Re: [Cryptography] prism-proof email in the degenerate case

2013-10-10 Thread John Denker
On 10/10/2013 02:20 PM, Ray Dillinger wrote: > split the message stream > into channels when it gets to be more than, say, 2GB per day. That's fine, in the case where the traffic is heavy. We should also discuss the opposite case: *) If the traffic is light, the servers should generate cover tr

[Cryptography] heterotic authority + web-of-trust + pinning

2013-09-28 Thread John Denker
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/25/2013 04:59 AM, Peter Gutmann wrote: > Something that can "sign a new RSA-2048 sub-certificate" is called a CA. For > a browser, it'll have to be a trusted CA. What I was asking you to explain > is > how the browsers are going to deal wit

Re: [Cryptography] real random numbers

2013-09-15 Thread John Denker
On 09/15/2013 03:49 AM, Kent Borg wrote: > When Bruce Schneier last put his hand to designing an RNG he > concluded that estimating entropy is doomed. I don't think he would > object to some coarse order-of-magnitude confirmation that there is > entropy coming in, but I think trying to meter entro

Re: [Cryptography] real random numbers

2013-09-15 Thread John Denker
Previously I said we need to speak more carefully about these things. Let me start by taking my own advice: Alas on 09/14/2013 12:29 PM, I wrote: > a) In the linux "random" device, /any/ user can mix stuff into the > driver's pool. This is a non-privileged operation. The idea is that > it can't

Re: [Cryptography] real random numbers

2013-09-14 Thread John Denker
This discussion will progress more smoothly and more rapidly if we clarify some of the concepts and terminology. There are at least four concepts on the table: 1) At one extreme, there is 100% entropy density, for example 32 bits of entropy in a 32-bit word. I'm talking about real physics

Re: [Cryptography] real random numbers

2013-09-13 Thread John Denker
Executive summary: The soundcard on one of my machines runs at 192000 Hz. My beat-up old laptop runs at 96000. An antique server runs at "only" 48000. There are two channels and several bits of entropy per sample. That's /at least/ a hundred thousand bits per second of real industrial-strengt

[Cryptography] auditing a hardware RNG

2013-09-09 Thread John Denker
On 09/05/2013 05:11 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > A hardware generator can have > horrible flaws that are hard to detect without a lot of data from many > devices. Can you be more specific? What flaws? On 09/08/2013 08:42 PM, James A. Donald wrote: > It is hard, perhaps impossible, to have t

Re: [Cryptography] Market demands for security (was Re: Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN")

2013-09-08 Thread John Denker
On 09/08/2013 12:08 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > I doubt that safety is, per se, anything the market demands from > cars, food, houses, etc. I wouldn't have said that. It's a lot more complicated than that. For one thing, there are lots of different "people". However, as a fairly-general rule,

Re: [Cryptography] tamper-evident crypto?

2013-09-06 Thread John Denker
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/05/2013 06:48 PM, Richard Clayton wrote: > so you'd probably fail to observe any background activity that tested > whether this information was plausible or not and then some chance > event would occur that caused someone from Law Enforcemen

Re: [Cryptography] tamper-evident crypto? (was: BULLRUN)

2013-09-05 Thread John Denker
I don't have any hard information or even any speculation about BULLRUN, but I have an observation and a question: Traditionally it has been very hard to exploit a break without giving away the fact that you've broken in. So there are two fairly impressive parts to the recent reports: (a) Brea

Re: [Cryptography] Snowden "fabricated digital keys" to get access to NSA servers?

2013-06-29 Thread John Denker
On 06/28/2013 04:00 PM, John Gilmore wrote: > Let's try some speculation about what this phrase, > "fabricating digital keys", might mean. Here's one hypothesis to consider. a) The so-called "digital key" was not any sort of decryption key. b) The files were available on the NSA machines in the

Re: Disk encryption advice...

