HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dseaman@oread.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: VCR+ code cracking: help!
Date: 15 Nov 92 18:59:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: oread.1992Nov15.125926.1
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Serces

Has anyone cracked the VCR+ codes? I am interested in getting the
algrthym that I could use in a BASIC program. Any info would be
appreciated. 

-- 
DSeaman@Oread.cc.ukans.edu
Derek Seaman
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: kocherp@leland.Stanford.EDU (Paul Carl Kocher)
Subject: Re: New Encryption - a Challenge
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 92 00:54:28 GMT

In article <n0eeat@ofa123.fidonet.org> Erik.Lindano@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
>Writes kocherp@leland.stanford.edu (Paul C. Kocher):
> 
> > It sounds to me like this "encryption" system just involves 
> > XORing random numbers onto the plaintext, which would explain 
> > why the program is very short, cannot use keys, and produces 
> > different cryptotext when run multiple times (different random 
> > number seeds stored at the beginning of the cryptotext).
> 
> The name seems familiar... the PKZIP password cracker? 

yes.

> How... ah, interesting that you should make so many assumptions 
> regarding an encryption method that you haven't even seen.  

Since you haven't shown anyone your algorithm, or even output from
it, I don't see how you can expect anything else.

> Well, if it's that simple, it should be real easy to crack! Wanna 
> try?

Sure, but I can't until you post some data.

By the way, RNG-based encryption can be extremely strong, depending
on how good the random number generator is.  One based on DES, for
example, could be very, very strong.  I came across a RNG-based
encryption algorithm a while ago, and I can tell you from experience
that it was not "real easy to crack," especially since I had no idea
what compiler was used.  If that isn't obvious to you and your friend,
I'm afraid it's quite unlikely that your algorithm is useful.

> (Actually, NuCrypt uses embedded, 2048-bit continuously- 
> shifting keys.  Not sure what that means, but you might know :-)   

It says essentially nothing about the strength of the algorithm, and
is not incompatible with my earlier guess about how it might work.

> Feel like taking a pot shot at it?  Nah, you're probably too busy 
> doing something else this time of year, right?  Mating season 
> perhaps..?  

I'd be happy to take a crack at it, it you'd be so kind as to post
some plaintext/ciphertext instead of making inappropriate comments.
This whole discussion is wasting net bandwidth, and the few of us who
haven't already it into our kill files are starting to wonder what
you are trying to hide, since you've posted nothing.

-- Paul Kocher
kocherp@leland.stanford.edu
From: cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: PGP and real criminals
Date: 20 Nov 92 19:25:34 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer, Software Engineering
NNTP-Posting-Host: ellisun.sw.stratus.com

In article <1ej1fsINN5ad@morrow.stanford.edu> castor@drizzle.Stanford.EDU (Castor Fu) writes:
>It seems to me that  once a person has violated certain rules, e.g.
>child molestation, insider trading, etc.  one might restrict their
>access to tools which are particularly useful towards those ends,
>e.g. guns, crypto etc.


Nice try.


I predict that in the future -- with the geographic distribution of both
computer systems and companies -- there will be widespread cryptographic
protection on inter-office phones, FAXes, video-conference machines,
cellular phones and corporate computer networks.  There will also be easily
available cryptographic protection of files.  All of this is needed to
allow corporations to function free from industrial espionage.

Many companies will have nothing but PCs for their computers, so all of
this crypto will be on PCs.  (Guess what: it is today, already)

To prohibit use of crypto by convicted felons you would have to prohibit
their employment in a large class of industries.

This is probably illegal -- or might easily be made illegal -- since it
works against the criminal's decision to go straight and build a new life.

-- 
-- <<Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own, of course.>>
-- Carl Ellison						cme@sw.stratus.com
-- Stratus Computer Inc.	M3-2-BKW		TEL: (508)460-2783
-- 55 Fairbanks Boulevard ; Marlborough MA 01752-1298	FAX: (508)624-7488
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: mrose@prufrock.stsci.edu (Mike Rose)
Subject: secure mail from a mac
Reply-To: mrose@stsci.edu
Organization: Space Telescope Science Institute
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 20:24:27 GMT

I'm interested in using secure mail or some sort, but my present
options are insecure, inconvenient, or both.

I have internet access through hosts that I do not control.  As the
PGP manual points out, this is very insecure.  I can dial in, using a
terminal emulator on a macintosh.

For secure mail I seem to have two choices.  

