December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Windows Eudora and PGP
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>>1) Use cut-and-paste into Private Idaho. Private Idaho will allow you to >>>paste back into Eudora. (Or you can send out from Private Idaho directly.) >>>This option is useful becuase it supports nyms and chaining of remailers. ... >>[sigh] Just what I thought, no easy solutions. Private Idaho's pretty easy - if you're replying to a message, you'll need to do a cut&paste to move the original into PI, but it follows all the standard Windows cut&paste clipboard stuff, and after that you can send the message directly (from newer versions of PI) or pick a menu item that hands it back to your mailer (Eudora or several others are supported) for delivery. Inside PI, you can pick menu items to call PGP, add remailer headers, etc. At 07:46 PM 1/3/96 -0500, "Douglas F. Elznic" <delznic(a)storm.net> wrote: > I have also heard that ViaCrypt is a good alternative. But I am not sure. >Has anyone else out there heard anything good/bad about ViaCrypt? I've got the ViaCrypt Windows package, as well as their DOS versions. It's really nice for key management (which Private Idaho doesn't do much of), though some of the other PGP Windows frontends also do that. Its encryption/decryption/signing functions are mainly oriented towards files rather than Clipboards - the big advantage of this is that there aren't any silly 64KB or 640KB limits anywhere, but it's a bit clumsier. I usually use Private Idaho as a front-end to ViaCrypt as well; it's faster and prettier to have ViaCrypt handling the Windows interfaces than to have PI pop up a DOS window to run Real PGP in. The PGP 3.0 stuff, when it comes out, will help the process a lot. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Internet Gateway for Bletchly Park Trust
by pjb＠ny.ubs.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am trying to setup an Internet gateway for BP Trust. I will either convience Sun to donate a SparcStation for this purpose, or I will donate one myself. What I need is a contact in the UK for some ISPs, or a University or somesuch that would consider hosting their domain/address. Will anyone having any information that might be of use to me in this endevour please email me at: pjb(a)ny.ubs.com and/or pjb(a)23kgroup.com. I have just returned from a trip to BP, and there are many new and exciting things going on there. I will (RSN) post an article re: the current state of affairs at BP. Cheers, paul

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Re: Representations of Pi, etc.
by stevenw＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >In summary, I would be surprised to find that a method for calculating the >Nth digit of pi works for base N but not for base M (modulo some minor >efficiency factors related to machine architecture, etc.). > >Any pointers to this result would be appreciated. See Peter Borwein's home page: http://www.cecm.sfu.ca:80/personal/pborwein/ under _Calculating Pi and Other matters_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller | "The Internet, of course, is more | than just a place to find pictures | of people having sex with dogs." stevenw(a)best.com | -- Time Magazine, 3 July 1995

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Re: Compuserve grovels to foreign censors
by Gordon Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:56 AM 1/5/96 -0500, Larry Sudduth wrote: >Attachment Converted: C:\WORK\WINMAIL.DAT What, pray tell, is this? ----- Gordon R. Campbell, Owner - Mowat Woods Graphics P.O. Box 1902, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 5J7 Ph: (613) 542-4087 Fax: (613) 542-1139 2048-bit PGP key available on request.

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Re: US cryptographic patents, 1995
by thad＠hammerhead.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

lull(a)acm.org (John Lull) said: > This data was extracted from a free database maintained by the > EDS Shadow Patent Office at http://www.spo.edo.com/ That's really http://www.spo.eds.com thad -- Thaddeus Beier thad(a)hammerhead.com Technology Development 408) 286-3376 Hammerhead Productions http://www.got.net/~thad

