IP: Cyber Patrol 4 reversed

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

[paper has some interesting descriptions of their techniques djf]


----- Original Message -----
From: <mskala () ansuz sooke bc ca>
To: <bennett () peacefire org>; <info () peacefire org>; <djones () efc ca>;
<efc () efc ca>; <ask () eff org>; <katina () eff org>; <president () asfar org>;
<rre () lists gseis ucla edu>; <cypherpunks () toad com>; <srm_dfr () hotmail com>
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2000 7:46 AM
Subject: Cyber Patrol 4 reversed


> March 11, 2000 - ANNOUNCEMENT
>
> Cyber Patrol(R) 4, a "censorware" product intended to prevent users from
> accessing undesirable Internet content, has been reverse engineered by
> youth rights activists Eddy L O Jansson and Matthew Skala.  A detailed
> report of their findings, titled "The Breaking of Cyber Patrol(R) 4", with
> commentary on the reverse engineering process and cryptographic attacks
> against the product's authentication system, has been posted on the World
> Wide Web at this address:
>
>    http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/reveng/cp4/cp4break.html
>
> The abstract of the report:
>
>    Several attacks are presented on the "sophisticated anti-hacker
>    security" features of Cyber Patrol(R) 4, a "censorware" product
intended
>    to prevent users from accessing Internet content considered harmful.
>    Motivations, tools, and methods are discussed for reverse engineering
>    in general and reverse engineering of censorware in particular. The
>    encryption of the configuration and data files is reversed, as are the
>    password hash functions. File formats are documented, with commentary.
>    Excerpts from the list of blocked sites are presented and commented
>    upon. A package of source code and binaries implementing the attacks
>    is included.
>
> Eddy L O Jansson
> srm_dfr () hotmail com
> http://hem.passagen.se/eddy1/index.html
>
> Matthew Skala
> mskala () ansuz sooke bc ca
> http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/