December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: crosspost re remailers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:00 AM 5/16/96 -0700, Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu> wrote: >The entry points into the system, though, have value. You need to be able >to locate and trust them. Remailer reputations are valuable. Otherwise, >you're liable to send your message into the NSA-remailers-are-us system. >You need a web of trust among remailers at the very least, which means >some level of exposure (at least by "social analysis" by observing the >relationships among the various remailer nyms). There are two ways around this problem - chaining remailers, and encryption. As long as one remailer on the chain from your source to your destination is not compromised, you can send mail encrypted to each remailer in the chain (i.e. send Alice's Remailer the message E(Alice, E(Bob, E(Carol, message)))) and the message won't be compromised, though it may be blocked. For reply-style remailers, chaining is much harder, at least if you use a non-stealth encryption system like PGP or RIPEM which reveals the recipient's public key in the headers, and if the remailers don't include a public key to encrypt the message contents with as well as a key to encrypt the connection to the next remailer with. (Otherwise, if the sender encrypts a message to NymA@Alice, and Alice encrypts it with Bob's key and sends it to Bob, Bob decrypts it, encrypts with Carol's key, and sends.... Zed decrypts it, encrypts it with your key, and sends it to you, then any node compromised by Bad Guys will see a message encyrpted to NymA. >Chaos within the system is good. Moving remailers around could be good, >provided that a service location infrastructure is established. >Raph's list is a good start, but it needs to be more automatic and dynamic -- >which to me (perhaps wrongly) suggests formalization, which means points >of failure. It would be much easier if there were a DNS hack that lets you connect to dns.remailer.net:registry, which takes your IP address and serves it as remailerN.remailer.net until you log off (using a short DNS expiration time). This does provide a large number of interesting attacks on the system - denial of service is easy (make lots of connections, filling all ports), and it's easy to add subverted remailers (just connect!) It also doesn't spoof reverse lookups unless your system is able to handle multiple IP addresses (which requires cooperation from your ISP's routers, unless remailer.net is also running a packet laundry, which increases its targetness.) Signed DNS responses would help some attacks, once that's standardized. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this correctly? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Burmese Excommunication
by camcc＠abraxis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 10:54 AM 5/19/96 -0700, you wrote: >Cypherpunks is not a political newsgroup. > I agree; I am concerned, however, when I read that any government, theirs or ours, acts or prepares to act to stop or stifle the free traffic of information. Your point is well taken; my post was intended for information and perhaps discussion value. Take it as you choose. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMZ/M2CKJGkNBIH7lAQHZZAP+KVLlk6REEaL4sskjV7mM28uMOOzGLxxf 3lf3UZGheizpgx6Ms3QpOyJpAADg365R4Lsgusynih49PM2EF+LLs1fNu6dUxbTm beXwK1UJBiBQhglL6pG5tKbjf8vQTdZWOBkEIVLjw4vsPQJlsRlAc8jkijJ/sq/+ uYd0Rof3boY= =adoY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Too cheap to meter
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 07:09 PM 5/15/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: >> One problem with the development of such high-end technologies is that >>they tend to increase economies of scale to the point where it's impractical to >>have anything but a monopoly or ogliopoly. As well as concerns about the degree >>of control such an organization may be able to exert in and of itself (acting >>like a government, in essence), there's also that such an organization is >>easier to pressure than a lot of small providers. Anyone have a suggested >>solution, or reasons that I shouldn't be so worried? The nice thing about economies of scale is that they make it possible to do things that used to be too expensive with older technology. For instance, the Internet has problems now because the Network Access Point capacities are really too low to let everyone connect to them, so there are limited numbers of powerful ISPs feeding the rest of us: the DEC Gigaswitches handle 16 users, and the FDDI-based systems don't have the capacity to support more than a couple T3-capable ISPs. Faster technology may let more people on. Faster technology also changes the balance between communications and computing - it's really hard to _do_ anything with 1Tb/s other than shove packets around between multiplexers. On the other hand, if the NSA (or NASA or Yoyodyne or some other surrogate) is on a FDDI NAP, they can promiscuously receive all the packets that go by and sniff for interesting addresses. Jim Bell: >You might as well forget about this 1 Tb/s fiber, for example. In order to >justify such a thing, you need to have 1 Tb/s of information that you want >to take from "here" to "there". A city of 1 million people would have to It's true that that's about 10 million simultaneous voice calls, which is enough for about 60 million typical business phones if they all went through the fiber, which they wouldn't, since they're mostly local. It's alternatively enough for 10,000 uncompressed TV-quality video streams, if you like variety in your television networks. Or 20,000 T3s. One major effect that happens if bandwidth becomes cheap (and I'm not sure that the mux costs for a system that size would really let it be cheap) is that it becomes cost-effective for far more people to get into the phone basis, bypassing the current local phone companies. The last mile to your house may still be expensive (that's also changing), but the last mile to any large office building or apartment complex isn't, for voice. > ....eggs in one basket... For redundancy, you'd probably use 4 fibers in a FDDI-like ring. Most of the major long-distance carriers are deploying their SONET as fully redundant rings, though one or two of them may still be considering non-fully-redundant SONET configurations, and even the carriers who are doing the Right Thing may do the Cheap Thing transitionally. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: Rumor: DSS Broken?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:33 AM 5/19/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 9:41 PM -0400 5/18/96, Bill Stewart wrote: >> MD5 is at least weakened, maybe broken; there's an abstract by Hans Dobbertin >> that says something about generating collisions, and gives an example >> (though the abstract doesn't say how general the method is.) > >That's what I get for not reading the DSS stuff when it came out. I'd heard >lots about the MD5 stuff, but I didn't put the two together. > >It also looks like I'm behind in my reading. Time to buy another edition >of Applied Cryptography... It should occur to all of us that if the NSA was actually doing the job we are vastly over-paying them to do, it is THEY who should be finding, exposing, and correcting these kinds of cryptography faults. Has anybody ever heard any evidence that the NSA has ever acted in this sort of responsible role? Another question: If the government provided DSS, and it's now toast, and it provided Clipper... Somebody ought to ask The Wicked.... er... Dorothy Denning how she thinks we should be willing to trust the government's vetting of anything like Clipper when DSS may be flawed...and the government didn't find the error! Think about it. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Virtual machines?
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi. Pardon my ignorance, but I had a few questions haunting me since a while. Is there a way to have a remailer de-localize itself and relocalize itself over the internet? For example, could there be several machines around the worlds that, when you send an e-mail to it, is routed to differents physical places of the world depending on where the actual remailer process is actually running? Could there be such a thing as a virtual machine runing a remailer that gets to hop from physical machine to physical machine around the world? Just an idea to avoid jurisdiction problems. Just asking, probably quite futilely... Thanks JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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Re: News from Burma
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:54 AM 5/19/96 -0700, an anonymous entity wrote: >Cypherpunks is not a political newsgroup. Cypherpunks is a _highly_ political newsgroup, it's just focussed on enabling technology and not too worried about political agreement. In this case, there are folks in Burma using PGP, and the cypherpunks goals of creating the ability to have private communications make it relevant to discuss societies where you can be busted for simply possessing communications technology even if the Thugs can't tell what you're saying on it. And a 9-line PBX may be usable as a telephone remailer... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: Assassination Politics 1-3
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 19 May 96 at 20:31, you, Pat Trainor, wrote: > On Sun, 19 May 1996, Jean-Francois Avon wrote: > > Back to AP, I did not invent the scheme nor do I approve or like > > it a lot. But I find it very interesting to discuss. > > > > The author of AP is Jim Bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com>. > > That was what I was interested in. You see, I read a story exactly > along the same lines a long time ago, and I thought the group would > like to know just what happenned during that 'scheme'. > > > I would gladly read the long letter that you wrote. > > Here's the text, and if you didn't see it posted, please repost > with a cc to Mr. Bell. If you did see it, then just erase.. But the > damnest thing that my email is so squirrely!! > > Thanks again!! > > (if anyone wrote me in a reply, I never got it. ISP is putting a new > T1 in, and this is causing errors in traffic I'm told.) > > >From ptrainor(a)aura.title14.com Sun May 19 20:23:48 1996 > Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 22:09:16 -0400 > From: Pat Trainor <ptrainor(a)aura.title14.com> > To: jimbell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> > Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto, talk.politics.libertarian, > alt.politics.libertarian, alt.society.anarchy, alt.privacy, > alt.security.pgp, alt.activism, alt.anarchism, alt.cyberpunk, > alt.politics.datahighway > Subject: Re: Insurable Interest Assassination Politics 1-3 > > On Thu, 9 May 1996, jimbell wrote: > > > > How will this be enforced, someone with more resources, > > >money, drugs, guns, better planned religion, icbms, will start to > > >gather "like minded individuals" and start to tell others how to > > >live., some will join them, others will fight, and we're back > > >where we started. > > > > No, because any threatening individual or group will be "predicted > > to death" posthaste. > > I haven't followed this thread from