2010-10-08 Thread John Denker
On 10/08/2010 04:27 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > I have a client with the following problem. They would like to > encrypt all of their Windows workstation drives, but if they do that, > the machines require manual intervention to enter a key on every > reboot. Why is this a problem? Because instal

Re: customizing Live CD images

2010-09-10 Thread John Denker
On 08/02/2010 10:47 PM, I wrote: > We have been discussing the importance of a unique random-seed > file each system. This is important even for systems that boot > from read-only media such as CD. > > To make this somewhat more practical, I have written a script > to remix a .iso image so as to

Re: Randomness, Quantum Mechanics - and Cryptography

2010-09-07 Thread John Denker
On 09/07/2010 11:19 AM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >> > 2) You can shield things so as to make this attack very, >> > very difficult. > I suspect that for some apps like smart cards that might be hard. > OTOH, it might be straightforward to detect the attempt. We should take the belt-and-suspenders a

Re: Randomness, Quantum Mechanics - and Cryptography

2010-09-07 Thread John Denker
On 09/07/2010 10:21 AM, Marsh Ray wrote: >> If anybody can think of a practical attack against the randomness >> of a thermal noise source, please let us know. By "practical" I >> mean to exclude attacks that use such stupendous resources that >> it would be far easier to attack other elements of

Re: Randomness, Quantum Mechanics - and Cryptography

2010-09-07 Thread John Denker
On 09/05/2010 08:27 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote: > If you think about the use of randomness in cryptography, what matters > isn't really randomness - it's exactly unpredictability. Agreed. > This is a very > tough to pin down: What's unpredictable to me may be predictable to > you, It's easy to

Re: questions about RNGs and FIPS 140

2010-08-27 Thread John Denker
On 08/26/2010 11:34 PM, Thomas wrote: > Luckily /dev/random is re-seeded during run-time. I would have said something different: *IF* you are lucky, then /dev/random gets reseeded during run time. > So even if you do > a roll-back of a system and the new input it non-deterministic it will > ge

customizing Live CD images (was: urandom etc.)

2010-08-03 Thread John Denker
We have been discussing the importance of a unique random-seed file each system. This is important even forsystems that boot from read-only media such as CD. To make this somewhat more practical, I have written a script to remix a .iso image so as to add one or more last-minute files. The leadin

Re: init.d/urandom : saving random-seed

2010-08-02 Thread John Denker
On 07/31/2010 09:00 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote: > I wouldn't recommend this for high-value security, but then if you're > dealing with high-value information, there's really no excuse for not > having and using a source of true random bits. Yes indeed! > On the question of what to do if we can't b

Re: init.d/urandom : saving random-seed

2010-07-31 Thread John Denker
On 07/31/2010 08:49 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: > the best way of fixing a Debian > system to be more secure as far as the quality of the randomness used by a > random user application will be, AFAIK, is to simply get a medium or high > bandwidth TRNG, Yes indeed! > I don't have

Re: init.d/urandom : saving random-seed

2010-07-31 Thread John Denker
Hi Henrique -- This is to answer the excellent questions you asked at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=587665#81 Since that bug is now closed (as it should be), and since these questions are only tangentially related to that bug anyway, I am emailing you directly. Feel free to

Re: Persisting /dev/random state across reboots

2010-07-29 Thread John Denker
On 07/29/2010 12:47 PM, Richard Salz wrote: > At shutdown, a process copies /dev/random to /var/random-seed which is > used on reboots. [1] Actually it typically copies from /dev/urandom not /dev/random, but we agree, the basic idea is to save a seed for use at the next boot-up. > Is this a go

Re: unattended reboot (was: clouds ...)

2009-08-03 Thread John Denker
On 08/01/2009 02:06 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote: > A while back, I evaluated a > technology that did it best to solve a basically insoluble problem: How > does a server, built on stock technology, keep secrets that it can use > to authenticate with other servers after an unattended reboot? This

Re: combining entropy

2008-10-28 Thread John Denker
On 10/28/2008 09:43 AM, Leichter, Jerry wrote: > | We start with a group comprising N members (machines or > | persons). Each of them, on demand, puts out a 160 bit > | word, called a "member" word. We wish to combine these > | to form a single word, the "group" word, also 160 bits > | in le

