December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Cellular phone tracing
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:49 PM 9/6/96 EDT, E. Allen Smith wrote: > From comp.risks: > >Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 22:24:13 -0400 (EDT) >From: glassman(a)sunsite.unc.edu >Subject: FedEx monitoring of cellular phonecall locations > >[...] nowhere near either of those places, so I did not bother to mention my >current location to the operator. The next day, Saturday, I called FedEx >with the same cell phone from Blowing Rock to arrange the pickup. The >operator immediately asked if I wanted them to come to the intersection that >I had placed my call from the day before. > >Two days later, a FedEx operator confirmed that they are getting "new >systems" at some locations that are able to record the locations from which >cellular calls are placed. > >I have now asked Cellular One three times to explain to me why they do not >tell subscribers that they pass this location information through the >system, but to no avail. [...] > >========== end fwd. You should DEFINITELY start worrying when the FexX operator says something like, "I see you're the guy in the red shirt and brown pants." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Junk Phone Calls, Metered Usage, and Cellphones
by Martin Janzen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) writes: >I am about to start worrying about "junk phone calls" more so than I have >been. I just bit the bullet and bought a digital cellular phone, with a >nifty rate plan called Digital Flex: I get unlimited free airtime from 7 >p.m. to 7 a.m. weekdays, and unlimited free airtime all weekend. From south >of Salinas to north of Santa Rosa and as far east as the Central Valley. In >other words, the entire Bay Area and outlying communities. I can send and >receive calls over this entire region, from anywhere in the region (of >course), without any charges. > >The downside is that calls _from_ or _to_ my phone during "business" hours >are charged 42 cents a minute, airtime (tying up a channel and all), plus >whatever other fees may be applicable at each end. Thus, every "junk call" >I get trying to get me to buy aluminum siding, or to vote Democratic, or to >switch my long-distance carrier (!), costs me a minimum of 42 cents, >depending on how fast I can realize who they are and get rid of them I have a similar plan. My cell phone company includes call forwarding in the package, so I deal with the possibility of junk calls by forwarding calls from my cell phone to my regular number (which has voicemail) during the day, then turning off the cell phone. This way, the calls are intercepted right at the switch (I assume), so no airtime is used, and no charges are incurred. Works for me... -- Martin Janzen janzen(a)idacom.hp.com

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Re: Metcalf and Other Net.Fogies
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:27 AM 9/5/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3COM, and how >publisher of "Infoworld" and sailing enthusiast, was interviewed on CNBC a >few minutes ago. He repeated his prediction of an "Internet collapse" in >1996, based on overuse, on bad pricing models, on lack of controls, and on >other concerns. Some are griping just to gripe. Metcalfe may have a valid prediction here. I have a machine that I use for work that is connected to the net via ethernet. No 28.8k bottlenecks involved. Most of the time I am lucky if I can exceed 14K bps to anything outside the local area. When I run traceroutes, the blockage is in MCI or Sprintnet land. (Except for the one to ftp.funet.fi early this week where where two of the machines somewhere in California were caught in some sort of weird DNS loop.) The bandwidth to the net has been oversold. If the government were *Really* concerned about "protecting the net", they would be on MCI and Sprint's cases, not looking for virtual terrorists. (Virtual Terrorists are to Terrorists the same way that Virtual Reality is to actual reality.) There have been days where you could not move anything at any reasonable speed from certain areas of the country. Yes, people have been predicting the end of the net (GIF/JPEG/WAV at 11!) since it was founded. In this case, I think that the person has enough network experience to be right. With the way things are now with oversold bandwidth, the DNS numbers getting close to being used up, many of the routers needing to be replaced and/or upgraded, and software that uses bandwidth like candy (phone conversations, video conferencing, huge interactive web page animations (like shockwave), real audio, and more as the marketing droids can sell you on it.), the chances of a west coast power-system style collapse does not seem that far from reality. (There are many who I know in the industry that are amazed that it has lasted this long.) On a smaller scale, those collapses happen in a small regional area, get fixed and things go on. But just like the earthquakes in California, everyone is waiting for "the Big One". (At least this one is preventable. Lets hope that the fixes can occur before the government gets involved, otherwise the net *IS* really doomed.) --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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Re: Court challenge to AOL junk-mail blocks
by AwakenToMe＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-09-06 23:31:06 EDT, rwright(a)adnetsol.com (Ross Wright) writes: << Everyone on this list seems to want to limit government intervention EXCEPT when it comes to spam, then every one just holds the door open wide and let them in. If they get that inch, they WILL take the whole 9 YARDS!!!!!! Get a clue, delete or killfile those who spam and keep the government out of cyberspace!!!!!! >> Tell me about it. Im on AOL. WHO CARESSSSSSS if ya get one MAYBE two pieces of mail you take LESS than a second to delete them both with the handy delete key. These people are wasting more time complaining about it than they will ever do actually deleting it.

