HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: jac54@cas.org ()
Subject: Re: Spycatcher
Organization: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 11:32:20 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.182906.9035@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>In article <fraserdt.727978978@unixg.ubc.ca> fraserdt@unixg.ubc.ca (David T.S. Fraser) writes:
>>In <1993Jan25.154016.10434@cas.org> jac54@cas.org () writes:
>>
>>>In article <1993Jan23.181520.18783@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jebright@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (James R Ebright) writes:
>>>>
>>>>Both books are great reads!  (Ever wonder why regular typewriters are
>>>>not used to type crypto messages...Read SPYCATCHER for that and much more.)
>>
>>>     That's regular ELECTRIC typewriters, regular manual typewriters
>>>     are very popular with the security-conscious.
>>
>>Same goes for PCs, too.
>
>I understand from my current reading, including a recent and excellent book
>on the CIA, apparently published with CIA cooperation to help with their
>more "open" image, and filled with revelations not previously seen, that

	That would be "Inside the CIA" by Ronald Kessler.

>manual typewriters are no more secure than electric. One simply uses
>different techniques for eavesdropping. In the case of "golf-ball"
>electrics, the motor is on for different lengths of time depending on the
>characters typed. In the case of manual ones, the sound is different
>depending on the key being struck.

	It all goes back to the old problem: a system is only as secure
	as the people who operate it.  Anybody paranoid enough not to
	use an electric typewriter, but not careful enough to consider
	attacks on the manual typewriter isn't really thinking about
	what they're doing and whether or not their information is
	valuable enough to an opponent to make them try that sort of thing.

>The book (sorry I haven't a pointer--I returned it to the library) has a
>particularly fascinating account of how the Soviets installed eavesdropping
>transmitters in the vertical support bar of U.S. typewriters in such a way
>that the workmanship was completely undetectable visually and the bugs had
>the same X-ray density as the support bar and thus didn't show up via
>X-ray. It took newer scanning techniques to spot the anomalies in the
>support bars and lead to the detection of the hidden bugs.

	And to think that they can't produce a TV set that doesn't
	explode.

	Alec Chambers
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math
From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Oh yeah?  Factor this...
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 00:40:18 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.205045.13877@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>In article <1993Jan21.011510.24294@linus.mitre.org> bs@gauss.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) writes:
>>In article <1993Jan20.232616.5748@zip.eecs.umich.edu> gilgalad@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Ralph Seguin) writes:
>>:
>>27392450308603031423410234291674686281194364367580914627947367941608692026226993634332118404582438634929548737283992369758487974306317730580753883429460344956410077034761330476016739454649828385541500213920807
>>:
>>:Can you factor this number [in your lifetime]?  If so, you may be
>> 
>>What is the source for this number? Is it a random integer? Is it
>>an RSA number, constructed as the product of nearly equal primes?
>>If the latter it is out of current computational range.
>
>(Correcting a previous post)
>Couldn't you take the approximate square root of the number, truncate the
>result, and then start searching up and down from there if the number is the
>product of two nearly equal primes?

Yes, you could.

You'd get a number on the order of 10^100.

You wouldn't need to search UP; only down, because you only really need to
find ONE of the factors.  Once you have one prime factor, the other is
easy to find.

Unfortunately, if you could test 10,000 values per second, it would mean
that the expected time required to factor the number would be of the
order 10^100/(10000) * 1/2 seconds.

That's a LOT of seconds.  On the order of 10^96 seconds.
10^94 minutes
10^92 hours
10^91 days

or in years, on the order of 10^88 years.

Far longer than ANY estimate of the age of the universe.

And if you could speed up the calculations by a factor of 10, it would
still be of the order 10^87 years.  Hardly computable.

And THIS is the reason why RSA is considered to be a comparatively safe
ciphering scheme.  There may be some better methods of searching for
factor candidates, but there aren't any "silver bullets," or algorithms
that can factor numbers in time on O(log N) time.  Factoring seems to take
O(sqrt N) time, which just don't cut it.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.
From: mag6@po.CWRU.Edu (Martin A. Gulaian)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Automatic lang. determination of titles/subj. lines?
Date: 24 Jan 1993 03:17:33 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: mag6@po.CWRU.Edu (Martin A. Gulaian)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, lhp@daimi.aau.dk (Lasse Hiller|e Petersen) says:
>> Rather than reinventing the wheel, I'd like to know whether someone knows
>> of a program for the automatic determination of the language of short
>> sentences, titles or subject lines.
>> 
>> Given a short piece of text, the program should output a (list of)
>> language(s) which the text is most likely to be in.
>> 
>> I think such a program could be based on the frequencies of syllables
>> or letter-pairs/triplets. Are there any good data collections of such
>> frequencies, at least for the European languages?

