Date: Mon, 12 Apr 93 13:48:49 PDT Reply-To: Return-Path: Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain From: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (orvat qvfpbeqvnaf jr qbag zvaq) To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal) Subject: [surfpunk-0078] DIGEST: cyberpunk, ZUMABOT, NREN, FBI, zero-knowledge # While I got a chuckle out of seeing my subscription # request quoted in the SURFPUNK "FAQ", I still have no # clear notion of what SURFUNK is. After a couple # months being on the list, while I like it, I don't # know what to make of it. # # But, being a discordian, I don't entirely mind. (-: # # -- Nowhere Man # However, if you want to be relatively more realistic, # try Arachnet, and some of the more innovative places # like Leri, Fnord, Surfpunk, Future-technologies, # Info-futures, Extropians, etc.... # # -- Andy Hawks The above are greps from futureCulture. Here's a grep from this surfpunk. --strick :g/Subject:/# 36 Subject: Re: [surfpunk-0076] TALLY: who are surfpunk? 59 Subject: ZUMABOT strikes back 110 Subject: Plan for 'info-highway' runs into FBI road block 185 Subject: MATH: Zero Knowledge Proofs 373 Subject: Telecomm statement on NREN, etc. 382 Subject: Telecomm statement on NREN, etc. [Hit return to continue] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ From: Mike Mitten Subject: Re: [surfpunk-0076] TALLY: who are surfpunk? To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 09:41:50 -0400 (EDT) dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion) writes: >Which brings to mind an interview with a guy involved in the Black Label >publicity here (from the firm Cossette i think) and the guy said they wanted >to give the tv adds a "cyberpunk look". We better get used to bad uses of >the term by technologically challenged people... This implies that there is a *good* use of the term cyberpunk. Which there is not, as it describes nothing, and serves only to let people know the extent of the coolness of the person using the word. -Mike Mike Mitten - gnome@pd.org - ...!emory!pd.org!gnome - AMA#675197 - DoD#522 Irony is the spice of life. '90 Bianchi Backstreet '82 Suzuki GS850GL "The revolution will not be televised." ________________________________________________________________________ To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com Subject: ZUMABOT strikes back Date: Mon, 12 Apr 93 0:31:50 BST From: jm@maths.tcd.ie More news on the zuma.uucp flamebots/NLP-frankensteins... -- -><- "I find the law of fives to be more evident every time I look" -><- Justin Mason (Iona Technologies' techie-in-residence and unix caretaker) -- generic -- MIME-extended phone: +353-1-6790677 fax: +353-1-6798039 In article <1993Apr10.190716.3431@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> jfurr@nyx.cs.du.edu (Joel Furr) writes: >It's like this. Warren Burstein and I newgrouped alt.fan.serdar-argic to >celebrate the follies of the infamous ZUMABOT. Then the 'bot got all >snotty and: > >1) forwarded all mail from sera@zuma.anatolia.org to warren@nysernet.org >2) newgrouped alt.fan.joel-furr (which doesn't look to have gone very far) >3) tried to rmgroup alt.fan.serdar-argic >4) signed Warren up for about sixty mailing lists >5) sent email to our news admins asking to have our accounts yanked >6) threatened legal action against us >7) went berserk and cancelled every current post it could find authored by > sera@zuma.uucp (our guess is so as to be able to claim that it really > hasn't posted all that many articles) > >But at no point did it newgroup alt.fan.warren.burstein, and Warren's >upset because he got left out. Doesn't that damn 'bot have any sensitivity? I *love* it! Warren and I got into it (actually, *I* did) last Pesach, and I have felt bad about it ever since. So seeing alt.fan.warren.burstein gave me such nachus, that I *had* to add it to my .newsrc! Ya gotta love that zumabot -- hell, zumabot posting to s.c.j. and t.p.m. account for some 50% of what my KILL files junk! But tell me, is warren.burstein anything like howard-stern? Does warren have a "robin"? -- Yonatan B. Horen | Jews who do not base their advocacy of Jewish positions and (408) 736-3923 | interests on Judaism are essentially racists... the only horen@netcom.com | morally defensible grounds for the preservation of Jews as a | separate people rest on their religious identity as Jews. _______________________________________________________________________ Source: Atlanta Journal / Atlanta Constitution, 12apr93, p A11 Subject: Plan for 'info-highway' runs into FBI road block Author: Andrew Glass About-The-Author: Andrew J. Glass is chief of the Cox Newspapers Washington bureau. Washington -- It was the kind of story sure to make big news: Hired Killers with links to Libya down a domestic jet over Chicago with a hand-held rocket launcher. But it didn't happen. The FBI got a timely tip, tapped a phone line and foiled the plot. An FBI memo that now sits on the desk of Attorney General