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Re: [fc-discuss] Financial Cryptography Update: On Digital Cash-like Payment Systems
>From: cyphrpunk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Oct 24, 2005 5:58 PM >To: John Kelsey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Re: [fc-discuss] Financial Cryptography Update: On Digital Cash-like >Payment Systems ... >Digital wallets will require real security in user PCs. Still I don't >see why we don't already have this problem with online banking and >similar financial services. Couldn't a virus today steal people's >passwords and command their banks to transfer funds, just as easily >as the fraud described above? To the extent that this is not >happening, the threat against ecash may not happen either. Well, one difference is that those transactions can often be undone, if imperfectly at times. The whole set of transactions is logged in many different places, and if there's an attack, there's some reasonable hope of getting the money back. And that said, there have been reports of spyware stealing passwords for online banking systems, and of course, there are tons of phishing and pharming schemes to get the account passwords in a more straightforward way. The point is, if you're ripped off in this way, there's a reasonable chance you can get your money back, because the bank has a complete record of the transactions that were done. There's no chance of this happening when there's no record of the transaction anywhere. >> The payment system operators will surely be sued for this, because >> they're the only ones who will be reachable. They will go broke, and >> the users will be out their money, and nobody will be silly enough to >> make their mistake again. >They might be sued but they won't necessarily go broke. It depends on >how deep the pockets are suing them compared to their own, and most >especially it depends on whether they win or lose the lawsuit. I don't think so. Suppose there's a widespread attack that steals money from tens of thousands of users of this payment technology. There seem to be two choices: a. The payment system somehow makes good on their losses. b. Everyone who isn't dead or insane pulls every dime left in that system out, knowing that they could be next. It's not even clear that these are mutually exclusive, but if (a) doesn't happen, (b) surely will. Nobody wants their money stolen, and I don't think many people are so confident of their computer security that they're willing to bet huge amounts of money on it. If you have to be that confident in your computer security to use the payment system, it's not going to have many clients. >CP --John
On the orthogonality of anonymity to current market demand
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- At 3:57 PM -0400 10/24/05, John Kelsey wrote: >More to the point, an irreversible payment system raises big practical >problems in a world full of very hard-to-secure PCs running the >relevant software. One exploitable software bug, properly used, can >steal an enormous amount of money in an irreversible way. And if your >goal is to sow chaos, you don't even need to put most of the stolen >money in your own account--just randomly move it around in >irreversible, untraceable ways, making sure that your accounts are >among the ones that benefit from the random generosity of the attack. >The payment system operators will surely be sued for this, because >they're the only ones who will be reachable. They will go broke, and >the users will be out their money, and nobody will be silly enough to >make their mistake again. Though I agree with the notion that anonymity is orthogonal to market demand at the moment, I think you lost me at the word "account", above. :-). That is to say, your analysis conflicts with the whole trend towards T-0 trading, execution, clearing and settlement in the capital markets, and, frankly, with all payment in general as it gets increasingly granular and automated in nature. The faster you can trade or transact business with the surety that the asset in question is now irrevocably yours, the more trades and transactions you can do, which benefits not only the individual trader but markets as a whole. The whole foundation of modern finance, and several -- almost posthumous, so pervasive was the homeopathic socialism that we now call Keynesianism -- Nobel prizes in economics are based on that premise, and it has been proven empirically now for many decades: The entire history of the currency futures markets would be a good example, though now that I think of it, any derivative market, since the time of Thales himself, would prove the point. However "anonymous" irrevocability might offend one's senses and cause one to imagine the imminent heat-death of the financial universe (see Gibbon, below... :-)), I think that technology will instead step up to the challenge and become more secure as a result. And, since internet