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:50 AM 9/7/96, Jean-Francois Avon wrote: >A maybe usefull program would be a little tsr that constantly >overwrite unused sectors of the entire drive with random patterns >(maybe seeded with a fast keyboard interval timer). Like at the very >moment I am writing this, my HD has been idle for several minutes... > The NSA STM method is related to reading _very subtle_ variations in magnetic domain modifications. Jitter in read-write head positions can be thought of as a noise (N) added to some signal (S)l. Extraction of signals in low S/N ration environments is a well-developed science. Not to start another round of "thermite bomb" posts, but I would not trust n-pass erasures. Of course, this is about the least of my concerns. If the Feds are planning to use STM probes on your seized drives, you've got more serious problems. (The oft-discussed possibility of more secure dongles, or secret decoder rings. is still off in the future. Most of us just enter our various passwords, and our local disk drives reveal all.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Court challenge to AOL junk-mail blocks
by Ross Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Or About: 6 Sep 96 at 23:16, Damaged Justice wrote: > > This is utter horseshit. AOL, like any private individual or organization, > has the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason, or > even for no reason at all. Sure. I agree with that, no shoes no shirt, if you are on AOL you accept "internet-lite". > The gubmint isn't doing SQUAT, except forcing > AOL to allow the spammers access. Right now. Yet it has been apparent to me that many people are begging for restrictions to be put in place. Restrictions on spammers. The government saying anything about regulation of the internet is bad... Yet people still scream about a couple of unwanted e-mails. I'm saying that this spammer thing could be the "kink in our armour" that lets the government into our little playground here. Just suck it up and delete those messages. Jog it off. Ross =========== Ross Wright King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia Voice: 415-206-9906

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USF_avv MS's Martha Stewart
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For MSerfs and groupies: A NYC local rag has a salacious article, "Microsoft's own Martha Stewart," on Michael Goff, the newly appointed editor of Cityscape, MS's upcoming urban-slurp-fuck-and-vomit vanity. Excerpts: The key to why Bill Gates hired Mr. Goff may lie in the fact that Mr. Goff is a marketing maniac, a self-confessed "media whore." "He became more of an egotistical asshole overnight than anyone I'd ever seen when the magazine [Out] came out," said one prominent gay journalist and acquaintance. Mr. Goff is indeed a family man, of sorts: He confirmed that he is considering donating his services to two lesbian friends who want to raise their own child. He bristled at being pigeonholed for being gay, rather than being recognized for his creativity. "It has nothing to do with me being gay or not," he said. "I've always been focused on doing mass consumer media." Besides, he added, "They're not paying me like that. I don't have a jet or anything." ----- http://jya.com/usfavv.txt USF_avv