Janet Reno suggests that kind of police work may not be so easy in the new age of all-digital phone networks. All the court orders under the sun won't get you in if the data is encoded and if the FBI lacks the key. The FBI is pushing hard for a new law to alter the design of the next wave of voice and data lines in ways that would make it easier to tap them. Otherwise, the bureau fears, its future wiretaps will yield only the stillness of glass fibers, pulsating at the speed of light. Basically, all we're trying to do is just keep the status quo, says an FBI agent. His agency, he points out, isn't asking for anything more intrusive than it already has. If society wants us to hit organize [sic] crime, thwart terrorists and catch spies, then Congress must act, he argues. But it won't happen soon. And it may never happen. For, on this issue, the G-men face a long list of foes. The list begins with the civil liberties folks. Already, they see, not without some cause, Big Brother keeping score. In such circles, they say, the FBI might just as well call for a ban on gloves. Since gloves don't leave any fingerprints, they make life harder for cops. Nor are the mega-owners of what Time magazine dubs "The Info Highway" all that happy about what the FBI now wants from them. While phone people have long been known for playing ball with the police, in these tough times they think the customer must come first. Money, to be sure, is an issue. But that isn't their main fret with being bound to build hidden "back doors" into their networks. While designed to be opened only by the FBI, one can see how others may also learn to tap dance [truly sic]. People have been making up codes for a very long time. Even now that we are buddy-buddy with the Russians, the secret National Security Agency employs upward of 35,000 code breakers. In the digital world, however, there are only two states of being -- on or off. On paper, they look like an endless chain of near-meaningless strings of zeros and ones. They also hold out the hope (and, for the FBI, the fear) of true privacy. Despite the huge stakes for both sides in this fight, the public debate has been muted. Here and there, a few trade journals review the arguments. Secret (and coded) memos cut an electronic path through the federal maze as sets of officials seek the comments of their peers and of higher-ups. Last year, President Bush backed the FBI view. The agency wrote new entry standards that would let it break into fax machines, cellular phones and private data networks. But Congress balked. The new attorney general has yet to tip her hand. In time, this issue will reach the White House. The current occupant has never seen a technology he didn't like. And President Clinton also has a thing about wanting to please people. However he comes down on this one, he's likely to leave some people mad. ________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 7 Apr 93 21:31:39 -0700 To: Extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Subject: MATH: Zero Knowledge Proofs Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com [Since this should also be of interest to the Cypherpunks list, which Ray is/was subscribed to, I am posting this essay to that list.] Ray Cromwell writes: > Could someone explain zero knowledge proofs and give me an example. I >have taken number theory and abstract algebra so feel free to use equations. > >(I know that zero knowledge proofs are a way of certifying something without >revealing the information you are certifying, but I want to know how they >work mathematically) Zero knowledge interactive proof systems ("ZKIPS") are sometimes called "minimum disclosure proofs" (with some subtle differences) and are exciting and mysterious (at first) methods that lie at the heart of modern cryptology. Here's a simple explanation. Too bad we don't have a blackboard! ALICE AND BOB (some people call them Peggy the Prover and Vic the Verifier) Alice wishes to prove to Bob that she knows some item of knowledge without actually giving Bob any of that knowledge. Let us first imagine that Alice claims she knows a "Hamiltonian cycle" on a particular graph. (For a given set of nodes and arcs linking some of those nodes, a Hamiltonian cycle is one which passes through each node once and only once. You might want to draw some graphs on a sheet of paper and try to find a Hamiltonian cycle for the graphs, to get a feel for the problem.) The particular graph may be "registered" somewhere with Alice's claim that she--and only she, for reasons I'll discuss at the end--knows a Hamiltonian cycle for the graph. In a sense, this is her "proof of identity." To make this example concrete, Alice is using this piece of knowledge as her *password* to get into some system. She presents a map of 50 cities and some set of highways interconnecting them and says "I am who I say I am if and only if I know a Hamiltonian cycle for this graph." The conventional (non zero knowledge) way to