December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers
by peb＠PROCASE.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: pierre(a)shell.portal.com >Who qualifies whom, based on what info, and to eliminate whom? As the Internet becomes more diverse and less the domain of programmers and scientists, it is natural that other means of selection are needed for membership in a group. The traditional academic atmosphere of mailing lists will evolve away from total openenss. Here are some possibilities: 1. By invitation only--members sponsor new members. 2. By trial period--new members are lurkers on the main list and a subset of the members can see their postings or they must first be moderated. 3. Qualifications--could range widely. 4. Tests. 5. All of the above. >From: owen(a)autodesk.com >with authentication qualifications for *entry* or transaction The Extropians list already does this--not totally secure, to be sure, but you must let the list administrators know all your posting nodes. Paul E. Baclace peb(a)procase.com

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Weak Keys? explained
by charliemerritt＠BIX.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

No, I did not mean I can find the spares of a well constructed key. And yes, the best key has at least one spare. What I meant was, if I were the NSA and wrote the keygen for a crypto system I could guarantee that each key would have a huge number of spares. Enough, that if I were the NSA I could find them. How to generate a weak RSA key: Start with a prime R S=R*2 L1 If S+1 is prime then P=S+1 If S+1 Not prime S=S* next_odd_number (3,5,7,9,11...) Loop to L1 else L2 If S+1 is prime then Q=S+1 If S+1 Not prime S=S* next_odd_number Loop to L2 else N=P*Q #spare keys => 2*R In the example I gave R was 101 p=1+(101*2*3) q=1+(101*2*2*3) spare keys=606 There are many BETTER ways to make a keygen that will produce keys the author can break. RSA has no government trap door, but I, and certainly the NSA can write a keygen that makes trap-doored keys. Ones YOU can't break, but I can, knowing my secret. My example was a put-down of Denning's assurance that skipjack is good. RSA is good, skipjack MAY be good. Look out for booby trapped keys.