bearer transactions are, by their very design, more secure on public networks than book-entry transactions are in encrypted tunnels on private networks, they could even be said to be secure *in spite* of the fact that they're anonymous; that -- as it ever was in cryptography -- business can be transacted between two parties even though they don't know, or trust, each other. For instance, another "problem" with internet bearer transactions, besides their prima facie "anonymity" (they're only prima facie because, while the protocols don't *require* is-a-person and-then-you-go-to-jail identity, traffic analysis is still quite trivial for the time being, onion routers notwithstanding) is that the client is responsible not only for most of the computation, but also for the storage of notes or coins, instead of a central database in a clearinghouse or bank somewhere "storing" various offsetting book-entries in, as you noted above, "accounts". :-). Of course, simply backing up one's data off-site, much easier with internet bearer certificates than with whole databases, solves this problem, and, as we all know here, the safest way to do *that* is to use some kind of m-of-n hash, stored, someday, for even smaller bits of cash :-), in many places on the net at once. Obviously, we don't need small cash to store big assets, any more than we need big servers to distribute big files in BitTorrent, but it will only accelerate, if not complete, the process, when we get there. As I have said, too many times :-), about these things, transaction cost is always going to be the critical factor in any change from book-entries to chaumian-esque internet bearer transactions. And I believe that, hand-in-hand with increased security, reduced transaction cost is more a function of the collapsing cost and the ubiquity of distributed processing power and network access than anything else. So, anonymity is, in fact, orthogonal to market demand, primarily because it's an *effect*, and not a cause, of that demand. As we all do now with the current proctological state of book-entry finance, the anonymity of a proposed internet bearer transaction infrastructure will just be a "cost" that the market would have to bear. :-). To channel Schopenhauer a bit, like the emergence of industrialism and the abolition of slavery was before it, once anonymity becomes a "feature" of our transaction infrastructure, people will eventually declare it to be not only self-evident all along, but a moral *prerequisite* of any transaction as well. To put it another way, it's a pity for acrophobics that the fastest way to get anywhere these days is to fly, but it is still a physical fact, nonetheless. Cheers, RAH -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.0.2 (Buil
On special objects, and Judy Miller's treason
Its unfortunate that some posters had to be reminded that anyone calling for government-licensed "reporters" (and "religions", as one author included) deserves to have their carbon recycled, because of the treason to the BoR. Tim May used to call government licensed citizens "special objects". Search for it. If state violence is used against "unlicensed" practitioners, then the state controls the practice. Pharmacy provides another example of this --the state controlling what you ingest. It is also sad that no one pointed out that when compelled to go before the Inquisition (aka grand jury) one is not compelled to say anything. So long as the BoR holds. For instance, Dupe Miller could have kept her crudely painted mouth shut, because she could have worried that she would have incriminated herself, eg in not reporting the felony of broadcasting a spook's identity. Or worried about unknown charges that might be brought against her; you never know what prosecutors will dream up. Do not cooperate with fascists, occupying troops, etc. (Speaking of which, are any anonymous offshore betting establishments making odds on Ryan Lackey's lifespan?) --- Impeach or frag.
Private records scattered in the wind (FLA)
We encourage the publication of the (paper) school records which the FLA hurricane reportedly distributed to locals, as part of an effort to show the sheeple how *well* the state guards their secrets. Particularly interested in offspring of state officials, not that their kids are likely go to public schools. [FLA is required to bus lower caste students within counties, to achieve a certain average complexion, so even in Jeb'$ neighborhood the schools suck.] --- Impeach or frag.
big bro in the car
Nuclear Detection: Fixed detectors, portals, and NEST teams wont work for shielded HEU on a national scale; a distributed network of in-vehicle detectors is also necessary to deter nuclear terrorism http://iis-db.stanford.edu/evnts/4249/disarm.pdf Maybe the FCC will require rad detectors in cellphones as part of their 911-location finding / dissident-tracking system? - Go for the head shot, they're wearing puffy vests on the tube, mate.
