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Message no. 1
From: Mike Goldberg <michael.goldberg@*******.COM>
Subject: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:26:07 MST
When messages are encrypted, how much of it is encrypted? Are they
encrypted to the point where the sender and receiver of the scrambled
message are all jibberish to the unknowing parties? Or can an
ingenious tracker trace the authors' to try and trace messages by
certain people?

(The answer to this will impact how I decide to develop the next stage
of my story).

Mike
Message no. 2
From: Brian Rogers <rogers@****.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: Re: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 14:42:47 -0600
Be kind to me, people. He's about to do something VERY bad to me, I can
tell!

Well, the way I see it, if you jack in to send out messages (making
the jumps from node to node) someone can pick you up while you are delivering
your message. After that, they can launch trace and reports at you
all they want. They are tracing a person / decker, not realy a
message.
Message no. 3
From: Mike Goldberg <michael.goldberg@*******.COM>
Subject: Re[2]: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:40:37 MST
I guess it is no turning back now. I just skyrocketed the stakes.

Let's see if I can unhinge DragonEyes (among other things).

Mike


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Tracing encrypted messages....
Author: ShadowTk Plot and Administrative Discussion
<PLOTD@********.ITRIBE.NET> at SMTP-PO
Date: 2/14/97 1:59 PM


Be kind to me, people. He's about to do something VERY bad to me, I can
tell!

Well, the way I see it, if you jack in to send out messages (making
the jumps from node to node) someone can pick you up while you are delivering
your message. After that, they can launch trace and reports at you
all they want. They are tracing a person / decker, not realy a
message.
Message no. 4
From: "Mark L. Neidengard" <mneideng@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:41:05 -0800
According to Mike Goldberg:
> When messages are encrypted, how much of it is encrypted? Are they
> encrypted to the point where the sender and receiver of the scrambled
> message are all jibberish to the unknowing parties? Or can an
> ingenious tracker trace the authors' to try and trace messages by
> certain people?
>
> (The answer to this will impact how I decide to develop the next stage
> of my story).

Well, I think the problem is bipartite. If you can intercept the message in
transit, it's probably a "normally" difficult problem to try to trace it back
to its origin (modulo extra precautions being taken). Once it hits Shadowland,
you'd probably have to break into some of the system logs to even get the
"last" link in the routing chain. If you could "break" the encryption
on
the message, it's probably easier.
--
/!\/!ark /!\!eidengard, CS Major, VLSI. http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~mneideng
"Fairy of sleep, controller of illusions" Operator/Jack-of-all-Trades, CACR
"Control the person for my own purpose." "Don't mess with the Dark
Elves!"
-Pirotess, _Record_of_Lodoss_War_ Shadowrunner and Anime Addict
Message no. 5
From: "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 23:13:42 +0000
In message <9701148559.AA855952810@*********.comm.twcable.com>, Mike
Goldberg <michael.goldberg@*******.COM> writes
> When messages are encrypted, how much of it is encrypted? Are they
> encrypted to the point where the sender and receiver of the scrambled
> message are all jibberish to the unknowing parties? Or can an
> ingenious tracker trace the authors' to try and trace messages by
> certain people?
>
> (The answer to this will impact how I decide to develop the next stage
> of my story).

Ask the player(s) concerned.

If the player says "sounds okay, you can break it" then it's broken. If
not, then that encryption will stand until Judgement Day.

I've happily let encrypted messages be cracked, and I've been very
annoyed when someone decided their decker could break my PCs' codes
without asking me first. We've even had (as a fairly serious 'calling in
favours' exercise) every encrypted or open message from one account
listed, but it was my character and I felt it was appropriate.

Which reminds me, I could use that :)

--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
Message no. 6
From: Mike Goldberg <michael.goldberg@*******.COM>
Subject: Re[2]: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 22:25:04 MST
Not really the answer I was looking for. Its more the plot mechanics
around whether or not an author of an encrypted note can be tracked if
the persona has never been seen before.

Let me give an example.

Cat posts a note threatening Ratspeak. Ratspeak wants to track the
sod, but has never before heard of or seen the actual persona known as
Cat in the matrix. If Cat writes to a colleague and the message is
encrypted, can Ratspeak spot the author quickly enough to gain any
sort of information from it?

