December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

(fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An announcement forwarded to me (due to being on des-challenge mailing list I think) of proposed organisation for breaking RSADSI's DES challenge. Those interested in participating might wish to join the lists mentioned. In addition the list: des-challenge(a)muffin.org is for discussion of the DES challenge, and can be subscribed to by sending email to majordomo(a)muffin.org. -Adam ====================================================================== Subject: Announcement: Organisation Committee From: ths(a)rz.tu-ilmenau.de (Thomas S.) Date: 15 Feb 1997 18:27:40 +0000 Hi! The six volunteers who answered the call for a committee of management have got together to try to help 'steer' the DES challenge. We have considered the available options of proceeding, and we kindly ask everyone interested in this project to follow our proposals, to avoid waste of efforts. 1. The attempt to break the key will be coordinated. We chose this mainly because we can make a political statement. We don't want it to be a race for money. Each task will be handled by logically separate servers, some of which with be replicated and run as a hierachy. The protocol will use UDP, although there will be gateway servers for other protocols (such as HTTP, SMTP, FAX, etc). We hope that one of the first requests for a key range will be from parties interested in using a "random" approach -- we would appreciate some discussion on how large their ranges should be. 2. There will be one consistent WWW structure for the project. It does not have to managed by a single person. This structure should provide statistics, information for developers, interested users and perhaps even for the press. Several mirrors and translations will be started soon. The starting point is: http://www.des.crypto.org/ [fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/] The url in brackets has to be used till we get the final subdomain. Likewise for the rest of this document. 3. The work of the different groups should be stated and coordinated on the page http://www.des.crypto.org/people.html. [fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/people.html] This is to avoid uncoordinated parallel developmemt. Please write to Thomas S. <webmaster(a)mail.des.crypto.org> [webmaster(a)fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk] if you what want to be mentioned on this page. 3a. Several mailing lists have been set up for the different groups: des-coding for the actual DES routine and optimisation des-networking for the network code and protocol des-www for www contributions and mirrors des-pr for press contact, translations etc (like challenge-pr) des-misc :-) des-announce moderated, important information for users of the client List address: <list>@lists.des.crypto.org [@xtn.net] To subscribe, send mail to majordomo(a)lists.des.crypto.org [@xtn.net] with in the body of the message (several actions allowed): subscribe <list> Achives available (see homepage). 4. The actual DES routine has to be written and optimised. We ask developers to participate and coordinate their efforts using the mailing list des-coding. For obvious reasons, developers outside the USA are prefered, but "publication" of algorithms seems to be a legal way go get around. Please do not use this list to distribute crypto code. 5. The prize money will be split equally between Gutenberg and EFF. There is a possibility of using part of it for stickers or something similar, but don't count on it. We hope to get a working system up and running ASAP. The fact alone that DES is seriously challenged (with a reasonable time frame) should give us quite some publicity (by the time the system is ready). If we can make use of that, we will have significantly more client than for the 48 bit key. The organisation committee: Piete Brooks <Piete.Brooks(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> Jered Floyd <jered(a)mit.edu> Tim Newsome <drz(a)froody.bloke.com> Germano Caronni <caronni(a)tik.ee.ethz.ch> Thomas Roessler <Thomas.Roessler(a)sobolev.rhein.de> Thomas S. <ths(a)fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk>

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Re: Fuck UseNet (fwd)
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

