Zimmermann/NSA debate postponed

The debate between Philip Zimmermann and Clinton Brooks from NSA
has been postponed.  The debate organizers, the World Affairs Council
decided today (Tuesday) that there were not enough attendees preregistered 
to proceed with the debate at this time.  The debate had been scheduled
for Thursday, 25 August, in Thousand Oaks, California.

A major conference organized by the World Affairs Council, scheduled
for 27 October, will have the debate included in the conference.
When those plans firm up, there will be detailed announcements
with more lead time.

I'm sorry if this change in plans inconveniences anyone who planned to 
attend the debate, but I had nothing to do with their decision.

--Philip Zimmermann

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Alright, well I'll go ahead and be the weanie that points out that
this is the first non-signed message from PRZ to appear here, at least
in a long time.

Conspiracy theory anyone?  :-)

			Rick

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6

iQCVAgUBLlqJQ5NR+/jb2ZlNAQGLEwP7B8yE0n/C1wBtsUj1gYjgh+2IBFzcFy1S
DUBDuIPpMgmkPHPQSuo8Mmc8QgO0YcrbuOvUCPkNJUryF0f2+zPmoBaRinPFnS4q
O362fieCF+KZ7LdZD0kzmD6GPy0wmo/VLBDn3r/fr8J/6LvwPLzpUT9kdupz/LpN
bW0ChQp92jk=
=yDBA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

THUS SPAKE Rick Busdiecker <rfb@lehman.com>:
# Alright, well I'll go ahead and be the weanie that points out that
# this is the first non-signed message from PRZ to appear here, at least
# in a long time.
# 
# Conspiracy theory anyone?  :-)

Could also be that we're at CRYPTO94 at UCSB, and there are no
phones in the dorm rooms, and we have to use other peoples'
computers .... right now I'm in the library on a stupid ibm
terminal ...  if I used PGP right now, I'd have to type my 
password thru a plaintext telnet session :( so i won't.

				unsigned, strick

> Alright, well I'll go ahead and be the weanie that points out that
> this is the first non-signed message from PRZ to appear here, at least
> in a long time.
> 
> Conspiracy theory anyone?  :-)
> 
> 			Rick

Huh? Phil almost _never_ signs his messages, and has talked about how
difficult it is to go through the rigamarole of signing,
authenticating, etc.


(I sympathize with him, and I intensely dislike getting PGP-encrypted
messages, decrypting them, only to find a banal message that wasn't
worth the effort.)

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

>From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
>Subject: Re: Zimmermann/NSA debate postponed
>Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 17:48:30 -0700 (PDT)

>Huh? Phil almost _never_ signs his messages, and has talked about how
>difficult it is to go through the rigamarole of signing,
>authenticating, etc.
>
>
>(I sympathize with him, and I intensely dislike getting PGP-encrypted
>messages, decrypting them, only to find a banal message that wasn't
>worth the effort.)


There is a lesson here.

Getting the BBEDIT extensions which do PGP and the emacs mailcrypt
functions made PGP almost convenient enough for me to use it without
grumbling about the trivial message enclosed.

Isn't it time for cypherpunks-who-write-code to respond to this obvious
customer need?

I have no mailer myself but I do have a friend who produces one and I'm
helping him to incorporate PGP seamlessly.  It's taking a long time but it
should be worth it.

Anyone else out there with their own mailer?

 - Carl

Carl said:

> Isn't it time for cypherpunks-who-write-code to respond to this obvious
> customer need?
> 
> I have no mailer myself but I do have a friend who produces one and I'm
> helping him to incorporate PGP seamlessly.  It's taking a long time but it
> should be worth it.
> 
> Anyone else out there with their own mailer?

I've fooled around with writing a mailer, and I ran up against a few 
walls.  The biggest one was my not being the world's greatest programmer, 
and not knowing much about email systems.  But there are other problems 
as well, that I think would plague anyone who tries to write a mailer.

The goal that I was working for was pretty straight forward:  some sort 
of a secure system that would be as transparent as possible.  Ideally, it 
would work just like elm or pine or eudora:  you'd just say "I want to 
send mail to so-and-so", and all the rest would happen automatically.  
The mail would be encrypted, your signature would be affixed, the 
recipient wouldn't have to worry about decrypting the mail, and there'd 
be some small little indicator on his status bar that said the signature 
was good.

The first thing I realized when I started fooling around with this is 
that my basic design, which was modeled on a QWK packet offline reader, 
wasn't practical.  Why?

First of all, all of the crypto work has to be done on a machine
controlled by the user.  This is obvious, and it's the reason I wanted to
go QWK style in the first place.

But think about what happens if you dl a packet of incoming mail.  
Inside, you've got a letter from someone you've never met before, and 
it's signed.  How can you verify the signature?