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DCSB: Digital Commerce: Living Room ExIm, Retail Replacement, or Mail-Order Redux?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Digital Commerce Society of Boston (Formerly The Boston Society for Digital Commerce) Presents Fred Hapgood Digital Commerce: Living Room ExIm, Retail Replacement, or Mail-Order Redux? Tuesday, February 6, 1995 12 - 2 PM The Downtown Harvard Club of Boston One Federal Street, Boston, MA Fred says: >So far Web commerce has largely been a speciality export story. >(www.activmedia.com says that web commerce is half exports.) This >reflects the obvious strengths of the medium: webstores are >globally accessible and can support information resources to any >depth customers require. > >However, the meat and potatoes of the $2 trillion American retail >market lie not in specialty exports but in geographically >structured markets built on access to local traffic and >characterized by low-information transactions. If web commerce >has no role to play in commerce on this level, it will end up >little more than an extension and enhancement of direct mail. >(Which is of course not to be dismissed entirely: direct mail did >$55 billion last year.) > >My talk will address the compatibility of these segments with the >web, now and later. Fred Hapgood has written on internet commerce for _CIO_ and _Webmaster_ magazines. He has written on associated subjects for _Wired_ and _Inc-Technology_. The February talk will be based on research for an article on the web and franchising. This meeting of the Boston Society for Digital Commerce will be held on Tuesday, January 2, 1995 from 12pm - 2pm at the Downtown Branch of the Harvard Club of Boston, One Federal Street. The price for lunch is $27.50. This price includes lunch, room rental, and the speaker's lunch. ;-). The Harvard Club *does* have a jacket and tie dress code. We need to receive a company check, or money order, (or if we *really* know you, a personal check) payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston", by Saturday, February 2 , or you won't be on the list for lunch. Checks payable to anyone else but The Harvard Club of Boston will have to be sent back. Checks should be sent to Robert Hettinga, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02131. Again, they *must* be made payable to "The Harvard Club of Boston". If anyone has questions, or has a problem with these arrangements (We've had to work with glacial A/P departments more than once, for instance), please let us know via e-mail, and we'll see if we can work something out. Planned speakers for the following few months are: February Fred Hapgood Freelance Author March Glenda Barnes X.9 Electronic Commerce Security Group April Donald Eastlake CyberCash May Perry Metzger Security Consultant and Cypherpunk June Dan Shutzer FSTC July Pete Loshin Author, "Electronic Commerce" We are actively searching for future speakers. If you are in Boston on the first Tuesday of the month, and you would like to make a presentation to the Society, please send e-mail to the DCSB Program Commmittee, care of Robert Hettinga, rah(a)shipwright.com . For more information about the Digital Commerce Society of Boston, send "info dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . If you want to subscribe to the DCSB e-mail list, send "subscribe dcsb" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu . Looking forward to seeing you there! Cheers, Robert Hettinga Moderator, The Digital Commerce Society of Boston -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMO1H9vgyLN8bw6ZVAQGPyAQAkJeE0VtJXMQ58uUss1hvW0Xtf5FBvAM8 3uNGxQIjLT48rkSPRtmqxsx8KLoirdbCdARwbwStewVVvehvUIByYTCGmUWXBxPH OKhCM/iuEqZ0oZR7RNcTHu2/rduIBdpC53CwyiUmaomj8tAgM5fry9H5h/mjJVu8 aRu36l8isH8= =+lq2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The NEW(!) e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: Compuserve grovels to foreign censors
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:47 PM 1/5/96 -0500, Gordon Campbell wrote: >At 12:56 AM 1/5/96 -0500, Larry Sudduth wrote: > >>Attachment Converted: C:\WORK\WINMAIL.DAT > >What, pray tell, is this? > When a MS Mail attachment wanders around the world, it is accompanied by a data file of some kind. That is winmail.dat. So every MS MAIL attachment is really two attachments. Try to ignore it. DCF "Windoz. It may not be an operating system but at least it's out there on the hardware."

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Portland Cypherpunks Meeting
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Here is the final(?) information on the Portland Cypherpunks meeting. Date: Jan 20, 1996 Time: 5:23pm (discordian time) Location: The Habit Internet Cafe 2633 S.E. 21st Av., Portland OR 97202 SE 21st @ Clinton in Portland, OR (503)235-5321 For more information on the location, visit: http://www.teleport.com/~habit/ We will be having a key signing and other activities, as well as general socializing. Bring information on projects you are pursuing or questions you would like to ask. Please leave your cameras and other photographic equiptment at home as some of the people attending are pretty camera shy. (And not shy about informing you of it...) It looks like we will be getting people outside of the Portland metro area attending as well. (I have heard from at least one person from the Bay area and one from Seattle, so who knows how many will show up.) If you want to be on the information list for this, just send me e-mail at alano(a)teleport.com. If all goes well, this may turn into a regular thing... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMO19CuQCP3v30CeZAQGi+wf+N7HUDRpgP40SDZHcHlGLk2ApMrQhfAKM 9zxYzphkuqNqNfQB1+b+EFb4dYGOJUcE+DScCbmZMFdy4k9xY78z3Lc3aGFQz4uS ALuPh2T4jbe3rqqJq0aqM/mHlYD63oMi1/aZNMLRmGb7UVMUiGvulYaWI6GBiZVz rMTrmKdQ/2jEzZRpCWbyVCa8X04QY3XnH2nP2s/nDgWyZl9Y87KXN44BizRKfde/ 9x/vWf3mceVa1e09YHwQEwzZNFBvIGlpM4XWLkxh12QeQGCu08CvfJo3dSL0OU/u nRlaBO7IqLH90Ejv0/bLRuI0G3jKXb6yZxexORl6+PUbmwusIeaWIA== =qpD8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- 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/ "Governments are potholes on the Information Superhighway." - Not TCMay

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Scaling Web-of-Trust
by Kevin L Prigge 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry for the noise, someone had emailed a while ago with the URL for a paper on scaling the web of trust for PGP, and I've lost the email. If whomever it was could resend the information, I'd be most appreciative. Thanks. -- Kevin L. Prigge |"Have you ever gotten tired of hearing those UofM Central Computing | ridiculous AT&T commercials claiming credit email: klp(a)tc.umn.edu | for things that don't even exist yet? 010010011101011001100010| You will." -Emmanuel Goldstein

