December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Petaflops Boondoggle Computer (was PET_ard)
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 29 Sep 1996 12:16:27 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >Symmetric multiprocessing is available, but it's often much less hassle to >have a single CPU running at 200 MHz than to try games with multiple >processors (which means more PCB real estate, more sockets, more of other >things). As far as SMP goes, it's actually not all that expensive. People in the linux-smp list have reported differences of as little as $50 for a uniprocessor vs. dual pentium system. Of course, every so often we'll get a message about a $30,000 system that can handle up to <drool>64 Pentium Pros</drool>! # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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Tools for Rendering Censorship Firewalls Ineffective
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been trying to categorize the web censorship techniques available to governments, such as Singapore and China's Firewall Curtains, Germany's ISP Threats, etc. The objective is to make information widely and conveniently available to subjects of the censoring country by building tools that will provide multiple paths to data that are easy to find and hard to block because they're too pervasive. I'm assuming that email is difficult to block, in-country public websites are blockable (through business licenses, lawsuits, rubber-hoses, or confiscation), in-country private websites are difficult to block but not very relevant, authors can afford and post to foreign web sites without effective blocking, and that the real "threat" to the government is foreign websites making banned information conveniently available to its subjects. I'm also assuming that the government can use humans to discover a moderate quantity of banned info, but that blocking will mostly be done by bots rather than human readers. In particular, I'm ignoring the approach of in-country hidden websites, since it's too vulnerable in some countries, and focussing on the web rather than email because it's mass-market and easier to use, and email is harder to stop, especially given crypto and remailers. Notation: "Attack" is the Censors trying to stop data; "defend" and "evade" are the Good Guys trying to not get censored. The obvious techniques I can see include 1) Filter on IP address (e.g. German attack on XS4ALL) 2) Filter on DNS Name 3) Filter on Patterns in URL 4) Filter on Patterns in PUT/GET Requests 5) Filter on Patterns in Response. 6) Traffic Analysis on reading patterns Defenses - The most important defenses to these attacks depend on ubiquity and volume - they can block one or two of anything, they might be able to block a thousand, and it's not possible to block millions of things everywhere. So building bridges between systems and increasing multiplicity is a win. 1) It's easy to evade the crude version of this attack - use rolling IP addresses, and use DNS to publish the new ones. For the German model, where the government has to tell the ISPs who to block, this wins. They can counter by blocking your whole IP network, not just a single machine, which you can counter by hopping IP networks as well as hosts, though that's more trouble (and blocking routes is probably easier than blocking hosts, since you do it at the routers, and harder to get people to turn back on.) They can also enforce boycotts on the ISP, as they did with XS4ALL - blocking most of the traffic to a site can affect its other traffic enough to be economically annoying. The attackers can counter by also tracking the address with a bot - if you change addresses hourly, they can change blocking addresses hourly, which may workable for somewhere high-tech like Singapore or very focussed like China, but isn't very effective for somewhere porous like Germany that has a system of laws that move at the speed of bureaucracy. A very effective defense against this method is to deploy relay servers, either anonymizers or simple non-anonymizing cgi scripts that take URLs like http://foo.bar.com/cgi-bin/relay.pl/http://banned.site.org/ and fetch and return the real URL (perhaps modifying any URLs in it to connect through the relay.) This works if there are lots of easy-to-find relay servers. An obvious approach would be to package the relay program with Apache or other popular web server, so anybody who didn't bother turning it off would have a relay named "relay.pl"; the attackers can't realistically block everybody who's got one. Another effective defense is to use web servers that gateway to AFS (Andrew File System) or other distributed file systems. This lets /stanford.edu/censored-mirrors/banned.html be accessible from any site supporting AFS, such as http://www.cmu.edu/afs/stanford.edu/censored-mirrors/banned.html This has the great advantage that AFS sites are usually at major universities, which are important enough that lots of people would complain if you blocked them. This works better if there's an easy way to insert things into the AFS tree - volunteers are fine, but if there are servers that can automatically import material it becomes easier, either by copying or by various kinds of indirection. (On the other hand, if you allow automated import, attackers can turn your site into the Child Pornography NarcoTerrorist Bomb Info Mart and ban you...) Do the major web crawlers index AFS? Or do the sites use robots.txt to prevent multiple crawls, e.g. by only allowing searching on the local file systems and not on the remote ones? 2) Filtering on DNS names is an attack that proxy servers can use - the HTTP spec [RFC1945] says that requests to proxies need to send an Absolute URI (method://machine[:port][abs_path]) rather than just the absolute path (/etc.), so the proxy servers can filter on DNS names, defeating the rolling-IP-address defense. Doesn't stop relays. Non-proxy attacks don't have access to this method. However, governments that use full-scale firewalls and not just http proxies can also restrict what DNS queries the National DNS Servers will pass. How to defend against it for non-proxy attackers? One way is to make it easy to find the IP address of a server with banned material - web indexers can find everything, so putting the IP form of the URL in a file that the popular indexers, along with useful keywords, is one way to make sure you get found. Another would be to deploy DNS servers widely (done:-) and maybe form-based interfaces for users that will run Dig or whatever. 