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Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers
by owen＠autodesk.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: pierre(a)shell.portal.com (Pierre Uszynski) > From: owen(a)autodesk.com (D. Owen Rowley) > There is another level of *menace* which I suppose many of you are unaware > > I mean people who exploit insecure sites and networking skill to forge > > mail and articles as part of a concerted and ongoing campaign of > ????????????????????? > > harrasement. > > Stuff that has resulted in very serious consequences. > ????????????????????????? > > Theres no need to go into detail here about the array of tactics and > > the widening scope of the phenomenon, but I think it needs to be looked > > at as an example of how and why systems are abused. > > On the contrary, let's hear the details. There are three personas in particular, who stand out in the crowd, they are: The Dark Knight Obvious psuedonym, claims that he was disciplined or fired because the nasty queers on soc.motss complained to his management about his honestly stated opinions. during two periods of his unwanted attentions and homophobic ranting there were several serious sendsys bombing incidents. I know of one in which an SGI employee was mail bombed with enough garbage to clog their whole mail system for quite a while. Interuption of net connectivity to a whole company in order to amuse some creep who fancys himself as a fag-bashing super hero, fits my definition of sociopath, and I suspect that if it happened to any of us, filling up our disk real estate, delaying our business as usual, we would consider it a serious situation. I'm not sure how many there were, but during the worst phases, there could be two or three such incidents per day, involving gigabytes of data. RALF, or RLF bizarre and aggresively homophobic, tends to rant about how homos victimised him in some way or another. Claimed to be Church of RALF, has a numerological hangup over his birthdate , pretty much your basic testosterone poisoned megalomaniac. also present and gloating during or around periods of mail bombing. like dark Knight, the home site of the acct changes, or is forged. Dr Artimus Page Phoney acct claiming to have succesfull therapies to turn disgusting homos into natural men like him. Posts long and surreal accounts, projecting his anal fantasys onto the nasty homos and promising to cure them.. uh huh! Claimed that phoney name and acct were to protect him from the roving gangs of hetero-bashers who are out to get him. In another incident from that same period an individual was targetted who did not have a very understanding employer, he was fired as a result. A very serious matter for the guy, who's life got turned upside down because he was the target of these acts. Sendsys messages would be forged, ton_o_byte mail bombings would be forged in the name of other soc.motss regulars, usually those who posted uppity responses to these *honestly stated opinions*. Punitive repostings of months of back traffic Oh.. yes.. there were denials.. but the common factors between all three of these guys and the harrasement showed more than a casual relationship between the appearance of this character and patterns of e-harrasement. There were occasional other minor players who would come around, usually obvious forgerys from accts claiming to have been succesfully cured by the sagely Dr Page, and trying to date the Lesbians in order to help them too. Rarely would more than one be present at a time, they seemed to run in a patterned sequence that has consistently covered the last two years. A good deal of it starts as nuisance stuff, forged addresses, forged cancelations. And you can look at sendsys and mail_bombing as the functional equivelant of ordering pizzas or other deliveries to a third party, but I see it as a pattern borrowed from terrorists, purposeful and repeated , intent to wear down the spirit, and keep their prey on the defensive so recovery doesn't happen. I have no illusion that it takes a rocket scientist to pull off these stunts, nor that given the state of our net, anything can really be done to stop it now. However the real world effect was that the real people of soc.motss were subjected to severe psychological harrasement, of the type that wouldn't be tolerated for a minute in real-space. That we currently have no choice but to tolerate it in cyberspace is not an acceptable prospect. Having experienced the personal cost of this sort of thing on my own psyche, I can tell you that it is maddening while it is going on, and sobering afterwards when you realise how vulnerable you are. There are others of course, actually quite a few who are more than willing to display there ignorance from their real accts. Why I bet some of 'em probably are on this list. lets see.. heres just a partial list of proud defenders of heterosexuality who find it amusing to taunt the queers on soc.motss. Daniel J Karnes, Walter Smith, Gary Lang, Ted Kaldis, Clayton Cramer, and more.. many many more. > > soc.motss and other newsgroups have seen a long list of pseudo-persons > > posting from non existent sites, and yes.. penet has been used to this > > effect. > ok, and anonymous remailers don't change that possibility one way or the > other. I'll go hang out there for a while anyway... I understand that, and for that matter I feel strongly enough about wanting my own freedom that I'll join you. > > I think that the design of privacy systems needs to take these > > dark-side issues seriously and do their best to minimise the potential > > for abuse. > Sure, but consider that extremist systems will exist nonetheless. oh .. of course, I'm only arguing for diligence and design criterea that will buy us optimum freedom, and minimise opportunity for abuse. > > Perhaps a *zoning* concept is needed, in such that transactions would > > have qualifying conditions - or in such that *zones* exist as data-space > > with authentication qualifications for *entry* or transaction. > Who qualifies whom, based on what info, and to eliminate whom? Well.. I suppose that in the case of commerce, the vendor will, and that market forces will ultimately detrmine the succesful strategys. Think of it in terms of reliability, and trustiness. Accountability optimises both, anonymity diminishes both - in fact can potentially dispense with accountability. when your transaction involves value don't you want reliability and accountability? I do. If providing my identity as collateral for reliability is required in some transactions, I think thats reasonable to offer as an option. I tend to think of cyberspace in terms of the UnReal Estate business. If I have some data space, then I think I should be able to determine who gets in and what they do there. regarding common data-space and whether there should be rules and accountability, would you move yourself or your family to a neighborhood where you couldn't determine who gets into your place or hold them accountable for what they do there? Perhaps you have a higher opinion regarding the negative aspects of human nature than I. LUX ./. owen

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Digital Cash Primer (fwd)
by Alexander Reynolds 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1993 21:34:37 -0400 From: DON_HENSON(a)delphi.com To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Digital Cash Primer Shari Steele writes: -> Hey 'punks. Anyone know of an elementary primer on digital cash? I'm trying to get up to speed on this. <-- I would like an elementary primer also. How about posting the info to the list vice just to Shari. Thanks, Don Henson PGP key avail on server or on request <-- could i also get some beginning info on this subject as well? thanks in advance, alex reynolds