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Re: RSA's Art gallery is now on the web
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:57 AM 1/5/96 PST, you wrote: > Are you tired of the clip art you downloaded last week? Do you >need a new background screen for you PC? Does your cubicle need something >to give it character? > Look no further. Visit the RSA Data Security Art Gallery and >download to your hearts content. BTW, the URL for this is: http://www.rsa.com/rsa/gallery/gallery.htm 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/ "Governments are potholes on the Information Superhighway." - Not TCMay

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recent garbage posts
by Daniel Leeds 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The user in question has been talked to. DO NOT mailbomb root or any other account any more, this will be seen as hostile activities. We apologize for your inconvenience, but please, the death threats, physical bomb threats, and other nonsense is not called for.

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Re: New Mitnick Book
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:36 PM 1/5/96 -0500, Brian Davis wrote: >FWIW: When Markoff showed up with Tsutomu, the FBI agents "assumed" that >he was there with Tsutomu as a fellow researcher/grad >student/assistant/whatever. > >They had no idea (initially) that he was with the media. > >... > I take it that you were in the vicinity? Or is this just what you've heard? Any more iside tidbits on the bust? DCF

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Re: Representations of Pi, etc.
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:45 PM 1/4/96 -0800, you wrote: >At 3:19 AM 1/5/96, jim bell wrote: > >>But BTW, isn't it interesting, that news item from a few weeks ago, on an >>algorithm for determining individual bits in Pi, regardless of whether >>you've calculated all the previous ones. Only problem is, it only works in >>hexadecimal (and, obviously, binary, etc, not decimal. > ^^^^^^^^^^^ >??? > >I didn't see this result you mention, but it surprises me. And practically everybody else, I'm sure! It was written up in Science News magazine, BTW. >The part about how it works in some bases, but not in decimal. Well, by definition if it works in hex, it'll work in octal, "quadal" (?), binary, etc. That's ASSUMED, since they would be subsets (co-sets?) of each other. >The "hand-waving" (motivational/informal) explanation for why I am >surprised is that "Nature doesn't care about bipeds with 10 digits vs. >bipeds, or whatever, with 2 digits or 16 digits." That is, results >applicable in base 16, hexadecimal, should be easily applicable in base 10. Yeah, well, I understand your frustration, but to me the really amazing part is that the elephant flies at all, and not how well he flies (<G>) (In other words, the amazing thing is that there is a predictable relationship in ANY base system) Chances are the thing WON'T work in base 3,5,6,7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15, and any other non 2**n base. Or, at least, it will take a DIFFERENT equation to work in those other bases, if they work at all. >And there is are interesting properties about the distribution of digits in >"random" numbers. Pi is of course not random by many definitions, but >shares certain important properties with random numbers. (Or sequences, if >you wish.) One of these is properties is that of _regularity_, the >frequency of digits. A regular number is one whose expansion has in the >limit the same frequency for all digits, and this is so in any base. Thus, >a regular number has an equal frequency (in the limit, blah blah) of 0s, >1s, 2s, 3s, etc. And switching to another base will not change this. Not "regular," you used the wrong term. As a mathematician's term of art, this is called "normal." In other words, equal numbers of digits 0-9, equal numbers of digit pairs 00-through 99, equal number of digit triplets 000-999, etc. A series of random numbers, by definition, must be "normal." But "Normal" numbers do not necessarily have to be random. As you might expect, however, testing for "normality" is a good first test of "randomness." (I'm not a mathematician, and I don't play one on TV. Don't be overly impressed with the preceeding knowledge; I'm sure there are dozens if a hundred people reading cypherpunks who know more math than I do. I only got a 780 on the math portion of my SAT, 20 years ago... 790's and 800's weren't all that uncommon.) >I recollect that pi has been proved to me regular, i.e., that pi has an >equal frequency of all digits, in the limit, in all bases. Yes, pi is apparently "normal." (at least four the first 4 billion or so digits...) >(This is the sense in which we can argue that pi is "random." in the sense >that there are no correlations, no dependence of the n+1th digit on the nth >digit, and "no apparent order." Furthermore, there is no effective >compression of pi, except by some tricks, such as _naming_ it (a dictionary >compression, of sorts) or by specifying a program which computes it. Lots >of interesting issues about the real meaning of randomness and >compressability, about the "logical depth" of certain computations, etc. I >recommend "The Universal Turing Machine" (ed. by Haken, as I recall) for a >nice set of articles on these fascinating issues.) Of course, I'm not sure of the ramifications of this new discovery (individual-digit computability of pi) on the facts you list... (for example, inter-digit dependence) However, if the digital representations of the digits of pi were indeed still individually "random" and they could be individually computed rapidly enough, at least hypothetically you could use the digits of pi as a "one-time-pad". Obviously, everyone would know (at least, conceptually) the ENTIRE CONTENT of the pad; the only issue would be the location where you started. If the starting point was the key, and could be defined by a number of at least, say, 256-bits long, it might be a replacement for IDEA whose current length is fixed at 128 bits. I suppose the problem with this technique will probably be that it would take too long to calculate the (a number somewhere around 2**256) bit of pi, and for an n-bit message you'd have to do this n times. >In summary, I would be surprised to find that a method for calculating the >Nth digit of pi works for base N but not for base M (modulo some minor >efficiency factors related to machine architecture, etc.). I'm sure somebody else will have seen it. It was in Science News in the last couple of months, as I recall. Some kind soul will probably type it in. Maybe I can even retrieve my copy from my sister.