Right now, people don't use secure mail for day to day traffic because
it's too much of a hassle.  You can write a mailer to automate encryption
and decryption, affixing and verifying signatures.  But you're still going
to have to require users to hunt down keys, decide if they want to trust
them, and load them onto their key rings.  That's enough hassle for most 
people to stick with elm.

It seems to me that a prerequisite for a transparent, secure mail system
is an efficient, interactive, IP based key distribution system.  It would
have to be distributed, at least if we were serious, because it would have
to be able to handle several million people's keys.  And the web of trust 
would have to be such that keys could be accepted (or rejected) 
automatically, without human intervention.

If such a system of keyservers existed, it's not hard to imagine really
useful secure mail systems, although implementing them would still be an
awful lot of work.  Sendmail could be configured to feed mail through
programs to handle the crypto work on single user unix machines (or even
on multi-user machines, if the users trusted the sysadmin), and some sort
of a secure pop system could be developed for other people.

But this would be a very big project, and would necessitate agreements on 
standards, etc.

It seems to me that a prerequisite for a transparent, secure mail system
   is an efficient, interactive, IP based key distribution system.  

Wait!  Reconsider!  The problems of doing public key distribution are
large, and not yet solved.  Don't wait for a perfect world before
trying to make a better one.

The PEM folks got bogged down for four or five years with key
distribution, only to need to put out version 2.0 because of lack of
acceptibility.  You need not repeat their mistake.  Assume that key
distribution happens somewhere else, and simply use the keys in some
repository.  Manual key distribution will work just fine for common
correspondents, and that's most ofthe problem.

Eric

> Huh? Phil almost _never_ signs his messages, and has talked about how
> difficult it is to go through the rigamarole of signing,
> authenticating, etc.
> 
> (I sympathize with him, and I intensely dislike getting PGP-encrypted
> messages, decrypting them, only to find a banal message that wasn't
> worth the effort.)

Huh?  Nonsense?

vie: - use PGP to sign & encrypt
vis: - use PGP to sign

Both of these sign or sign/encrypt outgoing messages automatically if 
you're using "elm" - just use them in place of your favorite editor.

pgpview does the same thing for incoming email.  Use it in place of your 
mail viewer in elm.

#! /bin/sh
#
# Created by shar, version 0.5 - 04/10/91
#
# This is a shell archive, meaning:
# 1. Remove everything about the #! /bin/sh line.
# 2. Save the resulting text in a file.
# 3. Execute the file with /bin/sh to create:
#
#        length  name
#        ------  -------------------------------------
#            28  pgpview
#           282  vie
#           102  vis
#

#
# Archive number 1
# This archive created Tue Aug 23 21:59:07 1994
#

echo "shar: extracting pgpview - (28 characters)"
if test -f 'pgpview' ; then
   echo shar: will not over-write existing file pgpview
else
sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'pgpview'
Xpgp +batchmode -m | less -c
SHAR_EOF
if test 28 -ne "`wc -c < 'pgpview'`" ; then
   echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file pgpview (should have been 28 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'pgpview'`" characters) *****"
fi
fi

touch 0823215894 pgpview
chmod 0777 pgpview

echo "shar: extracting vie - (282 characters)"
if test -f 'vie' ; then
   echo shar: will not over-write existing file vie
else
sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'vie'
X#
X# vie - like vi, but sign & encrypt with pgp
X#
Xsed -e 's/^> //g' $1 > $1.clr
X# why doesn't pgp $1 $1.clr work?  It should produce $1.clr... <sigh>
Xpgp +force $1.clr $1
Xsed -e 's/^/> /g' $1.clr > $1
X/bin/rm -f $1.clr
Xvi $1
Xclear
Xpgp -seta +clearsig=on -u `logname` $1
Xmv $1.asc $1
SHAR_EOF
if test 282 -ne "`wc -c < 'vie'`" ; then
   echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file vie (should have been 282 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'vie'`" characters) *****"
fi
fi

touch 0823215894 vie
chmod 0777 vie

echo "shar: extracting vis - (102 characters)"
if test -f 'vis' ; then
   echo shar: will not over-write existing file vis
else
sed 's/^X//' << \SHAR_EOF > 'vis'
X#
X# vie - like vi, but sign with pgp
X#
Xvi $1
Xclear
Xpgp -sta +clearsig=on -u `logname` $1
Xmv $1.asc $1
SHAR_EOF
if test 102 -ne "`wc -c < 'vis'`" ; then
   echo "shar: ***** error transmitting file vis (should have been 102 characters, but was "`wc -c < 'vis'`" characters) *****"
fi
fi

touch 0823215894 vis
chmod 0777 vis
echo End of all shell archives
exit 0
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
If you want magic, let go of your armor.  Magic is so much stronger than
steel!        -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

    From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@netcom.com>
    Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 17:48:30 -0700 (PDT)
    
    Huh? Phil almost _never_ signs his messages . . .

