From: don@cs.byu.edu
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 95 20:50:14 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Musings
Message-ID: <199509190256.UAA00267@wero.byu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I noticed Sameer's release had some nice shots at ITAR. Heh. When aiming
for outsiders, it might be productive to explain what cpunks do in a I'm-
ok-you're-ok sorta way. For example, "the cryptographic research group 
'cypherpunks'..."

ObHackNetscape:

I was thinking last night about the process of verifying that someone
had swept the keyspace that they claimed to have swept. (Umm, well,
so much for Mozilla, but ya know, next time...) and I wanted to run
this idea past Those Who Know[tm]:

When doling out a segment of 16M keys, attach results of two randomly
chosen garbage decryptions. The bruter has to report back which two keys
they are. The overhead would add up, but I don't think it would be
significant. Or if a stronger method is needed, provide the MD5 hash
of the garbage decryptions. Maybe with a discriminator or something, so
you only MD5 a few thousand.

Anyway, the idea is that if you have to prove that you swept a big
enough chunk to find the two keys, you've proven that you've swept
a great portion of the keyspace. Of course, this does nothing to
prevent _withholding_ a result. But it does prove that most of the 
keyspace has been swept; and most likely the search continued even after 
the two keys are found. 

This would make it much more possible to give consolation prizes without 
worrying about false NAKs of big segments. If anyone is still interested 
in that idea.

ObFactoring:

Picked up the Quadratic Sieve factoring program from Mathworks. Haven't
had a chance to compile it yet, but Bob Silverman told me in email he
was willing to make it available to a group such as [The Cryptographic 
Research Foundation] Cyperpunks.

ObHamilton '95:

Pulled up my tomorrow's stock pages. Netscape takes a big hit, but not
big enough for a foolish thing like that. I hope none of my banks go 
around setting their safe combinations to 1234 or anything...  ;|

Don

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<don@cs.byu.edu>           fRee cRyPTo!   jOin the hUnt or BE tHe PrEY
PGP key - http://bert.cs.byu.edu/~don     or PubKey servers (0x994b8f39)
  June 7&14, 1995: 1st amendment repealed.  Death threats ALWAYS pgp signed
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