October 2000 - cypherpunks-legacy

CDR: RE: Vanessa Lynch, still whining (an impressive feat)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

If you're not already removed from the list, you should look at the message headers and find the Sender: line. Take that domain name (ssz.com or cyberpass.net or algebra.com or something) and send mail with "help" in the body to majordomo(a)thatdomainname.com. Or you could find the original message you received when you signed up, which is probably easier. -Declan At 11:55 10/17/2000 -0400, Vanessa Lynch wrote: >Hi Yes it is me again and I won't stop until someone can stop being >rude...The first emai I sent was very polite and a simple request to be >taken off. The response I received was very rude and thats why I responded >the way I did. My apologies if you are having a bad day or feel personally >attacked by my responses, however I recieve numerous emails unsolicted and >solicted and when I request to be taken off its never a problem. This list >is the only one that has responded in this manner. > >I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and realize that this was not >about you ... I just wanted off the list. > >Thanks so much! > >-----Original Message----- >From: declan(a)cluebot.com [mailto:declan@cluebot.com]On Behalf Of Declan >McCullagh >Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 12:09 PM >To: vlynch(a)predictit.com >Cc: Cypherpunks Mailing List >Subject: Vanessa Lynch, still whining (an impressive feat) > > >Ah, Vanessa, it's you again. > >You've been clogging cypherpunks with drivel for days now, in an >apparent failure to understand the most basic mechanisms of mailing >lists, let alone any glimmering of netiquette. You've been rude and >obnoxious, threatening to report the cypherpunks list to the >authorities, whoever they are. > >A typical message: "i did NOT subscribe to this crap so u take me off >or im reporting site!!!!!!" > >I apologize, of course -- for being overly polite. > >Let me be more blunt this time: Bugger off. Stop whining, stop >frothing, and take your threats elsewhere. > >-Declan > > >At 11:37 10/17/2000 -0400, Vanessa Lynch wrote: > >Below is an email I received when requesting to be unsubscribed from a >specific list - It look like someone from your organization has sent the >latest email - please do whatever it takes to ensure I do not receive any >futher emails. Whoever this person is in dire of an ego check! I simply >requested to be taken off a list - no need for the organization/person to >take it personally & act like so childish. > >Thank you for your help! > > >-----Original Message----- >From: declan >Sent: Monday, October 16, 2000 10:33 PM >To: Jim Choate >Cc: vlynch(a)predictit.com; cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net >Subject: Re: CDR: RE: take me off ur list thank you! > > >Allow me to be more uncharacteristically succinct (it's been a long day): > >Ms. Lynch, get a clue. Stop frothing. Until then, spare us the venting. > >Yours truly, >A friend

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CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?
by Kerry L. Bonin 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

At 09:27 PM 10/16/00 -0700, Tim May wrote: >At 8:50 PM -0700 10/16/00, Nathan Saper wrote: [snip] >Recall that your precise words were: > >"IMHO, the NSA has enough expertise and technology to crack just about >any cipher out there." > >This is a claim about _ciphers_, a claim often made by the clueless. >("Any cipher can be broken...," "The NSA has more than enough >computer power...," are the most common variants.) And yet ciphers are a significant target of the NSA. Sure, they devote significant resources to exploiting weaknesses in key management, but ciphers are a primary target. Many people who discuss the capabilities of the NSA do not use proper methodology in extrapolating their technical capabilities. General purpose computers and supercomputers are not well suited to attacking ciphers - custom silicon is the best means. Extrapolate capabilities from the EFF DES crack project and you are somewhat closer (1536 ASIC w/ 24 cores/ASIC yielded 4.52 days/crack of 56 bit keyspace), then take into consideration the advantages of using more sophisticated semiconductor processes (ECL 15 years ago, GaAs on Sapphire today) and the higher clock rates that go with that (40MHz to well > 1GHz), and rerun your numbers. Instead of a small cabinet, fill floors of buildings with these machines, and you have realtime cracking farms. It should be noted that increasing the keyspace isn't a magic protection implying the heat entropy of the universe prevents a crack - the NSA has been playing with Feistel networks since before most cryptographers even knew about DA, not to mention the possibilities of many other unknown weaknesses in Feistel networks being known to the NSA. As for my own comments, I wrote layout and design tools used on these NSA custom chips in the mid 80's, certified for use with the "NSA Standard Cell Library" by their chip designers (they were just one of the customers of the CAD/CAM/CAE software I worked on back then...) I don't think its unreasonable to extrapolate that a sufficiently high priority message can be cracked by the NSA in near realtime, regardless of the cipher strength used, without significant knowledge of the nature of the plaintext. I'd imagine most attacks focus on key management, but anyone serious about the game will have obscene numbers of gates chewing on ciphertext. Kerry L. Bonin (speaking for self, insert lawyer joke here...) Sr. Engineer, Security/Cryptography, Cisco Systems. VScape lead architect - Adaptive secure clustering for multiuser VR.

