May 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Anti-snooping operating system close to launch
by Steve Schear 28 May '02

28 May '02

Anti-snooping operating system close to launch 16:28 28 May 02 NewScientist.com news service Computer activists in Britain are close to completing an operating system that could undermine government efforts to the wiretap the internet. The UK Home Office has condemned the project as potentially providing a new tool for criminals. Electronic communications can be kept private using encryption. But new UK legislation will soon give law enforcers the right to demand encryption keys from anyone suspected of illegal activity. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was introduced to update UK surveillance laws to include electronic communications. But privacy campaigners say it gives too much power to law enforcers and permits intrusive eavesdropping. Peter Fairbrother, a mathematician and computer enthusiast, is programming the new operating system, called M-o-o-t. "It is aimed at anybody who's concerned about the government being nosey," he says. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992335

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28 May '02

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Re: Edinburgh Financial Cryptography Engineering 2002 - CFP
by Dan Geer 28 May '02

28 May '02

Peter, > Does anyone know what happened to the Usenix e-commerce > conferences? They were in the vein of what FC used to be ... > there's also the EC-Web conference, although that has more of an > emphasis on web technology than EC. I founded this series in 1995 and was proud to have done so; we ran them in 1996 and 1998 as well, but the cutting edge quickly moved away from USENIX's core and forte to where every conference organizer on the planet had an e-commerce workshop of some sort up and running. Whether these were technical, financial or sheer hype, the noise factor was too great and we (USENIX Board of Directors) moved on to other things where we could make a difference without having to wage an advertising war in the middle of an investment bubble. I'm open to suggestions, of course, but in the meantime you might enjoy reminiscing about 1995 as seen through this lens: http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/ec95/index.html --dan (current usenix president)

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Forward-secure public-key encryption eprint
by dmolnar 28 May '02

28 May '02

Forward-secure public-key encryption has been discussed here, on sci.crypt, and elsewhere. To recap - the goal is that an adversary who breaks into your computer today can't read messages sent/received yesterday. In the interactive case, you use ephermal Diffie-Hellman. The non-interactive case is more complicated and has had some ideas considered by Ross Anderson, Adam Back, and David Hopwood (among others). Cypherpunks relevance: forward security is nice for remailers. Anyway, there's a new eprint up which shows how to construct such a scheme starting from an ID-based encryption scheme by Boneh + Franklin. "A Forward-Secure Public-Key Encryption Scheme" Jonathan Katz http://eprint.iacr.org/2002/060/ It's worth noting that the scheme this is based on has code available. http://crypto.stanford.edu/ibe/download.html -David

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NYT: Techies Now Respect Government
by John Young 28 May '02

28 May '02

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/opinion/26FRIE.html Webbed, Wired and Worried, May 26, 2002 I've been wondering how the entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley were looking at the 9/11 tragedy; whether it was giving them any pause about the wired world they've been building and the assumptions they are building it upon. In a recent visit to Stanford University and Silicon Valley, I had a chance to pose these questions to techies. I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone. I found a much keener awareness that the unique web of technologies Silicon Valley was building before 9/11 -- from the Internet to powerful encryption software -- can be incredible force multipliers for individuals and small groups to do both good and evil. And I found an acknowledgment that all those technologies had been built with a high degree of trust as to how they would be used, and that that trust had been shaken. In its place is a greater appreciation that high-tech companies aren't just threatened by their competitors; but also by some of their users. It was part of Silicon Valley lore that successful innovations would follow a well-trodden path: beginning with early adopters, then early mass-appeal users and finally the mass market. But it's clear now there is also a parallel, criminal path: starting with the early perverters of a new technology up to the really twisted perverters. For instance, the 9/11 hijackers may have communicated globally through steganography software, which lets users e-mail, say, a baby picture that secretly contains a 300-page compressed document or even a voice message. "We have engineered large parts of our system on an assumption of trust that may no longer be accurate," said a Stanford law professor, Joseph A. Grundfest. "Trust is hard-wired into everything from computers to the Internet to building codes. What kind of building codes you need depends on what kind of risks you thought were out there. The odds of someone flying a passenger jet into a tall building were zero before. They're not anymore. The whole objective of the terrorists is to reduce our trust in all the normal instruments and technologies we use in daily life. You wake up in the morning and trust that you can get to work across the Brooklyn Bridge -- don't. This is particularly dangerous because societies which have a low degree of trust are backward societies." Silicon Valley staunchly opposed the Clipper Chip, which would have given the government a back-door key to all U.S. encrypted data. Now some wonder whether they shouldn't have opposed it. John Doerr, the venture capitalist, said, "Culturally, the Valley was already maturing before 9/11, but since then it's definitely developed a deeper respect for leaders and government institutions." -----