E. Allen Smith allegedly said: > > From: IN%"ravage(a)EINSTEIN.ssz.com" "Jim Choate" 15-FEB-1997 07:11:54.43 > > >Perhaps in addition to the X-foo structures we have discussed already we > >might consider adding, > > >X-distrib-policy: foo > > >Where foo might be, > > > Public Domain > > All rights reserved, contact author for redistribution > > Distribution for non-commercial uses permitted > > Refer to authors header > > Copyleft > > etc. > > >or whatever the policy might be for a given remailer. This would > >significantly aid folks in their shopping around. > > The basic difficulty with this idea is that _senders_ generally > don't have much of a choice where the messages go, once you've decided > to accept them. In other words, just because you've decided to accept > a message doesn't mean it suddenly becomes > copyleft/public domain/whatever. Now, if you, say, announced that only > subscribers to your particular list, subscribers to any other lists > adopting the same idea, and those who'd sign a consent agreement could > post through your list, that wouldn't be a problem... although I > suspect you wouldn't get many subscribers. > -Allen That wouldn't be the way it work -- Jim operates one of the cp remailers; I operate another. Jim has a standard policy concerning public domain/copyright that is different than mine. So *I* put an X-distrib-policy header in all the cp mail I forward to him. More precisely, all of my incoming mail for "cypherpunks(a)songbird.com" gets the header. This protocol needs a bit of refinement, and perhaps some hacking at majordomo, but seems fairly straightforward. Jim's policy is actually very reasonable. It has a rational basis, though one might disagree with it, and it is easy to deal with it this way. A more extreme policy -- "The operator of this mailing list claims an exclusive copyright on every piece of mail sent to it; by sending to it you agree to this policy", for example -- would be harder to deal with. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com,kc@llnl.gov the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: 5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E 87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F

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Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:02 PM +0000 2/15/97, Adam Back wrote: >Thomas S <ths(a)fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk> writes: >> [...] >> >> 5. The prize money will be split equally between Gutenberg and EFF. >> There is a possibility of using part of it for stickers or >> something similar, but don't count on it. > >Not a good idea. > >How can this be enforced? The RSADSI DES challenge is open to all >comers, and how do you prove that someone who finds the key found it >through this group effort? > >I have a suspicion many people would be tempted to fill in the RSA >challenge form and email it in themselves. $10,000 is a fair amount >of money. Once again, the advantages of an "uncoordinated search" should be mentioned. An uncoordinated search, in which people randomly search chunks of keyspace is obviously less efficient than a coordinated search where no part of the space is searched two or more times. However, an uncoordinated search is only less efficient by a small factor of two or three, with a 95% probability that the key will be found with an effort "only" 3 times greater than with a coordinated search. (The Poisson probability distribution is what's involved here, and the math is fairly easy to work out.) A 2-4x factor is significant, and may warrant a coordinated search. However, the various problems implicit in coordinated searches are factors, too. Also, an uncoordinated search solves the "prize" problem, as whomever finds the key makes the contact with RSADSI. One of the problems with a coordinated search, if the remaining keyspace to be doled out is publically announced, is that as the keyspace is searched and a key _not_ found, the remaining keyspace is increasingly more tempting for "independent searchers" to search. Sort of the way the odds on some lotteries actually become "acceptable" as the lottery pot grows. The organizer of the coordinated search must then, I surmise, keep the assignments secret and dole out keyspace securely. Having the prize money go to the finder of the key, as opposed to some artificial