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The death of the list as we know it (tm)
by Robert J Woodhead 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've only been monitoring the list for a couple of days, but already it is clear to me that the traffic is _way_ too high to manage as a mailing list. Apart from the volume, the very structure of Email tends to dis-associate message from reply, and make it difficult to do any filtering before reading (one of the great joys of using _nn_ IMHO). A humble suggestion: someone undertake to create alt.cyperpunks and shadow the newsgroup and the mailing list (so that posts to one also go to the other). In my case this would cut my reading time in half and increase my "harvest" by a factor of two. The mailing list would still be available for those who cannot get the group. In addition, as the number of people getting the mailing list would decrease, it would probably delay the death of the net by bandwidth overload for a few hours (currently, it is scheduled for sometime in June 1997, last time I checked). Also, even an unmoderated alt group can be made moderated (and thus, filter out most of the forgery, etc) by appropriate use of technology described in this mailing list. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Robert J. Woodhead, Biar Games / AnimEigo, Incs. trebor(a)forEtune.co.jp | | AnimEigo US Office Email (for general questions): 72447.37(a)compuserve.com |

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Newbie reading: Bamberg
by jamie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Newbie cypheroids and cypherettes, Tim May has pointed to _The Puzzle Palace_ by Bamberg several times here and on the Extropians list. If like me you're a newbie, it's a quick, excellent read. Don't miss it. It'll give context for the quote, "gentlemen don't read each other's mail." -- ................................ Jamie Dinkelacker Palo Alto CA Jamie(a)netcom.com 415.941.4782

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Re: second order homophonic substitution
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Another way of thinking about this is: Compress with one Huffman compression scheme based on the message text then Decompress with the Huffman scheme based on the desired statistics.

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that internet security scanner
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

anyone actually seen that thing? (to refresh: CERT posted some warning about a security scanner for Internet systems that might be the evil work of themthere hackers so you just better delete it, etc etc.) -- DISCLAIMER: This message represents only my OWN opinion, not that of EFF. Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist mech(a)eff.org NitV-DataCenter BBS SysOp Fido: <tba> IndraNet: 369:111/1

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Re: Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace"
by jamie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Newbie cypheroids and cypherettes, >> >> Tim May has pointed to _The Puzzle Palace_ by Bamberg several times here > ^^^^^^^ >> and on the Extropians list. If like me you're a newbie, it's a quick, >> excellent read. Don't miss it. It'll give context for the quote, "gentlemen >> don't read each other's mail." > >"My name is Bamford, _James_ Bamford." > ooops, Tim's right. I was listening to David Bromberg (urg?) while writing that post and it slipped out. Thanks, Tim. -- ................................ Jamie Dinkelacker Palo Alto CA Jamie(a)netcom.com 415.941.4782

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Re: FIDONet Mail filterin
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

J >So how do I prevent what happened to SJG, killer, etc from happening J >to me? How do I prevent the LE types from showing up one day and J >saying 'hey, did you know there's a meg of kiddie porn on your J >machine and we're taking it all away'? As soon as you get the 10mbps line into the home (next year for you Continental cable customers), mirror your machine with another located overseas (or just run the machine overseas). Duncan Frissell --- WinQwk 2.0b#0

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Re: that internet security scanner
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Stanton McCandlish <mech(a)eff.org> said: >anyone actually seen that thing? (to refresh: CERT posted some warning >about a security scanner for Internet systems that might be the evil work >of themthere hackers so you just better delete it, etc etc.) (A) The "evil" in question was posted to comp.sources.misc (or some other similarly obvious group). (B) The advisory was about as neutral as such a thing can be. Further comment fails me. Doug