the beginning, but I recognize > the theme. I read _eons_ ago a short story in which this exact > mechanism was used to enforce a leaderless society. Now I'm no > economist, nor historian (future or otherwise) but I do vividly > remember this story. > It was in a science-fiction compilation, as I was very prone to > read (Nebula Awards, etc..) in my early days in the military and > before. > > My question would be: have you ever read a story with this precice > theme? The assisns looked like (sorry) Star Wars storm troopers in > white, air conditioned suits. They were not anonymous, except that > you couldn't see their faces (is that enough?). > > The story treated the same (apparently) hypothesis you mention. The > 'Assassin's Guild' I think was the title. Irrelevant to AP since nobody knows anybody, nor what anybody else do. > One of the problems in the model I read about was that the area to > be policed was too large to allow an elite minority to cover > properly, or even effectively. Again, irrelevant to AP. This scheme suppose some clan against another (the govt). Re-read Jim Bell's essay and you'll realize that it wouldn't work that way at all. > It was a situation of ratios. To be superior, even with a > technological edge, you need numbers. You have to offset the balance > somehow. Population control was attempted by the guild in the end as > a measure to increase the odds in their favor. This caused an > understandably intense reaction with the masses, who were ultimately > those being served. Not in AP. Because the aim when using AP against government or any other entity is not to get rid of it by killing it's members, but rather to get rid of it by scaring any individual that would participate to it. > Another problem was that the technology required for a large > coordinated effort required organization of a military nature (rank, > etc..). This was necessary due to the myriad of decisions that had > to be made. <Lots of stuff absolutely irrelevant to AP deleted>. Re-read the essay again. > Surveillance was the issue. In order for the Guild to be able to > identify a problem, an immense amount of surveillance was required. > Again the technology and the infrastructure required to support it. Are you saying that problems are difficults to identify? > The decision had to be made by superiors who were in touch with all > the information from all areas under surveillance to make the > ultimate decision. There needed to be, effectively, a steering > committee to determine if the proposed action was both affordable > and warranted. To Cypherpunks: I did not write the following paragraph. It was probably from Jim Bell, but I only guess. To: Pat Trainor: Ask Jim Bell to send you his paper. I'm sure he will do it wilfully. Pat Trainor wrote: >somebody wrote: > > To the eventual outcome. The system's inevitable. Read the > > essay; it explains why. I'll forward it to you; I assume it's no > > longer available on your newsfeed. > > I wouldn't mind reading it, it sounds a lot like what I'm > describing. > > > They might be wrong. I might be right. > > The Assassin's Guild was bought into in phases by the ruling > elements of all major powers only after they had all lost their > ability to maintain an effective repel borders and the place (earth) > was a mess. > > Realistically, you can't build from the ashes any faster than > anyone else is. And human nature doesn't change because of a new > caveat in religion or 'law'. A human will always be a human, > regardless of what law they proport to follow or heed. > > > Thomas Edison tried hundreds of differnet materials to make light > > bulb filaments before he found one that would work. > > Actually he directed experiments! :) But this statement reminded me > of the 'Infinite Number of Monkeys' theory, except applied to 'self > rule', well, I guess not, well..? > > > And BTW, we're already all "in fear of our lives." You know, > > muggings and carjackings. How is my system worse, > > quantitatively? > > Actually, you'll find folks doing the most desparate things in a > desparate world. If you try to forge order out of chaos, you quickly > find that the order you are trying to enforce feeds the chaos. You > create your own increasing difficulty by default. A society (or > group of societies) in anarchy will fear order. This, coupled with > the fact that you have to create from the same resoucres the masses > have access to, makes your efforts incredibly difficult. You will > never find a unified agreement among a society that can't feed or > cloth itself. If you do, you instantly become what you are telling > the people you are trying to prevent. Folks will see through this > veil and vanquish such an effort favoring a predictable anarchy over > a concerted organized rule. > > > >To change the world you have to understand the rules, > > > > But you don't necessarily have to _follow_ the rules! > > That's a good point, and one I think I've shown means that you will > always have rules. Sometimes yours, sometimes theirs, if lucky a bit > of both.. But they will be there. We are a self-righteous > pack-oriented species. We thrive on group individuality! That must > be why psychologists make so much money! > > > The system I've described will work even if only a small > > proportion of the population uses it, at first. That's what makes > > it so amazing, really. > > Again, I'd appreciate a look at your paper. > > Now for the subtle problems pointed out accurately in the > Assassin's Guild. As a strategic planner for a living, I have > learned to live by a good rule: Make your best estimates for a > project's completion, then double them. > > A support structure required