I can vouch for the approach - I wrote just such a program for a class
six or seven years ago. I fed it text in English/French/Spanish/German
and let it calculate the pair/triplet/whatever (it was selectable, I
think triplets and pairs both worked well) frequencies. It worked
very well - pretty much 100% accuracy on sentence-length samples of
unknown language, unless I deliberately tried to fool it.

I don't know where the source code ended up; it was in Prolog anyway.

-Marty
From: tgl+@cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Wanted: very fast random number generator
Summary: maybe a shift register would do?
Date: 26 Jan 93 19:36:45 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon

This isn't exactly a cryptographic problem, but I suspect sci.crypt is the
best place to ask.

What I need is a very very fast random number generator; it does NOT need to
be cryptographically strong.  The application is in generating random noise
for dithering a color image.  I need about 8 random bits on each call
(randomness of the low order bits is less important than the higher).
Ideally it would take, say, just a shift and XOR per value.  The code has to
be portable C, so circular shifts and other non-C operations are out.

I think something along the lines of a shift register with a constant
pattern XORed in after every shift might solve my problem.  But I don't
know how to design such a thing.  Info or references would be appreciated.

			thanks, tom lane
From: mjohnson@netcom2.Netcom.COM (Mark Johnson)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Disagreement with cost of DEA brute force crackmachine
Date: 22 Jan 93 14:48:48 GMT
	<1jmumhINNe3d@roche.csl.sri.com>
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Service

In article <1jmumhINNe3d@roche.csl.sri.com> boucher@csl.sri.com (Peter K. Boucher) writes:

   > In 1976, given economies of scale, each [custom built DES] Integrated
   > Circuit would cost ~$10 ([therefore] $10M/machine).  Allow a factor of
   > two, for other hardware and you pay $20M/machine.  Amortize costs over
   > 5 years, and you pay $10K/day.
   > [ ... ]
   > These are 1976 figures.  Even if we are optimistic by an order
   > of magnitude, the cost of computation falls in 5 years by a factor 
   > of 10; in 15 years (by now) by 1,000.


But you're talking about hardware design, not computation.


Have a look at a hardware budget for your chip, which holds
one copy of DES circuitry.  A swag at such an accounting is
shown below.  It is wrong (optimistic) because it assumes
the cost of the permutations and shufflings is zero, whereas
on silicon, gates are cheap and wires are expensive.

  a.  56 bit register for key bits                        336 gates
  b.  64 bit input register                               384 gates
  c   16 ranks of   32b  register pairs                  6144 gates
  d.  16 ranks of   (32  2-bit-XOR)                      1024 gates
  e.  16 copies of  (32b scramblers using S boxes)        480 gates
  f.  64 bit output register                              384 gates
                                                     -----------------
               TOTAL                                     8752 gates


Your $10-per-chip-in-1976 figure, divided by your "computation
cost reduction factor" of 1000, gives today's cost per chip of
$0.01.  Balderdash! Not in this universe in the year of our lord 1993.

But in today's practice we'd of course use high levels of integration,
putting (say) 32 DES hardware widgets on a single chip.  The
resultant VLSI device would have 280,000 logic gates (about the
complexity of the Intel 486 microprocessor).  Your cost figure
for this device would be $0.32.  Not in this universe in 1993.

Hire some genius to optimize the holy snot out of the hardware,
assume Allah is on your side and the gate count drops by 4X.
Now you can get 128 DES widgets on an i486 sized chip and
you pay the silicon fab $1.28 for this IC.  Good luck Mr. Phelps.