The simple but inconvenient choice is to use kermit to xfer encrypted
messages between my mac and my internet host.  I don't like this
because of the significant effort required to deal with encrypted
mail: no longer could I simply "reply" to a message, or even read it.
I'd have to
  1. log on the unix box
  2. write encrypted messages to a file
  3. kermit the file to my mac
  4. leave the terminal emulator, returning to the mac
  5. decrypt the message.
  6. compose a reply, outside of my standard unix mail environment
  7. write reply to a file, encrypt it
  8. kermit reply back to the unix box
  9. go back to terminal emulator, send mail.

This is simply too inconvenient to do on a large scale.  Or even a
small scale.

An alternative which is more complex to implement, and requires
changing the way I handle mail, but is much more convenient, is to
read all mail on my mac.  Ideally en/decrypting messages would be
built into the mail reader, but at worst I could en/decrypt local
files - avoiding the kermit steps above.  But I don't know how to go
about doing this.  Are there products on the market that do this?  Do
I need to make my mac a full-fledged internet host?

How have others dealt with this problem?  Are there convenient and
secure solutions?

Finally, I have seen references to RIPEM, but don't know anything
about it.  Would someone fill me in or give me a pointer?  I'm
guessing it's a public key system, using the rsa algorithm, blessed by
pkp.  Is there a macintosh version?

Thanks.
--
Mike Rose, mrose@stsci.edu, 410-338-4949
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
From: urbin@interlan.interlan.com (Mark Urbin)
Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
Organization: Racal-Datacom
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 21:26:15 GMT

In article <1992Nov11.223405.12090@rchland.ibm.com> lwloen@rchland.vnet.ibm.com (Larry Loen) writes:
>As for our wonderful handgun culture, I think it very interesting
>that I am more likely to be blown away by a 13 year old in 
>Minneapolis than I am to be blown up by the IRA in London and
>probably even in Belfast.  True, no one can keep the IRA disarmed,
>but trying does seem to help a little. . .
   Any facts to back this up?
Mark Urbin  Racal-Datacom  Boxborough, MA   urbin@interlan.interlan.com   
These opinions are mine.  No one else will admit to them.	          
"It is caffeine alone that sets my mind in motion.  It is through beans of
java that thoughts acquire speed, that hands acquire shakes, that shakes
become a warning...I am...IN CONTROL...OF MY ADDICTION!"
                        --From the Minicon Graffiti Wall, 1989(?)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: PGP and real criminals
From: john.eichler@grapevine.lrk.ar.us (John Eichler) 
Date: 22 Nov 92 06:38:00 GMT
Reply-To: john.eichler@grapevine.lrk.ar.us (John Eichler) 
Distribution: world
Organization: The GrapeVine BBS *** N. Little Rock, AR *** (501) 753-8121


In article: <1ej1fsINN5ad@morrow.stanford.edu> (Castor Fu) states:

>How do people feel about restricting cryptographic privileges of people
 once they have been convicted of a particular set of crimes?

>It seems to me that  once a person has violated certain rules, e.g.
 child molestation, insider trading, etc.  one might restrict their
 access to tools which are particularly useful towards those ends,
 e.g. guns, crypto etc.

I, for one, agree completely with Mr. Fu.  Once a person has been convicted
of a crime the government could outlaw their use of cryptography as a means
of communication.  These would tend to be individuals with a much higher
probability of future wrongdoing than the general public and hence it seems
logical to be more wary of their use of any facilities which would make
future crimes easier to commit.

I would be anxious to get further comments about this proposal.
---
 . SM 1.06 ----- . Email: john.eichler@grapevine.lrk.ar.us
From: cme@ellisun.sw.stratus.com (Carl Ellison)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Public key challenge
Date: 16 Nov 92 22:30:56 GMT
Organization: Stratus Computer, Software Engineering
NNTP-Posting-Host: ellisun.sw.stratus.com

In article <1992Nov14.153536.9930@infodev.cam.ac.uk> rja14@cl.cam.ac.uk (Ross Anderson) writes:
>
>Call a public key cryptosystem coercion-resistant if an opponent who 
>monitors the channel between two parties, and some time thereafter 
>obtains the cooperation of one of these parties, cannot recover the 
>session key.
>

If I wanted to do this with an RSA system, I'd put my session key in
a record with an expiration datime.  My tamper-resistent Digital Signing
Unit would check the expiration datime and refuse to give me a session
key which has expired.  Under no circumstances would anyone be allowed
to get the secret part of the RSA key out of the DSU.  There would be
no passive backup of the DSU.