convey this knowledge is for Alice to simply *show* the Hamiltonian cycle to Bob. This is how passwords are currently handled. Bob, and anybody else who is spying on the exchange, then knows the "secret," which isn't a secret anymore. (Anybody who saw the exchange, including Sysadmin Bob, could then impersonate her.) ENTER ZERO KNOWLEDGE Alice, instead of showing Bob the Hamiltonian cycle, takes the cities and covers them with something, say, coins. (On a computer, this is all done in software, using the cryptographic protocol called "bit commitment.") Alice scrambles the position of the cities (covered by coins) so as not to allow positional cues. (Most of the 50 cities should have about the same number, ideally exactly the same number, of links to other cities, to ensure that some cities are not "marked" by having some unique number of links. A detail.) Needless to say, she scrambles the cities out of sight of Bob, so he can't figure out which cities are which. However, once she's done with the scrambling, she displays the cities in such a way that she can't *later change*..i.e., she "commits" to the values, using well-known cryptographic methods for this. (If this sounds mysterious, read up on it. It's how "mental poker" and other crypto protocols are handled.) Bob sees 50 cities with links to other cities, but he doesn't have any way of knowing which of the covered cities are which. Nor, I should add, are the links labelled in any way--it wouldn't do to have some links permanently labelled "Route 66" or "Highway 101"! She says to Bob: "Pick one choice. Either you can see a Hamiltonian cycle for this set of covered cities and links, or you can see the cities uncovered." In other words, "Alice cuts, Bob chooses." Bob tosses a coin or chooses randomly somehow and says: "Show me the cities." Alice uncovers all the cities and Bob examines the graph. He sees that Akron is indeed connected to Boise, to Chicago, to Denver, not to Erie, and so on. In short, he confirms that Alice has shown him the original graph. No substitution of another graph was made. Bob, who is suspicious that this person is really who she claims to be, says to Alice: "Ok, big deal! So you anticipated I was going to ask you to show me the cities. Anybody could have gotten Alice's publicly registered graph and just shown it to me. You had a 50-50 chance of guessing which choice I'd make." Alice smugly says to him: "Fine, let's do it again." She scrambles the cities (which are covered) and displays the graph to Bob...50 covered cities and various links between them. She tells Bob to choose again. This time Bob says: "Show me the Hamiltonian cycle." Without uncovering the cities (which would give the secret away, of course), Alice connects the cities together in a legal Hamiltonian cycle. Bob says, "OK, so this time you figured I was going to ask you the opposite of what I did last time and you just substituted some other graph that you happened to know the Hamiltonian cycle of. I have no guarantee the graphs are really the same." Alice, who knows this is just the beginning, says: "Let's do the next round." ...and so it goes.... After 30 rounds, Alice has either produced a legal Hamiltonian cycle or a graph that is the same as (isomorphic to...same cities linked to same other cities) the registered graph in each and every one of the rounds. There are two possibilities: 1. She's an imposter and has guessed correctly *each time* which choice Bob will make, thus allowing her to substitute either another graph altogether (for when Bob wants to see the Hamiltonian cycle) or just the original graph (for when Bob asks to see the cities uncovered to confirm it's the real graph). Remember, if Alice guesses wrong even once, she's caught red-handed. 2. She really is who she claims to be and she really does know a Hamiltonian cycle of the specified graph. The odds of #1 being true drop rapidly as the number of rounds are increased, and after 30 rounds, are only 1 in 2^30, or 1 in a billion. Bob choose to believe that Alice knows the solution. Alice has conveyed to Bob proof that she is in possession of some knowledge without actually revealing any knowledge at all! The proof is "probabilistic." This is the essence of a zero knowledge proof. There's more to it than just this example, of course, but this is the basic idea. SOME DETAILS 1. Could someone else discover the Hamiltonian cycle of Alice's graph? Exhaustive search is the only way to guarantee a solution will be found--the Hamiltonian cycle problem is a famous "NP-complete" combinatorial problem. This is intractable for reasonable numbers of nodes. 50 nodes is intractable. 2. If finding a Hamiltonian cycle is intractable, how the hell did Alice ever find one? She didn't *have* to find one! She started with 50 cities, quickly connected them so that the path went through each city only once and then wrote this path down as her "secret" solution. Then she went back and added the other randomly chosen interconnects to make the complete graph. For this graph, she obviously knows a Hamiltonian cycle, *by construction*. 