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Idiot's Guide to News via Compuserve
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Idiots Guide to Reading Banned Newsgroups via CompuServe CompuServe (alone among the Big Three) gives all subscribers a PPP connection to the Net through any CIS node (including those in Germany). This is a real Net connection that makes it possible to use CIS to fully access all the Net's resources including "banned" newsgroups. A Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection makes your computer just another machine on the Net for the time you are connected. Anything that any Net-connected machine can do, you can do. The CompuServe Dialer (formerly CompuServe Internet Dialer) software that has been included with WINCIM at least since version 1.4 gives you a PPP connection but you need additional newsreading software to dodge CompuServe restrictions. So for real beginners, here is how you can use your CompuServe account to access banned newsgroups as well as the rest of the Internet. These instructions are for Windows users. MAC users can do the same things but I don't know the available MAC software. 1) Get the latest copy of WINCIM. GO WINCIM (hit Ctrl-G and type WINCIM in the dialog box) from within CIS. Download is free. Install it according to the instructions and make sure that you can log on to CIS. 2) Next, let's get a copy of Freeagent which is a free usenet newsreader which works with CompuServe's own Internet connection software. Log on to CIS. GO FTP or: Click the Internet icon, click the File Downloads (FTP) icon and proceed to the main FTP screen. Click the Access a Specific Site button. 3) Enter ftp.forteinc.com in the Site Name box and /pub/free_agent in the Directory box. Click OK and you should see some site login information. Click OK again and you should see a check box next to the file name fagent10.zip. Click the check box and then click the Retrieve button. Wincim will show you that it will save the file in the Compuserv\download directory on your hard drive. (Remember where it's going.) 744279 bytes later, you will have a copy of Freeagent. 4) Move the file fagent.zip into a directory by itself (C:\AGENT for example). Unzip it with Pkunzip or one of the many zip utilities available on CIS. 5) What you are going to do is to connect directly to the Internet via CompuServe and read usenet newsgroups using Freeagent. In order to do that, you will need to find a site somewhere on the Net that will let you read Usenet News for free or you will have to obtain an account on another Internet-connected machine. 6) Community ConneXion (c2.org) will give a month of free service to CompuServe members suffering from censorship. For information send email to uncensored(a)c2.org. After your free month, c2.org costs only $7.50 a month for accounts accessed via the Internet. 7) There are some news servers out there that are open to the public. A news server is just a machine connected to the Internet that stores and forwards Usenet news. The IP addresses of two of the open news servers are 198.70.185.5 and 205.139.39.1. Once you become a sophisticated user of the nets, you can use your Web Browser to pick up a longer list of open news servers at http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~jwa/open-sites.html. 8) Now back to Free Agent to grab those banned newsgroups. In your WINCIM directory (maybe in a subdirectory called \cid), click cid.exe to start CompuServe (Internet) Dialer or find the phone-shaped dialer icon in your CompuServe group window. Inside the Dialer, hit dial to log on to the Internet. 9) Start Free Agent. Click Accept to accept the license agreement. It will prompt you to enter various information including the address of the news server you want to use, your email address, and other info. All that you have to enter is the address of a news server. In the box labeled "News (NNTP) Server:" enter one of the IP addresses of open news servers (198.70.185.5, 205.139.39.1, or another from the list) or the address of the news server of a system you've opened an account on (news.c2.org, for example). 10) Freeagent will ask you if it's OK to retrieve a list of news groups from the server. Click Yes. Free agent will then tell you that it is Retrieving complete List of Groups. Once that's finished you'll be ready to read all the newsgroups you want and neither CompuServe nor the Bavarian prosecutor will have anything to say about it. "The Internet belongs to no one except its users."