(This calls for a fault tolerant DSU, but then all computers are FT,
aren't they?  :-)

-- 
-- <<Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own, of course.>>
-- Carl Ellison						cme@sw.stratus.com
-- Stratus Computer Inc.	M3-2-BKW		TEL: (508)460-2783
-- 55 Fairbanks Boulevard ; Marlborough MA 01752-1298	FAX: (508)624-7488
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: David Banisar <tc@eff.org>
Subject: Re: Where is PGP 2.0?
X-Xxmessage-Id: <A7350FEB6201AC84@truman.eff.org>
X-Xxdate: Sun, 22 Nov 92 10:22:35 GMT
Organization: Freelance Troublemaker
>message-Id: <17641@mindlink.bc.ca>
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d12
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 15:24:45 GMT

PGP is now available for the Macintosh also. It is available on the
following FTP sites.


Host plaza.aarnet.edu.au

    Location: /micros/mac/umich/util/encryption
           FILE -r--r--r--     210389  Oct 30 14:45 
macpgp2.0.sit.hqx

Host pencil.cs.missouri.edu

    Location: /pub/crypt
           FILE -rw-r--r--     210389  Oct 31 19:39 
macpgp2.0.sit.hqx

Host wuarchive.wustl.edu

    Location: /mirrors3/archive.umich.edu/mac/util/encryption
           FILE -r--r--r--     210389  Oct 30 08:45 
macpgp2.0.sit.hqx

Host src.doc.ic.ac.uk

    Location: /computing/systems/mac/umich/util/encryption
           FILE -r--r--r--     193665  Oct 30 14:45 
macpgp2.0.sit.hqx.Z
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy
From: unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Triple DES
Date: 23 Nov 1992 03:45:49 GMT
Organization: The University of British Columbia
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: physics.ubc.ca

phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin) writes:


>1. It's not known (that I've heard) that multiple DES is half the
>set of all encryptions.  What's known is:
>  1) (single) DES is not a group.
>  2) The *single round* DES functions generate half of the set of
>     all encryptions (i.e. permutations of the 2^64 text blocks).

Uh, there are 2^56 single round encryptions and (2^64)! permutatons. The
first is "slightly" smaller than the second.

>2. I don't see a simple argument that even if DES generates A_(2^64)
>(i.e. half of all the permutations), double DES contains anything
>like 2^112 of those elements.  It's a reasonable thing to guess, but
>I'd like to hear some actual evidence...
 Yes it was a pure guess. It would be interesting to see evidence. As I
 said, DES would have to be almost a group ( D1 D2=D3 for many D in
 DES) for my estimate to be false.
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.sys.next.misc
From: eoliver@ralph.cs.haverford.edu (Erik Oliver)
Subject: Re: UNIX Mail with PubKey Encryption
Organization: Haverford College Computer Science Department
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 17:30:58 GMT

Thwap!  Erik hits himself over the head for not being aware of For Your
Eyes Only on the NeXT.  On the other hand, Public Key encryption is only
useful if the other person can certify the file and unless the receiving
machine is another NeXT that just won't be the case.

-Erik
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: huntting@advtech.uswest.com (Brad Huntting)
Subject: Re: U.S. Constitution
Organization: U S WEST Advanced Technologies
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 00:08:26 GMT

In article <1992Nov6.093638.25816@ils.nwu.edu> mccoy@ils.nwu.edu writes:
>ObCrypt: It is interesting to note how easily/quickly people jumped to the
>gun analogy when people start talking about restricting encryption.  Is
>crypto the functional equivalent of a gun in an information age?

Hmmm...

	"Guns dont kill people,  People with guns kill people." "Keys
	dont kill people,  People with keys kill people."

Doesnt' really work now does it?  Mabey:

	"Keys dont lie cheat and steal,  People with keys lie cheat and
	steal."

Still sounds kind of stupid...  How about:

	"Keys dont do crimes,  People with keys do crimes."

Yea.  That's it....


brad


	"Let's go do some crimes..."
	"Yea!  Let get sushi and not pay!"
			-- Repo Man
Xref: sparky sci.crypt:4875 sci.math:15069 comp.theory:2440
From: pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.math,comp.theory
Subject: Re: Cryptography and P=NP
Date: 16 Nov 92 19:02:55 GMT
Reply-To: pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley)
Organization: Do they make a washing powder called Caliban Automatic?

