Blind signal demodulation

The October 1993 Proceedings of the IEEE contain a number of rather interesting articles on blind signal identification and demodulation, which may be described roughly as "demodulation without the cooperation of the transmitter (or intended receiver where this might be necessary)". The firs

Re: Blind signal demodulation

"Matt Crawford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>The October 1993 Proceedings of the IEEE contain a number of rather ... >>... They also comment that blind decoders for typical voiceband >>signals can be implemented on Pentium MMX/UltraSparc-grade hardware. >Did you make specific a more general sp

More on blind signal demodulation

There's at least one firm which makes this stuff commercially, their products are available via http://www.appsig.com/prods/index.html. This looks like a one-stop ECHELON shop: you take one or more of their products (pick your type, intended target, and budget), plug as many E1's or E3's or whate

Good crypto policy quote

This is probably the best one-sentence summary of export controls I've seen. It predates the recent Wassenaar announcement by about half a day, but is even more appropriate in the aftermath: "The real aim of current policy is to ensure the continued effectiveness of US information warfare asset

Re: What was the quid pro quo for Wassenaar countries?

One thing which came to me recently when I was trying to figure out what sort of gun the US held to the rest of the world's head to get them to agree to this: Could the Wassenaar outcome have been a sign of Echelon in action? Consider this: Delegates from each country have been travelling to V

Re: Building crypto archives worldwide to foil US-built Berlin Walls

John Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Let's replicate these archives in many countries. I call for volunteers in >each country, at each university or crypto-aware organization, to download >crypto tools while they can still be exported from where they are, and then to >offer them for export

Re: Export of PGP Illegal in Denmark. Threatened w. jail (fwd)

>This is a true story. Denmark now - along with the whole EU - has assimilated >US-crypto laws. I just had a phone conversation with the danish ministry of >commerce, the export control division. The kind lady I spoke to threatened me >with fines or jail for up to two years. > >For having PGP f

Encryption and security tutorial available

I've just released my godzilla crypto tutorial, totalling 509 slides in 8 parts, of which the first 7 are the tutorial itself and the 8th is extra material which covers crypto politics. It's available from http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/tutorial/. The tutorial is done at a reasonably h

New synonym for GAK

Another one to add to the list: >U.S. approves export of crypto product without key recovery > >EE Times >(12/22/98, 4:13 p.m. EDT) > >RICHARDSON, Texas. Network security specialists ODS Networks Inc. has won >government approval to export its strong encryp

Re: Triple DES "standard"?

Vin McLellan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >I understood that the NSA lobbied bitterly against the X9 effort to >standardize 3DES as an ANSI standard, insisting that DES would surfice until >its successor was chosen. > >A couple years ago, when the X9 committee -- or maybe one of the X9 crypto >

RE: Triple DES "standard"?

"Trei, Peter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I can partially confirm this - a couple of years ago (at a previous employer) >I incorporated SSL into an NT web server (using SSLeay). The standard version >used 3DES to encrypt server private keys for storage on the server (not for >transmission). T

Re: Triple DES "standard"?

I've had a request for the text of the NSA objections to the 3DES ballot, it's included below along with the ballot cover sheet for anyone who's interested, with the serial numbers filed off both documents. I've already asked this earlier, does anyone know any more about the planned TC68/SC2

Re: RSA Down Under

don't want. Because of this, they're both unwilling (they can't risk losing) and unable to change things. It's far easier to get some bureaucrat to declare the policy to be X and then hope none tries to challenge it, which is exactly how it's done in NZ (a national maga

New variation in Australia/NZ export controls

In their ongoing efforts to impose the US's export controls on their own countries, it looks like Australia and New Zealand are moving more and more into line with the requirements set by the NSA. A recent story in The Age (a Melbourne, Australia newspaper), "Export ban kills Nexus' WHO deal"

Menwith Hill Tours

For those who don't recognise the name, Menwith Hill in the UK is the largest RSOC ("spy base") in the world, and vaccuums up communications from all over Europe for use by the NSA. Recently the ukcrypto list discussed Menwith Hill Tours, which has been organising sightseeing trips over and ar

Re: ETSI vote on key escrow

>[ETSI GAK vote] > >Yes: Belgium (5), Bulgaria (3), Cyprus (2), Czech Rep. (3), Hungary (3), >Netherlands (5), Portugal (5), Slovak Rep. (2), Turkey (5), UK (10). > >No: Austria (4), Denmark (3), Finland (5), Germany (10), Greece (5), Ireland >(3), Italy (10), Norway (3), Sweden (4), Switzerland (

Re: 1024 bit RSA exportable?