division between EFF, Gutenberg, etc., is also an incentive for people to contribute more CPU time. --Tim May >I know I would be tempted. I have been running Svend Olaf's DES code, >and my intention in the unlikely event that I hit the key had been to >claim the money. > >How does it hurt the publicity if the actual individual who finds the >key takes the money? Surely it adds excitement to the story? > >In fact it would provide people with a possibly more powerful >incentive to try to break the key in the first place -- in the hopes >of winning the prize! $10,000 means more to a lot of people than >opposing ITAR/EAR, and participating in a technical challenge. To >start with a lot of people who's CPUs we could be using don't even >know what ITAR/EAR are! > >> We hope to get a working system up and running ASAP. The fact alone >> that DES is seriously challenged (with a reasonable time frame) >> should give us quite some publicity (by the time the system is >> ready). If we can make use of that, we will have significantly more >> client than for the 48 bit key. > >I would have thought announcing that $10,000 can be won by running >easy to use windows software on a wide selection of newsgroups would >get you lots of CPUs! > >Adam >-- >print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> >)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc` Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thomas S <ths(a)fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk> writes: > [...] > > 5. The prize money will be split equally between Gutenberg and EFF. > There is a possibility of using part of it for stickers or > something similar, but don't count on it. Not a good idea. How can this be enforced? The RSADSI DES challenge is open to all comers, and how do you prove that someone who finds the key found it through this group effort? I have a suspicion many people would be tempted to fill in the RSA challenge form and email it in themselves. $10,000 is a fair amount of money. I know I would be tempted. I have been running Svend Olaf's DES code, and my intention in the unlikely event that I hit the key had been to claim the money. How does it hurt the publicity if the actual individual who finds the key takes the money? Surely it adds excitement to the story? In fact it would provide people with a possibly more powerful incentive to try to break the key in the first place -- in the hopes of winning the prize! $10,000 means more to a lot of people than opposing ITAR/EAR, and participating in a technical challenge. To start with a lot of people who's CPUs we could be using don't even know what ITAR/EAR are! > We hope to get a working system up and running ASAP. The fact alone > that DES is seriously challenged (with a reasonable time frame) > should give us quite some publicity (by the time the system is > ready). If we can make use of that, we will have significantly more > client than for the 48 bit key. I would have thought announcing that $10,000 can be won by running easy to use windows software on a wide selection of newsgroups would get you lots of CPUs! Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Re: Excerpt on SPAM from Edupage, 11 February 1997
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Roy M. Silvernail wrote: > > Clearly, spammers who pay their readers to read their messages (and who > > do get them to read) will have a very high response rate. That may > > justify adding postage to their letters. > > It should also spur development of intelligent agents which can retrieve > this cash without human intervention. Spammers will doubtless alter > their pages to require more interaction to find the key to the cash. > Then the IA's will be improved. Then... remember the copy protection > wars? This isn't necessarily a negative point. > > > The advantages are obvious. The disadvantage is a possibility of someone > > stealing the money on the way, if the letters are not encrypted. > > Or that the money wasn't there in the first place (absent a trusted > signature system), or the key doesn't exist, or the wrong key is > offered, or the sender put the same e-dollar on all 60000 mails sie > sent and it's already been redeemed. Well, if the trusted party performs the encryption by both recipient's public key and the "retrieval key", the problem that you mention can be avoided. - Igor.