Re: combining entropy

2008-10-27 Thread John Denker
Alas on 10/25/2008 01:40 PM, I wrote: > To summarize: In the special sub-case where M=1, XOR > is as good as it gets. In all other cases I can think > of, the hash approach is much better. I should have said that in the special sub-case where the member word has entropy density XX=100% _or_ i

Re: combining entropy

2008-10-27 Thread John Denker
On 10/25/2008 04:40 AM, IanG gave us some additional information. Even so, it appears there is still some uncertainty as to interpretation, i.e. some uncertainty as to the requirements and objectives. I hereby propose a new scenario. It is detailed enough to be amenable to formal analysis. The

Re: combining entropy

2008-10-25 Thread John Denker
On 10/24/2008 03:40 PM, Jack Lloyd wrote: > Perhaps our seeming disagreement is due to a differing interpretation > of 'trusted'. I took it to mean that at least one pool had a > min-entropy above some security bound. You appear to have taken it to > mean that it will be uniform random? Thanks, t

Re: combining entropy

2008-10-24 Thread John Denker
On 10/24/2008 01:12 PM, Jack Lloyd wrote: > is a very different statement from saying that > lacking such an attacker, you can safely assume your 'pools of > entropy' (to quote the original question) are independent in the > information-theoretic sense. The question, according to the origina

Re: combining entropy

2008-10-24 Thread John Denker
On 09/29/2008 05:13 AM, IanG wrote: > My assumptions are: > > * I trust no single source of Random Numbers. > * I trust at least one source of all the sources. > * no particular difficulty with lossy combination. > If I have N pools of entropy (all same size X) and I pool them > together with

Re: Lava lamp random number generator made useful?

2008-09-21 Thread John Denker
On 09/20/2008 12:09 AM, IanG wrote: > Does anyone know of a cheap USB random number source? Is $7.59 cheap enough? http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HE-280B&cat=GDT For that you get a USB audio adapter with mike jack, and then you can run turbid(tm) to produce high-quality randomness.

On "randomness"

2008-07-31 Thread John Denker
In 1951, John von Neumann wrote: > Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits > is, of course, in a state of sin. That may or may not be an overstatement. IMHO it all depends on what is meant by "random". The only notion of randomness that I have found worthwhile is

Re: how to check if your ISP's DNS servers are safe

2008-07-23 Thread John Denker
On 07/23/2008 12:44 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: >> Niels Provos has a web page up with some javascript that automatically >> checks if your DNS caching server has been properly patched or not. >> >> http://www.provos.org/index.php?/pages/dnstest.html >> >> It is worth telling people to try. >> >

defending against evil in all layers of hardware and software

2008-04-28 Thread John Denker
This is an important discussion The threats are real, and we need to defend against them. We need to consider the _whole_ problem, top to bottom. The layers that could be subverted include, at a minimum: -- The cpu chip itself (which set off the current flurry of interest). -- The boot rom

customs searching laptops, demanding passwords

2008-02-09 Thread John Denker
I quote from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020604763_pf.html By Ellen Nakashima Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 7, 2008; A01 > The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from > travelers who say they now weigh

Re: two-person login?

2008-01-29 Thread John Denker
On 01/29/2008 11:34 AM, The Fungi wrote: > I don't think it's security theater at all, as long as established > procedure backs up this implementation in a sane way. For example, > in my professional life, we use this technique for commiting changes > to high-priority systems. Procedure is that tw

two-person login?

2008-01-29 Thread John Denker
Hi Folks -- I have been asked to opine on a system that requires a "two-person login". Some AIX documents refer to this as a "common method of increasing login security" http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg245962.pdf However, I don't think it is very common; I get only five hits from

Re: 2008: The year of hack the vote?