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Slashdot | NZ Firm Shows Anti-DDoS Tool
by Jim Choate 28 May '02

28 May '02

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/05/28/0345248.shtml?tid=172 -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ A witty saying proves nothing. Voltaire ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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28 May '02

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by Zoe 28 May '02

28 May '02

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by aema 28 May '02

28 May '02

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CRY FOR HELP
by mrsmabacha 28 May '02

28 May '02

ATTN: SEEKING HONEST ASSOCIATE Pardon me for contacting you through this medium and in this manner without any prior introduction. This is due to circumstances beyond my control. I had to bribe the prison attendants to secretly allow me open an email address from the computer in their office. My name is Alhaji Mohammed Sani Abacha, the eldest surviving son of the late Nigerian Head of State, General Sani Abacha. I am currently in detention on the orders of the current Nigerian government at the Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons, Lagos on what is to me, on political grounds. You would have read some of the news recently of how the present government claims that my late father looted their treasury before he died. Well, you can see some of them at the following websites: http//news.bbc.co.uk; www.bobminton.org. Since the assumption of power by the present civilian government in Nigeria, my entire family has known no peace. The present government has set out to humiliate and persecute my late father's family and associates for both real and imagined sins' of my late father. They have confiscated all the assets they could lay hands on, frozen the family's bank accounts both here and abroad and generally emasculate the members of my family. All these victimization and more have left me, my siblings and most especially my widowed mother in a very difficult situation in the battle for survival. In view of this experience and in order to avoid further decimation of the family's fortunes, my mother and I have decided to entrust a reasonable part of the family's hidden funds under the care of a trustworthy foreigner for safekeeping. Her major problem is that while I am in detention my mother's movements and access are restricted since she is virtually under house arrest and constantly monitored. This explains my having to contact you through clandestine sources. Let me therefore inform you in the utmost confidence that before the freezing of certain key bank accounts in Nigeria, we were able through a technical arrangement to withdraw monies totaling US$45,000,000.00 (Forty Five Million U.S. Dollars Only) which was immediately moved out of the country through the help of some of my late father's close associates who are still serving in the present government. It is both my wish and my mother's that you assist us in the safekeeping of these monies. My mother will be able to discuss with you if the proper arrangements are made through our lawyer, Messr abdulsan and abdulsan & Co. (Legal Practitioners & Notaries Public). Note that all correspondence between us shall be through the lawyer, contact directly the most senior partner. CHIEF hamed bala(SAN) bala & bala & CO. (Legal Practitioners & Notaries Public) e-mail:hamed_808_bala@yahoo.com Tele phone; 234-80-33223121. I have arranged and agreed with my mother that 25% of the total sum will be for you for your kind assistance, while 5% of the total sum have been earmarked for expenses that might be incured both local and international in the course of the whole of the whole transaction, including calls made either by you or both. But please note that this request is contingent on your undertaking that you shall make the funds available to my mother on demand as a primary condition prior to the commencement of this transaction. This email address is my only source of communication. You can contact the attorney directly as all the information is already with him. Please keep me posted via email as I will be looking forward to your favorable response. Regards, ALHAJI MOHAMMED SANI ABACHA

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