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Where is the reorg FAQ?
by das＠razor.engr.sgi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw a reference to an FAQ by Adam Back, explaining the mailing lists that are being set up to replace cypherpunks(a)toad.com, but I didn't see the FAQ itself, on either cypherpunks-unedited or cypherpunks(a)toad.com, which I read as mail.cypherpunks. Maybe it fell through the cracks. Could Adam or somebody else repost it? Thanks. Btw, one of our many news servers has alt.cypherpunks, but it has very low traffic. I doubt people are not posting. Must be alt.cypherpunks missing from some upstream sites. -- Anil Das

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk wrote: <earlier discussion excised> > Not my point, I didn`t say I would refuse, as in my example, to have > my car serviced by a woman, rather, that I would not feel comfortable > doing so. This is not prejudice, it is a statistical judgement based > on the fact that, as a percentage, I know few women who are competent > car mechanics but I know a number of men who, by the same criteria, I > would call competent. Acknowledged, agree to disagree :-). (Very few of my male friends can do more than sew on a button, but that doesn't weight my choice of a *professional* tailor.) It did, however, sound like you were agreeing with the previous poster's (more extreme) position. > Very much so, I did not intend, even though my post may have appeared > that way, for one minute to suggest that women were *unable* to carry > out certain tasks, just that they seem less suited to certain > vocations that others. For example, I know a number of good female > History or English students but very few good female mathematics > or computer science students. This is not, I believe, because women are > not "suited" to computer science rather that they have never been encouraged > at high school etc. to learn about such subjects which are seen as male preserves. > I wholeheartedly believe this should not be the case, and my original > post may have been misleading, I just believe that in the current > system very few women do become good at science/technical subjects. Agreed (sadly) that there is a dearth of role models like Mme. Curie or Roberta Bondar. There is also an unfortunate "geek stigma" often attached to those who are good at math or science (male or female). Whether this stigma discourages more girls than boys is questionable (psychology thesis, anyone?), but it has probably resulted in good-math-potential brains taking economics (or whatever) instead. Fewer competitors for the 56-bit prize, but also fewer brains thinking up better PRNGs. Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Re: More on digital postage
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sat, 15 Feb 1997 Dale Thorn wrote: > jim bell wrote: > > > But having an address, and a walkway, and a doorbell is generally considered > > if not explicit permission, but at least toleration of the idea that > > somebody can walk up and knock on the door, etc. Having a telephone with a > > number that anyone can dial is going to result in some level of intrusion. > > Having a fax machine is a similar issue, unless technology provides a way to > > block unwanted faxes. > > There are some neato methods to deal with the door and the phone, > but I haven't investigated faxes since I don't run one at home. Boring but it works: There are plenty of fax-to-PC programs out there. Anyone can save *lots* of trees by viewing faxes on the screen before printing the useful page(s). Yes, I know, this means human intervention, but so does crumpling up the ***BUY NOW*** garbage, tossing it at the recycle bin, missing, cursing, etc. Here in Canada, the CRTC (Canadian Radio & Telecomms Commission) put out rules limiting the time of day, etc. for phone spam (voice or fax). Does anyone out there have the specifics of the CRTC regs? Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Crypto code published in magazines
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm trying to find instances of crypto code published in computer magazines in the last few years. I know of Blowfish in DDJ, are there cases of more mainstream computer mags like Byte publishing crypto code (I know Byte did DES in 1977, I'm hoping for something a bit more recent)?. Please mail or cc replies directly to me, nntp.hks.net seems to have died :-(. Peter.

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Re: Mirrors and replies-to
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> However, I would like it if the mirror operators would reinstantiate a > feature of the original list for me. The reply-to field on the mirrors is > currently set to cypherpunks(a)toad.com. On the original list, this was set > to "sender", both to keep people from replying to the list unnecessarily > (hah! :-)) but also to keep mail loops from forming. Mail loops could be a > big problem, especially when you guys put together your neo-netnews > mailring. (a little jyaism, that... :-)). As to the Mailloops: Majordomo seems (at least to me) to be pretty good about handling those kinds of things. If you configure it right. I would rather have the replyto:cypherpunks as I am rather lazy, and would like to be able to save everything in one file easily. Just my $0.01.