In article <1992Nov16.152501.22172@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> pratt@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Vaughan R. Pratt) writes:
>In article <PHR.92Nov15203840@napa.telebit.com> phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin) writes:
>>It is true that if P=NP then all cryptography everywhere (not just RSA)
>>is dead; but at this point I wouldn't take Swart's claims seriously
>>without seeing some consensus among complexity efforts that unlike
>>his previous attempts, his latest effort is free of bugs.
>
>To rephrase Herman Rubin's point: an O(n^1000) algorithm for an NP-hard
>problem will show P=NP without compromising cryptography in the
>slightest.

If such an algorithm was found, I wouldn't trust RSA further than I
could throw it without a proof that factoring is something on this
order of hardness, and such a proof doesn't exist at the moment.  If
it's O(n^1000) today, then people will be bringing Fibonacci heaps and
hash tables and all sorts of odd things to bear on it until it's beaten
down to something smaller; and "something smaller" might be O(n^3).
  __                                ____
\/ o\ Paul Crowley pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk \  /
/\__/ "I'm the boy without a soul"   \/
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: ritter@cactus.org (Terry Ritter)
Subject: Re: Demons and Ogres
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 10:34:39 GMT


 In <hugh.721982357@gargoyle.uchicago.edu>
 hugh@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Hugh Miller) writes:


>  I.    Freely accessible practically secure cryptography (FAPSC) is an
>        area in which the interests of private corporations and the
>        interests (some would say rights) of private individuals to be
>        secure in their persons and papers converge.

 I believe this is clearly false.  What corporations (e.g., banks)
 have typically screamed about is the right to continue to use DES.
 A few months ago, corporations were screaming about possibly being
 required to provide remote monitoring access to their private
 telephone switches.  None that I know of is fighting, say, for
 the right of their employees to use cryptography for personal
 communications or data storage.


>        Making FAPSC illegal for the general populace
>        will severely impact the security of internal corporate
>        communications.  (Individual corporations are, I think, unlikely
>        to win exemptions to such legislation unless they do contract
>        work with the government, and then only on those specific
>        contracts.)

 I see no reason to think that corporations would not be granted
 easy-to-get licenses if they use particular types of equipment.

 In fact, a March 1987 article in Data Communications magazine
 described NSA's Commercial Comsec Endorsement Program (CEEP) and
 Project Overtake encryption equipment in two classes:  Types I
 and II.  Type I would be available only to government agencies and
 contractors, but a Type II "module" would be a replacement for DES
 equipment, and would be built into a computer or communications
 device and sold by a vendor.

 This program was not a success (they "ran it up the flagpole" and
 nobody saluted), but, clearly, NSA *is* prepared to support the
 concept of data encryption for business.  Not unexpectedly, there
 was no proposal to provide low-cost consumer encryption, a topic
 which has been at the heart of the argument here for the past week.


>Such a general ukase on FAPSC would thus hurt
>        American business in a competitive world market.  This kind of
>        argument is already being made by many corporations, and loudly.

 Business use and personal use are two different things.  I think
 it quite likely that the government would like to license the
 first, and minimize the second.  Consequently, arguments based on
 American business competitiveness may be totally irrelevant to the
 continued use of strong cryptography by individuals.

 ---
 Terry Ritter   ritter@cactus.org

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight)
Subject: Re: PGP and real criminals
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 09:05:46 GMT


Jeff Harrington says he and his wife are under surveillance, phone tapped,
mail opened, etc.

I don't know Jeff, and it would be interesting to hear how he knows this.

It would also be interesting to know if he was notorious in some way.

-- 
David Sternlight
PGP public key on request; RIPEM public key on server


Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: gauthier@ug.cs.dal.ca (Paul Gauthier)
Subject: Re: New ENcryption - a Challenge
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 17:17:16 GMT

In sci.crypt Erik.Lindano@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:

>Writes marc@tanda.isis.org (Marc Thibault):
> 
> > For an encryption to present a challenge, it has to be robust 
> > under plaintext attack when the attacker has a copy of the 
> > mechanism.
> 
> Spoken _ex cathedra_.  I think an encryption might be extremely 
> easy or extremely difficult to break whether one has a "copy of 
> the mechanism" or whether one doesn't. In the real world, during
> a practical attempt at breaking a code, you might not have the 
> algorithm. 
> 

I think what he, and a thousand other posters on the net, was trying
to say was that no one, in the real world, with real data to encrypt
is going to trust a system which hasn't been shown to resist a known
algorithm, known plaintext attack.