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Idiot's Guide to News via Compuserve
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Idiots Guide to Reading Banned Newsgroups via CompuServe CompuServe (alone among the Big Three) gives all subscribers a PPP connection to the Net through any CIS node (including those in Germany). This is a real Net connection that makes it possible to use CIS to fully access all the Net's resources including "banned" newsgroups. A Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) connection makes your computer just another machine on the Net for the time you are connected. Anything that any Net-connected machine can do, you can do. The CompuServe Dialer (formerly CompuServe Internet Dialer) software that has been included with WINCIM at least since version 1.4 gives you a PPP connection but you need additional newsreading software to dodge CompuServe restrictions. So for real beginners, here is how you can use your CompuServe account to access banned newsgroups as well as the rest of the Internet. These instructions are for Windows users. MAC users can do the same things but I don't know the available MAC software. 1) Get the latest copy of WINCIM. GO WINCIM (hit Ctrl-G and type WINCIM in the dialog box) from within CIS. Download is free. Install it according to the instructions and make sure that you can log on to CIS. 2) Next, let's get a copy of Freeagent which is a free usenet newsreader which works with CompuServe's own Internet connection software. Log on to CIS. GO FTP or: Click the Internet icon, click the File Downloads (FTP) icon and proceed to the main FTP screen. Click the Access a Specific Site button. 3) Enter ftp.forteinc.com in the Site Name box and /pub/free_agent in the Directory box. Click OK and you should see some site login information. Click OK again and you should see a check box next to the file name fagent10.zip. Click the check box and then click the Retrieve button. Wincim will show you that it will save the file in the Compuserv\download directory on your hard drive. (Remember where it's going.) 744279 bytes later, you will have a copy of Freeagent. 4) Move the file fagent.zip into a directory by itself (C:\AGENT for example). Unzip it with Pkunzip or one of the many zip utilities available on CIS. 5) What you are going to do is to connect directly to the Internet via CompuServe and read usenet newsgroups using Freeagent. In order to do that, you will need to find a site somewhere on the Net that will let you read Usenet News for free or you will have to obtain an account on another Internet-connected machine. 6) Community ConneXion (c2.org) will give a month of free service to CompuServe members suffering from censorship. For information send email to uncensored(a)c2.org. After your free month, c2.org costs only $7.50 a month for accounts accessed via the Internet. 7) There are some news servers out there that are open to the public. A news server is just a machine connected to the Internet that stores and forwards Usenet news. The IP addresses of two of the open news servers are 198.70.185.5 and 205.139.39.1. Once you become a sophisticated user of the nets, you can use your Web Browser to pick up a longer list of open news servers at http://dana.ucc.nau.edu/~jwa/open-sites.html. 8) Now back to Free Agent to grab those banned newsgroups. In your WINCIM directory (maybe in a subdirectory called \cid), click cid.exe to start CompuServe (Internet) Dialer or find the phone-shaped dialer icon in your CompuServe group window. Inside the Dialer, hit dial to log on to the Internet. 9) Start Free Agent. Click Accept to accept the license agreement. It will prompt you to enter various information including the address of the news server you want to use, your email address, and other info. All that you have to enter is the address of a news server. In the box labeled "News (NNTP) Server:" enter one of the IP addresses of open news servers (198.70.185.5, 205.139.39.1, or another from the list) or the address of the news server of a system you've opened an account on (news.c2.org, for example). 10) Freeagent will ask you if it's OK to retrieve a list of news groups from the server. Click Yes. Free agent will then tell you that it is Retrieving complete List of Groups. Once that's finished you'll be ready to read all the newsgroups you want and neither CompuServe nor the Bavarian prosecutor will have anything to say about it. "The Internet belongs to no one except its users."

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Pi Stuff
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Various amazed people on the Pi thread wrote: > But BTW, isn't it interesting, that news item from a few > weeks ago, on an algorithm for determining individual bits > in Pi, regardless of whether you've calculated all the > previous ones. Only problem is, it only works in > hexadecimal (and, obviously, binary, etc, not decimal. > I didn't see this result you mention, but it surprises me. > Yeah, well, I understand your frustration, but to me the > really amazing part is that the elephant flies at all, and > not how well he flies (<G>) (In other words, the amazing > thing is that there is a predictable relationship in ANY > base system) Chances are the thing WON'T work in base > 3,5,6,7,9,10,11,12,13,14,15, and any other non 2**n base. > Or, at least, it will take a DIFFERENT equation to work in > those other bases, if they work at all. A few quick comments. The notion that one might be able to compute digits of Pi efficiently at any starting point in the number is not late-breaking news. The Chudnovsky brothers developed a formula which permitted them to do this a number of years ago, and used it to compute Pi to several billion digits. Prior to that time, the Borweins' quartic interation based on Ramanujan's modular identities and AGM techniques was the existing state of the art. Given a base, d, and an finite ordinal, i, the function which computes the ith digit of the Pi in the base d is certainly a computable one. If we can find an algorithm for computing this function whose time as a function of "i" does not include the time required to compute all previous digits, then we are to a certain extent evaluating individual digits of Pi without calculating the previous ones. One should keep in mind, however, that the degree to which such things are true for algorithms lies on a continuum, with a near-constant number of arithmetic operations at one end, and a geometric progression at the other. So it is not the classic either/or situation. Good algorithms whose times are tractable functions of "i" are certainly desirable, and have been discovered. Someone suggested that radix conversion was a time-consuming operation. Modern FFT-based algorithms can do multiplication, division, Nth root, reciprocal, and base conversion in near-linear time. Doubtless good algorithms to compute the Nth digit of Pi in any base do exist, but their form may not be as obvious as those for trivial bases, such as powers of two. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: Massey, CEO of Compuserve, on Internet
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 13:55 1/4/96, Tony Iannotti wrote: >On Thu, 4 Jan 1996, Robert A. Rosenberg wrote: > >> Yes it would require that the Node be checked in the Software. What I was >> responding to was a claim that there is no way of telling where I am >> connecting from (which I disproved). As to calling a non-German Node, that >> is always an option. > >Yes, I agree. I think the real difference is that they really cannot tell >where you are calling from, even though they know where you are >connecting. Since the German Government (or the local "DA" who is claiming to represent the National Government <g>) is talking about delivery of banned items in Germany, I think that the relevant location is the node that is being used not where the other end of the call to that node is located. What is being requested is that CIS refrain for delivering the stuff to the Nodes in Germany (they are not being told to monitor someone in Germany who is trying to get it by calling LD to a node in France (or the US for that matter).