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Re: More on digital postage
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mr. May wrote: > At 11:40 AM -0600 2/15/97, snow wrote: > >Mr. Bell wrote: > >> However, you connect that fax machine to a phone line, when you know full > >> well that should it be enabled to do so, it will automatically pick up the > >> phone when it "hears" a ring, and will print out a fax based on information > >> provided. It isn't clear why sending a fax is any "wronger" than mailing > >> junk mail, or making a (voice) phone call to somebody. > > That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected > >to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone > >to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my > >home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to > >a beer out of my fridge? > > The proper parallel is to _knocking on the door_. Talking about "unwanted > phone calls" or "unwanted faxes" as being equivalent to entering a house > and wandering around is incorrect. With phone calls, yes. With unwanted faxes no. With Phone Calls, and knocks on the door I have the option of simply not answering. Faxes (in certain enviroments) you can't do that with. > Our society fairly reasonably allows tort relief for, say, having one's > doorbell rung frequently or at odd hours. On the fax issue, similar tort > relief could be obtained if a person or business was truly "under attack." > (Purists, like me, would probably prefer technological solutions even in > these cases. Leave a phone on answering machine mode, only switch on the > fax mode when a fax is expected, etc.) Or simply a societal acceptance of retaliation(sp?) Someone who constantly wakes you up in the middle of the night, well you just arrange it so they get no sleep. > These tort actions are a far cry from proposals that anyone whose knock on > the door, or phonecall, or e-mail, or fax is subject to criminal > prosecution under proposed new laws. > (I think the courts are already clogged enough, and I have faith that no > court in the land will accept a case where no real harm was done. A friend > of mine got mailbombed with 25,000 e-mail messages in one day, shutting > down his account until the mess could be cleaned up, and it's not even > likely he'll ever get any relief.) I (I think like you) feel that almost no one will get convicted of these "crimes" unless the attacker simply goes too far. > What CompuServe did was quite different, as CompuServe decided that some > e-mail would not be delivered. This is essentially comparable to the Postal > Service deciding that mail from the National Rifle Association is, to them, > "junk," or to the phone company deciding that phone calls from Libya or > Iraq or some other unfavored nation will be fed to a dead number. Not really. The US Postal service is a regulated monopoly, and is the only game in town. If they weren't a regulated monopoly, I wouldn't care if they refused to carry certain peices of mail, the mailer would have the option of simply using a different service. Thus with compuserve, they have the right (as a private company) to refuse to deliver what ever they wish. And their users have the right to go elsewhere. > Getting the courts and the regulators involved in deciding what speech is > junk and what is not junk is unconstitutional, which was my earlier point. Which I argee with.

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Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > How can this be enforced? The RSADSI DES challenge is open > to all comers, and how do you prove that someone who finds > the key found it through this group effort? > I have a suspicion many people would be tempted to fill in > the RSA challenge form and email it in themselves. $10,000 > is a fair amount of money. Of course they will. If the unsearched portions of the keyspace are published, you can just sit back until the odds go up and then throw some CPU power at it. There is no obligation on the part of the individual who finds the key to not claim the prize personally. The issues of random keyspace assignment to protect against sabotage and centralized monolithic server vs autonomous client have been debated on the "muffin" list, where I have been lurking, but the people in charge seem to like explicit keyspace partitioning and servers a lot. Should be an interesting effort. By the way, does anyone know if des-challenge(a)muffin.org is alive? I haven't seen any messages from it in over a day and majordomo is not responding to inquiries. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: More on digital postage
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jim bell wrote: > At 11:40 AM 2/15/97 -0600, snow wrote: > >Mr. Bell wrote: > But having an address, and a walkway, and a doorbell is generally considered > if not explicit permission, but at least toleration of the idea that > somebody can walk up and knock on the door, etc. Having a telephone with a > number that anyone can dial is going to result in some level of intrusion. > Having a fax machine is a similar issue, unless technology provides a way to > block unwanted faxes. There are some neato methods to deal with the door and the phone, but I haven't investigated faxes since I don't run one at home. For the door, you can have a locked gate so they can't knock on the door, and an adjustable volume ringer or phone at the gate that's easy to ignore when you don't want them to know you're there and you're ignoring them. If the gate is not practical, at least put a locked screen door in front of the regular door, and the ringer or whatever outside the screen. For more aggressive pests, some signs might be necessary. For the phone, you can do like I did, and simply remove (or break) the outgoing message tape, so when they call, all they get is a beep and they'll have to think fast or they're cut off. Cuts way back on pesky calls, but allows your loyals to leave messages or speak so you'll know who it is.