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CDR: RE: Re: why should it be trusted?
by Fisher Mark 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Kerry L. Bonin writes: > Most people who have worked with military crypto systems do, off the > record. The difference between what is public and what has > been developed > with decades of unlimited resources is staggering. How many > cryptographers > or discrete math experts work in the public domain? Now how > many work for > the NSA? That's how many orders of magnitude? And how many orders of > magnitude difference in budgets, ect., even with bureaucratic > and civil > service overhead. IMHO you haven't done much budgeting or defense work. I worked on a project secret enough that I still can't mention the name of the project (although the name itself is unclassified -- my association with the project was classified, however). Budgeting is still a factor in defense work. Your messages start to sound like the crypto that Tom Clancy uses in his novels, crypto that always annoys me because it is so fake. I agree that the NSA may have a few tricks up its sleeve on top of some pretty powerful specialized cracking hardware, but we are talking about needing heavy wizardry to do real-time cipher cracking, not just some parlor tricks that drop the work factor by 1000 or so. For the NSA to generally do what you propose, they would need some exponential-time methods, methods that would drop the work factor by 10^78 (or something like that). It is just a whole lot easier to do a black-bag job on a North Korean embassy (for example) than to directly attack their crypto. That is why defense companies do background checks, that is why some areas of military facilities are guarded by soldiers with guns, and that is why the NSA tried to conceal all evidence of their existence for a while. Crypto is just one part of a unified security policy -- sometimes not a very important part at that. ==================================================== Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics fisherm(a)tce.com Indianapolis, IN, USA "Display some adaptability." -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_

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CDR: Important Membership Information
by announce＠inbox.nytimes.com 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

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CDR: A helpful ruling on "anonymity"
by Tim May 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

This is a helpful ruling. No kidding. No spoof. --fair use excerpt begins-0- Monday October 16 4:29 PM ET Anonymous Net Posting Not Protected By CATHERINE WILSON, AP Business Writer MIAMI (AP) - In a ruling that challenges online anonymity, a Florida appeals court declared Monday that Internet service providers must divulge the identities of people who post defamatory messages on the Internet. Critics of the ruling say it could have a chilling effect on free expression in Internet chat rooms. .... Lauren Gelman, public policy director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is concerned that other courts could follow the lead of the 3rd District Court of Appeals in approving subpoenas. ``This kind of speech happens all the time in all kinds of chat rooms,'' Gelman said. ``We don't want to see these subpoenas become regularly used to cause people to self-censor themselves.'' ``The court had the potential to set an important precedent about the right to speak anonymously on the Internet,'' Lidsky said. ``The courts are eventually going to have to come to grips with this issue and decide how broad free speech rights are in cyberspace.'' --end excerpt-- Lidsky doesn't get it. There is no "right to speak anonymously on the Internet" (or anywhere else). If Alice observes Bob make a comment, and Alice chooses to speak about her observations, or is required by a court to speak about her observations, Bob cannot assert some "right to anonymity." Now, had the court said that all words must be traceable, must be signed, and so on, then this would be a different kettle of fish. But they didn't. The court just said, in this case, that the usual process of discovery and production of evidence is not trumped by some claim of a "right to anonymity." No surprises there. This is helpful because it pushed anonymity back into the technological arena, where it belongs. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.

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CDR: Think cash
by Marcel Popescu 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

An interesting idea has surfaced on the freenet-chat list: is it possible to build a program that creates some sort of a puzzle, whose answer the generating computer knows (and can verify), but which can only be answered by a human being, not by a computer? [Additional requirement: it should be easy for the human to answer the puzzle.] My proposal was to randomly create an image, which should be 1) easily recognizable by a human (say the image of a pet), but 2) complex enough so that no known algorithm could "reverse-engineer" this. [You need a randomly-generated image because otherwise one could build a large database of all the possible images and the correct answers.] Background information would also be very useful - see http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/userg/images/969403123.shtml - it's easy for a human being to identify the animal in the picture, but (AFAIK) impossible to write a program to do the same thing. Ideas? Mark --- All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification.