for the Assassin's Guild required > things you would never immediately think of. Support from several > areas are required. Remember, you are basically operating a country > with soft borders covering all areas, no matter how distant. > > For solely the guild's efforts, no others, a few of the things > required are: > > Manufacturing > Fabrication > Research & Developement > Quality Assurance > Medical > Clothing > Shelter > Food > Recreation > Self-Rule > Coordination > Information Exchange > Communication > Information Retrieval > Surveillance > Commerce > Expansion > Earth Sciences > > The trouble is, each and every one of the above is subject to > espionage, revolution, corruption, pranks, etc.. Therefore each must > be treated with complete encapsulation within the guild. The only > way to exclude interference from within or without, was to closely > monitor each and every aspect of the guild's organization. > Self-policing. > > When you start visualizing what the organization would actually be > running (never mind the seemingly impossible task of starting the > organization from scratch), it seems a very impractical proposition. > > Plus, the guild found all the military stuff laying around pretty > useful.. Folks were NOT excited about another police state.. > > Anyhow, sorry for the long post, but I thought perhaps you'd enjoy > the problems the Assassin's Guild had, and compare it to your own > model. > > later! > > pat > :) > > Pat Trainor * WARNING: THE OPINIONS I EXPRESS MAY NOT BE MY OWN > * finger for key: ptrainor(a)aura.title14.com > http://www.title14.com/ > Key fingerprint = 4B 14 97 D7 11 41 35 76 28 43 1E E3 2E E3 81 > D6 "Winning may not be everything, but losing is NOTHING!" -Ed > Bighead > > > DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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Re: Cypherpunks, a political "newsgroup?"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:09 PM 5/19/96 -0400, Declan B. McCullagh wrote: >Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 19-May-96 by anonymous-remailer@shell >> Cypherpunks is not a political newsgroup. > >Hah! Most everything that's discussed here has political overtones. I, >for one, appreciated in the info on the Burmese businessman and >forwarded it to fight-censorship. I'll link it in to >http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~declan/international/ when I get a chance. I happen to agree. Information privacy, security, and freedom are definitely "on-topic" around here. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Toastmasters? Incorporating
by remailer＠2005.bart.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How do corporations work, in terms of liability? If the cost of incorporating isn't forbidding, I would think a remailer operator might consider incorporating a company, and making the remailer a function of that company. That way, any losses are restricted to the total value of the corporation; that is, nothing. Any flaws? There must be something wrong with it somewhere. Thanks.

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New Remailer (hidden)
by middle-man-admin＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NOTICE: A new type of remailer has just gone into business! It's called a "hidden remailer-in-the-middle". The address is middle-man(a)alpha.c2.org. This new type of remailer uses a combination of Lance Cottrell's Mixmaster remailer and Raph Levien's premail program. Advantages: * The remailer is completely hidden. Attempting to discover the actual identity of the remailer site is virtually impossible. * The remailer uses both Type-I and Type-II remailer technology for handling remailer traffic. * Random remailer chains are selected separately for every outgoing message. * The remailer is designed to answer to a chained nym. * All Mixmaster administrative commands are also chained through multiple remailers. (i.e. remailer-help, remailer-key) How it works: The actual address of the remailer is hidden behind a chained nym. The plan is for the reply-block for middle-man to change approximately every 48-72 hours. This will be transparent to the net but will help to foil traffic analysis. The new remailer operates under a modified Mixmaster. The code has been modified so that outgoing messages are passed to premail to allow padding of extra remailer chains. Each outgoing message will have two type-I remailers randomly padded to the end of the chain based on the current status od Raph Levien's remailer reliability list. If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact middle-man-admin(a)alpha.c2.org. middle-man-admin(a)alpha.c2.org

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Re: The Crisis with Remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 17-MAY-1996 15:56:36.35 >Perhaps what is needed is a non-profit, charitable 501c foundation to >encourage anonymous communication. Those who support the idea could make >tax deductible contributions which would be used for grants, public >education etc. etc. to encourage anonymous communication. It could be >called, "The Federalist Foundation" because the Federalist Papers were >published anonymously. Hmm... I wonder if it would be good for this Foundation to itself operate some for-pay remailers, in order to make some money from sources besides contributions? Possible disadvantages: A. It could get sued, and thus lose funds B. If its prices were set too low, it could wind up driving other remailers out of the market (combination of low price with likelihood to still be there), and thus become a vulnerable point. -Allen

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Re: Rumor: DSS Broken?