   --- Mark Johnson
From: pcl@ox.ac.uk (Paul C Leyland)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Public Key Depository
Date: 21 Jan 93 12:34:17 GMT
	<C0x6K7.J3y@demon.co.uk> <bontchev.727481088@fbihh>
Organization: Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Rd Oxford OX2
	6NN
In-reply-to: bontchev@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de's message of 19 Jan 93 22:04:48 GMT

In article <bontchev.727481088@fbihh> bontchev@fbihh.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Vesselin Bontchev) writes:

...

   BTW, somebody of the gurus here mentioned to me that it is possible to
   use the DNS mechanism to distribute some additional information about
   your machines. Maybe this could be use to distribute the public keys
   of your local users... Would be nice if it is so - the DNS mechanism
   works rather well... Could somebody with more knowledge on that
   subject verify whether it can be achieved?

Fascinating.  I never thought of that!  As time goes on, I fear that
my brain is getting ever mushier.

In Athena, at least, hesiod is used to distribute information around a
network.  I can type, for instance, "hesinfo pcl passwd" and get back
the response "pcl:*:9512:101:Paul C Leyland,,,,:/das/pcl:/bin/csh"

Hesiod uses the DNS mechanism.

I will investigate further.  In particular, I could use "hesinfo pcl
pgpkey" and have it do the decent thing.

Paul

--
Paul Leyland <pcl@oxford.ac.uk>          | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
Oxford University Computing Service      |     the English way.
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, UK     | The time is come, the song is over.
Tel: +44-865-273200  Fax: +44-865-273275 | Thought I'd something more to say.
Finger pcl@black.ox.ac.uk for PGP key    |
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: bs@fatima.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman)
Subject: Re: Is N a prime power?
Organization: Research Computer Facility, MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 15:05:56 GMT

In article <C1Exs1.8uz@ms.uky.edu> jedwards@ms.uky.edu (Jonathan Edwards) writes:
:I am reading an old paper by Tompa that describes Blum's protocol for
:flipping coins by telephone.  The first thing the verifier must do is
:verify that a very large (hundreds of digits) number has at least two
:distinct prime factors (i.e., that the number is not a prime power).
:Tompa gives no hint how to do this and I haven't been able to find anyone
:else who knows.  I'd very much appreciate it if someone could explain
 
Direct search. An upper bound on the number of exponentiations is
log_2(N). Each one takes O(log^3 N), so direct search takes only
O(log^4 N) operations. 

I.E.

Compute M = log_2(N). One then need only check whether it is a perfect
square, cube, 4th power.....  M'th power. Each of these tests is trivial.

--
Bob Silverman
These are my opinions and not MITRE's.
Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730
"You can lead a horse's ass to knowledge, but you can't make him think"
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: ccat@netcom.com (Chris Beaumont)
Subject: The origin of frequency hopping..
Keywords: spread-spectrum
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 04:08:07 GMT

...
I have an interesting story about frequency hopping.It was actually invented
in 1940 by my father and the movie actress Hedy Lamarr. They wanted to
design a secure radio controlled torpedo.My father and Hedy,being familiar
with player pianos (my father was a composer) had the bright idea of using
two identical player-piano rolls to synchronize the frequencies of an 
independent transmitter and receiver...
Unfortunately this idea was a bit ahead of it's time and the patent expired
before they ever received any money for it.
C' est la vie..
-Chris Beaumont
 ccat@netcom.com

-- 
__
 "I guess that's what happens when you let Puritans found their own country."
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math
From: rcain@netcom.com (Robert Cain)
Subject: Re: RSA cracked? I don't think so..., HUGE primes?
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:10:49 GMT

gtoal@pizzabox.demon.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:
: In article <1993Jan21.070521.9787@netcom.com> rcain@netcom.com (Robert Cain) writes:
: :I'll be corrected if not :-)  The probibalistic test can be iterated
: :for an arbitrarilarily high theoretical probability that one is prime.
: :Well, I know that one is prime, you understand what I mean. :-)
: 
: "Oh no it isn't!" :-)
: 

Really?  Why not?  The only thing that divides it is itself.  Oh, all
other numbers are divisable by it so it must be discarded right?

