July 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

job listing, supercomputer systems administration
by jet＠nas.nasa.gov 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

-----cut here---- Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has an immediate opening for two Parallel Systems Analysts to support the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation (NAS) Program at NASA Ames Research Center, including a possible lead analyst position. The position is for a Systems Analyst in the Parallel Systems (PS) group of the Computational Services branch. This group provides support for the NAS parallel systems, which currently include a 128 node Thinking Machines CM-5, a 128 node Intel iPSC/860, and a 224 node Intel Paragon XP/S. Other systems may added in late 1993. While the group is part of a support organization, the immaturity of parallel supercomputers provides opportunitities for a significant amount of development work. Routine system administration and user assistance is provided by a separate user services organization, leaving only the more difficult problems and policy issues to be resolved by the parallel systems analysts. Network, distributed software, and parallel scientific programming (i.e. FORTRAN) support is also provided by separate groups, and on-site vendor analysts provide additional assistance. Current group members are involved in projects ranging from the development and modification of UNIX tools to kernel development work, as well as day to day system maintenance and evaluation tasks. The parallel systems group also has a close relationship with the proprietor of the best Indian restaurant in the known Universe. The NAS parallel systems operate in a networked (UltraNet, HiPPI, FDDI, Ethernet) heterogeneous environment that consists of a Cray Y-MP 8/8256, a Cray C-90, a large mass storage system, several general purpose support processors, and over 200 high performance workstations. UNIX and UNIX-derivatives are used exclusively. Located at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, the NAS Program is recognized internationally as a leader in large-scale scientific computing. Its mission is to act as the pathfinder in advanced, large-scale computer system capability through systematic incorporation of state-of-the- art improvements in computer hardware and software technologies; provide a national computational capability, available to NASA, industry, DoD, other Government agencies, and universities as a necessary element in ensuring continuing leadership in computational fluid dynamics and related computational aerospace disciplines. NAS considers parallel supercomputers to be the future of supercomputing, and opportunities for a motivated individual are extensive. Required Skills: o Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field, or unrelated bachelor's degree with equivalent experience. o Fluency with C and at least one UNIX shell, and excellent UNIX skills. o Experience as a system administrator in a UNIX network environment. o Good problem-solving and communications skills. o Willingness and ability to learn new skills. o U.S. Citizenship. Desired Skills: o Experience with parallel computers. o Experience with OSF/1, Mach 3.0, or other multiprocessor-capable operating systems. o Experience in a large scale scientific programming environment. Note: Computer Sciences Corporation policy requires pre-employment drug screening. Any job candidate who receives an offer letter from CSC must report for testing within 48 hours. Please forward your resume to: Eric Townsend Computer Sciences Corporation NASA Ames Research Center M/S 258-6 Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 or email jet(a)nas.nasa.gov

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META:Digital Signatures
by Andrew S Hall 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

Is there anyway for the list software to incorporate digital signatures as verifying the poster is a list member? I know Tim posted a whistle-blowing trial balloon, and I have used my anonymous acct to post here. It would be nice if the software used digital signatures to verify list members regardless of their actual origin of posting. Presumably the signature recognition base would be seperate from the names base. This is primarily directed to the Extropians mailing list, but overlaps to cypherpunks. What I am considering is that a user could chose to only accept digitally verified postings. That would eliminate noise like subscription requests. It would also "verify" anonymous postings as being from a "valid" (as in list member) source. I know there are some problems such as maintaining anonymity, but I think verifying would have some interesting and positive results. We could trade HeX shares based on signatures, not names. That would eliminate the element of personality (or some of it) contest. Some one who is considered persona non gratia could redeem themselves with a series of high quality, but anonymous posts. A. Techno-Anarchy.Neophilia.Economic Freedom.Cryptography.Anti-Statism.Personal Liberty.Laissez-Faire.Privacy Protection.Libertarianism.No Taxes.No Bullshit. ********** Liberty BBS 1-614-798-9537 ********** ********** Dedicated to Freedom. Yours. **********

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PGP in emacs rmail
by Mike Rose 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