by timd＠consensus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:32 PM 5/19/96, Bill Stewart wrote: >On the other hand, NIST has been saying that DSS isn't covered by any patents, >which the PKP folks had some very negative, skeptical comments about, >before PKP fell apart; it probably still is covered by the Cylink/Stanford >patents until they expire next year, though it's not covered by RSA. >The patent licensing hassles probably have kept a lot of people from using it, >except for specific sales to the government. Not to mention the Schnorr patent, which is good until 2008. NIST has claimed DSA doesn't infringe upon patents, but they won't necessarily help you in court, let alone indemnify you. I think everyone is using RSA because it's easy, safe and already widely deployed. Since you've got to buy a BSAFE license to do any interesting commercial cryptography anyway, why go through the hassle of another algorithm? Cylink is pushing DSA, however, because with DSA + Diffie-Hellman, you get both encryption and signing, thus providing a similar set of capabilities to RSA. Note, also that a DSA implementation might be usable as to do ElGamal or RSA encryption; I don't know whether generally available commercial / exportable implementations can or not. [Applied Cryptography, 2nd ed., 490-491] - Tim PS - Anyone know what the ASN.1 AlgorithmIDs and public key formats are for DSS? I'd like to add support for DSS X.509 certs to my X.509 library. Even better would be a couple of such certificates so I can test. PPS - Any chance the original rumor surrounded RCA/Hughes' DSS satellite TV system, and not the Digital Signature Standard, and we've all been barking up the wrong tree? Tim Dierks - Software Haruspex - tim(a)dierks.org "That's the trouble with technology. It attracts people who have nothing to say." - Muffey Kibbey, mother [Wall Street Journal, May 10 1996]

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Re: Defeating fingerprints
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"sinclai(a)ecf.toronto.edu" "SINCLAIR DOUGLAS N" 18-MAY-1996 04:15:33.26 >Not that random playing with carcinogenic chemicals is a good idea, but... >I've found that if you use just one reagent from epoxy glue, the collagen >in your skin will disolve. You can sculpt it into whatever shape you want, >and it will stay that way for an hour or so. I don't remember if it was >the resin or the hardener though. This was regular 5 minute epoxy. I somehow doubt that the collagen is dissolving. You may be loosening the keratinized dead skin cells and pushing them around, and then they flake off in some length of time (probably speeded up by this treatment). Any signs of redness, etcetera in the skin afterwards? Unusual sensitivity of the fingertips, especially to pain? One thing to keep in mind is that fingerprints aren't just from the whorl pattern that you see. They're also from that the sebaceous (oil) glands in the skin are arranged along those whorls. You need a pretty resistant barrier to stop these. I've been told by the son of a cop that the combination of a pair of latex gloves with a couple layers of cotton gloves stops both the oils and the normal pressure patterns. -Allen

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Re: Rumor: DSS Broken?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:05 PM 5/19/96 -0800, Jim Bell wrote: >It should occur to all of us that if the NSA was actually doing the job we >are vastly over-paying them to do, it is THEY who should be finding, >exposing, and correcting these kinds of cryptography faults. They may have; they're just kind of selective in who they expose them to :-) Also, there are expert cryptographers outside the NSA, and outside the US; you might check where Dobbertin lives. And this is a Good Thing. >Another question: If the government provided DSS, and it's now toast, SHA-1 isn't toast; it's MD5 that might be at least a bit crunchy. (The NSA gave us SHA, and later added a correction that appears to make it stronger, unless there's something really subtle and nasty inside.) DSS isn't toast either, though the subliminal-channel stuff makes it necessary to look very carefully at any applications to find out what else is being done with them, which you can't always do. One of the purposes of DSS appears to be that it provides signatures without providing encryption, so the Feds can trust the Public to have it. Except of course that subliminal channels _do_ toast that part of it. On the other hand, NIST has been saying that DSS isn't covered by any patents, which the PKP folks had some very negative, skeptical comments about, before PKP fell apart; it probably still is covered by the Cylink/Stanford patents until they expire next year, though it's not covered by RSA. The patent licensing hassles probably have kept a lot of people from using it, except for specific sales to the government. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAST
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu" "Rich Graves" 18-MAY-1996 09:07:35.05 >On Thu, 16 May 1996, Bill Stewart wrote: >> ================================================================== >> This message was posted from the anonymous remailer at www.jim.com. >> Send any complaints to webmaster(a)www.jim.com . >> Please don't post any copyrighted material longer than fair use quotations. >> And did you know that Scientology's highly overpriced documents say that >> "<random paragraph quotation>" >> =================================================================== >Once I was more or less done laughing and got off the floor, it occurred >to me that this could provide a revenue stream for anonymous remailers. >You'd charge advertisers sub-pennies for these little trailers. I >understand that Sameer is getting very little Ecash for his >remail/by-www.html, but maybe if he sold advertising space? It's an interesting idea. One wonders if EFF would be interested in such a sponsorship? One could even add, say, an ACLU promotion to the end of messages without getting cash from the ACLU - this might encourage them to give more backing in case of a legal dispute. (You scratch my back, I scratch yours... I'm not meaning to be offensive to the ACLU, BTW.) -Allen

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Re: Sendmail Question (was: SMTP Server for sending to anonymous remailers?)