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Re: Race Bit: C
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:49 PM 9/6/96 +0000, jonathon wrote: >On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, jim bell wrote: >> used to test out hypotheticals, for example a "SimEconomy." For example, > > They are very hard to program, and the ones that do exist are > based on the usually flawed assumptions that the designers make. > EG: taxation is a requirement for government stability A few months ago, somebody posted onto CP a phony story, which claimed that "somebody" had developed an artificially-intelligent program which would take the place of the judge and (?) jury in the (so-called) justice system. It was an obvious phony, but I thought it was even more obvious, even if we assumed the existence of a program which is smart enough to interpret evidence and laws. The problem is, the "legal system" is practically saturated with unwritten biases which favor the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, and the government over everybody else. Any program which read the Constituion and the laws wouldn't see those biases, and would start writing decisions...respecting the Constitution! It would presumably view the violation of someone's Constitutional rights as a criminal act, and it would be hard for the cops to stay out of jail. The standard for conviction, "beyond a reasonable doubt," when religiously adhered-to would make convictions difficult to obtain. The program would look for Constitutional justification for anti-drug laws, and finding none, would ignore such violations but would convict anyone trying to enforce them. Likewise, it would read the second amendment (and the lack of authority for regulating guns in the rest of the Constitution) and conclude that guns were un-regulatable. The program would see that nothing in the Constitution requires people to testify for the prosecution. The program wouldn't see any justification for the judge-written concept of judicial civil immunity, or government-employee immunity in most cases. The program would notice that double-jeopardy is prohibited, and would prohibit any retrials in which there are "hung juries" or government errors. In other words, the government would actually have to start OBEYING THE CONSTITUTION! Ask most lawyers, and they'll say, 'No, that's not the way we do things.' In a sense, they're right! That's NOT the way they do things. And that's the problem! This would be considered unacceptable; the program would be declared "broken" and "useless." Sure, it could be fixed, but they'd have to qualify and quantify all of the biases currently present in the system, and write them into the program in the form of subroutines. The problem is, nobody who actually supports these biases would want to acknowledge what they are and why they're there, and nobody who opposes these biases would agree to keep them. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>(Used to be they just kept stuff secret; now they patent some of it.) > >United States Patent Patent Number: 5264794 > Date of Patent: 23 Nov 1993 > >Method of measuring magnetic fields on magnetically recorded media using a >scanning tunneling microscope and magnetic probe > >Inventor(s): Burke, Edward R., Silver Spring, MD, United States > Mayergoyz, Isaak D., Rockville, MD, United States > Adly, Amr A., Hyattsville, MD, United States > Gomez, Romel D., Beltsville, MD, United States >Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Director, > National Security Agency, Washington, DC, United > States (U.S. government) That isn't NSA research, it was merely sponsored by the NSA. Those are all university people who have published their work on MFSTM in journals, papers, and theses (I used some of it in my paper at the Usenix Security Symposium, and two of the images in my talk were provided by one of Mel Gomez' students). What the NSA is doing in this area is still classified (although I suspect the techology isn't much different from what's publicly available), in this case all they were doing was protecting their investment (just like the various PKC patents originally assigned to universities). Peter.

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

wb8foz(a)nrk.com writes: > > So switch to Fedex. The P.O. gives lousy service anyway. Privitize. > > > > Try & mail an anonymous FedEx package. Just lie on the sender label, isn't that obvious? I know people who actually use "codeword" sender labels, in case FedEx or federales ask about a package they can tell by the sender mentioned which to disavow :) > Try and pay cash in most Fedex offices. I always do and as long as I have exact change I have never been hassled. jim

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Re: Metcalf and Other Net.Fogies
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

perry(a)piermont.com writes: > Alan Olsen writes: > > Metcalfe may have a valid prediction here. > > Metcalfe is talking out his ass. He's reached the "old geezer who's > impeding his own field" stage. Many of his articles seem to be written > as though no one was trying to fix problems. Well, having talked with people involved with the problems I can assure you that they are real. The net brownouts when MAE-East dumps its BGP core or the fact that when one of the NAPs upgraded to FDDI it soon found that by the time people had installed the upgrades to the routers the bandwidth was already saturated should indicate that there are problems. Most of the problems are in the routers, even the top of the line Cisco boxes can only handle so much. The sky is not falling, but these sorts of problems are cracking the whip behind IPv6 and pushing the companies that make the routers pretty hard (Have you ever tried to buy even a lowly Cisco 2401? Do you know what the wait is on delivery? I really wish I had bought Cisco stock earlier...) > > When I run traceroutes, the blockage is in MCI or Sprintnet land. > > How do you manage to determine where you are losing bandwidth using > traceroute? That must be a mighty powerful traceroute to do that -- > most traceroutes I've seen are hard pressed just to find out what the > connectivity path is. Then you should probably upgrade your traceroute, preferably to one which allows source routing of the packets and then couple the output to a nice udp source routing script which will bounce a few packets between links with slow response times. Most of the problems are at the exchange points where packets go from one company's network to another. It seems that users have the annoying habit of wanting to talk to other people's customers...imagine the nerve :) > > The bandwidth to the net has been oversold. > > Always the case. Big deal. Bandwidth is still increasing pretty > fast. There are, naturally, growing pains, but the outages and > bandwidth situation are pretty good, all things considered. Compared > to the way things were eight or nine years ago they are amazing; > compared to four years ago they are still astoundingly better. Bandwidth may be increasing quickly, but demand for it is increasing even faster with every moron wanting tose the web while the routers to hook it all together and make it work are still very expensive and not being produced fast enough to satisfy the demand. Compared to the way things were even a few years ago the aggregate bandwidth that one person can expect is decreasing, it seems that no one writing internet protocols passed an Intro to Sociology/Poly Sci course and assumed that the tragedy of the commons did not apply to them. The upside of all of this is that it is creating a demand for value-added services which offer users dedicated bandwidth and faster response time in return for a little coin. This will probably push micro-currency on to the net faster than any other consumer demand... jim