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MEETING: UK Cryptoprivacy Association
by russell＠eternity.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- UK Cryptoprivacy Association meeting Date: Sunday, 31 October 1993 Time: 1430 At the offices of: FOREST 4th floor 2 Grosvenor Gardens London SW1W 0DH [ FOREST is located at the corner of Grosvenor Gardens and Hobart Place, a couple of blocks west of Victoria Station. There is a taxi shelter across the street from the office. Those who have trouble finding this location can page Russell Whitaker on 081-812-2661, and stand by the payphone or cellphone for a callback. ] The UK Cryptoprivacy Association has its roots in the U.S. cypherpunk advocacy of strong personal cryptography. The next UKCA meeting, to be held at the offices of FOREST (see the above), will feature roundtable discussion on such issues as: - The recent well-publicised discovery of a larger number of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) electronic listening posts than had been previously suspected; - Further news on the spread of freely-available public key cryptography software in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Transcaucasian states; - The status of the various UK and Moscow PGP public key servers and software archive sites, with input from a couple of maintainers of these services in the UK; - The implications of the legal controversy surrounding the development and distribution of PGP encryption software in the U.S., with further discussion on the possibility of volunteer contributions to Phil Zimmermann's legal defence fund; - Introduction to public key cryptography for novices Attendees are encouraged to bring and exchange diskettes with their PGP public keys. A few of us will bring along our MS-DOS laptops, to sign public keys on site. In the interest of speeding things along, it is recommended that all keys signed at the meeting be submitted later, with their newly appended signatures, to the PGP Key Server at Demon Internet Services. Send a message with the subject line "help" to pgp-public-keys(a)demon.co.uk, for more information. PGP (Phil Zimmermann's "Pretty Good Privacy") public key encryption software can be obtained by ftp from, among other places, ftp.demon.co.uk in the directory /pub/pgp. Versions include, but are not limited to, Unix, MS-DOS, Archimedes, and MacOS. Full source code is available. This meeting will also feature discussion on the upcoming First European Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy (ECFP '93) to be held on 20 November 1993, which will feature speakers including John Gilmore, David Chaum, and Duncan Frissell, as well as a representative of the UK's Data Protection Registry. Russell Earl Whitaker ECFP Ventures Ltd -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLLTAC4Tj7/vxxWtPAQGxdQP9G7uFHCcLJeSTTOBKYFBck2PpVk/jvWyM bxRg0stdjuWpHkIIZHAq4koh9BfUo46N3WOIG95SlfuRLVxzm3WmvKV7PJKhyfdh pFoYIwB2UcAknLPJva5eFBpi1VdDAMqv9G7qQfkoJQGXNAOlmh9GKhZkeLIeqVwv qfb7Q2SjLaI= =4OyJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Russell Earl Whitaker whitaker(a)eternity.demon.co.uk Communications Editor AMiX: RWhitaker EXTROPY: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought Board member, Extropy Institute (ExI) Co-organizer, 1st European Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy, London, 20 November 1993

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Internet Security Scanner, description
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just in case you think your machine on the Internet is secure enough for remailers, storing private files, etc. here's the author's description from the source code shell archive as posted to comp.sources.misc. It would be a big confidence booster if remailer sites demonstrate that they have passed ISS and other Internet security tests. ---------------------- Internet Security Scanner (ISS) is one of the first multi-level security scanners available to the public. It was designed to be flexible and easily portable to many unix platforms and do its job in a reasonable amount of time. It provides information to the administrator that will fix obvious security misconfigurations. ISS does a multi-level scan of security, not just searching for one weakness in the system. To provide this to the public or at least to the security conscious crowd may cause people to think that it is too dangerous for the public, but many of the (cr/h)ackers are already aware of these security holes and know how to exploit them. These security holes are not deep in some OS routines, but standard misconfigurations that many domains on Internet tend to show. Many of these holes are warned about in CERT and CIAC advisories. This is the first release of ISS and there is still much room for improvement. ISS is a project that I started as I became interested in security. As I heard about (cr/h)ackers breaking into NASA and universities around the world, I wanted to find out the deep secrets of security and how these people were able to gain access to expensive machines that I would think were secure. I searched Internet for relative information, such as Phrack and CERT advisories. Most information was vague and did not explain how intruders were able to gain access to most systems. At most the information told administrators to make password security tighter and to apply the vendor's security patches. They lacked real information on how an intruder would look at a site to try to gain access. Having talked with security experts and reading CERT advisories, I started trying to look for various security holes within my domain. To my surprise, I noticed that many of machines were adequately secured, but within a domain there remained enough machines with obvious holes that anyone wanted into any machine could attack the weak 'trusted' machine and from there could gain access to the rest of the domain. From this project, I have not learned any new deep secret to cracking systems, but with the right tools that most domains on Internet are insecure. These holes will not be a surprise to any advanced intruder, but with this tool administrators will be able to quickly search for obvious holes and prepare to fix them.

