March 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

ANON: Textual analysis
by root＠rmsdell.ftl.fl.us 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

> This reveals a minor and probably obvious weakness of pseudonyms--writing > styles. We probably need "rephrasing remailers" which do some rudimentary grammar parsing on input text, and randomly substitute equivalent constructs such as switching active/passive voice, synonyms, changing the word order where it is insignificant, joining/splitting sentences, etc. Anyone here have any experience in NLP (natural language processing), specifically parsing english? A possible start would be to look at "grammar checker" programs that check for various grammatical mistakes/misusages and suggest improvements. Another starting point is language translation software. After your text has been translated automatically to spanish -> french -> german -> english, not much of the orignal style will remain. Hopefully, enough meaning will be preserved to allow understanding. Are there any public domain programs that do one of the above? One constraint on these is that the message must be present in clear text, so that it must be the last remailer in the chain. > examination of punctuation styles (e.g., some people use _this_ for > emphasis while others use *this*) This could be alleviated by using a standard markup format, such as MIME RichText, or the simpler markup convention recently proposed on the mime list. -- Yanek Martinson yanek(a)novavax.nova.edu

3 3

PGP: removed from UB
by babani＠cs.Buffalo.EDU 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

This message came to me immidatly after I requested the sysadmin here at UB to upgrade to PGP to version 2.1 Do I need to explain this? ---------Begin Included Message----- Organization: University at Buffalo Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1993 00:20:53 GMT Path: acsu.buffalo.edu!ub!pjg From: ACSU Staff <acsu-staff(a)acsu.buffalo.edu> Subject: UNIX Change Notice -- pgp removed Product: pgp Version: 2 Systems: UCS public suns Change: removed Contact: pjg(a)acsu.buffalo.edu Effective: 2-March-93 Notes: given the questionable legal status of the PGP software it has been removed from UCS supported areas. people interested in authentication/privacy should use ripem. -- +==== Internet: babani(a)cs.buffalo.edu ===+======== Amateur-Radio: N2LYC ======+ ! Bitnet: V078LNGT(a)ubvms.BITNET | UUCP: rutgers!ub!babani ! ! Alternate: an173(a)cleveland.freenet.edu | Plsure dpnds on the othrs prmison. ! +== PGP key available. (If you don't know what a PGP key is... find out!) ==+

2 2

Re: ANON/ANNOUNCE: Sysadmin Policies at Universities (and high schools)
by Peter Honeyman 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

don't overreact -- they are withdrawing support of pgp (i'm surprised they offered it in the first place), but are they prohibiting users from building and using pgp? now *that* would be an outrage. are they? peter

2 1

Re: more ideas on anonymity
by tony＠morgan.demon.co.uk 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

In message <9302282156.AA25135@SOS> you write: > Date: Sat, 27 Feb 93 23:59:30 GMT > From: Tony Kidson <tony(a)morgan.demon.co.uk> > > I see. So you don't believe in libel or slander laws. It's people believing and acting on the words that actually causes the damage. I believe that you must judge the reputation of the subject and issuer of any statement before you make up your mind to act on a statement. It is only possible to widely disseminate a libel if you have control of the means of dissemination. That, is not free speech. Where is the opportunity for contrary assertion by the person libelled? > And NBC was perfectly justified in faking an explosion in a GM truck to > show it was unsafe, and broadcast it on prime-time TV. And it didn't do > anybody any harm at all. Uh huh. Faking the explosion, was neither here or there. Did they deny GM the right of denial. Could they be sued by the people that they misled? I do believe in their right to say anything they like. They have a reputation to protect. How much reputation has an anonymous source? Are you going to believe an anonymous tip off until you have investigated it? If so bigger fool you. Tony +-----------------+-------------------------------+--------------------------+ | Tony Kidson | PGP 2.1 Key by request | Voice +44 81 466 5127 | | Morgan Towers, | | E-Mail | | Morgan Road, | This Space | tony(a)morgan.demon.co.uk | | Bromley, | to Rent | tny(a)cix.compulink.co.uk | | England BR1 3QE |Honda ST1100 ==*== DoD# 0801 | 100024.301(a)compuserve.com| +-----------------+-------------------------------+----------------------------+

4 4

Re: Handling Abuses of Remailers
by fen＠genmagic.genmagic.com 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

> Re: remailer price schedules > > My guess on all this is that you could make an awful lot of money at a > dime a hop for a less-than-10K message. Sell hops only in packages > of a hundred, in order to reduce your finance charges. Geeez, Eric! I'd think a penny a hop would be a pretty high price... And given that most messages go through two hops, then you'd really be giving your 2 cents worth! Note that there can be about 50 cypherpunks messages a day -- if each went through 2 hops at $0.10 / hop, as you proposed, that would be $10 / day in revenues for the remailers. Seems like a lot to me. I would support the idea if I felt that the system would quiet the flame wars, but I think rather it would simply quiet the poor... Fen

3 2

Re: ANON: My remailer
by dclunie＠pax.tpa.com.au 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

> I only got a brief message from the system administrator stating > "Running anonymous remailers is against University policy." What they probably mean is it is against their system administrator's policy ! I would be very surprised if the governing body of the university had a policy regarding this ! Not that you are in a position to argue of course. david