3) Filtering on patterns in URLs - as with DNS filters, a proxy server run by an attacker can block access based on patterns in the URL, such as relay.pl. This makes it tougher to use relays as a defense, because they either need to have different names on different machines (harder for users to find and for administrators to implement without having to pay attention), or else to not need a name (either modify the protocols or at least the servers so that http://foo.bar.com/http://banned.site.org/stuff.html gets handled properly.) The latter is doable, but probably requires more administrator support? Pattern matching on URLs can make it easier to attack AFS - you don't need to kill the whole AFS tree, just the banned parts. Pattern matching on URLs already starts to have heavy volume issues - can a proxy server take the extra time to search an ever-larger banned list on every web hit? Having used overloaded proxy servers at work (:-), I'd expect the population to start acting like disgruntled postal workers if the mandatory national firewall is underpowered. On the other hand, I suppose a government could partially solve scale problems by requiring a license fee for use of the proxy server; a few bucks per user could pay for increasing numbers of servers as well as tracking who's reading what. 4) Filter on Patterns in PUT/GET Requests As a defense against blocking URLs by patterns, defenders can send requests as message-body in PUT/GET requests; this is also useful for submitting banned material to cooperative sites. Attackers can filter on this material, though they can't easily filter out SSL or S-HTTP requests by content, depending on how much the protocols pass material end-to-end rather than link-by-link where the proxy can see it. 5) Filter on Patterns in Responses. Similarly, attackers could just grep for banned material in HTTP responses, though SSL/S-HTTP both interfere with this. Defenders can also structure banned writing in ways that don't trigger patterns easily (e.g. don't refer to Lee Kwan Yew, just refer to That Bum or Mr. Big, etc.) Filtering on picture content is obviously difficult, so including text in graphics can help prevent attacks. In general, I'd expect filtering attacks to be extremely susceptible to volume. On the other hand, attackers don't have to filter in real-time; they could scan material as a background activity, and go arrest the people who have received contraband after the fact, or just block their National Firewall Passports if they're reading too much. In general, this attack is probably more useful for overall study of what their subjects are reading than for real-time. 6) Traffic Analysis - who's reading what? Where? Who's reading a lot of contraband? What's popular foreign material? Which of the attackers' subjects are possible fellow travellers, based on what they're reading? This kind of material is useful for marketing as well as for identifying malcontents - businesses aren't always pro-privacy either, though they want their own secrets kept secret. Many of the attacks above can work as after-the-fact analysis more effectively than they can as real-time blocking, and volume is less of a problem for crunching a sample of firewall logs than for active blocking; this may be the hardest attack to counter, though it's repression rather than censorship. If you can't police everybody, you can at least encourage the policeman in everybody's head. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ What other kinds of attacks are there? What other defenses? What kinds of holes are there in these defenses? # 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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PRNG discussions
by scottb＠aca.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I was wondering if anyone has kept an archive of old disscusions on PRNG's. I am playing around with a few ideas, and don't want to re-invent the wheel. Does anyone know of any FTP sites containg this sort of thing?? /sb

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Re: [RANT] Re: Workers, Public Schools, Tradesmen, and Justice
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 29 Sep 1996 13:26:08 -0400 (EDT), Rabid Wombat wrote: >> The old way was that your HS provided what the mythical average person needed >> to go about life. College was for the more "complex" careers. >Perhaps "high school" should end at age 16, with two years of publicly >funded "junior college" or "technical school" available to those who >select one or the other, and qualify. This would bring an adult-level >decision earlier in life, and students would need to start thinking about >which path to chose at about 14. Perhaps this would allow reality to set >in at an earlier age. A high school diploma has become meaningless anyway >- it is viewed as a "right." How about a real simple rule: if you don't pass a standardized test (Call it the SATs w/800 of 1600 minimum) you repeat the grade - no maximum age! Might end some of those "easy A" classes I took. >This wouldn't leave anyone condemned to a life of menial labor for a >decision made at age 16 - there are plenty of successful people who have >obtained a G.E.D. later in life, and then gone on to college. It would, >however, give some measure of responsibility to the near-adult. Yeah. I'd still say that you'd want to make it pretty easy to switch over - I've known a few people who were massively flip-flopping. Also, some kids may have hard times (parents divorce, etc) that might screw up their judgement for awhile. . . >fiance did drop out of high school at age 16 and started college, with her >parent's blessing. All her high school guidence counselor could come up >with was "But she'll miss her prom"! <g> That seemed to be the general focus last year... "We may be idiots but we have school spirit!" In CA, isn't there the option of taking CHSPE (sp?) that is like a GED but instead of sending the "I don't want this" message is more like "I don't want to waste my time"? # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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Re: [CRYPTO] Does any body know anything about this?