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Re: Court challenge to AOL junk-mail blocks
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

frogfarm(a)yakko.cs.wmich.edu writes: > This is utter horseshit. AOL, like any private individual or organization, > has the right to refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason, or > even for no reason at all. The gubmint isn't doing SQUAT, except forcing > AOL to allow the spammers access. AOL has a service agreement with their customers, and they are not allowed to change the rules just because they feel like it (I believe that this is called a contract :) This is the jist of the injunction. jim

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Re: Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology (fwd)
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 6 Sep 96 14:04:51 -0500, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: >> I don't think any one step will solve all our spam problems >> but I wouldn't mind spending, say, 5 cents for each real piece >> of mail I sent outside my company and if end machines charged >> 5 cents per piece of ouside mail received, I think spamming >> would be crippled. (Note that with bad guy lists, you could >> collect the money and then just throw away the mail.) >So would you be willing to pay $50.00 for this message you sent to >cypherpunks? If there are a thousand recipients and each one charges $0.05 >for the priveledge of you sending it e-mail.... It seems like such a scheme >would not only cripple spam, but public discussion lists like this one. It's likely his $.05 would go to the list owner. When signing up for the list you would forfeit the right to collect on junk mail. Charging spammers would be up to the list... - "'Anonymity is bad,' says a source who wishes to remain anonymous." - Nuff' said. * Home: Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp * Autoresponder: send email w/subject of "send resume" or "send PGPKEY" * Work: cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 | (619)689-6579 * Member in good standing of the GNU whirled hors d'oeuvre

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 06 Sep 1996 11:59:18 -0500, John Deters wrote: >I hope some hardware hacker who knows their low-level stuff will be able to >write a secure disk wiper. They have: it's called a bulk tape eraser. <g> I'd just store everything sensitive on a floppy. Those are easy to erase with a heavy duty magnet (not a wimpy refrigerator magnet). I understand slagging one in the microwave is also effective <g>. - "'Anonymity is bad,' says a source who wishes to remain anonymous." - Nuff' said. * Home: Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp * Autoresponder: send email w/subject of "send resume" or "send PGPKEY" * Work: cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 | (619)689-6579 * Member in good standing of the GNU whirled hors d'oeuvre

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 6 Sep 1996 14:03:43 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >>A maybe usefull program would be a little tsr that constantly >>overwrite unused sectors of the entire drive with random patterns >>(maybe seeded with a fast keyboard interval timer). Like at the very >>moment I am writing this, my HD has been idle for several minutes... >The NSA STM method is related to reading _very subtle_ variations in >magnetic domain modifications. Jitter in read-write head positions can be >thought of as a noise (N) added to some signal (S)l. Extraction of signals >in low S/N ration environments is a well-developed science. > >Not to start another round of "thermite bomb" posts, but I would not trust >n-pass erasures. It's still likely that if you left it running after a month or so it would be next to impossible to do (assuming the NSA didn't get lucky - you still have to worry!) >Of course, this is about the least of my concerns. If the Feds are planning >to use STM probes on your seized drives, you've got more serious problems. Such as asking why you didn't use some very strong crypto software? Work out some sort of parallel port dongle that could be connected, the software generates a random key, the parallel port device is written and then removed. Further access would involve connecting. The code & chips needed have been provided in many places; DDJ for one. Allows a very convincing "Well it was encrypted and your goon stepped on the key!" >(The oft-discussed possibility of more secure dongles, or secret decoder >rings. is still off in the future. Most of us just enter our various >passwords, and our local disk drives reveal all.) This is too true. - "'Anonymity is bad,' says a source who wishes to remain anonymous." - Nuff' said. * Home: Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp * Autoresponder: send email w/subject of "send resume" or "send PGPKEY" * Work: cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 | (619)689-6579 * Member in good standing of the GNU whirled hors d'oeuvre