Re: [fc-discuss] Financial Cryptography Update: On Digital Cash-l ike Payment Systems
| U.S. law generally requires that stolen goods be returned to the | original owner without compensation to the current holder, even if | they had been purchased legitimately (from the thief or his agent) by | an innocent third party. This is incorrect. The law draws a distinction between recognized sellers of the good in question, and other sellers. If you buy a washer from a guy who comes up to you and offers you a great deal on something from the back of his truck, and it turns out to be stolen, you lose. If you go to an appliance store and buy a washer that turned out to be stolen, it's yours. Buy a gold ring from the salesman at the same store, and you better hope he didn't steal it. As in any real-world situation, there are fuzzy areas at the edges; and there are exceptions. (Some more expensive objects transfer by title - mainly houses and cars. You don't get any claim on the object unless you have a state-issued title.) But the general intent is clear and reasonable. | Likewise a payment system with traceable | money might find itself subject to legal orders to reverse subsequent | transactions, confiscate value held by third parties and return the | ill-gotten gains to the victim of theft or fraud. Depending on the | full operational details of the system, Daniel Nagy's epoints might be | vulnerable to such legal actions. This is no different from the case with cash today. If there is a way to prove - in the legal sense, not some abstract mathematical sense - that a transfer took place, the legal system may reverse it. This comes up in contexts like improper transfers of assets before a bankruptcy declaration, or when people try to hide money during a divorce. -- Jerry
[EMAIL PROTECTED]: [IP] Wiretapping innocent people on the Internet]
- Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 14:08:43 -0400 To: Ip Ip Subject: [IP] Wiretapping innocent people on the Internet X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.734) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Declan McCullagh , [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Politech] Wiretapping innocent people on the Internet In-reply-to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 10:20:16 -0700 From: John Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The NYT covered this story, on the front page, too. But somehow it was all about "Colleges Protest Call to Upgrade Online Systems". It wasn't about the government automating the bugging of every student, professor, and staff person by typing a few commands from the basement of the FBI building. The nasty word "wiretap" didn't appear til the eighth paragraph, "below the fold", and when it did appear, it was buried in mid-sentence, right next to "criminals, terrorists and spies". (They never wiretap "citizens", "innocent bystanders", or "suspects", and everyone wiretapped is of course guilty-as-charged, though they haven't been charged with any crime yet.) There's no shortage of bias in the New York Times, but this is a particularly blatant example. Now why is it in the interest of the Times to build wiretapping into the hardware of the Internet? The story also claimed that "Because the government would have to win court orders before undertaking surveillance, the universities are not raising civil liberties issues." I think there's a civil liberties issue when the US Government wants to wire the country like the Stasi wired East Germany for indiscriminate bugging. And there's no "winning" of these court orders; they happen in secret, without the participation or knowledge of the target of the wiretap. The university cannot appear in court to argue about whether the order should be issued (and very few challenge them after issuance). In most cases the judge is *required* to issue the secret wiretap order every time the Feds merely say "we need the info". To get 99% of such orders, they don't need a warrant, nor probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed. What used to be tough wiretap standards have been whittled away inch by inch by decades of aggressive pushing on the part of the FBI, DEA, CIA, NSA, and DoJ. In August, one judge woke up and published a decision that said, despite his previously regular issuance of secret orders to track the location of peoples' cellphones in real time, without probable cause or any suspicion of criminal activity, he was concerned about whether this routine secret practice was actually legal. (See http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_09.php#004002). Bravo for that one judge who found his conscience. The government argues that under the same conditions (no warrant, no reason to suspect you in particular), they can monitor about 40% of the bits you send over the Internet, in real time, including where you are, who you're talking with, what protocols you're using, and every URL, email address, IM name, or other "addressing and signaling information". (I argue that they don't have this authority, but I never get to show up in court at these discussions with the judge.) Not only is this information supposedly legal for the government to get about every citizen, it's perfect for automated software tracking of who's-talking-to-who, all the time. The NSA term for it is "traffic analysis", and most of it works even if your communications are encrypted. I understand why the authoritarian brass would want routine wiretaps of the innocent; as Orson Welles said, "Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy." They've lost sight of their goal (keeping people safe and free), yet redoubled their efforts. Why this would be in the interest of the citizens (or the FCC, or the NY Times) is the puzzle. John Gilmore (speaking for myself) - You are subscribed as [EMAIL PROTECTED] To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