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:38 PM 9/29/96 -0700, some nobody wrote: >Is this just more snakeoil or is this real? Neither Matt Blaze nor Ross Anderson are particularly on the pro-snake-oil side.... Sounds like an interesting talk and I'd enjoy being there for a variety of reasons, including being able to time-travel back to Last Monday :-) One difference between snake oil salesmen and mathematical cryptographers is that the latter talk about what they're doing, why it's as strong as it is, and how it relates back to other known hard problems or attack techniques. If this is sufficiently hard, cool. Most of the symmetric-key attacks these days are based on being sufficiently messy to be hard to attack, and on resisting known attacks, but there's no particular way to prove how hard they are - you can just show that they're messier than any currently known techniques can untangle. On the other hand, the experience with most public-key techniques is that it's hard to adapt NP-hard problems to crypto in ways that don't introduce special forms that can fall apart when handled right - the knapsack problem was a good example. Factoring and discrete-log still appear to be hard problems, but it would be nice to have other known-hard public-key systems. It would also be nice to have private-key systems that use NP-hard problems in strong ways, especially if it doesn't make them appallingly slow :-) >TITLE: SYMMETRIC-KEY CIPHERS BASED ON HARD PROBLEMS >A useful principle in cipher design is to reduce or at least relate >closely the cryptanalysis of the cipher to some long-studied problem >that is believed to be difficult. Most public-key ciphers follow this >principle fairly closely (e.g., RSA is at least similar to factoring). >Modern symmetric-key ciphers, on the other hand, can rarely be reduced >in this way and so are frequently designed specifically to resist the >various known cryptanalytic attacks. In this informal talk, we examine >a simple cipher primitive, based on Feistel networks, for which recovery >of its internal state given its inputs and outputs is NP-complete. We >outline simple and efficient block- and stream- cipher constructions >based on this primitive. # 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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Re: Cryptography..
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:03 AM 9/29/96 -0700, Erp <erp(a)digiforest.com> wrote: >What is the maximum encryption allowed to be created. With export >restrictions in mind, and without export restrictiosn in mind... >Thanks... By WORLD and US standards please... The laws of nature don't appear to provide any maximum strength, assuming you run out of atoms to store your data before you run out of capacity for your computer, and _you'll_ be out of cash long before that :-) For mathematically strong algorithms, you can make the work a cracker has to do be exponentially larger than the amount of work you have to do to decrypt, so you win. Different governments have different rules, and many have no rules. Bert-Jaap Koops has a summary that (last time I looked) was at http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/CRI/projects/bjk/lawsurvy.htm about different governments' crypto use and export rules. For the US, you can export cryptography software if you get permission, and you can usually get permission if you're using up to 40-bit symmetric-key keys and 512-bit public keys, or if you're writing software that's strictly for banking. You usually can't get permission for stronger crypto than that, unless you're a registered international arms dealer and are only selling your crypto gear to Friends Of The Pentagon. There aren't any restrictions on the strength of crypto you can use for messages you're exporting, only on software you export. And there are somewhat bizarre interpretations of "export", including telling foreigners inside US borders if they're not US subjects. Domestically, there are no restrictions on crypto you can write and use inside the US, subject of course to the bizarre interpretations of "domestically" that accompany "export". # 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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GCHQ releases Venona files (from UK Telegraph)
by Sherry Mayo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, A couple of articles from the UK Daily Telegraph may be of interest. The earlier one "Codebreakers come clean" is about the upcoming congference on cold war intelligence & mentions the continued release of the NSA's Venona files (see http://www.nsa.gov:8080/docs/venona/venona.html) The article is at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et/access?ac=116192744309&pg=//96/9/29/wspy29.ht… The second is about the GCHQ (UK equivalent of NSA) releasing its own Venona files in response to the NSA release. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et/access?ac=116192744309&pg=//96/9/30/ngch30.ht… These are being released into the public records office, but there is no indication that they will appear on the net for the time being. Sherry

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A periodic alert regarding Tim May
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May styles his facial hair to look more like pubic hair.