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CDR: NYT Account Request
by forgot＠lga2.nytimes.com 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

You have requested your ID and password for The New York Times on the Web. Please follow the instructions below. If you have any questions or problems, write to forgot(a)nytimes.com. Please DO NOT REPLY to this message. 1. Please make a note of your subscriber ID: cipherpunk1b1a 2. Next, to change the password for this account, using your Web browser go to this unique URL: http://verify.nytimes.com/guests/forgot/forgot?key=34156941_15666217 This page will allow you to choose a new password. Make sure you have copied the address EXACTLY as it appears here. (If you're getting an "Error" page, the address was probably entered incorrectly. See "Help With Copying and Pasting" at the bottom of this e-mail.) 3. Follow the instructions on the screen to choose a new password. After you have entered a password you will automatically enter our Web site. The New York Times on the Web Customer Service forgot(a)nytimes.com ******************** Help With Copying and Pasting 1. Using the mouse, highlight the entire Web address, (e.g. http://verify.nytimes.com/guests/forgot/forgot?key=34156941_15666217) shown above in step 2. It's essential to highlight the entire address, even if it extends over two lines. 2. Under the Edit menu at the top of your screen, select "Copy". 3. Go into your Web browser (open it if it's not already opened). 4. Click in the "Netsite" or "Address" bar -- the place in your Web browser where it says what Web address you're currently looking at -- and delete the address that's currently there. 5. In the blank "Netsite" or "Address" bar, paste the address by selecting the "Edit" menu at the top of your screen and choosing "Paste". 6. Press Enter. 7. Follow the instructions to choose a new password. ******************** If you did not request your ID and password for your NYT Web registration, someone has mistakenly entered your e-mail address when requesting their password. Please simply ignore this message, or, if you wish, you may go to the address above to select a new password for your account.

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CDR: NYT Account Request
by forgot＠lga2.nytimes.com 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

You have requested your ID and password for The New York Times on the Web. Please follow the instructions below. If you have any questions or problems, write to forgot(a)nytimes.com. Please DO NOT REPLY to this message. 1. Please make a note of your subscriber ID: sciferpunk 2. Next, to change the password for this account, using your Web browser go to this unique URL: http://verify.nytimes.com/guests/forgot/forgot?key=108370463_16329707 This page will allow you to choose a new password. Make sure you have copied the address EXACTLY as it appears here. (If you're getting an "Error" page, the address was probably entered incorrectly. See "Help With Copying and Pasting" at the bottom of this e-mail.) 3. Follow the instructions on the screen to choose a new password. After you have entered a password you will automatically enter our Web site. The New York Times on the Web Customer Service forgot(a)nytimes.com ******************** Help With Copying and Pasting 1. Using the mouse, highlight the entire Web address, (e.g. http://verify.nytimes.com/guests/forgot/forgot?key=108370463_16329707) shown above in step 2. It's essential to highlight the entire address, even if it extends over two lines. 2. Under the Edit menu at the top of your screen, select "Copy". 3. Go into your Web browser (open it if it's not already opened). 4. Click in the "Netsite" or "Address" bar -- the place in your Web browser where it says what Web address you're currently looking at -- and delete the address that's currently there. 5. In the blank "Netsite" or "Address" bar, paste the address by selecting the "Edit" menu at the top of your screen and choosing "Paste". 6. Press Enter. 7. Follow the instructions to choose a new password. ******************** If you did not request your ID and password for your NYT Web registration, someone has mistakenly entered your e-mail address when requesting their password. Please simply ignore this message, or, if you wish, you may go to the address above to select a new password for your account.

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RE: CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?
by Trei, Peter 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

> ---------- > Riad S. Wahby[SMTP:rsw@mit.edu] writes > >Nathan Saper <natedog(a)well.com> wrote: >> > Huh? Tarquin Fintimlinbin-Whinbimlim-Bus Stop F'Tang F'Tang Ol=E9 >> > Biscuit-Barrel? >>=20 >> Uh, what? This is a reference to a Monty Python sketch. Tarqin Fintimlinbin-Whinbimlim-Bus Stop F'Tang F'Tang Ole Biscuit-Barrel was the candidate for the Silly Party. In case you're wondering, Kevin Philips BONG! was the Somewhat Silly Party candidate, and the Very Silly Party candidate's name is not possible to type. These being 'interesting times', life imitates art: http://freespace.virgin.net/raving.loony/ The Official Monster Raving Loony Party has actually run candidates in Britain, and obtained votes (but not won any seats, so far as I know). http://www.sillyparty.com/ The North American Silly Party Homepage. Doesn't look like this is a real one, but you could send mail to TarquinFintimlinbinwhinbimlimBusStopPoontangPoontangOleBiscuit-Barrel@sillyp arty.com, JethroQBunnWhackettBuzzardStubbleandBootWalrustitty(a)sillyparty.com, or RaymondLuxuryYacht(a)sillyparty.com to find out. For a real and extensive list of US parties, try http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm which includes such oddities as the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party (http://www.nazi.org/) Peter Trei

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CDR: SFBAY CP meat meet timeout handler
by Anonymous Remailer 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Since no timely announcement from usual sources was detected, why not meet in San Francisco, Golden Gate Park, 9th and Lincoln, create an ad hoc agenda and beat it till dinner time.

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