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An open letter to Commtouch
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Commtouch people, I am intrigued and hopeful about your secure e-mail product, Pronto Secure. However, I am puzzled about its support for POTP encryption. The other encryption protocols (PGP, PEM, MOSS, and S/MIME) have all been reviewed carefully by outside experts, and there is general consensus that these protocols embody state-of-the-art cryptographic technology, and that there are no known major security flaws. POTP stands out on your list because such a review has not been carried out. In fact, grave doubts have been raised regarding its security, and (to my taste, anyway) not satisfactorily answered. I do not wish to raise those points here, nor do I wish to claim here that POTP is insecure. However, I believe the reputation of your product is drawn into question by association. Should POTP be definitively demonstrated to be weak, then it would not be the case that using your product according to the instructions would provide "security." Further, I would consider it slightly misleading to describe it as "mission-critical." I feel the situation is analogous to that of a hypothetical networking company claiming that their product delivers high bandwidth by offering the choice of ATM, Myrinet, 100Mbps Ethernet, or string and tin cans. That said, I applaud your multiprotocol approach in general. In fact, I feel it is the future of Internet security tools. I hope your product gains widespread acceptance, and helps to further the cause of deployment of strong crypto. Raph Levien

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No Subject
by Marc J. Wohler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Anyone know of the staus of the Phil Zimmermann Grand Jury investagation? Is there a Statuate of Limitations or what? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMO2XK2eikzgqLB7pAQE6wgQAg7bs/b9qkayCQSUz8Ql8vcVNF74cSAl+ TRs/HQWA8g99x5j0Boircf7kpO8LR8orFkHdsSApYWCOCTDTHpiQNmcLYcSbTiFn td3cJsponuKLa0qTjRpo3e+yIo8ebDC1tCrJaFXTZD8hHGLchr+rz8CLJR8R7pLS LxYr3TFMM3s= =x1Al -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ***Preserve, Protect and Defend the private use of Strong Crypto*** * * * PGP for the masses * * * Finger mjwohler(a)netcom.com for Marc Wohler's public key fingerprint= F1 70 23 13 91 B5 10 63 0F CF 33 AD BE E6 7B B6

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Re: FreeBSD user <fb@sponsor.octet.com>
by Steve14571＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-01-04 18:44:46 EST, you write: > Am I the only one who has received three unreadable >messages from this address on cypherpunks? No, I have them too... What is going on? Pvt Stephen Herbert United States Marine Corps

