August 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by Peter shipley 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- ># The audience would probably be bigger as as well. > >and quality would degrade. News and mail may look the >same, but the social effects are quite different. > ># Any counter arguments? > >Yeah. Gene Spafford often says that newsgroups are no way to get >things done. However I think that mailing lists can be rather >effective. > >I think you're saying that your problem is that your newsreader is a >lot better than your mailreader. Perhaps you can fix the problem... > I agree completely -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQBVAgUBLHKh3XynuL1gkffFAQHdzQH5ARdbgWXiIQ2wwpWzXoXZpByPBoSmEh52 BC+7A4NL5FjlVYp0uG7fRf4w/MPTYeZOHbqpgZLoNZuFVUHTeNeXHg== =RvvN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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META: on topics
by Eric Hughes 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

A message from your list maintainer. I try not to interfere with topic selection too much. I have only once or twice specifically requested that some topic not be discussed. Today, however, I want to offer a specific guideline about a group of topics. The guideline is as follows: Do not discuss topics on cypherpunks which are already frequently discussed on sci.crypt or alt.security.pgp and do not directly relate to cypherpunks concerns. To illustrate this guideline, the recent thread on parallel DES cracking has been well discussed on sci.crypt. This initial announcement was interesting, and maybe one round of short comments were appropriate, but the discussion should be held on sci.crypt. There is already a forum there, please use it. The list is large and getting larger. There are, by my guess, maybe four times as many people who were previously on the list than those who are on the list; most of these dropped out for volume, from the comments I get. I echo the call for self-restraint made earlier. Others have recently written on what cypherpunks, the list, is about. I have some comments myself, which are long, and go back to original purposes, and such. I will not elaborate too far in this message. _Pace_ Tim May, I do think that there should be some guidelines about list content. Cypherpunks is not all cryptography to all people, and parallel DES-cracking particular cryptography is totally mainstream. Cypherpunks is not totally mainstream. Cypherpunks is about implementations of cryptography, particularly disapproved-of cryptography--not just the privacy of epistles but the privacy of the structure of society. There can be no hard separation of topics between the newsgroups and this list; I don't intend to enforce one. Nevertheless, some things clearly belong better elsewhere. The existence of gray areas does not prevent the existence of clear ones. I do understand the concerns that some members of the list are new to cryptography as well as cypherpunks. Cryptology is a large and increasingly technical field; there is no substitute for some hours of study. I myself have logged hundreds of hours reading technical cryptography, and while I don't expect that many of the members of the list will ever do that, I do expect that those who want to learn will do some proactive reading. You can't be spoon fed a working knowledge of anything; working knowledge is the result of working. Since meta-discussion can easily bring down a group, I will appreciate it if responses to this position are short, cogent, and thoughtful. Eric

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Cypherpunk Chip
by technopagan priest 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

I suppose the biggest problem with a Cypherpunk chip is actually getting it designed and built. I think it is difficult to imagine anyone with a real job having the time and money to put it together. However, it is not out of the realm of possibility for a graduate project, except one must run the question of whether there is enough novelty in such a device to make it an appropriate project. I'm not sure if IDEA has been implemented in silicon yet, but clearly it will be more difficult to implement in a fast way than DES. Then there is the issue of patents...DES is the only freely usable algorithm in the concept. One would probably have to contact the IDEA people to ensure there are no problems with us using the technique. RSA, well, we know the problem there. Finally, even if implemented as a MOSIS device under NSF or other grants in a university research situation, we'd have to find a foundry to go into mass-production. This would not be possible without ironing out all legal problems. Of course, I think PKP might be on our side about Clipper, and might be very willing to license the Cypherpunk chip at a reasonable rate. I've done a couple of analog chips through MOSIS...and no, my advisor wants me doing silicon models of auditory cortex, not crypto, but I'll mention it to any incoming grad students here who want to do some digital stuff. -Thomas

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Re: World record in password checking
by peter honeyman 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

why doesn't this impress me? i'll tell you why. with o a stock version of des (dennis ferguson's), which is written in c, and not optimized for any particular chip or vector hardware o a no-name 50 Mhz 486, which you can buy for under $1,000 at fry's o netbsd, a freely available general purpose operating system i have measured 29,000 des crypts per second. now give me a "1,024 node" machine made of of these -- admittedly unwieldy, but no doubt a hell of a lot cheaper than a 1,024 node CM/5 (and a hell of a lot more useful, imho) -- and i can run at three times the "world record" rate. peter, inveterate iconoclast

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Re: ANON: remailer list
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