"David R. Conrad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >It appears that the definition of whether authentication code is exportable or >not now depends on whether BXA (NSA) feels the code can be "easily" converted >to encryption uses. Just as a data point, this morning I got a copy of NIST's reference

Re: references to password sniffer incident

Dominick LaTrappe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >While on the topic of password-sniffing anecdotes from conferences -- > >At the 2600-coordinated Beyond HOPE conference (NYC, 1997), it was made very >clear to users that passwords transmitted in-the-clear would be sniffed. To >hammer home the poin

Fortezza LEAF suppression

Does anyone know how the enabling of Fortezza LEAF suppression works? Since you have to return the cards to the vendor so the LEAF suppression feature can be added, it looks like there's an uploadable firmware patch available which would turn off the GAK on any Fortezza card. I'd guess it's don

Big Brother is listening in Australia

The transcript of the Australian Channel 9's "Sunday" program "Big Brother is listening" has been made available on their web site, acknowledging Australian participation in Echelon and the UKUSA alliance. A general outline is available at http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sun_cover.asp?id=817: In

Re: Stego patent

"P.J. Ponder" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >http://www.eet.com/story/OEG19990622S0026 > >Algorithm hides data inside unaltered images >By R. Colin Johnson >EE Times >(06/22/99, 4:29 p.m. EDT) > >ORONO, Maine Information can be hidden inside images without altering their >appearance, according to

Re: Padlock Size was Re: so why is IETF stilling adding DES to protocols? (Re: It's official... DES is History)

Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >You can disable 40 bit crypto via 'Security>Navigator>Configure SSL v2/3' That doesn't necessarily work. I don't know about SSL, but it's impossible to truly disable 40-bit RC2 for S/MIME no matter what you do - it's the Freddy Kruger of crypto algorith

RE: US export restrictions - a travellers guide ?

of heavy-duty crypto software on their laptops for their personal >>use. You're covered. > >Isn't that true only for US citizens ? > >Peter Gutmann erased his floppy. You can take it out of the country for personal use iff you keep it to yourself at all times and you return

"We're an intelligence agency, we don't do tours"

ities. Would it be possible for you to arrange a tour of your facilities for us along with a demonstration of some of the work you do? Areas of particular interest would be your computing facilities and anything related to cryptographic research and development. Sincerely, Peter Gutmann

Subject: Re: Security Lab To Certify Banking Applications (was Re: ECARM NEWS for July 23,1999 Second Ed.)

"William H. Geiger III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >In , on 07/23/99 > at 03:20 PM, Robert Hettinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: >>>The Financial Services Security Laboratory will open July 28 in >>>Reston, Va. The facility will be used to test software pa

Re: And now, a java encoder ring!

Andreas Bogk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>For me, the highlight of the JavaOne Developer Conference in San >>Francisco last March was Dallas Semiconductor's iButton with Java -- aka >>the Java Ring, a wearable computer that ran Java. It allegedly had

Re: House committee ditches SAFE for law enforcement version

Bill Frantz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >At 12:26 PM -0700 7/26/99, Rick Smith wrote: >>At 10:48 AM 7/26/99 -0700, Tom Perrine wrote: >>>At that time (1985), every MLS-possible system that had been produced >>>had been cancelled (or died for other reasons) Sure, >>>some of these (ours includ

New Zealand decontrols crypto exports

(That's not quite as momentous as it seems, for reasons given further down). What happened - I've finally (it took more than a month to get a response) managed to get hold of the General Technology Note and General Software Note from NZ's version of the Wassenaar control lists (the o

Re: going around the crypto

"Steven M. Bellovin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >The obvious protection is for users to check the certificate. Most users, of >course, don't even know what a certificate is, let alone what the grounds are >for accepting one. It would also help if servers used client-side >certificates for auth

RE: going around the crypto

Alan Ramsbottom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >IE5 gives you one or more warnings (unknown CA, invalid cert date, URL-CN >mismatch) and asks if you want to proceed. > >It can also check CRLs, but the feature is disabled by default (doubtless on >standards/compatibility grounds). Performance ground