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Re: New Mitnick Book
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by bdavis(a)thepoint.net (Brian Davis) on Fri, 5 Jan 3:4 PM Here's Littman on what the Feds knew about Markoff at Raleigh (Orsak and Murphy are with Sprint Cellular; Kent Walker was US Attorney in San Francisco): Monday afternoon, Special Agent LeVord Burns sits by the coffee pot and vending machine at the Sprint switch and debates the legal issues with Shimomura. "Tsutomu wanted us to kick his door down," recalls Orsak, who along with Murphy, listened in. "Burns was talking about what warrants had been issued, what the FBI was going to do." Burns impresses Orsak. A well-built, bespectacled black man in a suit and tie, Burns looks like the kind of FBI agent that doesn't miss details. As Burns recounts Mitnick's background, Orsak is surprised by what the agent says about Mitnick. "Burns said there were a lot of guys that as far as national security went were a lot more dangerous than Mitnick -- that a lot of professional hackers are a lot more dangerous." To Orsak, cyberspace's Most Wanted Hacker doesn't sound all that threatening. "One of the more interesting things, I thought, was the FBI goes, 'As far as hackers go,' Mitnick was 'benign.' They didn't have evidence he was in it for the money." A little later, John Markoff and Shimomura's girlfriend, Julia Menapace, who just flew in, arrive at the switch. Orsak and Murphy invite Shimomura's team, Burns, and two other FBI agents from Quantico, Virginia, out to Ragazzi's, a casual Italian restaurant nearby. Orsak spreads out a Raleigh street plan on the checkered tablecloth and pinpoints Mitnick's location. "LeVord was telling us what his involvement was for the FBI," recalls Murphy. "It was light banter. LeVord assumed like we all did, that Markoff was just another guy out of California. Just another egghead. One of Tsutomu's." Markoff gets everyone's ear when he mentions Mitnick inspired the hit movie WarGames. "Markoff was filling us in on Mitnick's typical behavior, the different people Mitnick had run-ins with," recalls Murphy. "A guy in England, a guy in Princeton, one at Digital." Then, Markoff runs through some of Mitnick's aliases. One of the phony names rings a bell with Murphy. After dinner, the whole crew heads back to the switch, and just as Murphy suspected, he finds a memo describing a recent attempt by someone using the alias to social engineer a new bunch of MINs. Meanwhile, the FBI is bumping up against a technical problem. The agents had planned to install the FBI's own bulky scanning equipment in a rental van, but they can't find one. Murphy suggests using his co-worker Fred's minivan. Burns gives the idea the green light, and Orsak helps the agents set up and calibrate their equipment in Fred's van. Around midnight, Fred chauffeurs the two agents to circle the cell site to calibrate their scanning equipment. Fred and the FBI agents get to talking. "He [Fred] let the cat out of the bag," confides Murphy. "We didn't tell him not to say anything. We weren't trying to hide it, but we were also not trying to convey it. He told them Markoff wrote a book on this guy." The boys from Quantico aren't happy. "They freaked," recalls Murphy. "They thought Markoff would tip the guy [Mitnick] so he could write another book." One of the Quantico agents phones the Sprint switch to confirm Markoff's identity. "Me, Markoff, Tsutomu, and Julia were at the switch," remembers Murphy. "One of the Quantico guys was on the phone. He wanted to talk to Tsutomu." Murphy passes the phone to Shimomura. "He [Shimomura] wasn't about to lie," says Murphy of the tense moment. "He [Shimomura] was trying to evade a little bit. He said that Kent Walker knew about Markoff being there, which of course Walker did." Murphy, Markoff, and Menapace listen to Shimomura. "Kent knows about it," insists Shimomura to the agent from Quantico. "He's cleared through Kent." But Kent Walker later denied ever giving Shimomura such approval or knowing John Markoff was in Raleigh. Shimomura later disputed Murphy's account and said he "never told anyone from law enforcement that anyone had authorized Markoff's presence in Raleigh." (pp. 357-58)

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More Noise Sphere Noise (simple source code)
by wlkngowl＠unix.asb.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok, no language holy wars. This was quickie to test out the Noise Sphere plotting. It's in Pascal, but it's understandable. { Simple demo of a Noise Sphere in Turbo Pascal } { (If only I had a really awful RNG to test it with...) } program NoiseSphere; uses Graph, Crt; const BGIPath = ''; { where those silly Borland *.BGI drivers are } var GraphMode, GraphDriver: Integer; type Polar = record r, theta, phi: Real; end; Cartesian = record x,y,z: Real; end; procedure PolarToCartesian(var P: Polar; var C: Cartesian); begin C.x := P.r * Sin(P.phi) * Cos(P.theta); C.y := P.r * Sin(P.phi) * Sin(P.theta); C.z := P.r * Cos(P.phi); end; procedure Plot(var C: Cartesian); begin with C do begin PutPixel(100+(Round(100*y)), 200-(Round(120*z)), Yellow); PutPixel(320+(Round(100*x)), 200-(Round(120*y)), Red); PutPixel(540+(Round(100*x)), 200-(Round(120*z)), Blue); end; Delay(1); end; function ByteToReal(b: Byte): Real; begin ByteToReal := b / 256; end; function InitScreen: Integer; begin GraphMode := VGAHi; GraphDriver := EGA; InitGraph(GraphDriver,GraphMode,BGIPath); InitScreen := GraphResult; end; var n: LongInt; X: Array [ 0..2 ] of Real; P: Polar; C: Cartesian; begin InitScreen; Randomize; for n := 0 to 2 do X[n] := {$ifdef USEDEV} {$else} ByteToReal(Random(256)); {$endif} n := 0; repeat with P do begin r := Sqrt(X[(n+2) mod 3]); theta := pi * X[(n+1) mod 3]; phi := 2 * pi * X[n]; end; PolarToCartesian(P,C); Plot(C); X[n] := {$ifdef USEDEV} {$else} ByteToReal(Random(256)); {$endif} n := (n + 1) mod 3; until KeyPressed; ReadKey; RestoreCrtMode; end.