> >11: remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu > >12: remail(a)tamaix.tamu.edu > These last two seem to remail from the same address. Are there really two, > with one automatically feeding into the other as a two-tier? What's the > deal? tamsun and tamaix are two different machines which share, NFS-ed, user directories; hence, any mail sent to tamsun or tamaix goes through the same bit of remailing script. They both work independantly, however, and I decided to keep both in case one of the machines goes down for some reason. > I'll send this message to remail(a)tamaix.tamu.edu to illustrate. I tried to, > and this message bounced. This is the second try, to > remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu. Let me know via email to remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu if you still can't get your message through. It should work though. -- [ Carlos Macedo Gomes ][ Quis Custodiet ][: .8. :]------ [ gomes(a)tamu.edu ][ Ipsos Custodes? ][ . ooo . ]000000 [ cmghelp(a)tamsun.tamu.edu ][ ][ : =o(Y)o= : ]000000 [ My views- not TAMU's ][30 37 40 N, 96 20 03 W][oo .ooooo. oo]------

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Re: ANON: remailer list
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

At 3:42 PM 8/17/93 -0500, Karl Lui Barrus wrote: >Q1: What cypherpunk remailers exist? > >A1: > > 1: nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu > 2: hh(a)cicada.berkeley.edu > 3: hh(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu > 4: hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu > 5: 00x(a)uclink.berkeley.edu I've never gotten a response from this one. Has anyone? > 6: hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu > 7: ebrandt(a)jarthur.claremont.edu > 8: remailer(a)rebma.mn.org > 9: elee7h5(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu >10: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com >11: remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu >12: remail(a)tamaix.tamu.edu These last two seem to remail from the same address. Are there really two, with one automatically feeding into the other as a two-tier? What's the deal? I'll send this message to remail(a)tamaix.tamu.edu to illustrate. I tried to, and this message bounced. This is the second try, to remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu.

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No Subject
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 19 Aug '93

19 Aug '93

>From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger(a)lehman.com> >>From: plmoses(a)emoryu1.cc.emory.edu >Paul L. Moses says: >> >> This may be a semantic point, but it should be made.... David >> Koontz sez: "Avoiding the appearance of endorsing the violent >> overthrow of government is prudent policy..." Um...I think I know >> what you mean, but isn't it better to just say outright that >> violence really is not the way to reform government at all, save in >> truly historical, exceptional cases (American Revolution, French >> Revolution...) >I'm not sure either of those cases truly succeeded, either. >Myself, I feel that no good can be accomplished by initiating force >against others, no matter what the cause. Violent revolutions go >completely against my grain. Any sorts of reforms that will stick are >going to have to arise peacefully. This is not to say, of course, that >they will necessarily arise via the "democratic process". The >government may simply find itself outflanked, for instance. (Imagine >as an example if the government realized tomorrow that allowing >citizens to know how to read would be dangerous -- its a little late >to stop it, so they will never do anything about that.) Two points of clarification: 1) I do not now, nor have I in the past advocated the violent overthrow of any domestic government. I am also opposed to the overthrow of foreign governments on moral grounds. 2) The necessity to distance ones self or organization (as may have occured in the case of the Libertarian Party) from what should be in effect an expression of free speech, smacks of McCarthyistic opression. (this was what was hidden beneath the cynicism and 'waffle') Thanks for rising to the occasion. ---- A country that can have a McCarthy Era has no business giving more power to its government.

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Re: World record in password checking
by smb＠research.att.com 18 Aug '93

18 Aug '93

Perhaps because internal communication between those 1024 machines will be significantly more difficult than running on a machine that is optimized for parallel operations, RPC just doesn't cut it. You would probably lose a number of your hosts off the top just to coordinate the activity of the remaining machines. But DES-cracking and password-cracking are almost completely decomposable; no co-ordination is necessary after you've sent the ciphertext string and the starting point for the search. Besides, if you really want to do this spend your one or two million (approx cost of your 1000PC site) on seriously dedicated DES-cracking parallel hardware. Do the cracking in hardware, not software. Sure -- if you want a machine that does nothing but. Either way, I could think of more fun things to do with those 1024 PCs:) Well, there's been an interesting thread on rec.woodworking about hurling strange things with medieval siege engines...

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my aps
by T. William Wells 18 Aug '93