by John Deters 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:42 PM 5/19/96 -0400, you wrote: >At 12:09 AM 5/19/96 -0700, you wrote: >>If you use popmail (like Eudora), then just tell it the server to use in >>"SMTP Host". >> -Lance >I have been following this with no little interest. Using Eudora Pro when I >attempt to replace host: smtp1.abraxis.com with *SMTP Host*, I receive the >message *Attempting to resolve host: SMTP Host*, and dat's all until I stop >the send command. > >Thanks > >Alec Alec, What he meant was that you should replace the contents of the SMTP server's field with the address of the first remailer in your chain. For example, if I wanted to send this through the Holy Cow remailer, I'd put this in the SMTP server field: haystack(a)holy.cow.net Remember, though, that several things OUT OF YOUR CONTROL have to happen for your mail to be anonymised successfully. First, if you are behind a "firewall" (i.e. doing this at work through your work's net connection) your firewall may be implementing what is known as a "proxy." That means even though you're using the SMTP protocol, you may not be *directly* talking to the SMTP client of the remailer. It may "look" like you're able to SMTP out to whoever you want to send mail, but in reality, the firewall can intercept your request, and "pretend" to be some other SMTP server. It then accepts your outgoing mail, and forwards it to the real destination. Abraxis sells firewalls. Also, your firewall may be configured to not pass SMTP out at all, but rather to require you to send any SMTP traffic directly to it. That means you can not change your SMTP server to anything outside of your local net. In either case, firewalls are certainly capable (and employers within their rights, but that's another useless thread) to log and/or read your mail. Anonymity lost, at least to your employer. Finally, the anonymous remailer may (or may not) have some kind of logging turned on. I don't know why they would (what's the value if they do) but if some law enforcement agency orders them to discreetly monitor traffic, you lose again. Unless you PGP encrypt your mail to the remailers before it leaves your machine for the big bad net, someone else can read it. And, no matter what, persons unknown can tell that your machine sent some message to the remailer. (This is known as "traffic analysis".) Therefore, I'd *highly* recommend not e-mailing anything illegal over the net, remailer or no. -j, annoying, yes. Illegal or harassing, no. -- J. Deters >From Senator C. Burns' Pro-CODE bill, which I support and you can find at: http://www.senate.gov/member/mt/burns/general/billtext.htm " (2) Miniaturization, disturbed computing, and reduced transmission costs make communication via electronic networks a reality." +---------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: jad(a)dsddhc.com (work) jad(a)pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'33"N by 93^16'42"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | PGP Key ID: 768 / 15FFA875 | +---------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: Is Chaum's System Traceable or Untraceable?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:10 AM 5/19/96 -0400, Simon Spero wrote: >> > (On the other hand, I have had a longstanding faith that the system can be >> > made to be both payer- and payee-anonymous. Moneychangers, for example.) .. >This scheme can't be used with the ecash API, and I believe is not looked >on kindly when applying for ecash licences. It makes you a lot more >vulnerable to traffic analysis There are at least two reasons for wanting payee anonymity - general privacy - criminal activities, e.g. ransom, where payee doesn't trust payer. In the latter case, the facts that collaboration is required, special software is needed, and licenses are violated are not really a problem - the Bad Guy can give the payer the code along with the ransom note, and doesn't care about the license. Traffic analysis is a concern, but you're probably not going to collect ransom from the same person on a regular basis, and for blackmail, you can keep changing the payment address, and you're a bit less worried about the payer's location being noticed than if you were collaborating in something like tax evasion. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailer servers FAST
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What countries are noticeable for being anti-Scientology? They would appear to be good locations for special-purpose remailer ultimate-output ends. -Allen

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5 MINUTE CYPHERPUNKS SURVEY
by Sally D. McMillan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! Im writing a paper for school on E-commerce and would like to include a brief section on the role of Cypherpunks in E-commerce. If you would, please email me your responses to the following questions. Some of these questions are broad, but please limit your response to each question to 0-100 words. Also, I am NOT attempting to stereotype the Cypherpunks, but am instead interested to learn whether there is a shared view among them. THANKS! PS- PLEASE RESPOND TO MY EMAIL DIRECTLY by FRIDAY, 5/24/96 : 103007.3426(a)compuserve.com 1. Would you call yourself a Cypherpunk? (Y, N, Not Sure) 2. What is the role of Cypherpunks in the DEVELOPMENT of secure E-commerce transactions? 3. What is the role of Cypherpunks in the MAINTENANCE of secure E-commerce transactions? 4. Why do Cypherpunks care about E-commerce? (Please limit to 100 words or fewer.) 5. What is a punk? What is a Cypherpunk? Can you distinguish between those who are up to no good, trying to crack security and those who try to crack security in order to maintain it? Do Cypherpunks, in your opinion, fall into either category? 6. What is the greatest security threat to E-commerce transactions? 7. On a scale of 1-10, how dangerous is it to give your credit card number to a vendor over the internet? (Please provide one number only for this answer.) 8. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rank your own knowledge of E-commerce and related security issues? (Please provide one number only for this answer.) May I quote part of or all of your answers in my paper? Would you like to be referenced by name, email address, or as Anonymous? Please provide pertinent details. THANK YOU FOR FILLING OUT THIS QUESTIONNAIRE! Please forward your responses to me at: 103007.3426(a)compuserve.com