It may very well be that he only signs messages to `public' forums or
that he only signs things when he considers the message to be more
important than normal, however, the majority of the messages that he
has sent out to cypherpunks, alt.security.pgp, etc. in, say, the last
half a year or so, have been signed.  On the other hand, the one other
message that I could come up with that wasn't signed was also about
the debate.

    . . . and has talked about how difficult it is to go through the
    rigamarole of signing, authenticating, etc.

Hmmmm.  FWIW, it typically requires two keystrokes for me to do any of
the half dozen PGP operations that I do most often.  I've heard of at
least three other emacs-based interfaces for simplifying PGP
interaction and there seem to be quite a few other `helper' packages
around for other email environments.

    (I sympathize with him, and I intensely dislike getting PGP-encrypted
    messages, decrypting them, only to find a banal message that wasn't
    worth the effort.)

 Perhaps you think your E-mail is legitimate enough that encryption is
 unwarranted.  If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to
 hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? 
 Why not submit to drug testing on demand?  Why require a warrant for
 police searches of your house?  Are you trying to hide something? 
 You must be a subversive or a drug dealer if you hide your mail
 inside envelopes.  Or maybe a paranoid nut.  Do law-abiding citizens
 have any need to encrypt their E-mail?

Ok, ok, so the above paragraph is blatant plagiarism (it's from
pgpdoc1 for anyone who didn't recognize it).  I encrypt most
point-to-point communications with other PGP users on principle,
regardless of the content.  In any case, I find it quite disappointing
to hear that one of the cypherpunks founders frowns on people actually
using strong crypto on a routine basis.  Sigh...

			Rick

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Version: 2.6

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CNFs43OIQ9t4SYkyjln4e/5aBmGd1fZrEqSDFdvTZ1+GlC9xYsEy8Io0CsGiJ5F0
xiBTZtcq5QG5AYoJBCFmWzzM/U9/o4BRnMQUPyrMgT7lPClDxt4lSVXurLE3/Wzq
UQM3hPm/d6c=
=0lmk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

> It may very well be that he only signs messages to `public' forums or
> that he only signs things when he considers the message to be more
> important than normal, however, the majority of the messages that he
> has sent out to cypherpunks, alt.security.pgp, etc. in, say, the last

I don't think this is the case. Most PRZ messages I've seen have been
unsigned; only the recent ones on the PGP 2.6 business have been signed.

I use MacPGP on my home Mac...I don't trust Netcom or any other system
outside my direct control for this. I figure if it's worth signing,
it's worth signing with a secure key, not just a "casual grade" key
(this is the term used by Jay P.P. and others for crypto on unsecured
machines...this involves having more than one public key, etc.).

(This is the main answer to Ed Carp's suggestion about PGP in elm.)

> Hmmmm.  FWIW, it typically requires two keystrokes for me to do any of
> the half dozen PGP operations that I do most often.  I've heard of at
> least three other emacs-based interfaces for simplifying PGP
> interaction and there seem to be quite a few other `helper' packages
> around for other email environments.

See above. I'm not interested in the various elm and emacs PGP
packages. Any sysop can not only obtain your secret key, stored on his
system, but he can also capture your passphrase as you feed it to the
PGP program (assuming you do...many people automate this part as
well).

Since this sysop or one of his cronies can then compromise your mail,
sign messages and contract as "you," I consider this totally
unacceptable. Others apparently don't.

> regardless of the content.  In any case, I find it quite disappointing
> to hear that one of the cypherpunks founders frowns on people actually
> using strong crypto on a routine basis.  Sigh...

"Sigh."

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

In article <199408240440.VAA06740@netcom4.netcom.com>,
Timothy C. May <tcmay@netcom.com> wrote:
>Since this sysop or one of his cronies can then compromise your mail,
>sign messages and contract as "you," I consider this totally
>unacceptable. Others apparently don't.

Well... Either that, or they have their own UNIX boxes (an increasing
 trend in this world of Linux boxes...) or other personal machines
 that run an MTA and emacs.
-- 
L. Todd Masco  | "Large prime numbers imply arrest."  - Previously meaningless
cactus@bb.com  |   grammatically correct sentence.  Now...

L. Todd Masco writes:

> In article <199408240440.VAA06740@netcom4.netcom.com>,
> Timothy C. May <tcmay@netcom.com> wrote:
> >Since this sysop or one of his cronies can then compromise your mail,
> >sign messages and contract as "you," I consider this totally
> >unacceptable. Others apparently don't.
> 
> Well... Either that, or they have their own UNIX boxes (an increasing
>  trend in this world of Linux boxes...) or other personal machines
>  that run an MTA and emacs.

Precisely! In fact, I think I cited the Linux phenomenon just a day or
so ago...(in a mention of cheap Pentium boxes). When many more
locally-controlled boxes are on the Net, conveniently, then things
should start to really get going.

