9 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child
--What is that weird
lawsuit all about wheresome director of the NSA is getting sued
forsomething? Does anyone know?-wabe
--digsig
EojdyErVslc/s6aQeIHwnOlMw3lUKJhdZc/ZeCNfe7H
L4ctAUj8gI6C830BTXaeFrhHME7aCeT3ev4HKbeT
4HICjjQYriAdlICrERT+zrSEtB1bkK+b6iRoC6a0yWabe <wabe@smart.net> writes: > What is that weird lawsuit all about where > some director of the NSA is getting sued for > something? Does anyone know? Bill Payne used to work for one of the US national labs, he did some work funded by NSA at that lab. He considered that the NSA were making incompetent cryptographic decisions endangering national security. He's suing them over their attempts to silence his criticisms by working behind the scenes to deprive him of research funding. Bill will have to provide a better summary himself, as the above is from memory, and I wasn't paying that much attention, and the above could be garbage. The practice of suing the director of NSA "DIRNSA" in such suits involving disputes with NSA is common practice... Dan Bernstein's case pursued by EFF, John Gilmore etc, and Peter Junger's case (both arguing that the ITAR/EARs are unconstitutional) involved suing the NSA, DIRNSA and a list of other misc. government officials. Adam btw. your netscape set up is broken... it includes an html version of your post below the ascii version. There is a setting somewhere were you have a choice to send ascii, or html or both. You clearly have this set to both. > ------=_NextPart_000_0043_01BD23B7.67DD8500 > Content-Type: text/html; > charset="iso-8859-1" > Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > > <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> > <HTML> > <HEAD> > > <META content=3Dtext/html;charset=3Diso-8859-1 = > http-equiv=3DContent-Type> > <META content=3D'"MSHTML 4.72.2106.6"' name=3DGENERATOR> [...]
Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > > Bill Payne used to work for one of the US national labs, he did some > work funded by NSA at that lab. He considered that the NSA were > making incompetent cryptographic decisions endangering national > security. > > He's suing them over their attempts to silence his criticisms by > working behind the scenes to deprive him of research funding. ... Bill Payne was with Sandia national lab (where they quite a bit of crypto work) Bill claims to have discovered a very fast factorization algorithm using shift registers, which he refuses to publish. While I haven't seen the algorithm, I believe he may well be right. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
> Bill Payne was with Sandia national lab (where they quite a bit of
> crypto work) Bill claims to have discovered a very fast
> factorization algorithm using shift registers, which he refuses to
> publish. While I haven't seen the algorithm, I believe he may well
> be right.
Bill Payne's claim to having discovered a faster factorization
algorithm than the current state of the art, allows us to invoke the
oft discussed mechanisms for the author to prove this ability without
divulging the algorithm, and then proceed to sell the algorithm to the
highest bidder, whilst minimizing his chances of being killed.
I am sure many here remember various past discussions which were based
on the "what if" question: one has discovered a fast factorization
algorithm and our aims as discoverer are to:
- maximise price for selling algorithm
- minimise chance of being killed by the NSA to silence one
- proving that we posses a fast algorithm
Minimising our chances of being killed would seem to rely on:
- posting our sale via BlackNet (ie posting anonymously)
- having a disclosure mechanism in place which will be invoked on the
eventuality of our premature death in an unfortunate `accident'
Bill Payne seems to have already blown the first option in disclosing
his identity. His dilemma is now that if the highest bidder is the
NSA, they may kill him afterwards to prevent a release of the
algorithm. This is where a robust disclosure mechanism in event of
premature death would be useful. I hope Bill has invested in such a
plan.
Maximise price for selling algorithm: hold out for the highest bidder.
Or perhaps sell to multiple parties with NDAs (would NDAs be
sufficient to protect such valuable information?)
Are there any reasons why Bill should be refusing to divulge the
algorithm? Perhaps he is waiting for a higher bid. What is the
current highest bid? What about alternate motives? Perhaps he is not
interested in money, but rather in proving NSA incompetence?
Or if Bill doesn't in fact have an algorithm, what would be the
motives for falsely claiming that he does? Is he working for the NSA
to spread FUD?
Lastly proving that Bill has a fast algorithm (or acess to some nice
hardware at NSA). Several RSA public key challenges are posted and
Bill posts the factorization of the public key. There are
conveniently pre-published RSA challenges in the form of rsa.com's RSA
factoring challenge with multiples of two primes ranging in sizes
going up in steps of 10 in decimal digits.
It would I think provide best assurance if challenges of both sorts
were broken, in that the RSA challenges have been available for some
time, and Bill could have been working on RSA 140 for the last 3 years
or whatever.