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[NOISE] Propaganda Bit: C
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:50 AM 9/6/96 -0800, Jim Bell wrote: >Since red liquid running in the streets is generally so reviled, one of the >things which mystifies me is why there aren't more simulation-type programs >used to test out hypotheticals, for example a "SimEconomy." For example, As someone else pointed out recently, this depends _so_ strongly on the assumptions built into your model, both explicit and implicit. SimHealth, for instance, was a propaganda piece put out for the last election so people could play with different approaches to managing other peoples' health care. If Duncan were to write something like that, anybody who tinkered with the economy would make it go downhill. If Ross Perot wrote it, anybody who started making the deficit larger would find his picture at the bottom of the screen having the ears grow larger. I assume that if Jim wrote it, anybody who did anything to the economy other than decrease government involvement would find a bunch of nasty little dwarves throwing stone knives at them.... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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IDC_ard
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

9-8-96. NYP Mag: "The True Terror Is In the Card." Faced with rising crime, illegal immigration, welfare fraud and absentee parents, many bureaucrats and members of Congress insist that the nation would run more smoothly if we all had counterfeit-proof plastic identity cards. Let's be clear that this is a one-way street. Once having established a requirement to carry photo ID, it will be difficult if not impossible to reverse. Don't we realize the dangers of allowing the Government to establish identity and legitimacy? Isn't it, in fact, the responsibility of the citizenry to establish the legitimacy of the Government? ----- http://jya.com/idcard.txt (11 kb) IDC_ard

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Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:20 PM 9/6/96 -0400, David Lesher / hated by RBOC's in 5 states wrote: >> >> So switch to Fedex. The P.O. gives lousy service anyway. Privitize. >> > >Try & mail an anonymous FedEx package. >Try and pay cash in most Fedex offices. Buy money order. Slip it into the plastic pouch with the airbill. Drop it into collection box. Works. DCF

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ASP_oil
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

9-7-96. FiTi: "Indian herb trick turns water into kerosene." A young, unemployed south Indian has flummoxed India's top government scientists by demonstrating an apparently simple recipe for producing a kerosene-like fuel by boiling a "mystery" herb in water: prospectively, he hopes, revolutionising the world energy industry. "We have no doubt we are sitting on something very big," said Mr Valangiman Ramamurthi, India's top science bureaucrat. Watching scientists professed little idea how or why the process worked, but said it conclusively produced "a clear oil separation in substantial quantities" which tests have identified as a hydrocarbon similar to kerosene. "Its properties make it better than petrol," said one. "Apparently the herb can grow widely in all types of soil -- it is very exciting." 9-7-96. WaPo: "More in the Pipeline." In the 1970s fear gripped the Western world that Earth was running out of oil. Since then, vast new reserves have been discovered that can be extracted with current technology. The known crude oil reserve now amounts to one trillion barrels -- enough for 45 to 50 years at current world production rates, and estimated reserves are at least one trillion barrels more. ----- http://jya.com/aspoil.txt (6 kb for 2) ASP_oil

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Re: What the NSA is patenting
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:18 AM 9/7/96 -0800, Adamsc wrote: >On Fri, 06 Sep 1996 11:59:18 -0500, John Deters wrote: > >>I hope some hardware hacker who knows their low-level stuff will be able to >>write a secure disk wiper. > >They have: it's called a bulk tape eraser. <g> > > >I'd just store everything sensitive on a floppy. Those are easy to erase with a >heavy duty magnet (not a wimpy refrigerator magnet). I understand slagging one >in the microwave is also effective <g>. Just remember that an AC-driven bulk eraser will be far more effective than a permanent magnet at erasing data securely. An oscillating magnet field re-magnetizes the floppy 120 times per second, as opposed to the single magnetization done by the permanent magnet. Each pass through the hysteresis curve brings down residual signals somewhat, maybe 10 db. With the AC field, it's hard NOT to have a good erase. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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forward secrecy in mixmaster
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since Peter Allen's discussion of mixmaster, I started doing something I'd been thinking of for a while, since noticing that it was on the mixmaster to-do list months ago (ie there is unfinished source to do this): direct socket connections and diffie-hellman key exchange for forward secrecy. I wrote the socket stuff yesterday evening, didn't take too long as socket programming is something I've done lots of. Now comes what do you actually send down the sockets. Question for Lance, and any others who were involved in mixmasters implementation: what did you have in mind as a way of negotiating the DH keys? I notice that mixmaster generates a DH key and stores it in file `DH.mix', but that this is not (as far as I can see from the source) included in the remailers public key block. (A couple of comments as an aside: I think that you should be able to have a much smaller generator without loss of security, this should reduce the overhead of a DH key exchange. Using 3 even I think is safe, without any extra precautions on prime generation. You can even go to 2, with a few precautions (PGPfone does this). Comment #2 I think 1024 may be a bit small, I don't have any figures handy for relative security of DH key lengths, but PGPfone offers 4096 bit DH for instance. Does rsaref have limits on prime lengths for DH, the same as it does for RSA?). There are lots of options for DH public key negotiation. First option is whether you have a common prime and generator for all remailers or not. If you have a common prime, accusations of the prime being `cooked' (chosen to have a weakness) can be mitigated by using a deterministic generation method based on the hash of a known phrase (a Jefferson quote perhaps), or PI or whatever. A common modulus may offer a fatter target for attack (for some precomputation attacks), but with large enough keys this probably isn't that bad, as there aren't that many mixmasters anyway. With a common modulus there is DH key negotiation needed, just include it with the source. For different modulii for each remailer, there are more options: a) include the DH key signed by the RSA key in the remailers public key (may break backwards compatibility with existing versions of mixmaster) b) send the DH public key at the start of each session c) send the DH public key on request There is also a question of which key do you use, the sender remailers or the recipient remailers. Negotiating DH public keys during execution also opens the possibility for periodic re-keying. Thats the end of my thoughts on direct socket mixmaster. Next message is some thoughts on non-interactive forward secrecy protocols. Adam -- #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