RE: NSA key in MSFT Crypto API

Eric Murray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>On Sat, Sep 04, 1999 at 01:59:01AM +0200, Lucky Green wrote: >>>On Fri, 3 Sep 1999, Tim Dierks wrote: >>>Even if the key belongs to the NSA, I suspect that the NSA just wanted to >>>be able to load classified Crypto Service Providers into Windows and didn

RE: NSA key in MSFT Crypto API

This topic has problably just about reached its use-by date, but I recently saw a comment by "J. Andrs Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on how to cripple Microsoft's own CSP's using _NSAKEY: >Because the person posessing the private key corresponding to _NSAKEY can now >take a trusted, signed CSP (even

Re: London Times on quantum crypto

"K. M. Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/09/29/timintint02001.html?1341861 This story is like the creeping slow spam from hell, I think it's now appeared once on every crypto list I read. It consists of a series of out-of-context extracts, half

Wave Systems brings you DivX for the PC

An EMBASSY is a complete cryptographic and usage measurement system integrated into hardware on the client PC. It is designed to provide metered access to executables and information by authorized users, and host specially programmed services in a secure, tamper-proof environment. The

Re: IP: IETF considers building wiretapping into the Internet

"Steven M. Bellovin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >So -- how should the back door be installed? In the protocol? In the telco >endpoint? Is it ethical for security people to work on something that lowers >the security of the system? Given that it's going to be done anyway, is it >ethical to ref

Re: a smartcard of a different color

Robert Hettinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Subject: a smartcard of a different color >From: Dan Geer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Yesterday I saw a smartcard of a different color. In particular, it is the >smartcard chip but in a key-ring thing that is more or less identical to the >Mobil SpeedPass

Re: DPA mapped to spectral analysis

"Matt Crawford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>A while back someone on cypherpunks posted a program that would let you >>hear FSK modulation on a normal radio when the program was run, by >>modulating PCI traffic. >Shoot, I remember the operators of the CDC 3150 at the local state college >doin

Re: Siemens German Digital Signature Chip Hacked

[I posted this earlier today but it never appeared, apologies if you've seen it before. In any case the bit about the SigG card has been updated] Martin Minow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >The Register reports that the Siemens >Digital Signature Chip used for cash

Re: Forthcoming Biryukov/Shamir result against A5/1 GSM privacy algorithm

Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >At 22:36 12/5/1999 -0500, Matt Blaze forwarded: >>Real-Time Cryptanalysis of GSM's A5/1 on a PC >> >>Alex Biryukov and Adi Shamir >>Computer Science Department >>The Weizmann Institute >>Rehovot 76100, Israel >Thanks, Matt, for forwarding. My article

Re: FW: Invitation to CKM (fwd)

Rich Salz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Anyone know anything about these guys? > >[I may be having a knee jerk reaction, but this smells snake oily. --pm] >The technology we are talking about is a new cryptographic key distribution >system <97>The Constructive Key Management System (CKM) creat

Re: New Encryption Regulations have other gotchas

John Young <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Phil Karn wrote: > >>I believe the anti-Tempest provisions have been in the export regs >>for some time. > >Yes, but when did they appear? We're attempting to trace Tempest's origin -- >not easy because of classification of so much stuff. One classified sta

Godzilla crypto tutorial updated

Thanks to the fine folks at www.ps2pdf.com, I've just updated my godzilla crypto tutorial, and the resulting PDF files are about 25% smaller than those produced by Distiller. Updated sections include coverage of PKCS #11, PC/SC, JavaCard/OCF, iButtons, contactless smart cards, DNSSEC, e-cheques

Interesting point about the declassified Capstone spec

Late last year the Capstone spec ("CAPSTONE (MYK-80) Specifications", R21-TECH-30-95) was partially declassified as the result of a FOIA lawsuit[0]. The document is stamped "TOP SECRET UMBRA" on every page. UMBRA is a SIGINT codeword, not an INFOSEC one, so the people who designed the thing were

Re: Interesting point about the declassified Capstone spec

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Arnold G. Reinhold) writes: >I've always thought that the unique id built into each device and available >to Law Enforcement (LE) without court order would give LE huge leap forward >in traffic analyses. That's not unique to Clipper though, I bet there are systems out there

More comments on Arcot's "software smart cards"