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crypto cd
by Remo Pini 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Mon Sep 30 07:21:49 1996 Still looking for material... especially: sci.crypt archives (10.1994 until now... Mark Riordan???) sci.crypt.research archives (all) other releavant news groups has anybody anybody got anything? remo - ------< fate favors the prepared mind >------ Remo Pini rp(a)rpini.com PGP: http://www.rpini.com/crypto/crypto.html - ----< words are what reality is made of >---- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv Comment: http://www.rpini.com/crypto/crypto.html iQEVAwUBMk9Y7hFhy5sz+bTpAQHz3wf/VD175Mf8ShQ0drqvwH4m5Yf7N9iE0ZeG V5Nv80Um3ofnhZvFscgijgPf54+25a8ogWJcEB3k+SEROvkeQkA49QmEYPIlotYi 2U6+xb5bgjQ5NvRMe09o+3cBSd7y3HabWpNPBtCX4cLxKWm3DOw+xOa+CWf8Kmuu nuaFaJhKG1RYkr/3QNPFlDSbh7PPi1Rg7go0LdVMkQUzMgWizkAOJJlg0cl5ZdVE ZV6JdiQD6o9JBWKEOX1Y4mqxQ9tRRDagfADa3S8wPOpT3WxWKVgKgbjLtvUsXrgZ miokoDGNSs2Cxlw+wk9kxKAbRrsCfoEAAPygvCHEDp0WGxA445iRZA== =NT66 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Looking for Codebreaker's by David Kahn
by Hendrik Reh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Im looking for Codebreakers by David Kahn !! Can anybody give me a hint where i can get this book thanx -- ,,,, Gruss, /'^'\ Hendrik ( o o ) -oOOO--(_)--OOOo------------------------------------------------ Hendrik Reh, Tel. : +49 0681 48362 .oooO WWW: http://fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de/~garetjax/ ( ) Oooo. eMail: hereh(a)stud.uni-sb.de ---\ (----( )------------------------------------------------- \_) ) / (_/

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Re: What about making re-mailers automatically chain?
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Would it be a good idea to have a re-mailer "randomly" decide whether to >send the mail to the destination or to another re-mailer. No. The remailer user should be presumed to know what s/he wants. Some remailer users may want to optimize for speed and certainty of delivery and therefore use a short chain; other users may want to optimize for more difficult traceability, and consequently choose a long chain. Remailers shouldn't try to rewrite the user's (perhaps) deliberate balancing of these factors. Also, users may choose to use or not use certain remailers based upon their policies, the reputation of the operators, the legal rules affecting the operators, and so forth. These choices should also be left to the user and not overridden by third parties. > If all >re-mailers performed this way, not even the sender would know the path. I don't see why this is useful. As things work now, only the sender knows the path, assuming chaining and nesting encryption. How does taking away the sender's knowledge add security? Adding hops to the chain requires that remailers keep track of other remailers; a robust way of doing this would require that they also keep track of reliability, because deciding to add a downed (or unreliable) remailer to a chain would be harmful. To prevent an active and hostile eavesdropper from adding itself as a remailer eligible to receive extra hops (and then dropping or logging the traffic), this remailer status information should be provided by a trusted source in a secure manner. All of this (adding remailer status tracking based on frequent updates of digitally signed information from a trusted third party) can be done, but it's a pain in the ass to code, and it doesn't add anything that users can't get for themselves. (Users who want long difficult-to-trace chains can already generate them. They can also let software generate random chains at the source.) It also may degrade performance for users who value speed and reliability over untraceability. So I suggest that it's not very useful. The best way to implement this would be to modify remailers to use "Anon-To: random" or "Random-To: xxx(a)yyy.zzz" header commands, such that users who desired the random hop behavior could get it, but users who didn't want it wouldn't get it unexpectedly. (Isn't some remailer doing this already? I've lost track.) -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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Re: Making Remailers Widespread [REMAILERS]
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:37 AM 9/29/96 EDT, you wrote: >How about: maintain a list of trusted blocking-list sites (comparable to the >list of remailers used for chaining) and when it comes the time to update the >local copy of the blocking list, ask a random one on the list; if it's down, >ask another random one on the list. There may even be more than one list. :-) Getting more complex, but it might be workable. >> sender-blocking list ... >With most ISP's it's trivial to forge one's From: header in SMTP. >Switching to another dime-a-dozen throwaway account is also trivial. >Just admit that you can't block senders, and don't pretend that you >can - false pretenses destroy one's credibility. You obviously can't source-block a determined spammer, but you can slow down some spam attacks, especially if they're one individual using his/her regular account. It's no panacaea, but it helps. Also, if you source-block based on patterns anywhere in the header, you can catch less capable email forgers. >I think I see a way to accomplish this without too much trouble. >When an e-mail is directed at u@c4.c3.c2...c1, the code that checks >for blocking will search for the following records in the blocking list: >u@c4.c3.c2...c1 (exact match) >*@c4.c3.c2...c1 (replace user by *) >u@*.c3.c2...c1 (replace leftmost .-separated piece of domain by *) >*@*.c3.c2...c1 (both) >and repeat until there are only 2 components left in the domain name. That'd work. It's clunky, but there's no avoiding clunkiness for this sort of thing, and it does preserve privacy. >Now, the question is, who would be allowed to add records containing >'*' to the blocking list using the cookie protocol? I suggest that it be >one of the contacts listed in Internic's database. postmaster@domain is (ostensibly) guaranteed to exist. The Internic database is an interesting alternative, but for this I suspect postmaster is good enough. There's also the problem that for many domains, where smallcompany.com is virtual on an ISP, the Internic database will generally list someone at the ISP, who probably has no interest in the issue, rather than someone responsible for making decisions about smallcompany.com >Thus a blocking record for cypherpunks(a)toad.com could be added by >anyone listed in toad.com's Internic entry. There's no need for any >Remailer Cabal [tinc] to maintain blocking lists. For destination blocking, I agree that users