cryptoanarchy.wiki

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1995-11-09 - Re: PGP Comment feature weakens remailer security

Header Data

From: Raph Levien <raph@CS.Berkeley.EDU>
To: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Message Hash: f0fab3a8b4b6fb05444de92fd8749681b2bdff04275b46f0fe029cc1ee302660
Message ID: <199511081943.LAA24863@kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu>
Reply To: <199511080454.UAA05765@jobe.shell.portal.com>
UTC Datetime: 1995-11-09 00:44:18 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 08:44:18 +0800

Raw message

From: Raph Levien <raph@CS.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 9 Nov 1995 08:44:18 +0800
To: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: PGP Comment feature weakens remailer security
In-Reply-To: <199511080454.UAA05765@jobe.shell.portal.com>
Message-ID: <199511081943.LAA24863@kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


   Point well taken.

   I'm seriously considering completely disabling the PGP comment
feature when invoked from premail. In fact, that's what the new code
does right now.

   On an unrelated topic... cypherpunks like to count bits, right?
What is the correct number of pseudorandom bits to use in a MIME
multipart separator? If the data has a line which matches the
separator, the message is corrupted. Of course, if you can take
multiple passes through the data, you can simply verify that it does
not contain a line which matches the separator. But if you're
restricted to a single pass, then the only way to do it is to use a
randomly generated separator.
   I figure that 128 bits should _definitely_ be enough (that's what
is in the new premail code now). Even 64 bits should ensure that it is
unlikely that anyone will ever experience message corruption over the
expected lifetime of premail. However, it makes me nervous. What do
people think?

Raph

Thread