Has anyone written elisp code for running pgp? I found crypt++, but in its default configuration it only does conventional crypto, nothing like signing, verification, and pubkey encryption. Has someone already done this, or am I pioneering new ground? Mike

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a simple elm script for RIPEM and PGP
by Tyler Yip - UnixWeenie 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

#!/bin/ksh # use the elm "pipe" feature to automatically detect which type of privacy # enchanced mail the message is under, and then automatically send the message # with the correct options to the cipher program. # usage from elm # | elm2pem # you can also put this as the default reader in elm, but sometimes it barfs # if you get a pgp signed message and don't have the sender's key. umask 077 clear cat > $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc PGP="BEGIN PGP" PEM="BEGIN PRIVACY" if grep "$PGP" $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc > /dev/null then pgp -m $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc elif grep "$PEM" $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc > /dev/null then ripem -d -i $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc | more -d else more $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc fi rm -f $HOME/.tmp/mbox.enc

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ANON: nntp
by nobody＠rosebud.ee.uh.edu 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Oops...looks like my message got trimmed somewhere by a sig catcher. Here is the usenet forging part: So, we can all forge mail with smtp, use the cypherpunk remailers, use "anonymous" servers like penet and charcoal, email-to-usenet gateways, etc. I've never seen instructions on how to forge a usenet post, so here goes: 1) Telnet to an NNTP server (see Yanoff's internet services list) 2) Type 'post'. After a bit, you'll get an OK message. 3) Type in what you want to appear. Have in mind before you start what fields you want in the header, or check other posts to see what they have. 4) End with a period on a line all by itself. After a bit, you'll get a "Post OK" message. 5) Type 'quit' For example, I was experimenting and telnetted to news.fu-berlin.de 119: ====================================================================== menudo> telnet news.fu-berlin.de 119 Trying 130.133.4.250... Connected to gibb.math.fu-berlin.de. Escape character is '^]'. 200 gibb NNTP server version 1.5.11 (10 February 1991) ready at Thu Jul 8 16:19:05 1993 (posting ok). post 340 Ok Newsgroups: alt.binaries.pictures.d Path: one!two!three From: mr.smiley(a)other.plane Subject: A test II Content-Type: text Sender: the MailMan Nntp-Posting-Host: castle Organization: other plane hackers Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 07:45:00 GMT Lines: 1 This is another test.

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I need a way to...
by nate＠VIS.ColoState.EDU 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Guys, (and, of course, all species that may be getting this) I need a way to be able to have pgp envoked on a mail message that is encrypted, or that has a pgp signature on it. I would like it if it just printed a banner about the fact that "this is a PGP encrypted and signed meessage", then, if necessary, it asks me for my password, etc.... and then says "message has been validated as coming from so-and-so" etc.... thanks, - -nate sammons +-------------------------------------------------------------------- | Nate Sammons email: nate(a)VIS.ColoState.Edu | Colorado State University Computer Visualization Laboratory | Finger me at nate(a)monet.VIS.ColoState.Edu for my PGP key | #include <std.disclaimer> | "I have but one single desire - to tear down the sky" -A. Toomba +----------------------+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLDxY0tTgi1fmrpxlAQH8ZgP7BHGGnAP2MGLg0pbhJ8HpgU/1t6Ai+ln5 xzpcsvbG4cJwhKBrX5luVLGmdHSZxdZ3kyv4+G6ypcIb5MZMpiPzbGH7z2kuRc4y XlHBwrjOlbZDcyupJJUzSi8LuoQmXVu+M1r7EAkiK7JOMgljyOQ//E5ctJbt3qHl 8eA0uJGQFqs= =4oo0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: scanning (was Happens to `best' of them
by jet＠nas.nasa.gov 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