Arcot's "software smart cards" have been discussed in the past on these lists, however the discussion predates the publication of their paper "Software smart cards via cryptographic camouflage" at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy halfway through last year (http://www.itd.nrl.navy.mil/ITD

RE: X.BlaBla in PGP??? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

"Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >I think you are probably refering to Ron's paper in FC'98. I presented an >alternative and somewhat radical architecture at RSA'99 which demonstrated >that it was practical to distribute revocation info in real time for a >population of 5 billio

Windows 2000 "Save plaintext passwords and encryption keys to disk" facility

Windows 2000 includes a very dangerous feature as part of its power management interface which saves the current system state to disk before putting the system into hibernate mode. Unlike the (already considerable) problems with a swapfile, which creates the risk that encryption keys, passwords,

How to avoid those pesky crypto security measures

An except from Microsoft Knowledge Base Article Q228786: -- Snip -- Sometimes it is convenient to export/import plain text session keys. However, the Microsoft Cryptographic Providers (Base and Enhanced) do not support this feature, for which both CryptExportKey() and CryptImportKey()require a

Re: Slow revocation checks (was: X.BlahBlah...)

lcs Mixmaster Remailer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Peter Gutmann writes: >>The reason why revocation checking is disabled by default is a pragmatic >>one, in practice it acts as a "Delay processing each message by a minute >>or two" facility (or at l

Re: Critics blast Windows 2000's quiet use of DES instead of 3DES

"Will Price" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >So in any case, the issue was rapidly corrected, and within months of NAI >purchasing TIS, TIS had killed all of its key recovery features, and the KRA >membership had been cancelled. There's a paper on adding GAK to IPSEC by someone from NAI in the GAK

Re: legal status of digital signatures

Rich Salz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Here's an interesting hypothesis that also touches on Perry's followup. >Digital signature "laws" are the result of PKI vendors trying to create a >market. Just as the Utah digital signature law was also called the "Attorneys Full Employment Act of 1997" I

Re: outlook certs

Markku-Juhani Saarinen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >By the way, here's the complete factorization of the value of public modulus >that openssl displayed for you: It's now been confirmed by several sources that this number has small factors, can someone confirm that MS software will generate more

Re: Extracting Entropy?

Ben Laurie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >OK, so if I've got a passphrase of arbitrary length, and I wish to >condense it to make a key of length n bits (n > 160), what's the >approved method(s) of doing that? PKCS #5 v2 probably contains the best key derivation mechanism, followed closely by TLS,

RE: outlook certs - solved

Markku-Juhani Saarinen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>I now believe you've decoded the below incorrectly because the leading >>bit is set, making this a signed number which may have made some of your >>tools croak. Decoding by hand, I get the following mod/exp: >Are you saying that under some con

Re: Lowercase compresses better?

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >If your compression algorithm is tuned for normal ASCII text, then > may be considered more frequent than for >all combinations of values of , and thus pairs of uppercased >letters may result in longer bit streams than pairs of lowercase letters or >one uppercase lett

New Zealand to implement FBI's surveillance blueprint

Excerpts from a story in today's New Zealand Herald (a large daily paper), http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=157533: Taxpayer cash to help e-spies 30.10.2000 By EUGENE BINGHAM political reporter The Government is planning to pay telephone and internet companies to make their s

The AuthentiCode signature format

I reverse-engineered Microsoft's AuthentiCode format a few years ago while, uhh, investigating its security but never really published the details, here they are in case anyone finds them useful. There's nothing terribly tricky about it, it's just a PKCS #7 detached signature inserted as a COFF r

Re: Is PGP broken?

"Enzo Michelangeli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (or someone, the quoting makes it difficult to tell) writes: >If it may of any comfort (or perhaps enhanced desperation), the S/MIME >community has similar headaches: in these days, the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list is >debating whether, in S/MIME v.3, RSA shoul

Re: Is PGP broken?

"Enzo Michelangeli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >Apart from standards issues, one thing I'd like to see added to popular S/MIME >agents is a mini-CA to issue self-signed certificates. This would allow people >to use S/MIME as they use PGP (who relies on the WoT anyway?), breaking the >dependency

Re: Is PGP broken?

"Enzo Michelangeli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>I have an RFC draft for this which I wrote a while back but it was rejected by >>the PKIX WG chair(s) ("I am concerned that we not turn PKIX into PGP with ASN.1 >>syntax"), and I haven't had the motivation to publish it as an independent >>draft -