Until the "Internet-in-a-box" or TIA-type products are more
widespread, many people will be connecting home or office machines to
other systems they don't control. (To put this in sharper focus: do
you want your electronic money being run out of an account that your
sysop and his friends can monitor? Not hardly. "Electronic purses,"
which may be smart cards, Newton-like PDAs, or dongle-like rings or
pendants, are clearly needed. Another entire discussion.)

Too many people are kidding themselves that their messages are secure.
That their electronic identities cannot be spoofed. Debate about
whether PGP needs 4096-bit keylengths is absurdly moot if PGP is being
run on a university or corporate computer outside the direct control
of the user!

Some folks who use PGP on such machines at least take steps to better
secure things....Perry Metzger, for example, once described the
multi-stage process he went through each day to reload his key
material in a way he felt was quasi-safe. 

Yes, some of you PGP fans may say "Sigh!" when you hear that I don't
particularly like downloading-and-then-decrypting a message only to
find it saying, "Gee, Tim, isn't this PGP stuff really neat?" Too bad.

Not only do many of us not do all this stuff (have you seen Eric
Hughes signing his messages? How about John Gilmore?), but some people
have decided to stop reading e-mail altogether. Donald Knuth, for
example. A wise man.

I'm happy that you PGP fans are thoroughly infatuated with using PGP
for everything. Just knock off the clucking and sighing about those
who don't see it as the end-all and be-all of today's communications.

It reeks of fanaticism.

--Tim May




-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

In article <199408240630.XAA26030@netcom4.netcom.com>,
Timothy C. May <tcmay@netcom.netcom.com> wrote:
>L. Todd Masco writes:
>> Well... Either that, or they have their own UNIX boxes (an increasing
>>  trend in this world of Linux boxes...) or other personal machines
>>  that run an MTA and emacs.
>
>Precisely! In fact, I think I cited the Linux phenomenon just a day or
>so ago...(in a mention of cheap Pentium boxes). When many more
>locally-controlled boxes are on the Net, conveniently, then things
>should start to really get going.
>
>Until the "Internet-in-a-box" or TIA-type products are more
>widespread, many people will be connecting home or office machines to
>other systems they don't control.

Actually, I expected to get jumped on in a major way for saying that.

Linux boxes run X11, with all its security problems.  Add to that the
 increasing frequency of popularity of UNIX and UNIX-alikes, with all
 their security problems, and you get a picture that's terrifyingly
 cyberpunk.

I can just picture in three years: Job Bob Public sitting at his Linux
 box, connected by TC/IPng over the local cable IP provider -- scared
 by a mailing he's recently gotten from the Oregon Driver's Privacy
 Initiative with information of where his daughter had his lojack-ng
 equipped car was three days ago when she was supposed to be at football
 practice -- decides to set up Microsoft PGP 5.7us on his machine (and
 to wire up the optional personal lojack-ng tracking feature, of
 course -- brought to you by AT&T).

He writes a message that he believes secure -- Of course, he's got his X11R8
 server xhost +'d, so that his friend Suzy EveryCheese can send windows
 to him (she's much too smart to allows other clients to attach to *her*
 server).  He types his passphrase in and his son, Bubba Public, snarfs
 it from his PC-SeptiumJr.  It never hurts to be able to see what the
 Old Man might be writing.

Of course, the entire thing falls apart when the Morris Worm Mk 3 chomps
 down through the least-secure encryption methods specified in IPng's
 security specs (they salvaged the old AFS "xor 'flamingo'"
 "optimization"), but that's another matter.

The point?  I'm actually not very sure... but it has something to do with
 there never being an easy way to be secure, especially for the plug-n-
 players.  It also has to do with the way things are going to be extremely
 unstable when everybody is networked on machines with an OS and windowing
 environment that evolved to play XTrek efficiently and to support Xeyes
 with motif. 

Knowledge and/or effort -- not to mention a good dose of paranoia -- are de
 riguer, and I doubt that we'll see anything different in the near future
 (even if technically possible: the rise of MS Windows and UNIX/X11 have
 me pretty down on the economics of quality these days).

>It reeks of fanaticism.

Fanaticism's fine.  It's clueless, dogmatic fanaticism that's a problem.
-- 
L. Todd Masco  | "Large prime numbers imply arrest."  - Previously meaningless
cactus@bb.com  |   grammatically correct sentence.  Now...

Timothy C. May says:
> Some folks who use PGP on such machines at least take steps to better
> secure things....Perry Metzger, for example, once described the
> multi-stage process he went through each day to reload his key
> material in a way he felt was quasi-safe. 