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Mixmaster In a Box
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Towords the goal of making Mixmasters in a box, I've written an installer script for mixmaster. If you're running on one of the supported platforms (alpha, bsdi, hpux, linux, sunos, solaris), the script will walk you through everything from the make to setting up cron jobs & /etc/aliases. If you've been putting off setting up a remailer because its a pain, give this a shot. Lance will probably be including it in the next release of mixmaster, but you can get it now by sending me a message with the Subject: get mix-installer. Comments, bugs, bug fixes are welcome. Thanks to Rich $alz for a extensive comments & suggestions for portability. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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Re: More Noise Sphere Noise (simple source code)
by wlkngowl＠unix.asb.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 05 Jan 96 07:24:03, I wrote: >Ok, no language holy wars. This was quickie to test out >the Noise Sphere plotting. It's in Pascal, but it's >understandable. >{ Simple demo of a Noise Sphere in Turbo Pascal } >{ (If only I had a really awful RNG to test it with...) } Odd... That came through on the mail/news gateway but the preceeding article that explains what that was about didn't.... did anyone receive it? In case no, it's based on Clifford A. Pickover's paper "Random Number Generators: Pretty Good Ones are Easy to Find" which doesn't deal with useful RNGs for crypto sense, but the paper does explain ways to visually represent RNGs so that seemingly good RNGs show their awful correlations, etc. My previous post that should have showed up mentioned that these methods might be useful for checking out crypto functions (hashes, pRNGs, ciphers). The full reference is The Visual Computer (1995) 11:369-377, Springer Verlag, 1995.

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Ruby Block Cipher Mark 5
by Michael Paul Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Ruby Block Cipher, Mark 4, had some problems with slow avalanche with a worst-case input, as well as some really amateurish reference code bugs that I apologize for. The good news is that these things have (I hope) all been corrected in the Ruby Block Cipher, Mark 5. The biggest change to the algorithm is that the "family key" is no longer simply added (modulo 2) to the input blocks, but is used in add and multiply steps to eliminate the old worst case avalanche patterns. The Ruby Block Cipher is not a general block cipher in that it cannot be used in Electronic Codebook (ECB) mode. It is a cryptographic hash function with a block size of only 64 bits. Of course, 64 bits is too short for a cryptographic hash function intended for digital signature use, but it is just fine for a quick block cipher. This may be a good reference for those folks who want a quick & easy encryption algorithm that need not withstand nuclear attack but can provide something better than common weak encryption methods in use in the software industry. The small amount of code, fast operation, and lack of the need for a lengthy key setup time are definite advantages where computing resources are at a premium. On the other hand, fast key setup time substantially reduces the cost of a brute force attack on the key, so use of the full 64 bits of the key is essential. Your comments and suggestions on this rather strange little cipher are welcome and encouraged. I'm particularly interested in any ideas as to how many rounds (the STRENGTH constant in the source code) are appropriate for well-balanced security. Information on the Ruby Block Cipher is available as ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/public/ruby_m5.ps.gz or ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/public/ruby_m5.rtf.gz and, if you are in the USA or Canada, a reference implementation and a sample file encryption program with free source code is in ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/I_will_not_export/crypto_???????/mpj/ruby_m5.zip where the ??????? is revealed in ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/README ruby_m5.zip is also available on the Colorado Catacombs BBS at 303-772-1062. I urge caution in using such a new cipher in actual applications, but if you feel the need to, you might consider asking me if any known weaknesses have been reported before you do. Note: this is not a product for sale (it is free and probably worth at least as much as you pay for it). It is also not a prepublication (it is THE publication in electronic form with no paper publication anticpated in the near future). ___________________________________________________________ | | |\ /| | | Michael Paul Johnson Colorado Catacombs BBS 303-772-1062 | | \/ |o| | PO Box 1151, Longmont CO 80502-1151 USA Jesus is alive! | | | | / _ | mpj(a)csn.net aka mpj(a)netcom.com m.p.johnson(a)ieee.org | | |||/ /_\ | ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/README.MPJ CIS: 71331,2332 | | |||\ ( | http://www.csn.net/~mpj -. --- ----- .... | | ||| \ \_/ | PGPprint=F2 5E A1 C1 A6 CF EF 71 12 1F 91 92 6A ED AE A9 | |___________________________________________________________| -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.7.1 iQCVAgUBMO1VgvX0zg8FAL9FAQECzQP/fD9dLLeixfZAtKXM2tDXrGgrashiqEsn jU9ohnNsou9MMU+PUmNj8RJCRHSXy4HMskV5BhnILUYaSI5ztJjZYvhBcIbBcR8J ecGl5++iaj4vRAb1vs32Y6LVsQm7hsMvy0byaszOWUKDpn+ZJrFCwMiKgD50ecXW y+XlpkdOhiA= =FQec -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Please include my address on followups, since I don't read all mail on this wonderful (but high volume) list. Thanks! mpj(a)netcom.com

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