So, Bill what size challenge in bits would you like to break first?
I'll post one of your desired bit size.
Adam
--
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes: > > Bill Payne was with Sandia national lab (where they quite a bit of > > crypto work) Bill claims to have discovered a very fast > > factorization algorithm using shift registers, which he refuses to > > publish. While I haven't seen the algorithm, I believe he may well > > be right. > > Bill Payne's claim to having discovered a faster factorization > algorithm than the current state of the art, allows us to invoke the > oft discussed mechanisms for the author to prove this ability without > divulging the algorithm, and then proceed to sell the algorithm to the > highest bidder, whilst minimizing his chances of being killed. ... I believe Bill is genuinely afraid that if he published his algorithm, then he'll be killed. I don't know enough to judge how realistic his fear is. I've been involved in serious discussions of assassinations over smaller amounts of money than is at stake here. He displays great courage by saying anything at all at this point. I also have an extremely high opinion of Bill's (and Adam Back's) technical abiltities. That is, I'd be much less surprised if Bill Payne (or Adam Back) comes up with some truly remarkable breakthrough than someone I've never heard of or someone I heard of and don't have such a high opinion of. Yes, it would be most interesting/impressive if Bill demonstrated his ability to factor using some of the published chalenges. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:
> I believe Bill [Payne] is genuinely afraid that if he published his
> algorithm, then he'll be killed. I don't know enough to judge how
> realistic his fear is.
There are a few other scenarios which suggest he may be at risk even
if he doesn't publish. Firstly if we argue on the basis that he does
have a fast algorithm:
- if the NSA thinks they already know the algorithm he has discovered,
they may kill him anyway to prevent disclosure to others
- the NSA may kidnap him, inject him with various truth drugs, and
generally torture the information from him, and then kill him
Insurance in the form of a disclosure procedure in the event of his
premature death will reduce his risk of being killed.
Secondly if we argue on the basis that Bill doesn't have a fast
factoring algorithm, or is mistaken about the complexity of his
algorith:
- if the NSA thinks his claim credible they may again kidnap him and
attempt to extract this algorithm from him. They may then kill him
to prevent him talking about them torturing him if he reveals an
algorithm, or appears not to have an algorithm
He appears to be in greater risk if falsely claiming he has a fast
algorithm if his claim appears credible to the NSA -- his insurance in
the form of a fall back public disclosure procedure in event of his
premature death no longer helps him.
In general it seems generally a dangerous claim to make.
> I've been involved in serious discussions of assassinations over
> smaller amounts of money than is at stake here. He displays great
> courage by saying anything at all at this point.
If it is true, it is a big deal indeed.
> Yes, it would be most interesting/impressive if Bill demonstrated his
> ability to factor using some of the published chalenges.
Another target Bill might be amused to factor if we can obtain it is
the NSA's public key embedded in lotus notes implementations. Should
fit in with his interest in showing incompetence on the part of the
NSA.
Adam
--
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`> >Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes: >> Bill Payne was with Sandia national lab (where they quite a bit of >> crypto work) Bill claims to have discovered a very fast >> factorization algorithm using shift registers, which he refuses to >> publish. While I haven't seen the algorithm, I believe he may well >> be right. I think this ought to be nipped in the bud right now if not true. I've heard rumors on this list about algorithms but attributing it to someone at Sandia is pretty substantial however I think DV's claim above sounds totally bogus. if anyone else can comment please do. I don't so much want to know whether he has discovered an algorithm at this point, only whether someone at Sandia claims to have discovered a fast factoring algorithm. after that-- well, what exactly is "fast"?
Vlad the E-mailer <vznuri@netcom.com> writes: > I think this ought to be nipped in the bud right now if not true. I think you ought to be killfiled. <PLONK> --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps
At 08:34 PM 1/18/98 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: >I think this ought to be nipped in the bud right now if not true. >I've heard rumors on this list about algorithms but attributing it to >someone at Sandia is pretty substantial however I think DV's claim >above sounds totally bogus. if anyone else can comment please do. >I don't so much want to know whether he has discovered an algorithm >at this point, only whether someone at Sandia claims to have >discovered a fast factoring algorithm. after that-- well, what >exactly is "fast"? Payne's previous claims were examined on one of the other crypto lists a few months ago. (Actually "ripped apart" is a better term.) Wei Dei and a few others examined the mathmatical basis of his "break" of RSA. Turns out that is is not nearly the shortcut claimed. (Actually not a shortcut at all.) Based on that previous experience, I would be very suspect of such a claim from Mr. Payne without any proof. --- | "That'll make it hot for them!" - Guy Grand | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan@ctrl-alt-del.com|