2007-12-26 Thread John Denker
On 12/23/2007 08:24 PM, ' =JeffH ' wrote: > 2008: The year of hack the vote? Shouldn't that be: 2008: Another year of hack the vote yet again? ..^^^...^ There is every reason to believe that the 2000 presidential election was stolen. A fair/honest/lawful

Re: PunchScan voting protocol

2007-12-15 Thread John Denker
On 12/13/2007 08:23 PM, Taral wrote: > On 12/12/07, John Denker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Several important steps in the process must be carried out in >> secret, and if there is any leakage, there is unbounded potential >> for vote-buying and voter coercion. > &

PunchScan voting protocol

2007-12-13 Thread John Denker
Hi Folks -- I was wondering to what extent the folks on this list have taken a look the PunchScan voting scheme: http://punchscan.org/ The site makes the following claims: >> End-to-end cryptographic independent verification, or E2E, is a >> mechanism built into an election that allows voter

electoral security by obscurity on trial

2007-12-06 Thread John Denker
For years, the Election Integrity Committee of the Pima County Democratic Party has been trying to improve the security of the elections systems used in local elections. The results include: -- a dozen or so suggestions that they made were actually accepted and implemented by the county. -- th

Re: How the Greek cellphone network was tapped.

2007-07-16 Thread John Denker
On 07/10/2007 01:59 AM, Florian Weimer wrote: It's also an open question whether network operators subject to interception requirements can legally offer built-in E2E encryption capabilities without backdoors. I agree. It's a tricky question; see below JI responded: You probably meant devi

Re: Quantum Cryptography

2007-07-03 Thread John Denker
On 07/01/2007 05:55 AM, Peter Gutmann wrote: One threat model (or at least failure mode) that's always concerned me deeply about QC is that you have absolutely no way of checking whether it's working as required. With any other mechanism you can run test vectors through it, run ongoing/continuo

Re: Quantum Cryptography

2007-06-26 Thread John Denker
On 06/25/2007 08:23 PM, Greg Troxel wrote: > 1) Do you believe the physics? (Most people who know physics seem to.) Well, I do happen to know a thing or two about physics. I know -- there is quite a lot you can do with quantum physics, and -- there is quite a lot you cannot do with quantum

Re: Private Key Generation from Passwords/phrases

2007-01-18 Thread John Denker
On 01/18/2007 03:13 PM, David Wagner wrote: > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> you write: >> The /definition/ of entropy is >> >> sum_i P_i log(1/P_i) [1] >> >> there the sum runs over all symbols (i) in the probability >> distribution, i.e. over all symbols in the ensembl

Re: Private Key Generation from Passwords/phrases

2007-01-18 Thread John Denker
On 01/17/2007 06:07 PM, Allen wrote: > The whole issue of entropy is a bit vague for me - I don't normally work > at that end of things - so could you point to a good tutorial on the > subject, or barring having a reference handy, could you give an overview? Entropy is defined in terms of probab

Re: SC-based link encryption

2007-01-05 Thread John Denker
On 01/05/2007 10:53 AM, Paul Hoffman wrote: > You could take an IPsec stack and repurpose it down one layer in the > stack. At least that way you'll know the security properties of what you > create. That is a Good Idea that can be used in a wide range of situations. Here is some additional deta

Re: gang uses crypto to hide identity theft databases

2006-12-24 Thread John Denker
On 12/22/2006 01:57 PM, Alex Alten wrote: > I'm curious as to why the cops didn't just pull the plugs right away. Because that would be a Bad Idea. In a halfway-well-designed system, cutting the power would just do the secret-keepers' job for them. > It would probably > take a while (minutes,

Re: Impossible compression still not possible. [was RE: Debunking the PGP backdoor myth for good. [was RE: Hypothesis: PGP backdoor (was: A security bug in PGP products?)]]

2006-09-03 Thread John Denker
Dave Korn asked: > Is it *necessarily* the case that /any/ > polynomial of log N /necessarily/ grows slower than N? Yes. Hint: L'Hôpital's rule. > if P(x)==e^(2x) That's not a polynomial. x^Q is a polynomial. Q^x is not. ---

Re: Quantum RNG

2006-07-06 Thread John Denker
James A. Donald wrote: > > And if you want to obtain noise from quantum > indeterminacy, shot noise is much more convenient. > Instead of photons going through a half silvered mirror, > and randomly being reflected or not, you rely on > electrons randomly winding up at the base or the > collecto

Re: Quantum RNG

2006-07-04 Thread John Denker
Andrea Pasquinucci wrote: > > http://www.idquantique.com/products/quantis.htm > > "Quantis is a physical random number generator exploiting an elementary > quantum optics process. Photons - light particles - are sent one by one > onto a semi-transparent mirror and detected. The exclusive events

Re: History and definition of the term 'principal'?