should be able to block their own stuff as automagically as possible. For source blocking, most of the need is for spams and abusers that have been tracked down (or identify themselves in their postings), and that takes human thought. In particular, spammers are unlikely to block themselves from the remailers (:-), but forgers may try to block legitimate users. >One other suggestion: instead of storing one bit of information (the >address is on the list or not), why not have several flag bits. >E.g., the blocking list could contain records similar to: >hash - e.g. 160-bit SHA >flags - e.g. reserve 32 bits Interesting. I suspect the state of the art would be to collect the bits with a disclaimer that there isn't any code to interpret them :-), but it does let you build a blocking database that's usable as capabilities grow. Any suggestions for flags besides block/allow one-way, block/allow two-way, and max-size? I'm thinking of doing a remailer that instead of sending you a message, it sends you a retrieval cookie and lets you send it back to collect the message; blocking that would be another flag. The other kind of blocking that needs adding is blocking by words in message bodies - the spammer that caused me to shut down my remailer and not bring it back up was posting hate messages with somebody else's name and email signed at the bottom. It only took one or two to generate a flood of flames to the victim, and my current remailer couldn't block any followups. Also, since the spammer wasn't generating the flames himself, his spam slipped under the remailer's spam counter, just as hipcrime's did. This sort of blocking also lets you block things like the hipcrime spam and MAKE MONEY FAST. But it's a much more sensitive problem - anybody who can add things to the body-checking list can start doing real censorship, and it's probably best to leave that to individual operators to block, or at least to turn on by hand rather than default. # 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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the key of DES
by yjkim＠ssrnet.snu.ac.kr 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, all ! With given a unknown DES system with 64 bits plaintext p, ciphertext c, can there be MORE THAN ONE keys ? If so, How is the probability (big or small)? Sincerely, - Yoonejong =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Yoonjeong Kim Email: yjkim(a)ssrnet.snu.ac.kr Department of Computer Engineering Phone: +82-2-875-7726 (office) Seoul National University +82-2-872-9801 (home) Seoul 151-742 Korea Fax: +82-2-875-7726 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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(Firewalls) Where is that Snake Oil FAQ again?
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This may of course, just be a troll. ----- Forwarded message from Anonymous ----- >From firewalls-owner(a)GreatCircle.COM Sun Sep 29 21:27:09 1996 Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 02:37:26 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <199609300037.CAA20690(a)basement.replay.com> Subject: New Release - Software OTP Encryption. Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: firewalls(a)GreatCircle.COM From: nobody(a)REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) Organization: Replay and Company UnLimited XComm: Replay may or may not approve of the content of this posting XComm: Report misuse of this automated service to <abuse(a)replay.com> Sender: firewalls-owner(a)GreatCircle.COM Precedence: bulk I apologize for this intrusion into your affairs. Please forgive but we do have important information that will be of interest to Internet users. Would you like to secure your hard disk files against compromise by Internet Interlopers? Would you like to communicate over Internet in absolute privacy? We can provide you with the tools necessary to do those two things in an absolute sense. Briefly, we have developed the first software sourced OTP, which is provably as good as any hardware sourced OTP that can possibly be be generated. Most experts thought that this could not be done, but we have done it, and can prove it. Our prices are: - $95.00 for a complete dual user system, the full package for two users, but your communications are limited to that single user - - $95.00 for a complete Elita unlimited usage system - that is you can protect your internal files, and communicate with anyone else that has an Elita system, or more comprehensive Ultima system below. - $195.00 for a complete Ultima Internet/intranets system, this allows user to protect their own files - communicate with anyone that has an Ultima, or an Elita, system - to form hierarchal work groups that provide the same protection - and to customize their system variables to achieve the maximum entropy. We are also going to open up the whole company for outside participation - it is going to a completely open Internet Distributive Company, we believe the first one of its kind. Anyone is welcome to participate in the venture. All marketing is to be done on an lucrative MLM basis, program development will be done on a royalty/commission on adjusted gross income basis. Everyone that participates will share in the rewards. System testing will also be handle in a similar manner, and system engineering will be handled on a fee for services and participation basis. If you can perform, you can win big, really big. If you just try to perform, you will still win. This is an important opportunity for you, take advantage of it at this most opportune time, To order, call us at 817-691- 1081, or write to us at 2629 Plaza Parkway, Suite B-20, Wichita Falls, Texas, or order through Internet or e-mail us at: ipgsales(a)netprivacy.com. For more details, visit our web site at: http://www.netprivacy.com Our apologies again, but we believe it to be important. Appreciatively, Don Wood, IPG "None can be so true to your secret as yourself." - Sa'Di ----- End of forwarded message from Anonymous ----- -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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An ITAR moment
by Simon Spero 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm currently sitting in a computer lab at the ICM in Warsaw, at a workshop on caching in the web. I wanted to log back home to check my email, so I asked if they had telnet or something. "Actually, we're disabling rlogin and telnet on our machines - can you use ssh?". Simon --- Cause maybe (maybe) | In my mind I'm going to Carolina you're gonna be the one that saves me | - back in Chapel Hill May 16th. And after all | Email address remains unchanged You're my firewall - | ........First in Usenet.........