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Re: DES challenge organisation
by Anil Das 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Feb 15, 5:01pm, Timothy C. May wrote: > Subject: Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation > However, an uncoordinated search is only less efficient by a small factor > of two or three, with a 95% probability that the key will be found with an > effort "only" 3 times greater than with a coordinated search. (The Poisson > probability distribution is what's involved here, and the math is fairly > easy to work out.) > The motivation to crack the DES challenge is more the political one of proving DES (aka 56 bit encryption in the popular press) insecure than the financial one of getting the $10,000 prize. To actually get a good mesaure of the strength of DES using this approach, the number of machines that participated in the attack and the time they spend has to be known. This is a main reason why Germano's team prefers the search to be co-ordinated and why they have been asking people not to start the search before the server is ready. > One of the problems with a coordinated search, if the remaining keyspace to > be doled out is publically announced, is that as the keyspace is searched > and a key _not_ found, the remaining keyspace is increasingly more tempting > for "independent searchers" to search. Sort of the way the odds on some > lotteries actually become "acceptable" as the lottery pot grows. The > organizer of the coordinated search must then, I surmise, keep the > assignments secret and dole out keyspace securely. Knowing the number of people they were able to get to participate in the RC5 attack, this is not a significant problem. They are going to have 5000 clients nibbling away on the not-yet-searched keyspace. Some Johnny-come-lately trying to muscle in on the action towards the end is not going to make a significant dent in their chances of hitting the correcy key first. > Having the prize money go to the finder of the key, as opposed to some > artificial division between EFF, Gutenberg, etc., is also an incentive for > people to contribute more CPU time. Again, they didn't have a problem getting people to join in on the RC5/32/12/6 attack. At least the same number of people can be expected to join in for the DES attack, giving an estimated search time of around eight months, if nobody else builds a hardware DES cracker first. -- Anil Das

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Re: FBI_100
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young wrote: > "Phone Companies Balk At Latest Plan by FBI." Markoff. > Telcos are arguing that the new system will be far more > intrusive and expensive than industry first thought, and > would expand LEA wiretap capabilities 100-fold. "This is > kind of scary. What does the FBI know about our future > that we don't?" > See the FBI's latest wiretap plan at: > http://jya.com/fbi011497.txt You could start by interviewing Freeh's own kids, who conspired (according to the L.A. Times) to have the local police make a call the other night. According to Freeh, "I dealt with my kids in a most un-Constitutional and autocratic manner" (quote approx.).

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Re: The EFF
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto wrote: > Timothy C. May wrote: > > At 9:36 AM -0800 2/14/97, Declan McCullagh wrote: > It is my (limited) understanding that the EFF has discovered that > the support that comes with private philanthropy from will o'wisp > Bay Area 'liberals' doesn't carry the terrible burden of having to > compete for the petty contributions of the UnRich. > I have a brother-in-law who gives seminars to the Nouveau Riche in > the Bay Area, teaching them how to give their money away to 'good' > causes. I believe that one of the prime considerations in separating > the 'good' causes from the 'bad' causes has something to do with the > the proper wine being served with the cheese and cracker offerings > during their cocktail parties. Wine and cheese are the key. You hit that one on the head. I tried those Mensa parties in Beverly Hills a few times, but the girls want you to kiss their hands like some kinda princesses or something, whereas I think a simple handshake would suffice. So I just quit going. Maybe this has something to do with why there are no c-punks meetings in the L.A. area.

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kent Crispin wrote: > Dale Thorn allegedly said: > > If I understood the last several hundred messages correctly, they have > > tried to make the point that the cypherpunks mailing list (unedited) > > was more ideal than a newsgroup. If this is what Dave is offering, > > I'm surprised if more people don't jump on it. Then again, they > > took their good ol' time jumping onto cypherpunks-unedited. > Dave is offering a single mailing list, which, while I am sure Dave is > a great person, still represents a single point of control and a > single point of failure. A distributed mailing list has a potential > for being much more robust, and for supporting a wide range of > viewpoints. Furthermore a distributed mailing list is an interesting > minor technical problem, and a good solution could have wide > applicability. > So I think that people would like to get the distributed list going... I hope this doesn't duplicate the earlier message - if someone were tracking all this activity and kept the lists informed about what was available where - and particularly if the downloading could be automatic as in the subscription lists - that would be ideal. I wanted to spend some time on alt.cypherpunks, but I haven't got thru the subscription mail for the last few days yet. If there's a scheme that works better than just ad-hoc looking, I'd sure like to know.