2006-04-26 Thread John Denker
Hadmut Danisch wrote: is anyone aware of a general and precise definition of the term 'principal' (as a noun) in the context of security? Its use in security does not AFAICT differ from its use in other contexts, notably law and finance. I don't see why it is necessary to look beyond an ordin

Re: Unforgeable Blinded Credentials

2006-04-05 Thread John Denker
Hal Finney wrote in part: ... Attempts to embed sensitive secrets in credentials don't work because there are no sensitive secrets today. You could use credit card numbers or government ID numbers (like US SSN) but in practice such numbers are widely available to the black hat community. The

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-26 Thread John Denker
In the context of >> 0 occurs with probability 1/2 >> each other number from 1 to 2^{160}+1 happens with >> probability 2^{-161}. I wrote: > This ... serves to illustrate, in an exaggerated way, the necessity > of not assuming that the raw data words are IID (independent and identically > distr

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-24 Thread John Denker
Ed Gerck wrote: In Physics, Thermodynamics, entropy is a potential [1]. That's true in classical (19th-century) thermodynamics, but not true in modern physics, including statistical mechanics. The existence of superconductors and superfluids removes all doubt about the absolute zero of entrop

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-24 Thread John Denker
Erik Zenner wrote: 0 occurs with probability 1/2 each other number from 1 to 2^{160}+1 happens with probability 2^{-161}. Is anyone aware of whether (and where) this was discussed in the literature, or what other approaches are taken? This particular problem is contrived or at least exagg

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-24 Thread John Denker
osen input program will output that string. So this is clearly a probability distribution (with some technicalities regarding issues of program lengths being glossed over here) as John Denker says. However to go from this to a notion of entropy is more questionable. Not really questionable. If

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-23 Thread John Denker
I wrote: >>With some slight fiddling to get the normalization right, 1/2 >>raised to the power of (program length) defines a probability >>measure. This may not be "the" probability you want, but it >>is "a" probability, and you can plug it into the entropy definition. John Kelsey wrote: No,

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-23 Thread John Denker
John Kelsey wrote: As an aside, this whole discussion is confused by the fact that there are a bunch of different domains in which entropy is defined. The algorithmic information theory sense of entropy (how long is the shortest program that produces this sequence?) is miles away from the infor

Re: Entropy Definition (was Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy)

2006-03-23 Thread John Denker
Aram Perez wrote: * How do you measure entropy? I was under the (false) impression that Shannon gave a formula that measured the entropy of a message (or information stream). Entropy is defined in terms of probability. It is a measure of how much you don't know about the situation. If by

Re: passphrases with more than 160 bits of entropy

2006-03-22 Thread John Denker
Matt Crawford wrote: I so often get irritated when non-physicists discuss entropy. The word is almost always misused. Yes, the term "entropy" is often misused ... and we have seen some remarkably wacky misusage in this thread already. However, physicists do not have a monopoly on correct u

Re: GnuTLS (libgrypt really) and Postfix

2006-02-15 Thread John Denker
James A. Donald wrote: The correct mechanism is exception handling. Yes, I reckon there is a pretty wide consensus that exceptions provide a satisfactory solution to the sort of problems being discussed in this thread. If caller has provided a mechanism to handle the failure, that mechanism

Re: GnuTLS (libgrypt really) and Postfix

2006-02-13 Thread John Denker
David Wagner wrote: This just shows the dangers of over-generalization. One could make an even stronger statement about the dangers of making assumptions that are not provably correct. Of course, we have to decide which is more important: integrity, or availability. That is a false dicho

Re: GnuTLS (libgrypt really) and Postfix

2006-02-12 Thread John Denker
On Sat, 11 Feb 2006 12:36:52 +0100, Simon Josefsson said: >> Yet, I agree it is poor design to [exit] in a library. I agree, it is a poor design. Werner Koch retorted: I disagree strongly here. Any code which detects an impossible state or an error clearly due to a programming error by t