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Re: The Petaflops Boondoggle Computer (was PET_ard)
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> On Sun, 29 Sep 1996 12:16:27 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: > > >Symmetric multiprocessing is available, but it's often much less hassle to > >have a single CPU running at 200 MHz than to try games with multiple > >processors (which means more PCB real estate, more sockets, more of other > >things). > > As far as SMP goes, it's actually not all that expensive. People in the > linux-smp list have reported differences of as little as $50 for a > uniprocessor vs. dual pentium system. Of course, every so often we'll get a > message about a $30,000 system that can handle up to <drool>64 Pentium > Pros</drool>! Check out http://www.ssd.intel.com/tflop.html, where Intel is building a 9000 Pentium Pro (200 MHz) machine for Sandia. Yes, it runs Unix, and they've already delivered the first 64 processor node. When finished, it will have 600Gbyte RAM, 200Tbyte disk, and run at about 1.8 Tflops, and cover about 1600 square feet. Price? 46 M$, or about $5k/processor. Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Re: Utah as a Religious Police State
by Deana Holmes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 29 Sep 96 at 17:36, Ryan Russell/SYBASE wrote: > Hmm...never heard that one before. Care to produce > a reference? > > (Or am I supposed to be ignoring this guy when he > makes ridiculous claims?) > > Ryan I suspect that Dmitri is referring to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It's not a pretty story and is one of the low points of Mormon history. The late historian Juanita Brooks wrote about the masscre, and about the leader, John D. Lee, in a couple of books. > ---------- Previous Message ---------- > To: cypherpunks > cc: > From: dlv @ bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) @ smtp > Date: 09/29/96 05:54:09 PM > Subject: Re: Utah as a Religious Police State > > Ryan Russell/SYBASE writes: > > I guess that depends on your definition of liberty. The Mormons > > originally moved there to have a place to practice their religion, > > and have freedom from persecution. I suppose one could extend that > > to wanting a place to have the freedom to have a set of rules consistant > > with their beliefs. Should that include freedom from interferance from > > folks such as yourself who want to change their rules, even though > > you're not presently effected? > > It's worth noting that one of Utah mormons favorite pastimes was to ambush > the settlers heading for California, kill them all, and take their property. > However the mormons were dealt with much less severely than the local Indians > who tried the same tricks. Pity. ===end vulis rant=== Deana Deana M. Holmes April 1996 poster child for clueless $cientology litigiousness alt.religion.scientology archivist since 2/95 mirele(a)xmission.com

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Re: Utah as a Religious Police State
by Deana Holmes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 30 Sep 96 at 0:55, Moroni wrote: > I never cease to be surprised by the interest that gentiles show in > working mormon communities while totally neglecting their own failing > areas. <rant on> I never cease to be surprised by Mormon apologists who refuse to look in the mirror at problems in so-called "working Mormon communities." I moved to Utah 2 years ago from Texas. Even though I am nominally Mormon (I haven't been to Church in years), it was still a huge culture shock to me. I think the thing that bugs me the most is the way the political system is dominated by a 500 lb. elephant known as the LDS Church. We Utahns sit in a room with this elephant that eats and s**ts and yet we don't talk about the fact that it's there. This is Utah for you...Utah where during the first legislative session I was here (1995) the legislature spent 42 out of 45 days talking about whether they were going to have tightened ethics laws. Where during the last legislative session (1996) the legislature spent 42 of 45 days discussing what to do about the fact that a few kids in one of the Salt Lake high schools wanted to have a gay/lesbian/straight club. NO MATTER that the schools are horribly overcrowded and that in some elementary grades 40-plus students per classroom is the norm. NO MATTER that teachers are horribly underpaid in a state with California-style costs. NO MATTER that despite a $100 million surplus the governor and the legislature can't see clear to get rid of the sales tax on *food*. NO MATTER that if anything terribly controversial (or even not so controversial) comes up, someone in the legislature feels like they have to sound out the Church to make sure that they don't cross Gordon B. Hinckley or Boyd K. Packer and endanger their Church membership. In the meantime, our legislators (with Church approval, these are Church "callings") run down to the prison at Point of the Mountain to "counsel" convicted child abusers and then pass laws to get rid of minimum mandatory sentencing. The roads are falling apart here, the schools are overcrowded. Gang violence is prevalent up and down the Wasatch Front. I heard about a gang-related murder in Layton last weekend. Up until a month ago, when the mayor of Salt Lake City closed the place and forced them out, there was a well-known open-air drug supermarket going on in Pioneer Park. Legislative leaders think that they're above the Open Meetings law. And liquor laws still are pretty backwards. (Gee, just last week places that sell beer actually got permission to put signs that say "BEER" instead of "BEE?" on their premises.) Thing is, Utah is generally a wonderful place to live. As I said, I used to live in Texas. It's great to live in a place where the economy is booming and there are jobs available. The crime rate is pretty low for an urban community (but there are sore spots, as I indicated above). The scenery is downright spectacular. And Salt Lake City proper is a pretty cool place. But I don't believe that Utah is immune to the problems that beset other cities. One thing that would help is for Utah opinion-makers to admit that not everyone who lives in this "pretty, great state" is a devout Mormon and/or a Republican. Not everyone shares the same values as the dominant religion, and they shouldn't have to. I apologise to the cypherpunks mailing list for this rant, but not everyone in Utah agrees with the view expressed by Moroni above. Deana Deana M. Holmes April 1996 poster child for clueless $cientology litigiousness alt.religion.scientology archivist since 2/95 mirele(a)xmission.com

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Re: What about making re-mailers automatically chain?