Quasi. I'm pretty sure that anyone who cared enough could have gotten
hold of my ancient pmetzger@shearson.com key, which I keep around only
for nostalgia reasons at this point -- I believe its one of the oldest
keys still on the rings. On the few occassions when I've truly cared,
I've generated new keys to use and only used them for a brief period
-- PGP provides very poor forward secrecy.

(By the way, I've become convinced with time that the forward secrecy
characteristics of systems like this are far more important than
people believe, especially since keys are likely to be so poorly
managed by most non-paranoid users. Diffie-Hellman provides perfect
forward secrecy.)

Tim's point is, however, correct -- using PGP on Joe Random
University's central computing facility is not the way to go if you
are really concerned about security. You have to run it only on
hardware you personally control, and which others do not have much if
any physical or network access to.

Also importantly, the user interfaces for PGP simply suck as it
stands, making people like Tim uninterested in going through the
rigamarole needed to use it on a day to day basis. The real revolution
isn't going to come until people are able to use PGP and the rest both
reasonably securely without it being especially noticable that they
are doing so -- and that is a while off.

Perry

> Also importantly, the user interfaces for PGP simply suck as it
> stands, making people like Tim uninterested in going through the
> rigamarole needed to use it on a day to day basis. The real revolution
> isn't going to come until people are able to use PGP and the rest both
> reasonably securely without it being especially noticable that they
> are doing so -- and that is a while off.

At the risk of repeating myself, what's the problem with wrapping PGP in 
a shell script?  Works for me - see a previous mailing, complete with 
wrapper scripts.  I can send either encrypted or just signed email 
without especially noticing it.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
If you want magic, let go of your armor.  Magic is so much stronger than
steel!        -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> At the risk of repeating myself, what's the problem with wrapping PGP in 
> a shell script?  Works for me - see a previous mailing, complete with 
> wrapper scripts.  I can send either encrypted or just signed email 
> without especially noticing it.

At the risk of repeating what Tim's said in the past, shellscript
wrappers are useless to people who use Macs, Windows/WinNT, and so on.

At the risk of repeating what Tim, Perry, and several others have
said, using PGP- with or without shell scripts- on a machine which you
do not physically control is also risky.

- -Paul

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG        |  Demand that your elected reps support the
perobich@ingr.com             |  Constitution, the whole Constitution, and
Not speaking for Intergraph.  |  nothing but the Constitution.

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vGNiBJu0+Ys=
=OQO0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

> At the risk of repeating what Tim's said in the past, shellscript
> wrappers are useless to people who use Macs, Windows/WinNT, and so on.
> 
> At the risk of repeating what Tim, Perry, and several others have
> said, using PGP- with or without shell scripts- on a machine which you
> do not physically control is also risky.

I understand the first objection.  The second is moot if you're running
something other than a dumb tube at home.

I run Linux on a 486/25 at home, DOS/Windows on a 386SuX laptop on the 
road.  Works for me.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
If you want magic, let go of your armor.  Magic is so much stronger than
steel!        -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"

In article <m0qdImM-0004EcC@khijol.uucp>,
Ed Carp [Sysadmin] <khijol!erc@apple.com> wrote:
>At the risk of repeating myself, what's the problem with wrapping PGP in 
>a shell script?  Works for me - see a previous mailing, complete with 
>wrapper scripts.  I can send either encrypted or just signed email 
>without especially noticing it.

Okay, I'm the Evil NSA Sysadmin from hell.  I want to collect all the
 info available on my users.  The NSA gives me $50 per keypair, snitch
 money.  Or I just like to be able to read all your mail, and would like
 to have the option of, at some point, forging something from you.

So, I replace the shells on machines under my control with programs that
 invoke something like tee(1) to split stdin and stdout to files and then
 execs the intended shell.  For good measure, I overwrite the process
 entry in the running kernel.

So I now have a files of every keystroke you type, and if I'm clever about
 how I do it (I will be), I can correlate them with the stdout.  I just
 search for "pgp" and bingo: I've got your passphrase.

Since I'm root, getting your keyfiles is trivial.  

Your keys are toast, and you don't even know it.  There are a gazillion
 other ways the ENSFH could have done this: monitoring your /dev/tty vector
 in the kernel would be far more subtle, for example.  The key thing to
 remember is that the computer isn't your tool: it's the tool of the people
 with root.

Not only that, but I don't even have to steal your keys: the plaintext will
 exist at some time, and I can trap that -- by only twinning your stdio.
 
The network security is almost as important, since there are probably many
 more malicious people outside your machine than inside.  So, if you're
 running UNIX, you'd damn well trust everyone with root, run a logging
 /bin/login, be behind a firewall, replace the crypt that passwd uses with
 some transformation, put shadow passwd files in place, make crypt log
 usage and place appropriate monitoring software to watch the logs, monitor
 the machine from another machine behind your firewall, and a host of other
 things.