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non-interactive forward secrecy
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[This discussion is driven by the desirability of having forward secrecy in mixmaster for the mix packets delivered by email where the interactive nature of normal DH is incovenient] Anyone have any ideas for a non-interactive forward secrecy protocol? Aside from actually doing the DH key exchange via email (painful), I have one suggestion for a protocol, perhaps people can improve on this: Assuming common prime p, and generator g: Two remailers A and B. A wants to send messages to B without having to wait for replies from B. B generates ys (y0,y1,...,yn), where y(i+1) = hash(y(i)) then computes Ys (Y0,Y1,...,Yn) where Y(i) = g ^ y(i) mod p B sends A Ys, and discards ys. Now A can send B n consecutive packets with forward secrecy before receiving any more packets from B. (B keeps y0, and overwrites it with y1 = hash(y0), etc, so that all B ever has to hand is the current y(i), and y(i-1) is hard to compute from y(i) because of the hash functions properties.) This isn't truly non-interactive, it just reduces the number of interactions, to an interactive exchange in 1 out of n cases. (you could randomly chose ys rather than having related ys, and delete y(i) after use, but this has higher storage requirements (n rather than 1 on the recipient)). Heres the obvious construction for a truly non-interactive forward secrecy protocol based on DH. (That is it only requires 1 interactive exchange). Aside from the obvious of having a huge n, and the above protocol, which would have large space requirements, what we're after is a way to do this with negligable space requirements. Say that we have the two parties Alice and Bob. Bob doesn't loose much by having his secret (x) related as above. 1. x(i+1) = f1( x(i) ) 2. X(i+1) = f2( X(i) ) 3. f1 is non reversible f1 should have hash-like properties (it should be non-reversible). Do functions f1 and f2 satisfying 1, 2 and 3 exist? Is there another way to achieve this? (My closest attempt so far, based on the hardness of discrete square roots: f1(x) = x^2 (mod p) f2(X) = X^2 (mod p) doesn't work because g^(x^2 mod p) mod p != g^(x^2) mod p) Adam -- #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