Sameer Parekh writes: > Remember that some people think that becoming skilled at using > a non-Mac is tough. Which is why I made the statement about MacScanner. Access to this sort of technology should not be limited to ham freaks, private eyes, and followers of the great Radio Shack. I bought an ICOM R-1 because it does almost everything interesting to the average person (FM & AM), scans a wide range of stuff, and is relatively cheap and lightweight. It's easy to use, modulo tiny buttons. It doesn't have all sorts of ham stuff (special SSB mode, for example). The R-1 is not 'MacScanner', but it's closer. It's sort of like having Windows on a PC. Once I got it up and running, figured out a few wierd things, and ignored the rest, I can use it quite easily. :-) What would be way cool is a handheld scanner with buttons marked: "Fire", "Emergency", "State Police", "Sheriff", "Police Jury", "Municipal Police", "Cellular", "Cordless Phone", "FM Radio", "AM Radio". It would also be nice to have built in DTMF decoding, blah blah blah. And it would really crank up the desire to have crypto phones. :-)

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Re: I need a way to...
by dmandl＠lehman.com 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

> From: mdavis(a)pro-sol.cts.com (Morgan Davis) > > This is my first post here, so go easy if I'm way off base. Why would > you want to include a PGP signature (in addition to your net .signature) > for a message that is NOT encoded? I've included the pageful of useless > text from your message as an example of how wasteful this seems to me. > I'm all for personal privacy and message security, but this smacks of > either paranoia, showing off, or laziness. Genuinely curious. > > /\/\ Morgan Davis Group (619/670-0563) > / /__\ Internet: mdavis(a)pro-sol.cts.com > Simply to confirm that the file is from who it's supposed to be from. If I send a file to you with my signature on it (assuming no major security breaches), you can be absolutely certain that the file came from me. This is of tremendous importance if we're dealing with electronic contracts or the like, but there are plenty of other situations where you need to be sure. The file itself may or may not be confidential, so it may or may not need to be encrypted. The signature is valid either way. Yep, it's true that most routine e-mail and Usenet postings don't NEED to be signed, but it's good practice and good propaganda: it helps to promote the widespread use of crypto, helps spread the word, and gets people in the habit of doing it. Believe me, it's not laziness, since as of today it's not too convenient to send and receive encrypted email without going through gyrations. Several cypherpunks have come up with good workarounds for this on various platforms, but we still have a ways to go. --Dave.

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Happens to `best' of them
by whitfield.diffie＠Eng.Sun.COM 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

The following delicious item appeared at the bottom of page 4 in the National Edition of The New York Times on Saturday, 3 July 1993. The Iraq Raid: Snoop Gets Scoop Special to The New York Times Washington, July 2 --- An electronic hacker was able to listen in as top aides to Secretary of State Warren Christopher helped him to alert world leaders about the missile strike against Baghdad last Saturday. The conversations were intercepted beginning nearly an hour before the raid was made public. But the first calls were apparently not overheard until after Tomahawk missiles from Navy ships struck the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service. The calls, placed from a Government plane as Mr. Christopher returned to Washington from Maine, provided a sense of the hurried efforts made by officials in midair and in Washington to spread news of the attack. At one point, they indicate, a State Department official awakened Chancellor Helmut Kohl of of Germany only to discover that President Clinton had spoken with the German leader earlier in the day. The eavesdropping was first reported in the current issue of Business Week, which obtained a tape recording of the conversations from an electronic hacker who specializes in monitoring unsecured calls. The magazine made available a transcript of the recording. The State Department refused to comment on what is said were private conversations among Mr. Christopher's aides, but a senior official there said the transcript was essentially accurate. None of the calls made by Mr. Christopher himself was recorded, apparently because they were placed through secure channels. Any uncoded call that travels through the airwaves rather than along a wire can be intercepted, and electronic eavesdroppers have become skilled at using scanners to monitor the communications.

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Re: Motorola phones
by Chris Claborne 08 Jul '93

08 Jul '93

>Anyone know anything about Motorola's new phones (models VST 100, VST >350, VST 550, locally priced at $179, $249 and $299 Canadian)? I have the 550. It has a demo mode on it so that you can hear what it sounds like to other phones. I is one of the few phones that will work in my office (because of all of the EMI). The range doesn't seem to be as good as the AT&T phone. People seem to be able to tell that I am using it as opposed to when I used my AT&T cordless (it was stolen). The sound on my end is _very_ clear. I tried out the demo mode and you can possible pick out a few words on it. I feel much safer using it as apposed to other cordless phones. The only company that I have seen sell the Motorola is Sears. 2 -- C --

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