Security is not easy -- Tim's point is that you can't get it by just
 running some package;  If you think you can, you're fooling yourself
 and everytime someone puts on a securer-than-thou-because I run PGP air,
 they're showing themselves to be totally clueless.

This is all very rudimentary -- come on, you've got to be paranoid where
 security is concerned.  There are many vectors of attack and you've only
 got to miss the one that someone tries to lose big.
-- 
L. Todd Masco  | "Large prime numbers imply arrest."  - Previously meaningless
cactus@bb.com  |   grammatically correct sentence.  Now...

Tim sez:
> What is being missed here is the issue of where the PGP operations are
> being done. If done on a machine outside the direct control of the
> user, obvious security holes exist.

Perry sez:
> Also importantly, the user interfaces for PGP simply suck as it
> stands, making people like Tim uninterested in going through the
> rigamarole needed to use it on a day to day basis. The real revolution
> isn't going to come until people are able to use PGP and the rest both
> reasonably securely without it being especially noticable that they
> are doing so -- and that is a while off.

Which brings me to the question; "What ARE people using, and what are
they GOING to use?" Can anyone point me to a survey of the most used
ways for e-mail to get on the net, and what will be most used in the
future? The problem of insecure machines can be dealt with, but right
now I have only knowledge of the insecure machine I use for email, and
how I deal with it.

If no such surveys exist (which I find hard to believe) than I'll do
one myself.

Also, with this NII/SuperDuperHighway/Infobahn thing happening in the U.S.,
and the impending market war between Microsoft, Sega, Nintendo and
Scientific Atlanta to supply the Set Top Box that will give John Q. Consumer
his movies-on-demand and access to the SuperMall(TM) and, incidentally, his
E-mail capability, it might be a good thing to know in advance what J. Q.
Consumer will be using so that we can be there with strong, usable
crypto when he gets there.

JJH
--

James Hightower writes:

> Which brings me to the question; "What ARE people using, and what are
> they GOING to use?" Can anyone point me to a survey of the most used
> ways for e-mail to get on the net, and what will be most used in the
> future? The problem of insecure machines can be dealt with, but right
> now I have only knowledge of the insecure machine I use for email, and
> how I deal with it.

We did a survey of this nearly 2 years ago, at the second Cypherpunks
meeting. Got about 10 main mail programs being used, about the same
number of editors, and about as many platforms.

> If no such surveys exist (which I find hard to believe) than I'll do
> one myself.

I think this is a great idea. 

I suggest we toss around a few questions, to make the poll as useful
as possible (and so it doesn't have to be done a second time to fill
in missing gaps). Here are a few questions I'd like to see (with *my*
answers included to help show context):

* Internet service provider: Netcom, SunOS Release 4.1.3
* Accessed via: Macintosh IIci, running VT100 emulator, White Knight 11.14
* Online mail program used (if any): elm
* Online text editor used: emacs
* Offline mail program used (if any): Eudora 2.0.2
* Offline text editor used: Eudora, Microsoft Word, etc. (any Mac program)
* PGP version used: MacPGP 2.3

In the poll of two years ago, this was abbreviated into a message
like:

"Netcom/elm-Eudora/emacs/MacPGP 2.3"

for easier processing. 

And the poll taker could simply list all the
one-line responses so as to give developers/readers a better feel for
the environments being used, a la:

"Netcom/elm/emacs/PGP 2.6ui"
"CRL/emacs/emacs/PGP 2.7"
"Linux/xmail/pine/PGP 2.3"
"AOL/??/??/not allowed"

etc.

> his movies-on-demand and access to the SuperMall(TM) and, incidentally, his
> E-mail capability, it might be a good thing to know in advance what J. Q.
> Consumer will be using so that we can be there with strong, usable
> crypto when he gets there.

Here I differ, as I don't think we can plausibly do a poll of what
"J.Q. Consumer" is using, or plans to use. That's a huge job, fraught
with polling problems. And J.Q. Consumer himself has no idea of what
he "will be using," so why bother?

I had assumed the poll was of *us*, which is both a manageable poll to
take, and a useful one.


--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

James Hightower writes
> it might be a good thing to know in advance what J. Q.
> Consumer will be using so that we can be there with strong, usable
> crypto when he gets there.

High Tech industry has considerable experience with surveys of
consumers for nonexistent products.

Such surveys are useless at best, and dangerous at worst.

The survey invariably shows one of two things:

1.  Whatever the Science fiction writer who rigged the
questions wishes it to show.

2.  The consumer wants what he has already and does not
want anything different.

Back in the dim early days of computing they took a survey
to have consumers (secretaries) design a word processor.  
Numerous marketing experts took part in this study.

They concluded that consumers wanted a word processor that
worked just like a typewriter, and the UI specs were
drawn up accordingly.