by Geoffrey C. Grabow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:30 09/29/96 -0800, you wrote: >At 4:14 AM -0500 9/29/96, David E. Smith wrote: > >>I dunno about that one. Even if the message itself is encrypted, >>every remailer has to have the address of the final recipient for >>your plan to work. And if you have cleartext for that message >... > >Actually, as I read the original proposal, it was to only _insert_ >additional links. Thus, imagine the following remailer chain, with Alice >sending to Zeke through a chain, represented in parentheses (like LISP): > That's what I was going for. The re-mailer would only add links if the recip that it sees is another mailer. If it doesn't recognize the destination as a remailer, it must assume that it's the last link and should send the mail. If that doesn't happen Dave's right. Multiple mailers would know the final dest. The question I was heading for on this is: Does this add anything useful? Removing knowledge of the path from the sender is a plus. This prevents anyone, even the sender, from being able to give up any useful info even if under court order. Adding "random" traffic is helpful 'cause many people (including myself) use pre-fab anon scripts and therefore use the same anon paths all the time (I should stop that). This opens those messages up to some analysis and the possibility of the sender being revealed. Granted, these are not major items. The real question is: Is this worth implementing? As gbroiles(a)netbox.com said: >All of this (adding remailer status tracking based on frequent updates of >digitally signed information from a trusted third party) can be done, but >it's a pain in the ass to code... G.C.G. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Geoffrey C. Grabow | Great people talk about ideas. | | Oyster Bay, New York | Average people talk about things. | | gcg(a)pb.net | Small people talk about people. | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | PGP 2.6.2 public key available at http://www.pb.net/~wizard | | and on a plethora of key servers around the world. | | Key ID = 0E818EC1 | | Fingerprint = A6 7B 67 D7 E9 96 37 7D E7 16 BD 5E F4 5A B2 E4 | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | That which does not kill us, makes us stranger. - Trevor Goodchild | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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ADJ_ust
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

9-30-96. NYP: "National Security Experts Plan for Wars Whose Targets and Weapons Are All Digital." Is the threat real, or is this just another way to win scarce funds? Military and intelligence officials believe that enemy nations, terrorists and criminal groups either already have the capability to mount information warfare strikes or soon will. Criminals are quickly progressing beyond the vandalism and petty theft associated with teen-aged hackers and into robbery and extortion schemes ranging up to millions of dollars, corporate executives and private investigators say. Others reply that the worst threats mentioned are mostly speculation. "Information warfare is a risk to our nation's economy and defense," said Martin Libicki, a senior fellow at the National Defense University. "But I believe we will find ways to cope with these attacks, adjust and shake them off, just as we do to natural disasters like hurricanes." ----- http://jya.com/adjust.txt (14 kb) ADJ_ust

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Re: [AP] Afghanistan
by Wayne H. Allen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:57 PM 9/29/96 EDT, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >"Wayne H. Allen" <whallen(a)capitalnet.com> writes: > >> At 04:10 AM 9/29/96 EDT, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >> >Afghanis publicly hanged their former president, Najibullah [no last name]. >> >Other countries should follow their example. >> > >> >> And this would accomplish???? And this has what to do with cryptography?? > >Nothing, of course - neither do Timmy May's stupid rants, lies, and personal >attacks. > >By the way, your abuse of your native language suggests that you're probably >a product of U.S. public education. > > And you would be far off base once again. Wayne H.Allen whallen(a)capitalnet.com Pgp key at www.capitalnet.com/~whallen

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Re: GCHQ releases Venona files (from UK Telegraph)
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If anyone in the UK cares to get the GCHQ Venona releases, we'll be pleased to scan them for distribution. Or put them on our Web site. Our fax: 212-799-4003 (US) Vox: 212-873-8700 Or if someone else scans them and needs a Web site, ftp them to: ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming

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Another briefing in Atlanta on the NRC crypto report,...