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Re: More on digital postage
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:33 PM 2/15/97 -0600, snow wrote: >Mr. May wrote: >> At 11:40 AM -0600 2/15/97, snow wrote: >> > That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected >> >to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone >> >to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my >> >home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to >> >a beer out of my fridge? >> >> The proper parallel is to _knocking on the door_. Talking about "unwanted >> phone calls" or "unwanted faxes" as being equivalent to entering a house >> and wandering around is incorrect. > > With phone calls, yes. With unwanted faxes no. With Phone Calls, >and knocks on the door I have the option of simply not answering. Faxes >(in certain enviroments) you can't do that with. That's a technlogical problem, and deserves a technological solution. > >> Our society fairly reasonably allows tort relief for, say, having one's >> doorbell rung frequently or at odd hours. On the fax issue, similar tort >> relief could be obtained if a person or business was truly "under attack." >> (Purists, like me, would probably prefer technological solutions even in >> these cases. Leave a phone on answering machine mode, only switch on the >> fax mode when a fax is expected, etc.) > > Or simply a societal acceptance of retaliation(sp?) Someone who >constantly wakes you up in the middle of the night, well you just arrange >it so they get no sleep. Well, I've proposed such a system before... >> These tort actions are a far cry from proposals that anyone whose knock on >> the door, or phonecall, or e-mail, or fax is subject to criminal >> prosecution under proposed new laws. >> (I think the courts are already clogged enough, and I have faith that no >> court in the land will accept a case where no real harm was done. A friend >> of mine got mailbombed with 25,000 e-mail messages in one day, shutting >> down his account until the mess could be cleaned up, and it's not even >> likely he'll ever get any relief.) > > I (I think like you) feel that almost no one will get convicted >of these "crimes" unless the attacker simply goes too far. Which is why my first choice is, uh, and alternative method of "justice." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Where is the reorg FAQ?
by Anil Das 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw a reference to an FAQ by Adam Back, explaining the mailing lists that are being set up to replace cypherpunks(a)toad.com, but I didn't see the FAQ itself, on either cypherpunks-unedited or cypherpunks(a)toad.com, which I read as mail.cypherpunks. Maybe it fell through the cracks. Could Adam or somebody else repost it? Thanks. Btw, one of our many news servers has alt.cypherpunks, but it has very low traffic. I doubt people are not posting. Must be alt.cypherpunks missing from some upstream sites. -- Anil Das

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cypherpunks@toad.com
by Sheldon Glass 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm a very long term lurker writing to thank you for hosting the mailing list. It was surprising that the list, if not the community, was as vulnerable to twits like Vulis as it appears. It's a valuable lesson. When cypherpunks rise from these ashes I hope that designers of alternatives will remember the Alamo so to speak. -- sheldon glass | Plauger's Dogma sglass(a)mail.sdsu.edu | No program may leave its sanity #include <std.disclaimer> | at the mercy of its input.

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Re: Where is the reorg FAQ?
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Duvos wrote: > > Anil Das writes: > > > Btw, one of our many news servers has alt.cypherpunks, but it has very > > low traffic. I doubt people are not posting. Must be alt.cypherpunks > > missing from some upstream sites. > > To spam propagation islands, it might be a good idea to crosspost to > alt.privacy when posting to alt.cypherpunks. It will probably take a week > or two before everyone who is going to create the group on their news > server gets around to it. > Better yet, crosspost to misc.misc. - Igor.

