misc crypto stuff

Cypherdudes,

First a prediction, soon the news media will pick up on a major story on
somthing like child porn being transfered around using something like
PGP.  It will get blown out of preportion, and there will be a call to
outlaw anything but government approved government decodeable encription.

The news media will do one of there steller jobs on how bad this encyption
problem is and how there needs to be somthing done about it (see there
handling of gun related stuph).  The cattle, I mean ppl of this country
that still don't know the first thing about computers, and even lots of
those who, do will support the idea that something needs to be done (to
protect those poor children) and congress will pass a law, call it the
"communication security act" (don't you just love the names they choose for
these laws that do the opposite of what they are titled).  And since there
is no crypto lobby that weilds much power (unlike the gun lobby), it will
get passed, despite the outcry on the net, overloaded government email
boxes and editorials from computer rags.

Second, ever wonder why they picked 80 bits for the key length for clipper?
I think they used the same criterea that they used when they picked 56 bits
for DES.  I'm somewhat sure that clipper, like DES is a sound encription
method, but I'm also somewhat sure that 80 bits is not out of the NSA's
realm of attacking if it was neccary (like there not being able to use the
giant back door called key escrow).   They probibly calculated that 80 bits
is strong enough to provide a good level of protection against most cracking
attemts that could be mustered from other governments and orginizations,
but not against theirselvs, at least scailed for the preposed release date.

3rdly and finally,  if anyone is interested I can send them, for educational
purposes only, the source code for Zipcrack.  It hacks Zip V1.1 only, and
does a brute force attack, but it is economical for <7 character passwords.
It could be modified to do things like a dictionary search, but I lost
intrest a couple years ago.  Anyway it is in C and is quite short.

mycal

"mycal (voices through your head @ 88.1MHz)" writes:
 > First a prediction, soon the news media will pick up on a major story on
 > somthing like child porn being transfered around using something like
 > PGP.  It will get blown out of preportion, and there will be a call to
 > outlaw anything but government approved government decodeable encription.

Already happened.  The fellow used something like PGP, if not PGP, to
encrypt stuff to disk.  If I remember correctly (Mike G., help me out
here) he was asked to cough up the passwords in court as part of the
legal proceedings. (I remember this only because of the following
discussion of 'can a court make me give out my passwords?)  No call
for banning of encryption by The Media(tm).

J. Eric writes:

> Already happened.  The fellow used something like PGP, if not PGP, to
> encrypt stuff to disk.  If I remember correctly (Mike G., help me out
> here) he was asked to cough up the passwords in court as part of the
> legal proceedings. (I remember this only because of the following
> discussion of 'can a court make me give out my passwords?)  No call
> for banning of encryption by The Media(tm).

I'm not sure which case you're thinking of, Eric. I know of no case in
which the defendant was forced to disclose his keys.



--Mike

Mike Godwin writes:
 > I'm not sure which case you're thinking of, Eric. I know of no case in
 > which the defendant was forced to disclose his keys.

I don't think I dreamed this, but...

I remember hearing that one of the people hit by the bamse sting had
encrypted a bunch of stuff on their system.  I also remember some
discussion of whether or not the person in question could be ordered
to reveal their keys.  (Maybe I *inferred* that the person had been
ordered to reveal their keys since there was a discussion of whether
or not it was legal.)


-eric

J. Eric Townsend writes:
 > "mycal (voices through your head @ 88.1MHz)" writes:
 >  > First a prediction, soon the news media will pick up on a major story on
 >  > somthing like child porn being transfered ...
 >
 > Already happened.  The fellow used something like PGP...
 > No call for banning of encryption by The Media(tm).

Ahh, but recall how The Media operates.  There will come a case
involving encrypted data that for some reason can be made spectacular
by the law enforcement agency involved.  The agency will ensure that
The Media paints as threatening a picture of "the encryption crisis"
as desired.

Even better would be the reaction to encryption involved in some
Threat to National Security.  In a situation anything like the Gulf
War, any ominous words in a Pentagon press briefing will be siezed
upon hungrily by The Media.

All it'll take is one memorable incident.  Even if mountains of
evidence turn up later to show that the case was bogus, it won't
matter.  A suitable majority of the public will only remember the
original terror, the few soundbytes about national security/drug
dealers/cocaine cartels/child snuff films/Islamic extremists, and
there'll be no stopping the Government from enacting whatever laws it
pleases.

--
Mike McNally