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Can I conect to cypherpunks list?
by blaster＠rd.relcom.msk.su 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello! I want to conect to cypherpunks mailing list. What I must made for conect to this list? Do you welcame people from Russia? Thank you in advance. PS. Sorry for my poor English. --- Victor A. Borisov aka blaster; Relcom R&D; Email: blaster(a)rd.relcom.msk.su; Phone: +7(095)-943-4735; +7(095)-198-9510; === Don`t panic! ===

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Re: FIDONet Mail filterin
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

J >So how do I prevent what happened to SJG, killer, etc from happening J >to me? How do I prevent the LE types from showing up one day and J >saying 'hey, did you know there's a meg of kiddie porn on your J >machine and we're taking it all away'? As soon as you get the 10mbps line into the home (next year for you Continental cable customers), mirror your machine with another located overseas (or just run the machine overseas). Duncan Frissell --- WinQwk 2.0b#0

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Re: that internet security scanner
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

anyone actually seen that thing? (to refresh: CERT posted some warning about a security scanner for Internet systems that might be the evil work of themthere hackers so you just better delete it, etc etc.) CERT isn't that stupid. What they said was that ISS has been posted, and that it was likely that some folks would try to use it to break into various systems. Do you disagree with that statement? They also said that you should consider running it yourself, so that you can close the holes first. They even gave the pointer to the directory on UUNET where it's stored. What good would it possibly do to delete it on your own machine, when many thousands of other machines around the world have copies? Again -- CERT isn't stupid. --Steve Bellovin

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Re: that internet security scanner
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, seems some folks took exception to my remarks about the CERT post. I was simply kidding, and have no problem with CERT warning SysAdmins about possible hazards. I thought it might be humourous to sound mock-alarmist, in response to some shouting and nay-saying over EFF warning SysOps about possible hazards. -- DISCLAIMER: This message represents only my OWN opinion, not that of EFF. Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist mech(a)eff.org NitV-DataCenter BBS SysOp Fido: <tba> IndraNet: 369:111/1

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Phone Privacy
by Ron McCoy - Yale Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was mention on this list, some time ago, of a 1-900 number which could be used to ensure non-tracibility. Does anyone have this number? Thanks, Rmccoy(a)rock.concert.net

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second order homophonic substitution
by peter honeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

a faq on this list (and other places) is whether it is possible to encipher a message in such a way that the resulting ciphertext can be deciphered into a different (harmless?) message. i mentioned on sci.crypt that a second-order homphonic substitution does just this, but it seems to have been missed by the cpunx readership. so, just to prove that i can read denning and still type, here is a brief explanation. (not brief enuf, sorry.) a homophonic substitution maps letters from the plaintext alphabet into sets of letters from the ciphertext alphabet. to encipher, you pick an arbitrary letter from the image of each plaintext letter. usually the intent is to disguise single letter frequency statistics. it's still not very strong, since it doesn't disguise digram or trigram statistics. (also, it seems to me that it would be vulnerable to the same sort of attack used on running key ciphers.) need an example? see denning, p. 70. to build a second order homophonic substitution cipher, you construct an n by n table, where n is the size of the plaintext alphabet. (say n = 26). initialize each entry in the table by a unique element from the ciphertext alphabet. (say, the integers from 0 to 26 * 26, permuted arbitrarily.) this table constitutes the key. to encipher a message, select a "dummy" message (say the itar regs). to encipher the i-th plaintext letter, say p sub i, grab the i-th dummy letter, say d sub i, and output table[d sub i, p sub i]. to decipher, find the ciphertext letter (or number, in this case) in the table at row i and column j. to recover the actual message, output the j-th plaintext alphabet letter. to recover the dummy message, output the i-th plaintext alphabet letter. i.e., the rows give the dummy message, while the columns give the actual message. simple stuff. here's an example. table: D E G I N O S T U D 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 E 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 G 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 I 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 N 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 O 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 S 55 56 57 58 58 60 61 62 63 T 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 U 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 here is some ciphertext: 64 11 05 32 49 77 57. it's clear how to extend this to n-th order. peter