-- 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we              James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.                jamesd@netcom.com

> Yes, some of you PGP fans may say "Sigh!" when you hear that I don't
> particularly like downloading-and-then-decrypting a message only to
> find it saying, "Gee, Tim, isn't this PGP stuff really neat?" Too bad.
> 
> Not only do many of us not do all this stuff (have you seen Eric
> Hughes signing his messages? How about John Gilmore?), but some people
> have decided to stop reading e-mail altogether. Donald Knuth, for
> example. A wise man.

I think that's because Knuth is rather famous.  I imagine that his 
mailbox stays rather full ;)

> I'm happy that you PGP fans are thoroughly infatuated with using PGP
> for everything. Just knock off the clucking and sighing about those
> who don't see it as the end-all and be-all of today's communications.
> 
> It reeks of fanaticism.

I don't quite see it that way - it's just easier for me to automatically 
sign my messages than not if I choose to set my mailer up that way.  If I 
want to encrypt, it's just a couple of keystrokes in elm to change my 
editor to the appropriate script.

I guess I really don't understand your objections, Tim.  True, not every 
UA is as easy as elm to change operating parameters, but it works for me.
PGP is easy and not-too-slow to use, and it integrates fairly well into 
scripts. I've been using these little scripts for months and while 
they're not quite as flexible as I'd like, they do the job - easily, 
transparently, and automatically.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG    			Ed.Carp@linux.org, ecarp@netcom.com
Finger ecarp@netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key		an88744@anon.penet.fi
If you want magic, let go of your armor.  Magic is so much stronger than
steel!        -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"

On Wed, 24 Aug 1994 khijol!erc@apple.com wrote:

> I think that's because Knuth is rather famous.  I imagine that his 
> mailbox stays rather full ;)

He's also trying to complete his "Art of Computer Programming" series...

-- 
Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU) | dave@esi.com.au | VK2KFU @ VK2AAB.NSW.AUS.OC | PGP 2.6
Opinions expressed are mine. | E7 FE 97 88 E5 02 3C AE  9C 8C 54 5B 9A D4 A0 CD

On Thu, 25 Aug 1994, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> He's also trying to complete his "Art of Computer Programming" series...

Is Volume IV out yet?  My I-III still await the promise of the Intro...


-NetSurfer

#include standard.disclaimer

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
==  =    = |James D. Wilson        |V.PGP 2.7:   512/E12FCD 1994/03/17 >
 "  "    " |P. O. Box 15432        |     finger for full PGP key        >
 "  " /\ " |Honolulu, HI  96830    |====================================>
\"  "/  \" |Serendipitous Solutions|    Also NetSurfer@sersol.com      >
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

On Wed, 24 Aug 1994, NetSurfer wrote:

[ On Knuth no longer reading his mail ]
> > He's also trying to complete his "Art of Computer Programming" series...
> 
> Is Volume IV out yet?  My I-III still await the promise of the Intro...

Not that I know of.

-- 
Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU) | dave@esi.com.au | VK2KFU @ VK2AAB.NSW.AUS.OC | PGP 2.6
Opinions expressed are mine. | E7 FE 97 88 E5 02 3C AE  9C 8C 54 5B 9A D4 A0 CD

> He's also trying to complete his "Art of Computer Programming" series...

Has anyone heard what the status of the 4th volume is?  I thought that
I had heard that Addison-Wesley was taking preorders for it about 2
years ago, but I haven't heard anything since.


Paul

From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@netcom.com>
    Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 23:30:18 -0700 (PDT)
    
    Yes, some of you PGP fans may say "Sigh!" when you hear that I don't
    particularly like downloading-and-then-decrypting a message only to
    find it saying, "Gee, Tim, isn't this PGP stuff really neat?" Too bad.

Actually, my sigh included a bit of ``Gee, I thought this guy was
supposed to be one of the mega-rich, so why's he so low-tech that he
can't run PGP, etc at home.''

As to the security, using PGP in the way that I do routinely is more
secure than not using it -- the number of people who have the special
access that would ease the cracking effort is limited.  Also, the key
that I advertise is not my only key.  To the best of my knowledge, my
secure key pair has never had either the public or private part touch
a hard disk, much less a network.
    
    I'm happy that you PGP fans are thoroughly infatuated with using PGP
    for everything. Just knock off the clucking and sighing about those
    who don't see it as the end-all and be-all of today's communications.
    
    It reeks of fanaticism.

Oh puhleeeze . . . . 

Trying to get strong crypto to be commonplace is hardly the most
fanatical thing that gets discussed on this list.

			Rick

In message <9408242328.AA12758@fnord.lehman.com>Rick B. writes:
  > Trying to get strong crypto to be commonplace is hardly the most
  > fanatical thing that gets discussed on this list.

This is not a point to be minimized. Even when the security of each message
is not all that high, the more encrypted traffic there is, the better
off we all are.