RE: On special objects, and Judy Miller's treason
Its unfortunate that some posters had to be reminded that anyone calling for government-licensed "reporters" (and "religions", as one author included) deserves to have their carbon recycled, because of the treason to the BoR. Tim May used to call government licensed citizens "special objects". Search for it. Although I agree in theory, if I were a black man in Alabama in the 1950s (for instance), I might certainly be willing to try to declare blacks as worthy of "special consideration" if that would keep me from getting lynched. I would not, in general, expect to be held liable by others for the reaction of Tyrants, and I'd be willing to allow other lynchables to take care of themselves. Is Miller in this situation? Doubtful, but then again were you -suprised-? -TD
[EMAIL PROTECTED]: [Politech] U.S. passports to receive RFID implants starting in October 2006 [priv]]
- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh - From: Declan McCullagh Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 13:23:23 -0700 To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: [Politech] U.S. passports to receive RFID implants starting in October 2006 [priv] User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (Macintosh/20050716) Text of regulations: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-21284.htm --- http://news.com.com/Passports+to+get+RFID+chip+implants/2100-7348_3-5913644.html?tag=nefd.top Passports to get RFID chip implants October 25, 2005, 12:12 PM PDT All U.S. passports will be implanted with remotely-readable computer chips starting in October 2006, the Bush administration has announced. Sweeping new State Department regulations issued Tuesday say that passports issued after that time will have tiny radio frequency ID (RFID) chips that can transmit personal information including the name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph of the passport holder. Eventually, the government contemplates adding additional digitized data such as "fingerprints or iris scans." Over the last year, opposition to the idea of implanting RFID chips in passports has grown amidst worries that identity thieves could snatch personal information out of the air simply by aiming a high-powered antenna at a person or a vehicle carrying a passport. Out of the 2,335 comments on the plan that were received by the State Department this year, 98.5 percent were negative. The objections mostly focused on security and privacy concerns. [...remainder snipped...] ___ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) - End forwarded message - -- Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
crypto on sonet is free, Tyler
At 03:15 PM 6/8/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >Well, it's interesting to consider how/if that might be possible. SONET >scrambles the payload prior to transmission..adding an additional crypto >layer prior to transmission would mean changing the line rate, so probably a >no-no. Tyler, one can implement crypto at *arbitrary* line rates though the use of multiple hardware engines and the right "mode" of operation. If you don't use crypto you are broadcasting, as well as accepting anything from anyone as authentic. Its that simple. Caveat receiver. --- Impeach or frag.
RE: info you requested B0568
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Re: [PracticalSecurity] Anonymity - great technology but hardly used
Part of the problem is using a packet-switched network; if we had circuit-based, then thwarting traffic analysis is easy; you just fill the link with random garbage when not transmitting packets. I considered doing this with SLIP back before broadband (back when my friend was my ISP). There are two problems with this; one, getting enough random data, and two, distinguishing the padding from the real data in a computationally efficient manner on the remote side without giving away anything to someone analyzing your traffic. I guess both problems could be solved by using synchronized PRNGs on both ends to generate the chaff. The two sides getting desynchronzied would be problematic. Please CC me with any ideas you might have on doing something like this, perhaps it will become useful again one day. On packet-switched networks, running full speed all the time is not very efficient nor is it very friendly to your neighbors. Again, if you have any ideas on how to deal with this, email me. Many of the anonymity protocols require multiple participants, and thus are subject to what economists call "network externalities". The best example I can think of is Microsoft Office file formats. I don't buy MS Office because it's the best software at