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Re: Mirrors and replies-to
by Lance Cottrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:24 AM -0800 2/15/97, Robert Hettinga wrote: <SNIP> >However, I would like it if the mirror operators would reinstantiate a >feature of the original list for me. The reply-to field on the mirrors is >currently set to cypherpunks(a)toad.com. On the original list, this was set >to "sender", both to keep people from replying to the list unnecessarily >(hah! :-)) but also to keep mail loops from forming. Mail loops could be a >big problem, especially when you guys put together your neo-netnews >mailring. (a little jyaism, that... :-)). After some discussion, the reply-to: cypherpunks(a)toad.com was a deliberate choice. I wanted to ensure that the list at cyberpass did not become an island. Once the main list expires, the reply-to will be changed to the sender. -Lance ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. http://www.obscura.com/~loki/ "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: > How can this be enforced? The RSADSI DES challenge is open > to all comers, and how do you prove that someone who finds > the key found it through this group effort? > I have a suspicion many people would be tempted to fill in > the RSA challenge form and email it in themselves. $10,000 > is a fair amount of money. Of course they will. If the unsearched portions of the keyspace are published, you can just sit back until the odds go up and then throw some CPU power at it. There is no obligation on the part of the individual who finds the key to not claim the prize personally. The issues of random keyspace assignment to protect against sabotage and centralized monolithic server vs autonomous client have been debated on the "muffin" list, where I have been lurking, but the people in charge seem to like explicit keyspace partitioning and servers a lot. Should be an interesting effort. By the way, does anyone know if des-challenge(a)muffin.org is alive? I haven't seen any messages from it in over a day and majordomo is not responding to inquiries. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: (fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Mark Newton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote: > The organizer of the coordinated search must then, I surmise, keep the > assignments secret and dole out keyspace securely. Perhaps they should DES-encrypt the list of assignments :-) - mark -------------------------------------------------------------------- I tried an internal modem, newton(a)dotat.org but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton ----- Voice: +61-4-1155-2401 ------------- Fax: +61-8-83732527 -----

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Re: More on digital postage
by omegam＠cmq.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter J. Capelli writes: > I pay for my phone service; I assume you pay a flat rate and not by the incoming fax! > I pay for my fax, toner, and > paper. If they use my property without getting permission first, So, if a person uses a computer fax-modem and, therefore, paper, toner, etc. aren't used, does this change the situation? Suddenly we're very close to the situation of junk-email. (Except that the sender of the junk fax incurs long-distance charges, if there are any, not to mention he pays for the phone service the same as you do) > I believe > that *is* ( or should be ) illegal. "There should be a law!" 5 of the ugliest words in the English language when put together. Look. I understand your sentiment and junk faxes piss me off as well, but the cost of government regulation is too high in my opinion. As I'm sure you're aware, government does a *great* job of creating sensible and useful regulations. Unfortunately, fax machines can't distinguish the text of messages, so you can't do filtering or bounce messages, etc. (Although I have been known to send a nasty reply fax or two. And I never fail to call the send of the fax to complain and have the junk faxes terminated) > Your argument that my plugging a fax > machine itno a phone line I know it will answer, even if it is unauthorized, > is tantamount to saying that if I leave my keys in my car, anyone can take > it, and legally so! While it may be foolish to do that, being > foolish is not > a crime You purchased the fax equipment. Why should the government regulate its usage for you? Ideally, the manufacture of fax machines which are able to authenticate a sender in some manner before permitting the actually permitting transmission of the fax out to paper would likely eliminate junk faxes. Of course, this would involve strong encryption. And -- wouldn't you know it! -- that's covered by a range of confusing and threatening federal regulations -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Omegaman <mailto:omegam@cmq.com>|"When they kick out your front door, PGP Key fingerprint = | How are you gonna come? 6D 31 C3 00 77 8C D1 C2 | With your hands upon your head, 59 0A 01 E3 AF 81 94 63 | Or on the trigger of your gun?" Send email with "get key" as the| -- The Clash, "Guns of Brixton" "Subject:" to get my public key | _London_Calling_ , 1979 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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