Re: thoughts on one time pads

2006-01-31 Thread John Denker
I forgot to mention in my previous message: It is worth your time to read _Between Silk and Cyanide_. That contains an example of somebody who thought really hard about what his threat was, and came up with a system to deal with the threat ... a system that ran counter to the previous conventiona

Re: thoughts on one time pads

2006-01-31 Thread John Denker
Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote: is there any more reason to destroy a daily key after it as been used than before it has been used? That's quite an amusing turn of phrase. There are two ways to interpret it: *) If taken literally, the idea of destroying a key _before_ it is used is truly an inge

Re: thoughts on one time pads

2006-01-27 Thread John Denker
Dave Howe wrote: Hmm. can you selectively blank areas of CD-RW? Sure, you can. It isn't s much different from rewriting any other type of disk. There are various versions of getting rid of a disk file. 1) Deletion: Throwing away the pointer and putting the blocks back on the free lis

Re: quantum chip built

2006-01-13 Thread John Denker
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From what I understand simple quantum computers can easily brute-force attack RSA keys or other types of PK keys. My understanding is that quantum computers cannot "easily" do anything. As the saying goes: "We can factor the number 15 with quantum computers. We

Re: permutations +- groups

2005-12-22 Thread John Denker
Ben Laurie wrote: Good ciphers aren't permutations, though, are they? Because if they were, they'd be groups, and that would be bad. There are multiple misconceptions rolled together there. 1) All of the common block ciphers (good and otherwise) are permutations. To prove this, it suffices t

Re: packet traffic analysis

2005-10-31 Thread John Denker
In the context of: >>If your plaintext consists primarily of small packets, you should set the MTU >>of the transporter to be small. This will cause fragmentation of the >>large packets, which is the price you have to pay. Conversely, if your >>plaintext consists primarily of large packets, yo

packet traffic analysis

2005-10-31 Thread John Denker
Travis H. wrote: Part of the problem is using a packet-switched network; if we had circuit-based, then thwarting traffic analysis is easy; you just fill the link with random garbage when not transmitting packets. OK so far ... There are two problems with this; one, getting enough random

Re: EDP (entropy distribution protocol), userland PRNG design

2005-10-24 Thread John Denker
I've been following this thread for a couple of weeks now, and so far virtually none of it makes any sense to me. Back on 10/12/2005 Travis H. wrote: I am thinking of making a userland entropy distribution system, so that expensive HWRNGs may be shared securely amongst several machines. What e

continuity of identity

2005-09-27 Thread John Denker
Jerrold Leichter mentioned that: a self- signed cert is better than no cert at all: At least it can be used in an SSH-like "continuity of identity" scheme. I agree there is considerable merit to a "continuity of identity" scheme. But there are ways the idea can be improved. So let's discu

Re: Clearing sensitive in-memory data in perl

2005-09-17 Thread John Denker
Victor Duchovni wrote: So wouldn't the world be a better place if we could all agree on a single such library? Or at least, a single API. Like the STL is for C++. Yes, absolutely, but who is going to do it? One could argue it has already been done. There exists a widely available, freely

Re: solving the wrong problem

2005-08-07 Thread John Denker
Adam Shostack wrote: Here's a thought: "Putting up a beware of dog sign, instead of getting a dog." That's an interesting topic for discussion, but I don't think it answers Perry's original question, because there are plenty of situations where the semblence of protection is actually a cost-ef

Re: solving the wrong problem

2005-08-06 Thread John Denker
Perry E. Metzger wrote: We need a term for this sort of thing -- the steel tamper resistant lock added to the tissue paper door on the wrong vault entirely, at great expense, by a brilliant mind that does not understand the underlying threat model at all. Anyone have a good phrase in mind that

Re: ID "theft" -- so what?

2005-07-13 Thread John Denker
On 07/13/05 12:15, Perry E. Metzger wrote: However, I would like to make one small subtle point. ... the use of widely known pieces of information about someone to identify them. Yes, there are annoying terminology issues here. In the _Handbook of Applied Cryptography_ (_HAC_) -- on page 38

ID "theft" -- so what?