Bob
-- 
Bob Cain    rcain@netcom.com   408-358-2007

    'The meek shall inherit the earth--the rest of us will move on..'
                                                    Sameer Parekh


               PGP 1.0 or 2.0 public key available on request.
From: m_lennon@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Mike Lennon)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: LUC vs RSA
Date: 25 Jan 93 23:40:25 GMT
Followup-To: sci.crypt
Organization: Computer Science Dept

The Dr Dobbs article claims that LUC is stronger than RSA.  In fact we now
have "proof" of that claim, in the sense that we have worked out a way
(actually refined an old way - we're well aware that this type of attack is
well known) to forge RSA signatures, using just public information.  The
basic method is to factorise a message just before it's signed (i.e. after
the hashing algorithm has been applied), then recover the signatures of the
prime factors by using an elimination method on factorised random messages.
 Unfortunately with a 512 bit key it all takes too many lifetimes to be
feasible in "general", but it becomes at least capable of consideration if
:
* The message is hashed to a short (eg 128-bit) block.
* Either the number 3 is used as the RSA encryption exponent,
* Or there is a Notary Public you can use which signs things that are
obtained from the message in a predictable way (eg hashing or addition of
time stamp).

The interesting thing is that hashing is no protection whatsoever - it
makes things simpler for the first stage (in practice, by reducing the size
of the message to factorise), and it doesn't stop the Notary Public attack
because the thing which the N.P. signs is obtained predictably from the
message sent to it.

Because factorising LUC signatures does not get you anywhere (the
signatures of the factors are no use at all), LUC can continue to be used
with short signature blocks, exponent 3, and simple Notary Publics. 
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: oml@eloka.demon.co.uk (Owen Lewis)
Subject: Re: Technical Terms ... 
Distribution: world
Organization: Eloka Consultancy & Project Management
Reply-To: oml@eloka.demon.co.uk
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 19:36:58 +0000

In article <1jpgn8INNq89@morrow.stanford.edu> waldo@lucifer.stanford.edu writes:

>What does the term "superencipherment" mean ?
>
>What exactly is a "generatrix" ?

Non-standard (to me) terminology. I would assume them to mean:

	1) Superencipherment. Double (or more) encryption. Examples would be: 
the repetitive encryption in DES of a message (by any of several methods) to 
improve the cryptographic protection available from a 56 bit key. Also the 
off-line encryption of plain text in one cipher before on-line encryption in a 
second cipher during the transmission process.

	2) Generatrix. The feminine counterpart of 'generator'. The politically
correct equivalent of The Lady's Prayer, 'Our Mother which art in Heaven.....'

Owen
From: pcl@ox.ac.uk (Paul C Leyland)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Public Key Ciphers
Date: 22 Jan 93 15:01:56 GMT
Organization: Oxford University Computing Services, 13 Banbury Rd Oxford OX2
	6NN
In-reply-to: warlord@MIT.EDU's message of 21 Jan 93 01:43:17 GMT

In article <WARLORD.93Jan20204310@m1-115-7.mit.edu> warlord@MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins) writes:

   If you are trying to secure the network, and if you can trust the
   machines that you are trying to secure, then I suggest you look into
   Kerberos (comp.protocols.kerberos, or kerberos@mit.edu).  It is based
   on DES, and uses shared secrets between entities to prove
   authenticity.

   It doesn't sound like you need real-time key distribution, which is
   something that Public Key algorithms have over secret-key algorithms,
   but if you have physical access to both machines, then you can place a
   shared secret on both machines and now that link is secure...

   I hope this helps.  If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

My fiquestion is: how do I get kerberos source code, with all the DES
code and hooks in place?  Does your answer vary, depending on whether
I'm in the US or the UK?


Paul
--
Paul Leyland <pcl@oxford.ac.uk>          | Hanging on in quiet desperation is
Oxford University Computing Service      |     the English way.
13 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6NN, UK     | The time is come, the song is over.
Tel: +44-865-273200  Fax: +44-865-273275 | Thought I'd something more to say.
Finger pcl@black.ox.ac.uk for PGP key    |
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.security.pgp
From: smb@research.att.com (Steven Bellovin)
Subject: Re: Was Sidelnikov right???
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 18:23:32 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories

In article <7V2qXB1w165w@tornado.welly.gen.nz>, sai@tornado.welly.gen.nz (Simon McAuliffe) writes:

....