It is utterly naive to assume that this magic algorithm won't become
known to any sort of serious attacker. If more than a handful of people
ever come to use your algorithm, then surely through analysis of the
executable code and decompilation the algorithm _will_ become known
to all and sundry.

When you started this challenge did you read the FAQ? I'm guessing
that you did, and then decided to ignore, nay invert, all the good
advice contained therein and make this challenge. Enough with the damn
bandwidth wasting, the patronizing tones and the relentless repetitive
ranting, and on with the damn challenge.

Just be warned, even if the code is not broken, it shows nothing useful
about its utility as an encryption tool. Without analysis of the algorithm,
no one can know for sure how secure it may be. There could be a trivial
loophole which is made totally, and blatently obvious by a casual analysis
of the algorithm. In other words, this test can only show that your
method is useless, and can make _no_ statement concerning the fact that
it is useful. At some point you _will_ have to release the source code/
algorithm to gain some insight into its real utility. Why not just do it
now and stop this silly hand-waving, snotty-nosed, we-know-better-than-
all-you-professional-cryptographers, if-you-won't-take-our-challenge-as-
is-then-you-are-a-wimp-and-our-algorithm-must-scare-you-cause-it's-so-
damn-good, I'll-respond-to-everyone's-thoughtful-intelligent-postings-
by-ignoring-the-meat-and-flashing-back-some-rhetoric-bullshit-concerning-
a-peripheral-point waste of time?

PG

-- 
===========================================================================
                             Paul Gauthier
cyclist, rock climber, skydiver, computer scientist (...in order of danger)
Electronic: gauthier@ug.cs.dal.ca  Voice: (902)423-0089  Fax: (902)420-1675
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns
From: erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp)
Subject: Re: Risks of Using PGP 2.0
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 02:26:23 GMT

Robert Cain (rcain@netcom.com) wrote:

: I still don't like that the public must purchase rights to use work
: done by tax-exempt, non-profit (I'm getting more specific here) groups
: like MIT and Stanford funded signifigantly by public taxes but that's
: reality at the moment and another issue.

Wasn't there a big brouhaha a couple of years back that said that Ashton-Tate's
copyright of DBase was invalid, because DBase had been developed with public
funds?  Seems to me that this would be the case here.  The RSA algorithm was
developed at MIT with public funds.  That would make it, in theory, public
property.  PKP was set up, it seems, to cheat the American public out of what
is rightfully theirs, but they have everyone running scared, so it probably
will not be tested in court for some time.  So they get away with theft,
and try and screw the rest of us out of what is legally ours by intimidation.
Doesn't seem right to me - but, then again, I'm not a lawyer.

I welcome replies on this matter from representatives of PKP.  If they stand
up and tell me I'm wrong, fine.  If they tell me that RSA was not developed
at MIT using public funds, fine.  But I don't think that's the case.
--
Ed Carp			erc@apple.com, erc@saturn.upl.com	801/538-0177

"There is nothing to seek and nothing to find.  You're already enlightened, and
all the words in the world won't give you what you already have.  The wise
seeker, therefore, is concerned with one thing only: to become aware of what
he already is, of the True Self within."  -- Zen maxim
-- 
Ed Carp			erc@apple.com, erc@saturn.upl.com	801/538-0177

"There is nothing to seek and nothing to find.  You're already enlightened, and
all the words in the world won't give you what you already have.  The wise
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin)
Subject: Re: Triple DES
Organization: Telebit Corporation; Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Date: 16 Nov 92 13:25:59

    >2.  Has triple DES actually been proven to be stronger than a single
    >    DES encryption?  I guess this boils down to whether DES has been
    >    proven to be a group.

    No.  The inventors assert that DES is composable under most circumstances.
    (See Matyas and Meyers).  However, the independent evaluators are
    silent.  IBM notes in passing that an exhaustive attack against a
    112 bit would require all of the energy from all of the coal and oil
    likely to recovered in the continental US for the next five hundred
    years. 

Could you explain this some more?  I don't understand what you
mean by "composable under most circumstances".  (We know now that DES
is *not* a group, per discussion here a few months ago).
Newsgroups: sci.crypt