More specifically, can Ratspeak a) track from where the message
originated (say Hartford, Connecticut), and b) figure out who the
message is supposed to go to? Second, how hard is it to do the parts
A and B?

I know enough about the actually cracking open an encrypted message
(at least as far as shadowtk is concerned), but it isn't the message
contents that I'm after. I'm after the message traffic (between who
and who) and from where in the real world to where in the real world.

Mike


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Tracing encrypted messages....
Author: ShadowTk Plot and Administrative Discussion
<PLOTD@********.ITRIBE.NET> at SMTP-PO
Date: 2/14/97 6:10 PM


If the player says "sounds okay, you can break it" then it's broken. If
not, then that encryption will stand until Judgement Day.

I've happily let encrypted messages be cracked, and I've been very
annoyed when someone decided their decker could break my PCs' codes
without asking me first. We've even had (as a fairly serious 'calling in
favours' exercise) every encrypted or open message from one account
listed, but it was my character and I felt it was appropriate.

Which reminds me, I could use that :)

--
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable and
praiseworthy...

Paul J. Adam paul@********.demon.co.uk
Message no. 7
From: "Mark L. Neidengard" <mneideng@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Tracing encrypted messages....
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 10:37:44 -0800
According to Mike Goldberg:
> Not really the answer I was looking for. Its more the plot mechanics
> around whether or not an author of an encrypted note can be tracked if
> the persona has never been seen before.

Well. Currently in RL, mail leaves accounting traces on all the mailers it
passes through between source and destination. Also, the message itself gets
stamped with messages saying which mailers it's passed through. I don't
see either of these things being done away with any time soon. Now, even today
there are anonymous remail sites which deliberately mask the originator of
the message, but must retail all that information at the remailer so that
people can reply. I could see some of those being operated, but probably
not on a large scale or at least not for "business" clients because of the
danger of corp or government action against the site if one of its clients
should prove troublesome.

> Let me give an example.
>
> Cat posts a note threatening Ratspeak. Ratspeak wants to track the
> sod, but has never before heard of or seen the actual persona known as
> Cat in the matrix. If Cat writes to a colleague and the message is
> encrypted, can Ratspeak spot the author quickly enough to gain any
> sort of information from it?

If person A writes an encrypted message to person B, the only way person C
could track it would be to: 1) access the internal logs of the mailers between
A and B; 2) break the encryption on the message and hope the relevant stamps
weren't too badly "corrupted"; or 3) tap an opportune part of the network and
thereby watch A or B perusing the message live.

> More specifically, can Ratspeak a) track from where the message
> originated (say Hartford, Connecticut), and b) figure out who the
> message is supposed to go to? Second, how hard is it to do the parts
> A and B?

I suspect communication nets by 205x would have encryption at several levels.
There is probably some encncryption that affects _everything_ sent over a
single wire; this makes life annoying for whoever is trying to tap it. If
you could either break this physical-level encryption or hack into the
decrypted traffic at the device driver level on either end, you'd probably
see a stream of messages of different "flavors" (email, Usenet, IRC, etc),
each of which is probably internally encrypted in some way. By watching for
"mail"-flavor messages, you should be able to get some idea that person A has
sent a message to person B (after all, the mailers themselves have to know
who to send the message to...) The more security-conscious persons A and B
might have made arrangements to use a Secure Mail Protocol where the routing
information is encrypted too, but normally only the "payload" of the message
would be encrypted. IMO, of course. =)

> I know enough about the actually cracking open an encrypted message
> (at least as far as shadowtk is concerned), but it isn't the message
> contents that I'm after. I'm after the message traffic (between who
> and who) and from where in the real world to where in the real world.

Because the mailing system itself has to know this, it should be one of the
easi_er_ things to find out. Unless there are specific reasons to assume
otherwise, I'd say one should be able to get at least that info _if_ you
can access the mail logs of one of the mailer systems between person A and
B. Of course, this requires breaking in past their ICE, but that's just
par for the course.
--
/!\/!ark /!\!eidengard, CS Major, VLSI. http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~mneideng
"Fairy of sleep, controller of illusions" Operator/Jack-of-all-Trades, CACR
"Control the person for my own purpose." "Don't mess with the Dark
Elves!"
-Pirotess, _Record_of_Lodoss_War_ Shadowrunner and Anime Addict

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