4 3

Please unsubscribe me
by aa996＠freenet.carleton.ca 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

Please unsubscribe me. Much as I find the subject quite interesting, I cannot at present devote enough time to read all of the information that comes up. I hope to be able to re-subscribe at a later date. With great regrets... -- --------------------------------------------------------------- | Francoys Crepeau, Ottawa, Canada (613) 565-7198 (VOICE) | | aa996(a)freenet.carleton.ca (613) 733-7191 (FAX) | ---------------------------------------------------------------

1 0

CASH/REMAIL: combination
by Karl Barrus 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Cypherpunks, Some people have made excellent suggestions regarding digital cash and anonymous remailers. I'm going to try to obtain another account from a friend in order to implement a remailer which accepts digital cash. (However, this will probably wait until I am able to upgrade the bank to PERL) Maybe future for "profit" anonymous services will work similarly, thus helping to cut down on remailer abuse since abusers must be willing to "pay" for the service. I don't think I can work in usenet posting as well (technical reasons not philosophical ones!) but the whole thing should be an interesting experiment anyway. The remailer will work like the others, except valid cash must be included or the remailer will not forward the message. For ease, a number of bills will be generated upon request, which will then be deposited as used. As a side effect, bank accounts will be incremented as well (too bad real banks don't work like this) so customers may "withdraw" more bills to use for remailing messages. Since the bank won't mail back confirmation of deposits (messages may be coming from other remailers, etc.) and it would be nice to have a way for you to see if your cash was accepted and your message forwarded, I think I'll have the bank accounts copied into the .plan file so you can finger the account, check your account number and balance, and determine whether or not the remail was successful. Of course, the full account number will not be displayed - perhaps the MD5 hash of an account number or whatever will be put in the file, along with the account balance. I'll also provide a command to obtain the .plan file via email, for those without finger. Actually, for the purposes of this experiment, it might be best to not use the new site in a chain. At least until the single hop mode works well! Nathan Estey suggested to me that traffic analysis could be made more difficult if messages under a certain length were padded, and message over the length were split and remailed a piece at a time. This will help, although I think it would be easier for the sender to include padding in the message itself (thus identical messages plus random padding will encrypt differently). Plus, the message may be multiply encrypted and thus padding cannot be added "inside." Maybe future mail software will automatically pad in addition to encrypt :-) I may implement a delay feature, which would help foil traffic analysis. Comments? /-----------------------------------\ | Karl L. Barrus | | elee9sf(a)menudo.uh.edu | <- preferred address | barrus(a)tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTMail) | \-----------------------------------/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.1 iQCVAgUBK5bTsoOA7OpLWtYzAQEYMQP/WGUGNFiA9ftV7N8JRe01zLooa5b1hTaG Fh5eYiQflf9S1ttv0DCvZXo+6/yUVWLmPZHqG04xsnZXc6Z1SFw9C0zd3oP/kM9h 2IMrbrqF8ICNA8hSoDV97U2Rf+r0qpUVtSzgoOsuxw+4EVEkgjflNA9v8YJcL+Sv ZQR/6po1lU8= =QdR1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

unsubscribe
by ghabrech＠ultrix.ramapo.edu 05 Mar '93

05 Mar '93

PLEASE UNSUBSCRIBE ME!!!! ghabrech(a)ultrix.ramapo.deu errr..... edu

1 0

ANNOUNCE/ANON: Posting in alt.cyberpunk
by nowhere＠bsu-cs.bsu.edu 04 Mar '93

04 Mar '93

For those who do not read alt.cyberpunk, I found an interesting article that I think is applicable to cypherpunks. Chael Hall --- Begin forwarded message Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk Subject: internet and security Message-ID: <C3AJrG.LpB(a)dartvax.dartmouth.edu> From: strake(a)coos.dartmouth.edu (strake) Date: 3 Mar 93 02:18:51 GMT a request to all you folks out there. I am thinking of doing a research type paper on the internet and security. More to the point, I'm interested in how the internet users themselves view security. If internet and security strike some cord in you, please send me some email about your babblings. My goal is to get a general impression about how the people who use the net feel about the security measures that exist or may soon exist and whether or not they are a help or a hindrance to the net and its use. For the rest of you on a more specific note, here are some questions that hopefully will get your creative juices flowing. Do you think the internet is secure? What types of security measures would you like to see put in place? In an ideal world, how would security work? What would be protected? What kinds of measures would you need to gain access to the information? Should the DES be the standard for encryption? Do you think access should be restricted? (period, should all information just b e free?) Do you like people who make anonymous postings? Should a human have _any_ part of the anonymous servers? What do you think of Hackers? Do you like them? Are the a benefit? What do you think of the NSA, FBI, CIA, and everything else government related? If you knew how to hack into your bank account and change the amount of money yo u had, would you? If you have an answer to one (or all or anything in the middle) of these questions please email me back with your answer. Help me pass my classes and graduate. *grin* -- strake(a)dartmouth.edu its not pop, its not coke, its not soda. where I'm from its a 'soedaher'

1 1