2005-07-12 Thread John Denker
I am reminded of a passage from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the episode "Lie to Me": BILLY FORDHAM: I know who you are. SPIKE: I know who I am, too. So what? My point here is that knowing who I am shouldn't be a crime, nor should it contribute to enabling any crime. Suppose you k

Re: /dev/random is probably not

2005-07-05 Thread John Denker
On 07/03/05 15:19, Dan Kaminsky wrote: > So the funny thing about, say, SHA-1, is if you give it less than 160 > bits of data, you end up expanding into 160 bits of data, but if you > give it more than 160 bits of data, you end up contracting into 160 bits > of data. This works of course for any

Re: /dev/random is probably not

2005-07-01 Thread John Denker
On 07/01/05 13:08, Charles M. Hannum wrote: Most implementations of /dev/random (or so-called "entropy gathering daemons") rely on disk I/O timings as a primary source of randomness. ... I believe it is readily apparent that such exploits could be written. So don't do it that way. Vastly b

Re: WYTM - "but what if it was true?"

2005-06-27 Thread John Denker
On 06/27/05 00:28, Dan Kaminsky wrote: ... there exists an acceptable solution that keeps PC's with persistent stores secure. A bootable CD from a bank is an unexpectedly compelling option Even more compelling is: -- obtain laptop hardware from a trusted source -- obtain software from a tru

Re: link-layer encryptors for Ethernet?

2005-02-09 Thread John Denker
Steven M. Bellovin wrote: Are there any commercial link-layer encryptors for Ethernet available? I know that Xerox used to make them, way back when, but are there any current ones, able to deal with current speeds (and connectors)? Several people have made suggestions involving IPsec, which were

Re: Entropy and PRNGs

2005-01-26 Thread John Denker
Ed Gerck wrote: Let me comment, John, that thermal noise is not random When did you figure that out? If you'd been paying attention, you'd know that I figured that out a long time ago. First of all, the phrase "not random" is ambiguous. I said Some people think “random” should denote 100% entropy

Re: Entropy and PRNGs

2005-01-10 Thread John Denker
John Kelsey wrote: If your attacker (who lives sometime in the future, and may have a large budget besides) comes up with a better model to describe the process you're using as a source of noise, you could be out of luck. The thing that matters is H(X| all information available to the attacker),

Re: Entropy and PRNGs

2005-01-10 Thread John Denker
Ben Laurie wrote: The point I am trying to make is that predictability is in the eye of the beholder. I think it is unpredictable, my attacker does not. I still cannot see how that can happen to anyone unless they're being willfully stupid. It's like something out of Mad Magazine: White Spy accep

Re: Entropy and PRNGs

2005-01-10 Thread John Denker
Referring to http://www.apache-ssl.org/randomness.pdf I wrote: >>I just took a look at the first couple of pages. >>IMHO it has much room for improvement. David Wagner responded: I guess I have to take exception. I disagree. I think Ben Laurie's paper is quite good. I thought your criticisms mis

Re: entropy depletion

2005-01-08 Thread John Denker
Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote: I would love to have an information-theoretic argument for the security of my PRNG, but that's not what we have, Yes, and I'd like my goldfish to ride a bicycle, but he can't. The P in PRNG is for Pseudo, and means the PRNG is relying on computational intractability, not

Re: Entropy and PRNGs

2005-01-07 Thread John Denker
Ben Laurie wrote: Given recent discussion, this is perhaps a good moment to point at a paper I wrote a while back on PRNGs for Dr. Dobbs, where, I'll bet, most of you didn't read it. http://www.apache-ssl.org/randomness.pdf I just took a look at the first couple of pages. IMHO it has much room f

Re: entropy depletion

2005-01-07 Thread John Denker
I wrote: >> A long string produced by a good PRNG is conditionally compressible in the sense that we know there exists a shorter representation, but at the same time we believe it to be conditionally incompressible in the sense that the adversaries have no feasible way of finding a shorter represe