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Re: academician seeks critique of cryptographic paper
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Message-Id: <9310070630.AA17189(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu> >Subject: academician seeks critique of cryptographic paper >Date: Thu, 07 Oct 93 00:30:51 -0600 Richard, This reminds me of what I had to go through to get approved to get married in the Roman Catholic Church. I ended up having to say, for the record, "I have no intention of using mechanical methods of birth control" (pre-safe-sex days) when what they wanted was for me to say I would avoid all birth control. I'm now ashamed I stooped to that non-confrontive statement (especially since the marriage didn't last :-). I should have said, "No, I don't accept your view of birth control and have every intention of using it." At least I did say that my fiancee was on the pill and we intended to continue using it. I would be happy to review your paper and to suggest others who might be good reviewers. Furthermore, I have no intention of violating the export laws (even though I disagree with them and work very hard to change them). However, I do not grant the NSA the power to control the publication of theoretical information. I have published papers on cryptology in the international press, without offering the NSA the chance to review what I write ahead of time, and I intend to continue doing so. They have their internal publications, no doubt, and we have our public ones. I don't tell them what to publish internally and I will not allow them to tell me what I can publish out here in the public. That is my policy, for my own writing. If you send me your paper to review, I will not disseminate it. That's a matter of respecting your wishes -- not the NSA's. My acceptance of your paper will not constitute any agreement on my part to give the NSA control over publications of ideas. - Carl - <<Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own, of course.>> - Carl Ellison cme(a)sw.stratus.com - Stratus Computer Inc. M3-2-BKW TEL: (508)460-2783 - 55 Fairbanks Boulevard ; Marlborough MA 01752-1298 FAX: (508)624-7488 -----BEGIN RIPEM PUBLIC KEY----- User: cme(a)ellisun.sw.stratus.com PublicKeyInfo: MIGbMAoGBFUIAQECAgP+A4GMADCBiAKBgCl79/jl0DEVl1GQzOHlzjDmChDDxnWO Acd7jShj2x1vclFh6vbHx9IJqkQdwNhNAWf8XnTrqBDN+VSBc1qdT6nSEAbNPxHD XcvY2DudhuRaRBVLgUQ4scTK657m90Q+bTL5yIh2MaFipUw9BgbIXPTDlksSskWP 9oHjo+pCJC+lAgMBAAE= MD5OfPublicKey: 39D9860686A9F075A9A83D49589C677A -----END RIPEM PUBLIC KEY-----