3. Can Bob reconstruct what the Hamilonian cycle must be by asking for enough rounds to be done? Not generally. Read the papers for details on this, which gets deeply into under what circumstance partial knowledge of the solution gives away the complete solution. 4. Are there other problems that can be used in this same way? Yes, there are many forms. I find the Hamiltonian cycle explanation quite easy to explain to people. (Though usually I can draw pictures, which helps a lot.) 5. How general is the "zero knowledge interactive proof" approach? Anything provable in formal logic is provable in zero knowledge, saith the mathematicians and crypto gurus. Check out the various "Crypto Conference" Proceedings. Hope this helps. -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: 2^756839 | Public Key: MailSafe and PGP available. _______________________________________________________________________ To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com From: "Gregory L. Searle" Date: 9 Apr 93 01:28:13 EDT Subject: Telecomm statement on NREN, etc. Reply-To: GSEARLE@ccs.uoguelph.ca Here it comes, Third-Hand. More info on NSFNET and NREN. ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1993 18:01:20 EST From: Jim Conklin Subject: Telecomm statement on NREN, etc. To: Multiple recipients of list BITNEWS This may be of general interest to those of you wondering what's coming (and why) with the NSFNET and NREN. / Jim ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Finally a clear statement of what they want and why the NSF is planning changes to the backbone funding and usage. For Release: March 23, 1993 LEADING TELCO CEOs JOINTLY SUPPORT CLINTON-GORE TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE The Chief Executive Officers of the nation's leading local and long-distance telecommunications companies today announced that they have signed a landmark public policy position statement (attached) -- signaling strong industry-wide support for the communications technology initiatives envisioned by the Clinton- Gore Administration. The statement was signed by the CEOs of Ameritech, AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Bellcore, BellSouth, Cincinnati Bell, Inc., GTE, MCI, NYNEX, Pacific Telesis, Southern New England Telephone Company, Southwestern Bell Corp., Sprint, U S WEST. The policy statement provides a set of principles consistent with the Administration's initiative, "Technology for America's Economic Growth, A New Direction to Build Economic Strength," and articulates the roles government and industry should play. The CEOs suggest the Administration and Congress adopt these principles as a framework for cooperation among federal, state and local governments, key users communities -- such as schools, libraries and health care providers -- and the private sector (including telecommunications, computer, information, and related industries.) In addition, the set of principles recommends that government support research on applications and services that benefit schools, health care, and industries crucial for U.S. competitiveness, as well as research that will make it easier for people to connect to, and use, information networks. Benefits to come from following these principles would include: * Increased private sector investment in, and continued development of, a national information infrastructure as a result of government serving as a catalyst. Partnerships among government, academia, industry and key user communities will focus on development of experimental technologies that leverage limited government funds. Transferring experimental technologies to commercial (production) networks will provide new capabilities to users, meet their expanding needs, and increase industry's investment in the infrastructure. * Alternative visions of the national information infrastructure can be integrated into a common vision which provides interactive multi-media and other advanced networking capabilities to all Americans. * Industry's incentive to invest in the infrastructure will remain strong because the government will not subsidize commercial networks and because commercial services will not be provided on government- supported experimental networks. * Selected user communities will be provided support for access to, and use of, networks and information through government funding. Supporting these communities represents a shift of emphasis from government's direct support of networks. These funds, predominantly grants, would be carefully targeted by the government to meet urgent societal needs by communities which otherwise could not afford to take advantage of the benefits that the infrastructure can provide -- for example, innovative math and science programs for children in public schools with limited budgets and resources. * Alternative network suppliers will be able to interconnect