> This is kinda frightening...  Every single test failed miserably,
> supporting the alternative hypothesis.  Even if I tried my best I
> couldn't fiddle these tests.  These tests simply cannot be passed at any
> significance level.
> 
> It looks like _THIS_IS_ what Dr. Sidelnikov also did, and it means one
> of three things:  (ranked in order of likelihood as I see it)
> 
>    1)  Both Dr. Sidelnikov and I stuffed up.
> 
>    2)  This correlation test isn't appropriate for this situation.
> 
>    3)  Something funny is going on and either the RNG is badly
>        implemented or IDEA has a problem.
> 
> Number 1 sounds like the most likely and number 3 is just plain scary.
> 
> Well, after all this, perhaps Dr. Sidelnikov isn't just a crock. If I
> didn't make any mistakes, there may be something to what he says after
> all.  Can somebody who really knows some real statistics shed a brighter
> light on the subject?

An interesting test.  A useful control would be to plug in DES instead
of IDEA, and see what happens.  It's pretty well accepted that DES is
a very good random number generator; if it fails your test, I'd look
hard at cases 1 and 2.  If DES passes, on the other hand, case 3 looks
plausible.
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: jcluett@world.std.com (Jim Cluett)
Subject: Programs in BASIC please
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 14:34:00 GMT

Could any of you point me to an encryption program or two,
written in BASIC that would be suitable for beginners? Security
is not important. Just looking for some introductory material
that would be fun and educational for students. Thanks. e-mail to
jcluett@world.std.com.
 

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: schneier@chinet.chi.il.us (Bruce Schneier)
Subject: RAND Tables
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 03:03:55 GMT

Has anyone ever put the RAND tables on line?

Bruce
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: DDFr@Midway.UChicago.Edu (David Friedman)
Subject: Re: Legal Stuff!
Followup-To: sci.crypt,alt.security.pgp,alt.security.ripem
Organization: University of Chicago Law School
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:04:31 GMT

In article <C0uouu.96I@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>, hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu
(Herman Rubin) wrote:
> 
> In article <wingo-130193131057@90.190.20.24> wingo@apple.com (Tony Wingo) writes (assuming I have correctly untangled the attributions):
If you want to claim that their invention was not unique and original,
you'll demonstrate that someone else used it or described it earlier.  The
fact that someone else COULD have come up with it can be said of any
invention, so is not in and of itself sufficient.

If I am correct in interpreting this as a comment on patentability (I am
just entering the thread), it seems to confuse two different
requirements--novelty and non-obviousness (paragraphs 102 and 103 of the
patent act).

The novelty requirement is that the whole idea was not present in one place
in the past (publication, in public use, etc.--I oversimplify a little).
The non-obviousness requirement is that the thing would not have been
obvious to a (hypothetical) person skilled in the relevant art. This is a
much fuzzier concept and allows the argument that the person skilled in the
relevant art would have known about elements of the invention present in
different publications, existing objects, etc. A further ambiguity is that
the "relevant art" may not be obvious--in this case is it cryptography or
number theory?

A further problem is that laws of nature, principles of mathematics, and
the like are not patentable. The Supreme Court, in some opinions, holds
that an invention using a law of nature must be analyzed as if the law of
nature was already known in deciding whether the invention is non-obvious,
hence patentable. The CAFC (where appeals of patent cases go before they
reach the Supreme Court) has generally been more pro-patent, and has I
believe held that while an algorithm, equation, etc. cannot itself be
patentable, its non-obviousness can be used in demonstrating the
non-obviousness of an invention using it (at least, that clearly seems to
be Judge Rich's position).

I hope this helps.

David Friedman
Olin Fellow in Law and Economics
University of Chicago Law School
(312) 702-9589
Xref: sparky sci.crypt:7059 alt.security.pgp:583
From: rpw3@rigden.wpd.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: random number generation
Date: 28 Jan 93 07:05:32 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

drake@Autodesk.COM (Dan Drake) writes:
+---------------
| Measure the time between successive particles detected by the counter.
| Remember it.  Measure the time between the next two.  If it's less than
| the first, generate 0; if more, generate 1; if the same, within your
| means of measurement, drop it and try again.  Repeat as necessary.
| 
| If the half-life of your source is long enough (exercise for the
| reader), the bias towards 1-bits will not be measurable.
+---------------

Well, if you simply reverse your 1/0 selection rule after every bit
generated...


-Rob