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distributed autonomous networks
by hiscdcj＠lux.latrobe.edu.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi guys, well, after reading through the backlog of spread spectrum stuff, I was surprised to read about the radio-network-on-a-board (Julieboard) article that someone posted. A couple of us here in Australia have been kicking around the idea of a cheap network, running via repeaters in _very_ small boxes tossed all around a city, which would be indestructible through sheer numbers (a la the arpanet). So: anyone got any ideas, schematics, information? The main idea is a huge number of small, low-power and CHEAP nodes which would handle through traffic which anyone with a radio modem could tap into, with the nodes disguised and placed in extremely hard to get to places (tops of telephone poles, buildings, on bridges and overpasses, etc). This would mean that it would cost an awful lot of money to remove each of these things, IF they could be found. Possible power sources: batteries (but they need to be changed) solar power (Australia leads the world in solar power technology, and I know people who know people). Near Field Interaction and EMF pickups (stick 'em near high-frequency power transmission lines). Something that convert heat to electrical energy or combinations of all of the above. The idea being that we would have an untraceable, unbreakable network. Sure, you may have an address (perhaps we could set it up as a FQDN domain?), but that address would not correspond to any actual physical location. And, it would be free, aside from the cost of the equipment. No more phone calls to pay for! I have no idea how this could be done across interstate or international distances, but I'm sure people might have ideas. Bounce signals off satellites (are those big shiny things from the 50's still about?); send stuff encrypted via the internet, etc etc. This could well mean that we would have a truly private network, with strong encryption and no centralised source of transmission (I mean, most of the internet traffic into and from Australia goes via a single link, so far as I know). Comments? Dwayne

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Re: Digital Cash Primer
by peter honeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Likewise, the Simmons books on "Contemporary Crytology" has good stuff > on digital money no it doesn't. (or am i blind?) peter

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Re: MacPGP 2.3 source
by jrk＠sys.uea.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Apparently there's a basic incompatibility between ftp and the auto-backup program which runs every now and then on my Mac, which brings everything to a halt if anyone connects to ftp while the backup is being done, so I'll have to remove the MacPGP source from the ftp area on my Mac. But I'd only promised to keep it there until this morning anyway. However, the sysadmins happen to have just set up a properly supported anon ftp area, so I've put the stuff there instead, where it can probably remain indefinitely. The site to ftp to is ftp.sys.uea.ac.uk, and the files are in the directory ftp/Macintosh. (Ignore the .finderinfo and .resource subdirectories -- it's an AppleShare thing, your computer wouldn't understand, at least not over the Internet.) -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk(a)sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.

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Re: FIDONet Mail filterin
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > J >So how do I prevent what happened to SJG, killer, etc from happening > > J >to me? How do I prevent the LE types from showing up one day and > > J >saying 'hey, did you know there's a meg of kiddie porn on your > > J >machine and we're taking it all away'? Well, keeping things encrypted helps, especially backup disks - one site was being generally harassed and may be convicted because of possible child pornography that the sysop had deleted but was still on backup floppies in his re-use bin. (Police got a 15-year-old kid to log in for them and find some adult material, but dropped that attempt probably because it would have been thrown out as entrapment; the child-porn gave them a much nastier charge to use to steal the computer.) Perry> Censoring your users mail will not lower your risk, so why do it? On the other hand, making sure your users *have* email on the system, especially mail in transit to other systems, is good protection, since the ECPA limits what they can do with it.

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Re: The death of the list as we know it (tm)
by Matthew B. Landry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I strongly support this idea, so I'll mention a further advantage: >kill files! No more wading through boring message about anonymous >remailers, digital cash an so on (or RSA weaknesses, or >crypto-legality or whatever your personal bug happens to be). I really think that the powers that be should consider the newsgroup idea. The reasoning above is really the best justification, even though I'd personally kill the code and concentrate on the politics, that's just me. Newsreaders really have much better tools for handling this sort of traffic. (Back when my account was on msen.com, the absolute _only_ way I could possibly read this list was through the gateway to list.cypherpunks. My mailbox couldn't handle a subscription, and I was able to concentrate my time on the _good_ stuff instead of the noise.) To the people who say that Usenet has a worse s/n ratio than mail, I have two points. First, not all of Usenet has a bad s/n ratio (and this particular list _does_ have a _very_ bad s/n ratio). Second, the traditionally lower s/n ratio on Usenet has led to the development of better tools to deal with it than are available in mail. (I'd dearly love to see an ignore feature on this list, as I understand that the Extropians have, but I realize that's unrealistic. Even that wouldn't be as effective as a well-designed killfile.) I really think this idea deserves at least serious consideration. -- Matthew B. Landry ml7694a(a)american.edu (Finally!) mbl(a)ml7694a.leonard.american.edu

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