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Re: New Remailer (hidden)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cool. I've got a test message going now. Does your remailer accept PGP-encrypted email? It's really critical for high-security applications, at least for first remailer hops, but your key's not on the MIT keyserver. BTW, how do we know you're not a plant? :-) Aside from having an interesting nym, you've probably got the first remailer that makes it difficult to tell who's running it. You could be Sameer, or you could be Louis Freeh, but we don't know. At least folks like Xenon were known to be real people.... Even if you _are_ a plant, of course, we can still use your system, but I'd want to do encrypted email through other remailers on one end or the other. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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Re: anonymous companies
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"unicorn(a)schloss.li" "Black Unicorn" 18-MAY-1996 11:16:57.48 > At 06:42 PM 5/16/96 -0700, Wei Dai wrote: > > Solution: smart contracts. This is Nick Szabo's idea of building > > contractual obligations into cryptographic protocols so that the parties > > have no choice but to fullfil them. But again we don't know whether this > > will actually work for this problem. >But what happens when there are nuances or circumstances which contracts >do not anticipate? This "complete" reliablity is also a curse for >flexibility which fast moving entities need to survive. That's an argument for combining them with escrow agencies. If the escrow agency is less likely to need to intervene, then they'll charge less... the principle of insurance company risk estimation. -Allen

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Re: Why does the state still stand:
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"jimbell(a)pacifier.com" "jim bell" 18-MAY-1996 02:54:47.09 >On the other hand, the government also has enormous "obligations" that keep >it close to bankruptcy. It wouldn't take a great deal of interference in >its ability to collect taxes to put it solidly in the red based on current >receipts. And remember, if the individuals who populate government could be >persuaded that their tenure would be forcibly shortened if they didn't >resign, they wouldn't stick around. Once that cohesiveness of jointly >sucking on the government tit is eliminated, I think they'll cut and run. >These people are working for a fat paycheck and the promise of a retirement >package, and it wouldn't take much convincing to show them that they won't >get either for very long. I'm convinced that's why so many Senators and While quite a lot of people in the government are working just for the paycheck, there are also some idealists - and some who are working for a "power paycheck" rather than a "cash paycheck." I'm willing to bet that that's the case with the NSA and its _general_ opposition to cryptography. You'll have three basic groups: A. Those who are idealists. This can be divided into two categories. 1. Those who idealize the power of government, such as via a devotion to democracy. These oppose cryptography because it weakens the government. 2. Those who are primarily interested in protecting America from everyone else. These promote cryptography, and need to be supported. 3. Those who (stupidly) believe in the US government enough to "just follow orders," as the Nuremberg phrase goes. If you can get the type 2 idealists in power, these will do the right thing. B. Those who want power. These oppose cryptography because they will lose power if it is widely implemented. C. Those who are just there to get a paycheck. These will act in most situations about like an idealist of type 3, but when push comes to shove won't be willing to back it up seriously. I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who's dealt with the intelligence community more than I have (not particularly difficult) to confirm or deny the above classification system, and give some idea as to the proportions within the NSA, government in general, etcetera. -Allen

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Edited Edupage, 16 May 1996
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"educom(a)elanor.oit.unc.edu" 16-MAY-1996 23:29:38.03 >AOL TEAMS UP FOR E-COMMERCE >America Online has cut deals to license encryption, digital signature, and >electronic transaction and funds transfer technologies from a variety of >companies, including CyberCash, IBM infoMarket, RSA Data Security, Terisa >Systems and VeriSign. "These new relationships will provide the building >blocks for a secure electronic commerce platform," says AOL's VP of product >marketing. The online service plans to integrate the electronic commerce >technologies into both its online service and its Global Network Navigator >Internet access service. (Investor's Business Daily 16 May 96 A9) Well, at least they're making moves to get cryptography to the AOL masses.... although somehow I suspect that they'll roll over and play dead for any and all GAK pressure, and won't use any variety of truly anonymous digital cash. >ATTEMPT TO BLOCK USE OF CANADIAN SATELLITES >MCI Communications, AT&T