'The nail that sticks up gets hammered down'

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <9408240400.AA18251@fnord.lehman.com>, "Rick Busdiecker" wrote:

> > regardless of the content.  In any case, I find it quite disappointing
> > to hear that one of the cypherpunks founders frowns on people actually
> > using strong crypto on a routine basis.  Sigh...

To which Tim provides the enlightening reply:

> "Sigh."

Stick to your guns, Rick.  Even cypherpunks founders can become corrupted.
Here is how Tim's perspective was publically reported a mere year ago:

> The Village Voice
> August 3, 1993
> Vol. 38, No. 31
> pages 33 through 37

> Code Warriors

> Battling for the Keys to Privacy in the Info Age
> by Julian Dibbell

> And Cypherpunks are hackers to the bone.  ``Encryption always
> wins,'' Tim May insists with the serene confidence of one
> convinced he's a mere conduit for historical tendencies built
> into information technology itself --- and yet by definition no
> Cypherpunk takes the ultimate achievement of the group's goal for
> granted.  A pragmatic activism hardwires the group's collective
> identity, their very motto (``Cypherpunks write code'') signals a
> commitment to making the proliferation of cryptographic tools
> happen now rather than waiting on big business, big science, or
> Big Brother to determine its fate.  Nor is this commitment limited
> to the creation of tools; indeed, an even better motto might be
> ``Cypherpunks use code,'' since the essence of the revolution the
> 'punks seek to effect lies in making encryption a cultural habit,
> as common and acceptable as hiding letters inside envelopes.  Thus
> the Cypherpunks' almost religious use of PGP and of their use of
> their own primitive remailer systems isn't just a grown-ups' game
> of cloak and dagger, as it sometimes seems, or a matter of
> testing out the crypto hackers' experimental creations.  It's an
> attempt to nudge ciphertech toward that pivotal accumulation of
> users that finally makes the forward rush of the technology's
> far-reaching social implications irresistible.

Sigh!

	John E. Kreznar		| Relations among people to be by
	jkreznar@ininx.com	| mutual consent, or not at all.

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Version: 2.3a

iQCVAgUBLlsuBcDhz44ugybJAQFX2wP/TLEWdSAQRjsR6mB9vPXan9enxA0NtVE6
bkE1CTxPLOFkfLJ2QCwXVmR2HkwPzh63UKw9p1jwln4tMYV1AtlyxBg9aCNk/P7K
Ff7ZVrGDtbhOi0Tt2f4II1lAW7fj7R/3TsQ+ajKuHz6nnI5v/6X1vrx7Mo5G4CRY
0OJFT99TDz0=
=5ToI
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

John Kreznar writes:

> Stick to your guns, Rick.  Even cypherpunks founders can become corrupted.
> Here is how Tim's perspective was publically reported a mere year ago:

"Corrupted"?

A mere "PLONK* is not sufficient for this sort of crap.

Disgusted, 

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

> (I sympathize with him, and I intensely dislike getting PGP-encrypted
> messages, decrypting them, only to find a banal message that wasn't
> worth the effort.)

Perhaps the readers of this list may be interested in a thing called
PGPsendmail, which automatically encrypts/decrypts mail.

Are you on this list, Richard?

-- 
Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU) | dave@esi.com.au | VK2KFU @ VK2AAB.NSW.AUS.OC | PGP 2.6
Opinions expressed are mine. | E7 FE 97 88 E5 02 3C AE  9C 8C 54 5B 9A D4 A0 CD

> Perhaps the readers of this list may be interested in a thing called
> PGPsendmail, which automatically encrypts/decrypts mail.
> 
> Are you on this list, Richard?
> 
> -- 
> Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU) | dave@esi.com.au | VK2KFU @ VK2AAB.NSW.AUS.OC | PGP 2.6

There are several such tools. Tools for editors, for mailers, tools
etc.

What is being missed here is the issue of where the PGP operations are
being done. If done on a machine outside the direct control of the
user, obvious security holes exist.

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@netcom.com>
    Date: Wed, 24 Aug 1994 01:37:39 -0700 (PDT)
    
    What is being missed here is the issue of where the PGP operations are
    being done. If done on a machine outside the direct control of the
    user, obvious security holes exist.

I don't suppose that you'd care to describe a situation with
absolutely no security holes, would you?

If not, can we conclude that any attempt to do anything related to
security is, in your opinion, silly?

What's wrong with the following approach:
 - Try to control what you can control.
 - Try to recognize what you cannot control.
 - Try to reduce the second set in favor of the first.

Using PGP on Unix systems where you are not root *does* have a place
in this framework.

			Rick

Dave Horsfall says:
> Perhaps the readers of this list may be interested in a thing called
> PGPsendmail, which automatically encrypts/decrypts mail.
> 
> Are you on this list, Richard?

Again, this is only of use on a machine that is totally within your
control and both physically and network secure.

.pm