Re: entropy depletion

2005-01-07 Thread John Denker
Jerrold Leichter asked: random number generator this way. Just what *is* good enough? That's a good question. I think there is a good answer. It sheds light on the distinction of pseudorandomness versus entropy: A long string produced by a good PRNG is conditionally compressible in

Re: entropy depletion

2005-01-06 Thread John Denker
I wrote: >> Taking bits out of the PRNG *does* reduce its entropy. Enzo Michelangeli wrote: By how much exactly? By one bit per bit. I'd say, _under the hypothesis that the one-way function can't be broken and other attacks fail_, exactly zero; in the real world, maybe a little more. If you said

Re: entropy depletion (was: SSL/TLS passive sniffing)

2005-01-05 Thread John Denker
Enzo Michelangeli wrote: > > This "entropy depletion" issue keeps coming up every now and then, but I > still don't understand how it is supposed to happen. Then you're not paying attention. > If the PRNG uses a > really non-invertible algorithm (or one invertible only with intractable > complexity

Re: Conspiracy Theory O' The Day

2005-01-04 Thread John Denker
Udhay Shankar N wrote: I just got a batch of spam: perfectly justified blocks of random-looking characters. Makes me wonder if somebody is trying to train Bayesian filters to reject PGP messages. Another hypothesis: Cover traffic, to defeat traffic analysis. The procedure: send N copies. N-M o

Re: SSL/TLS passive sniffing

2005-01-04 Thread John Denker
I wrote: >>If the problem is a shortage of random bits, get more random bits! Florian Weimer responded: We are talking about a stream of several kilobits per second on a busy server (with suitable mailing lists, of course). This is impossible to obtain without special hardware. Not very special, a

Re: SSL/TLS passive sniffing

2004-12-22 Thread John Denker
Florian Weimer wrote: Would you recommend to switch to /dev/urandom (which doesn't block if the entropy estimate for the in-kernel pool reaches 0), and stick to generating new DH parameters for each connection, No, I wouldn't. > or ... generate them once per day and use it for several connections?

Re: 'Proving' the correctness of a network encryption system test system

2004-12-05 Thread John Denker
Fredrik Henbjork wrote: Alice has: 1. A system which does processing of encrypted network streams. Alice wants the following from Bob: 2. A test system for the processing system in 1. This system is going to be used to decide if the processing system in 1 is working (processing) as it should. Thi

Re: IPsec +- Perfect Forward Secrecy

2004-12-05 Thread John Denker
OK, let me ask a more specific question. Actually, let me put forth some hypotheses about how I think it works, and see if anyone has corrections or comments. 0) I'm not sure the words Perfect Forward Secrecy convey what we mean when we talk about PFS. Definition 12.16 in HAC suggests _break-back

Re: IPsec +- Perfect Forward Secrecy

2004-12-01 Thread John Denker
Eric Rescorla wrote: Uh, you've just described the ephemeral DH mode that IPsec always uses and SSL provides. I'm mystified by the word "always" there, and/or perhaps by the definition of Perfect Forward Secrecy. Here's the dilemma: On the one hand, it would seem to the extent that you use ephemer

Re: Compression theory reference?

2004-09-06 Thread John Denker
Matt Crawford wrote: >>Plus a string of log(N) bits telling you how many times to apply the >>decompression function! >>Uh-oh, now goes over the judge's head ... Hadmut Danisch wrote: The problem is that if you ask for a string of log(N) bits, then someone else could take this as a proof that this

Re: ?splints for broken hash functions

2004-09-01 Thread John Denker
I wrote >> the Bi are the input blocks: >> (IV) -> B1 -> B2 -> B3 -> ... Bk -> H1 >> (IV) -> B2 -> B3 -> ... Bk -> B1 -> H2 >>then we combine H1 and H2 nonlinearly. (Note that I have since proposed a couple of improvements, but I don't think they are relevant to the present remarks.) David Wa

Re: Compression theory reference?

2004-09-01 Thread John Denker
I wrote: 4) Don't forget the _recursion_ argument. Take their favorite algorithm (call it XX). If their claims are correct, XX should be able to compress _anything_. That is, the output of XX should _always_ be at least one bit shorter than the input. Then the compound operation XX(XX(...)) sh

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