creating documents, but I have to buy it because the person in HR insists on making our timecards in Excel format. In this case, the fact that the HR person (a third party to the transaction) is using it forces me to buy it from Microsoft. Similarly, the more people use digital cash, the more likely I am to decide to use it. The more Tor nodes we have, the more high speed and close nodes there will be, and the more enjoyable the experience will be (assuming Tor is smart enough to use the close, fast nodes). For more information on network externalities, see the book "Information Rules", available from Amazon for just over $4. Everyone working in IT or interested in computers should read that book. Another issue involves the ease of use when switching between a [slower] anonymous service and a fast non-anonymous service. I have a tool called metaprox on my website (see URL in sig) that allows you to choose what proxies you use on a domain-by-domain basis. Something like this is essential if you want to be consistent about accessing certain sites only through an anonymous proxy. Short of that, perhaps a Firefox plug-in that allows you to select proxies with a single click would be useful. It would be nice if the protocols allowed you to specify a chain of proxies, but unfortunately HTTP only allows you to specify the next hop, not a chain of hops. Perhaps someone could come up with an encapsulation method and cooperative proxy server that is more like the old cpunk remailers, using nested encrypted "envelopes" in the body of the request. Perhaps crowds or Tor already does this, I don't know. Where anonymizing facilities fail are fairly obvious to anyone who has used them, listed in descending order of importance: ease of configuration (initial setup cost) ease of use locator services for peers or servers network effects (not enough people using it) efficient use of resources (see quote in sig about why this is the least important) There are some technical concerns limiting their security: resistance to traffic analysis or trojaned software ad-hoc systems for crypto key updates or revocation I think one way to encourage adoption is to amortize the cost of setup over a group of people. For example, everyone who reads this could set up a hardened co-loc box and install all the relevant software, then charge their friends a small fee to use it. An ISP could make these services available to their customers. An ASP could make them available to customers over the web. People could start creating open-source Live! CD distributions* with all the software clients installed and preconfigured (or configured easily through a wizard-like set of menus invoked automatically at bootup). With Live! CDs in particular, you'd have a bit of a problem with generating crypto keys since the RNG fires up in the same state for everyone, but perhaps you could seed it by hashing the contents of a disk drive, or the contents of memory-mapped hardware ROMs (e.g. ethernet MAC address), network traffic, and/or with seed state persisted on a removable USB drive. [*] See http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php I don't see a distro specifically for anonymity; if you have friends who want to create Yet Another Linux Distro, perhaps they could fill this niche. Two alternatives suggest themselves; a client distro for end-users and a server distro for people with a machine that's not doing anything. You'd just pop in the CD and it announces its availability to various locator services to act as a Tor, mixmaster, or whatever node. Again, keep me informed if anyone starts work on this. -- http://www.lightconsulting.com/~travis/ -><- "We already have enough fast, insecure systems."
Re: [fc-discuss] Financial Cryptography Update: On Digital Cash-like Payment Systems
> If you have > to be that confident in your computer security to use the payment > system, it's not going to have many clients. Maybe the trusted computing platform (palladium) may have something to offer after all, namely enabling naive users to use services that require confidence in their own security. One could argue it's like going to a Vegas casino; software vendors (MS *cough* MS) probably won't cheat you in such a system because they don't have to; the odds are in their favor already. The whole system is designed to assure they get paid, and they have a lot to lose (confidence in the platform) by cheating you (at least in ways that can be detected). And since you won't be able to do anything to compromise the security, you can't screw it up. While I wouldn't see an advantage in that, I might recommend it for my grandmother. More on topic, I recently heard about a scam involving differential reversibility between two remote payment systems. The fraudster sends you an email asking you to make a Western Union payment to a third party, and deposits the requested amount plus a bonus for you using paypal. The victim makes the irreversible payment using Western Union, and later finds out the credit card used to make the paypal payment was stolen when paypal reverses the transaction, leaving the victim short. -- http://www.lightconsulting.com/~travis/ -><- "We already have enough fast, insecure systems." -- Schneier & Ferguson GPG fingerprint: 50A1 15C5 A9DE 23B9 ED98 C93E 38E9 204A 94C2 641B