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Re: MUD anyone?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:06 AM 9/1/96 +0000, Rev. Mark Grant wrote: >On Tue, 27 Aug 1996, Jon Leonard wrote: >Protection Agencies >Escrow Agencies >Private Law Courts (probably controlled by players rather than the computer) >Reputation Agencies > >> What am I missing? Should there be direct support for Jim Bell's >> assasination markets? It'd provide a means of demonstrating its >> ineffectiveness as a means of social control. > >I think it should be incorporated, but I think that people can set them up >easily themselves. Perhaps we should have an NPC-run 'Assasins Inc' which >would run the lottery, and then players could do the actual 'wet work'. > >But yes, I'd really like to see how this would work in the game. As I >said I'm thinking of this more as a semi-scientific experiment than a >pure game. We have some idea of how this stuff should work in theory, but >little of how it works in practice. > >I do think though that we'd have to enforce some kind of rule against >'disposable characters', otherwise people could simply create a new >character every time they were killed trying to assasinate someone. There >would need to be some disadvantage to just going in guns-blazing and being >killed ten times in a row. Wouldn't it be more realistic if instead of representing individual characters, you created composites which had a "weight" based on how many of them exist in the country/world? For example, the character "buggy-whip maker" in 1900 would be weighted in the thousands, while his number would be drastically reduced a few decades later. This would avoid the "going in with guns blazing" scenario, or at least it would put it into perspective: the number of assassins would drop by "1" (or some proportion) if that happened, although correspondingly the number of targets would also drop. With this system, a character would never die, but his number would simply drop to an insignificant quantity. ("Government-thugs" comes to mind...) And that's not the only reason the number of characters would drop: If it suddenly became "unhealthy" to accept a public paycheck, and thus the risk wasn't matched by the rewards, presumably people would shift professions. Again, this would all be part of the simulation. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Court challenge to AOL junk-mail blocks
by Will Rodger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 12:27 PM 9/7/96 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote: >If AOL wants to stop spammers, let them. They have every right to do so as >long as their agreement with their customers permits it. It's a matter of >contract law between AOL and its customers and should not involve the >spammers and a lawsuit brought by the spammers. > >It seems as though the judge was snookered by the spammers' claim of U.S. >Mail-like service, free speech, blah. The right to free speech does >extend to corporations; in that way, it includes the right *not* to speak. > Declan raises a good point. But I'm guessing it's a bit more complex than that. CyberPromo and AOL lawyers tell me the court slapped down AOL simply to "keep the status quo." Both sides used those very words, in fact. What's more, CyberPromo talks a good game on the First Amendment, but used computer fraud and unfair competition statutes - not the Bill of Rights - in its original filing against AOL. So what's going on? It seems Weiner is _very_ aware that this case deals with things never before argued in court. No one has really sorted out just how much e-mail - if any - an ISP is obligated to carry against its wishes. What Weiner decides this fall may not set the kind of precendent that the case of the Pentagon Papers did, but will be important for a while at least. Will -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMjIIw0cByjT5n+LZAQFNWgf/Xb+yG9JDVZ6MN1Hz/K4IUCXL8hSgjeG3 +Ih+aXiod/vVAHXCJmktvBJFWWAJjpFjW/0WQljvsMULxXYpdXAYFDh4kiZZg4A3 7xkjCsT+Kpi8lDCRmFPciQfvoLyiEJxr8hI2l2qucE0THV0spysTKpgYueggLZI6 no5mC47ZGusfL9jWb7qrnbqjO1h+0mVZYgr0GRY8MVvyMsJGgylEDaiCh0KSaI1V TqEfTF+kcbzqtht0yG/M+QmCRertH4s1y9IWllWvJLMbAfwgFCxgGtamWoyXiHye keXAGLK0r2u8vTfwK5rJ91ZR774CGkZHulNi3wx53pZaFyYPJtYizA== =KS50 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Metcalf and Other Net.Fogies
by John Brothers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:17 AM 9/7/96 -0400, perry(a)piermont.com wrote: > > <snip discussion of internet collapse> > >I'm "involved with the problems" too, you know. Don't teach granpaw to >suck eggs. OF COURSE there are problems. None of them, however, are >signs of "collapse". This whole thing makes me ill - maybe I'm just an idiot. What could possibly cause a collapse? More usage?? No - that would just mean that everyone's access would be slower. Do routers fail because they can't talk to other routers? no - they route around it. I consider myself reasonably educated when it comes to the layout of the internet, and I have never heard _anyone_ ever say what constitutes a collapse, and, if it means 'catastrophic permanent failure of the Internet', what could possibly cause that. These people are acting like one day, something is going to blow up, and the entire internet will follow, and stay down for a long long time. If all the DNS servers died, the internet would stop working for non-local access until they recovered. If there was a bug in Cisco routers that was set to go off on Thursday, September 12th, that would render them inoperable until power cycled, that would cause a major failure. If every building in MCI and Sprint's data network blew up, that would cause a major failure. If the usage increased so that the Internet was 'saturated', that doesn't qualify as a collapse. It qualifies as 'rush hour'. If the internet was in 'rush hour' 24 hours a day, it would be unfun to use, but unlike the highway system, we can add more lanes pretty much at will. (within reason). Will someone please explain to me what I'm missing? Thanks John --- John Brothers Do you have a right not to be offended?

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