seamlessly with each other, resulting in a wide array of competitive choices that will spur innovation and result in competitive prices to users. According to George Heilmeier, President and CEO of Bellcore, "The telecommunications industry looks forward to the challenge of evolving information networks to meet urgent societal needs, spur economic growth, and strengthen America's competitive position in the global economy." . Policy Statement 1. The High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) vision should be expanded to foster the emergence of services and applications that will serve the urgent societal needs of a broad range of users and industries, such as K-16 education, health care delivery and cost containment, manufacturing productivity and job creation, and the general public through telecommuting and access to libraries and other databases. This imperative is shared with the recommendations of the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP). 2. This expanded vision can be most effectively served by a target structure comprised of separate Experimental and Production Networks. Experimental Networks should consist of government supported testbeds (for example, the Gigabit testbeds) and high performance national testbeds (for example, interconnecting major supercomputer research sites) for leading edge networking technology and applications requiring such technology. Experimental Networks supported by the government should be used only: a) To carry traffic directly related to the experimental goals of these networks, and b) By those researchers who need to perform applications that require the advanced technological capabilities of these networks, and which cannot be performed on Production Networks. These Experimental Networks will be developed by partnerships among government, academia, private industry and target user communities. These partnerships, which can build upon the long and successful collaboration between industry, academia and government, can leverage the government's limited resources to maximize social return. Production Networks should consist of present and future commercially available communications networks. Production Networks would: a) Be built, managed and operated by multiple providers from the private sector; b) Provide a vehicle for technology transfer from their experimental counterparts; c) Offer commercial networking capabilities to the business and residential population; and d) Serve all users, including the Research and Education Community, for those applications that can be supported by commercially available network services. The government, private sector and key user communities should jointly implement transition steps to achieve this target structure. 3. The government should encourage maximum interconnectivity and interoperability among Production Networks as an important goal of public policy. 4. The following four activities should be supported by the government and given the highest priority for achieving broad societal benefits: a) Research into applications and services that will provide for the urgent needs of the broad range of users in K-16 education, health care and industries critical for U.S. competitiveness. b) Research into user-friendly access and use of the networks to promote broad utilization by all members of society. c) Direct subsidies to the Research and Education communities to support their access to and use of Production Networks. d) Technical development of the Experimental Networks, including continued support of the Research and Education community's contributions in developing these networks. 5. Full consideration should be given to the present and future developments of the computer, telecommunications, information and related industries when planning, designing, and implementing the technology and standards for the Experimental Networks. Giving full consideration to the developments in all these industries will help ensure the maximum transfer of the best and most effective technology from the Experimental to the Production Networks. 6. Decision making processes-relative to government programs associated funding should be open to the target user community, including K-16 educational institutions, libraries, the health care industry, and industries critical to U.S. competitiveness. G.L. Searle +-------------------------------------+ |Gregory L. Searle Political Studies| |Computing and Communications Services| |University of Guelph, Ontario, CANADA| |(Home): 519-767-2500 N1G 3E1| | | | | +-------------------------------------+ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states, spin surf or spin punk. Undetected, we are both, or might be neither. ________________________________________________________________________ Send postings to , subscription requests to . MIME encouraged. Xanalogical archive access soon. All trains should be free. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________