18 Aug '93

There are several issues I want to address in this message. One is communication style, another is the nature of my anonymous service, and finally, what I think about the whole thing. On communication style: some people have this delusion that they can write to others and expect or even demand a reply. Well, it isn't so. If someone writes to me, I'm under no a priori obligation to read, to try to understand, or to spend effort replying. This is irrespective of the style *or* the content of their message. In general, the only thing that obligates one to answer another is the prior respect that one should have for others -- which has to be lived up to in *their* actions. Mr. Detweiler simply blew it. His original message was full of insults and insinuations and, quite frankly, he should consider himself honored that I bothered to tell him where he went wrong. _Of course_, any legitimate issues he brought up in the same message weren't addressed. He demanded of me that I address those issues -- and that I deal with hus abusiveness. As you may guess, I really have no interest in addressing Mr. Detweiler directly; I figure he's got a few years of mental development to go through before I'll consider him fit for carrying out any sort of rational conversation with. However, others have been more reasonable and I'll try to address some of their concerns and to point out some of the relevant circumstances surrounding my service. The first thing you need to understand is that my anonymous service is integral to a specific community of people who have suffered through childhood abuse and adult sexual abuse. (In fact, essentially everyone on the group who is dealing with adult sexual abuse is also dealing with childhood abuse.) It is intended only for the users of a specific set of newsgroups, alt.sexual.abuse.recovery and its .d group. On the newsgroup, there are usually several individuals who are "that close" to committing suicide. Some will be shortly, or have been recently, in psychiatric wards. Most have been in, or are contemplating, psychological therapy of one sort or another. Quite a few are taking medication for various psychiatric conditions. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the wherefors and whys of abuse recovery; you'll just have to take it as a given that the rules used for understanding people in general won't work so well when applied to this newsgroup, or to my anonymous service. I provide a service to people who, at least in specific areas, are not rational, who are definitely irrational. I know of, for example, one person who went into convulsions simply because they received e-mail from a person who, many years ago, had abused a child. In line with that, my service differs from the standard anonymous services. One is that it *is* integrated into the community. I am a survivor myself, I offer personal assistance (in computer matters) to people in the group, I forward the newsgroup via e-mail to those who can't get it otherwise, and so on. These are all part of what I do, not just running the anonymous service. (In fact, I have to occasionally correct the erroneous belief that I am responsible for the newsgroup; not surprising when you realize that over half the newsgroup goes through my server.) My service has things like being able to turn on and off e-mail forwarding. People can remove themselves from the server automatically. Shortly, people will be able to specify by id who they do or do not get e-mail from. The other area where my service differs is that the others provide two distinct functions, confidentiality and privacy, but there is no attempt, or reason, to protect their users from any sort of e-mail. It's enough to deal with harassment claims when they arise. In mine, I've chosen a different direction. I've decided to make the attempt to keep out specific types of e-mail, with the cost that I cannot guarantee privacy from me. Also, I probably have a higher standard of confidentiality than the other two services. (This is not intending to suggest that there's anything wrong with their standards, just that I suspect mine are a bit tighter.) People on the newsgroup post their innermost secrets and fears and many have a need to believe that those won't then be used against them. (And, for that reason, the default for e-mail forwarding is "off".) Public posting is one thing but it is quite easy for one skilled in the art of abusing (and, yes, there are such people and they do read the newsgroup, getting a kick out of the pain of others) to manipulate people behind the scenes into abusive situations and in such a way as to keep the victim from being able to speak of what is going on. *That*, and similar things, are what this is all about. As to my thoughts on the relevant principles. As I mentioned, I am an Objectivist. That may clue you as to where I'm coming from. But in case not, the primary fact is that I'm offering a *private* service. I run it out of my home, using my phone lines, and paid for with my money. While I offer it to all on the newsgroup, it *is* *not* intended for the general public. Only survivors and their supporters are legitimate users. (Though I tend to be lax on that. Just as I am with my encryption proscription. There are users who send encrypted e-mail through my service but they have recieved my prior permission to do so.) No one, other than myself, has any right to specify what I do with this, beyond the minimum of respecting their rights. Their rights do not extend to arbitrary protection of their confidentiality or privacy. Those who use my anonymous service have an implicit right to protection of their anonymity *and that is all*. (And even that is only up to a point.) Any other protections I offer beyond that are mine to choose; they are not implicit in an anonymous server. In addition to confidentiality, I offer privacy in two ways: from others, because it is necessary to protect confidentiality, and from myself, because no one likes their innermost thoughts gratuitously pawed over by one who is essentially a complete stranger. But that latter privacy is only with respect to *gratuitous* invasion by myself. Beyond that, I offer a watchful eye to keep abuses in hand. The bottom line is this: I provide a useful service to over half of the newsgroup. Most of its users are happy with it. Most people who have communicated with me, who are or are potentially legitimate users of my service, have been either neutral or positive about my policies. (Yes, most people who have expressed dislike for my policies are outsiders.) As things are, they work well. No change is *necessary* though some may be *desirable*. Careful thought and respectful dialog may convince me of desirable changes. Logicless rhetoric and verbal abuse, however, will, at best, cause me to ignore both the speaker and his message.

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Re: mailing list <-> newsgroup ?
by peter honeyman 18 Aug '93

18 Aug '93

> Yeah. Gene Spafford often says ... it is odd that you quote gene spafford in a group that is anathema to his avowed goals. peter

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