by CRYPTO 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Another briefing in Atlanta on the NRC crypto report, October 21, 1996 Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society A Public Briefing in Atlanta, Georgia Monday, October 21, 1996, 1:30-3:30 pm There will be a public briefing in Atlanta, Georgia by the National Research Council on this report. The briefing will be held at the Manufacturing Research Center on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology on Monday October 21, from 1:30 to 3:30. Dr. Herbert Lin, director of the NRC study will conduct the briefing. Questions from the audience will be entertained. For further information, please contact Dr. Myron L. Cramer (404) 894-7292, <myron.cramer(a)gtri.gatech.edu> at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The event is open to the press and the public. Directions: From I-75/85 exit on Tenth Street and head West. Turn left on Hemphill Street and follow it to where it ends on Ferst Street. The Manufacturing Research Center is the modern building in front of you. Parking is limited; use public transportation or allow yourself extra time. If you have suggestions about other places that the committee should offer a public briefing, please send e-mail to crypto(a)nas.edu.

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Re: Internet plug pulled on Colombia's guerrillas
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 27 Sep 1996 14:33:42 -0800, jim bell wrote: >>The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which >>has periodically paralyzed half the country with road blocks, >>found its route to the information superhighway barred. >> >>The Communist insurgents, who rose up in arms in 1964, >>embraced new technology last year in their fight to overthrow the >>government by launching a home page on the Internet. > >I couldn't resist smiling when I read this. Not that I want their access >cut; quite the opposite. But it is REALLY reassuring to see the authorities >behave in exactly the fashion you expect them to! Attempting to cut off >dissenting political voices IRL is de rigeur; now, this shows that they >believe "threat" to the government posed by allowing others to voice >contrary opinions on the 'net is real. It's particularly funny when you consider that the main justification for suppression is that insurgents (or rebels or freedom fighters or ...) kill people. Something along the lines of "We don't suppress unpopular views; we're just protecting our citizens". Now, it seems to me that that having a web page is a decidely non-lethal thing. <g> OTOH, it's probably more effective at getting the outside world to find out what's happening. Draw your own conclusions. # Chris Adams <cadams(a)acucobol.com> # <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)miron.vip.best.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"c2"} = "<remail(a)c2.org> eric pgp hash reord"; $remailer{"penet"} = "<anon(a)anon.penet.fi> penet post"; $remailer{"flame"} = "<remailer(a)flame.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp. hash latent cut post reord"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"ecafe"} = "<cpunk(a)remail.ecafe.org> cpunk mix"; $remailer{"amnesia"} = "<amnesia(a)chardos.connix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ksub"; $remailer{'alpha'} = '<alias(a)alpha.c2.org> alpha pgp'; $remailer{'nymrod'} = '<nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"lead"} = "<mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"nemesis"} = "<remailer(a)meaning.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"exon"} = "<remailer(a)remailer.nl.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"vegas"} = "<remailer(a)vegas.gateway.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"haystack"} = "<haystack(a)holy.cow.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"ncognito"} = "<ncognito(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> mix cpunk pgp hash latent"; $remailer{"lucifer"} = "<lucifer(a)dhp.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)c2.org> cpunk pgp hash cut ksub reord"; $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"balls"} = "<remailer(a)huge.cajones.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"squirrel"} = "<mix(a)squirrel.owl.de> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"middle"} = "<middleman(a)jpunix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek reord"; $remailer{'cyber'} = '<alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"dustbin"} = "<dustman(a)athensnet.com> cpunk pgp hash ksub latent cut ek mix reord"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (cyber mix) The alpha and nymrod nymservers are down due to abuse. However, you can use the cyber nymserver. The nym.alias.net server will be listed soon. See http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/n.a.n.html for details. 403 Permission denied errors have been caused by a flaky disk on the Berkeley WWW server. Hopefully, this is fixed by now. The penet remailer is closed. Last update: Mon 30 Sep 96 6:45:05 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca ************ 14:56 100.00% cyber alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net *****++**+** 33:36 99.96% dustbin dustman(a)athensnet.com ++-+-++++-- 1:11:40 99.94% winsock winsock(a)c2.org --------..-+ 6:56:13 99.81% exon remailer(a)remailer.nl.com #*+#*# -#*** 12:53 99.79% extropia remail(a)miron.vip.best.com ----.------ 7:25:48 99.62% balls remailer(a)huge.cajones.com ************ 5:03 99.40% haystack haystack(a)holy.cow.net #--*##*#### 13:56 99.17% amnesia amnesia(a)chardos.connix.com ----------+ 3:47:17 98.46% middle middleman(a)jpunix.com - - +- - + 1:27:49 95.92% squirrel mix(a)squirrel.owl.de --++++ +++ 1:56:13 92.08% replay remailer(a)replay.com **+****** * 4:11 91.92% lead mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu + ++*++ .-* 2:49:27 91.01% mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com ++++-++--+ 1:53:37 81.18% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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