and EchoStar Satellite all have filed additional >complaints this week with the FCC about proposals made by rivals >Tele-Communications Inc. and TelQuest Ventures that cite Ottawa's refusal to >allow American companies to beam their programs into the United States as >cause for the FCC to deny the application. (Toronto Financial Post 16 May 96 >p3) An ex-FCC official says the American regulator is unlikely to approve >the use of four Canadian satellites by US-based TelQuest Ventures and >Tele-Communications Inc. to beam signals to the American market unless >Canada's market is opened up to U.S. services. (Montreal Gazette 15 May 96 G3) One wonders what the FCC would do if they weren't US-based companies, and if it weren't from satellites from such an interlocked-with-the-US country as Canada. -Allen >Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl(a)educom.edu) & Suzanne Douglas >(douglas(a)educom.edu) Voice: 404-371-1853, Fax: 404-371-8057. >*************************************************************** >Edupage ... is what you've just finished reading. To subscribe to Edupage: >send mail to: listproc(a)educom.unc.edu with the message: subscribe edupage >Jack Kerouac (if your name is Jack Kerouac; otherwise, substitute your own >name). ... To cancel, send a message to: listproc(a)educom.unc.edu with the >message: unsubscribe edupage. (If you have subscription problems, send >mail to educom(a)educom.unc.edu.)

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(Fwd) Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry Vlad Z. Nuri, but this message was intended for Cypherpunks, to be cc'd to you. Unfortunately, I wrongly addressed it. To CPunks: the reply that should have hit CPunks: ============================================================ To: jf_avon(a)citenet.net Subject: Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace Date sent: Sun, 19 May 96 19:52:45 -0700 From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> there is no ethical basis for killing. please kindly keep your trash out of my mailbox I've evaluated all sides of the story, and am not influenced by corrupt machiavellianism ============================================================= -------Original Message Follows ------- From: Self <Single-user mode> To: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> Subject: Re: TCM: mafia as a paradigm for cyberspace Reply-to: jf_avon(a)citenet.net Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 01:59:00 On 18 May 96 at 12:43, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: > maybe talk to Jim Bell some more. perhaps > eventually you will perfect the method of perpetrating the perfect > killing!! I really do admire you, because killing people without > getting caught is surely a great unrecognized art, and one of the > most unappreciated and misunderstood. something that has only been a > dream to the blighted wretches prior to our glorious new phases of > cyberspatial technology, which makes human morality completely > obsolete. I think that you are writing way out of context. First, wether or not the AP scheme is used for the control of government, as Jim Bell pushes it, does not mean that it will not be implemented for other purposes, such as killing successful businessman or your neighboor's son who is screwing your wife (noticed that she smiles all the time since a while? ) . Second, everybody like Jim Bell who is pushing the AP scheme is doing so on ethical basis: that the coercion the government imposes on to the individuals by regulations, and guns backed taxation justifies the killings. I have to see yet any cypherpunks who seems to agree with AP that envision another use than govt control. Third, you will notice that even Jim Bell discusses issues of anonymous transactions and businesses that, if conducted properly, makes the AP scheme irrelevant. So, it seems that AP is only a tool instead of being an end in itself. Fourth, you lack some basic psychological insight: intrinsic murderers do enjoy the knowledge of the details of their actions and the derived perception of power. AP prevents that by anonymising everything: a donator cannot know if he caused the death of somebody (unless he spends several tens of grands himself, but then, there are other, more satisfying ways for a power seeker to fullfill his passions...) . You seems to oppose the proposed violence entailed by AP but you positively blank out what everybody who reflected on AP put in the opposite pan of the balance, i.e. the ethical standards of contemporary govt actions. And you'll also note that the anonymity issue generate more interest from more CPunks because it (hopefully) will acheive the same goal without any killing. Until you accept to evaluate both side of the story, your recriminations opinions are as evident as the magnetic monopole... jfa DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants; physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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Re: SEVERE undercapacity, we need more remailers
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It occurs to me that a certain number of companies have schemes that could easily be used to set up anonymous, transient mailing output ends on anonymous remailers. These are AOL (with its famed lack of true credit card verification) and free email services such as Juno. The idea would be to have a remailer address that took in mailings, then sent any that were to go other than to another remailer via a temporary account. Now, this would have the potential problem of decreasing remailer reputation among those in such companies; for AOL, it would also decrease the chance of anyone paying attention to the remailed messages (people deleting stuff from @aol.com automatically, etcetera). -Allen

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