December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

DHM patent
by Richard Schroeppel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

re: A.Walker's query about expiration date of DH patent. (I'm not a lawyer: This is just my opinion. Get advice from a professional for making your business decisions.) A couple of years ago, as part of the legislation implementing the GATT treaty, Congress changed the patent lifetime. The old rule was 17 years from grant date; the new rule is 20 years from filing date. There were various transition rules; one was that holders of current patents could select either rule. Presumably they will choose the rule that gives the later expiration date. In the case of the DHM patent #4200770, this gives then a few more months, to Sept. 6 1997. Roger Schlafly has made a reasonable case that the DHM patent is invalid because the invention was "published" more than a year before the patent was filed. (He dug up a copy of a preprint they were circulating with a stamped received-date of ?May 1976?.) There is also a patent by Hellman & Merkle that seems to deal with the (busted) knapsack cryptosystem. It's number 4218582, filed Oct 6, 1977, granted Aug 19, 1980. My cursory reading shows that it includes the math both for knapsack crypto and for doing modular exponentiation. It might be a good idea to look this over to make sure it doesn't affect your plans. Rich Schroeppel rcs(a)cs.arizona.edu

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Disseminating public-key crypto source code
by Jon Orwant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've written a few Perl routines for public-key cryptography. I'd like to freely disseminate the source code (starting with ElGamal) to as many people as I can, It's my understanding that there are two orthogonal restrictions: 1) ITAResque: I can't give code to non-U.S. citizens. 2) PKPesque: Using public-key crypto is an infringement, although disseminating/possessing the source code is not. While I'm sure these are oversimplifications, it would seem that I can release my source code over the Internet provided I install a simple verification mechanism (cf. MIT's PGP distribution) to ensure that only people claiming to be U.S. citizens have access privileges. Am I correct? If so, why aren't more people doing this? Jon Orwant MIT Media Lab orwant(a)media.mit.edu

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Re: a comment of Vulis's
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr Vulis made a comment that there was the threat of persons in favor of the moderator being able to get away with slander while those victims being unable to respond. I assume that the moderator will refrain from such action, but if something were actually cut, I could get it through anyway. At least until majordomo is secured against such intrusion. The list won't be truly secure until no one can request the subscription list. If I felt that I needed to get my message past the moderator, I would just request the complete listing of cypherpunks subscribers, copy that into the Bcc: field of eudora, and forge an address. Now my message would get through, my computer would probably be tied up for an hour or so distributing my statement, but my message would get through. The security necessary to counteract this would be to either make the subscription list unavailable, or delete the actual addresses from the list. For instance Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> would become Sean Roach. Now people could still see who was on the list, but couldn't use it to negate the established distribution system.

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[FLAME] [PURE VITROL] Re: IMDMP: SOURCE...
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:05 PM 1/18/97 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis wrote: >> Non sequitor. > ^ >Do "cypher punks" use lousy spelling as a kind of "poor fag's crypto"? I'm a heterosexual, so I may be off the mark here, but. Reguarding my history books, Mr. Hoover (can't remember his first name), of F.B.I. fame, a reported homosexual, was one of the biggest gaybashers of his era. By your acidic comments, are you trying to tell us something?

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ElGamal
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. Mayonnaise is the living proof that anal sex causes pregnancy. o /\O/ O Timothy C. Mayonnaise 0 \\ | 0-# // | / \

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"Technical data" exemptions in new crypto regs
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Can anyone who knows more than I do answer this? --Declan] --- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:45:44 -0500 (EST) To: declan(a)well.com (Declan McCullagh) From: Solveig Bernstein <sberns(a)cato.org> What have the new crypto regs done to the "technical data" and the "public domain" exemptions from ITAR? The problem is this: as I understand it, the Commerce Dept. regs exempt teaching and print presentations generally, but these exemptions do not apply to "encryption software." Does this mean that the exemptions do not apply to *teaching about* encryption software or *publications about* encryption software? Or *only* that the exemptions do not apply to diskette-contained source code or object code. In other words, the new regs might completely decontrol teaching and publication of something like Professor Bernstein's Snuffle. On the other hand, the new regs might, like ITAR, restrict teaching and publication of Snuffle (as well as publication of source code in diskette format). The purpose of the question is to understand whether a First Amendment challenge to the new regs is a First Amendment challenge to a restriction on *teaching, publication, and program distribution* or just a challenge to a restriction on *program distribution.* Solveig Bernstein, Esq. (202) 789-5274 (202) 842-3490 (fax) Assistant Director of Telecommunications & Technology Studies Cato Institute 1000 Mass. Ave. NW Washington, DC 20001 ------------------------- The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com/

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Re: [FLAME] [PURE VITROL] Re: IMDMP: SOURCE...
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> writes: > At 10:05 PM 1/18/97 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis wrote: > >> Non sequitor. > > ^ > >Do "cypher punks" use lousy spelling as a kind of "poor fag's crypto"? > > I'm a heterosexual, so I may be off the mark here, but. Reguarding my > history books, Mr. Hoover (can't remember his first name), of F.B.I. fame, a > reported homosexual, was one of the biggest gaybashers of his era. By your > acidic comments, are you trying to tell us something? Homosexual activists have accused many prominent people, like Hoover and da Vinci, of sharing their sexual perversions. I have seen no evidence that Hoover was a pervert other than a claim by one woman, a proven liar, that she was present at an orgy where Hoover wore a woman's dress and engaged in sex with men. Several other people who she claimed were present at the orgy called her a liar. She's dead, or she would have probably been supporting Geekmore and EFF today. You may recall that the moderator cocksucker Sandfart invited me to a "cypher punks" meating in San Francisco, and if I had accepted, would have told many lies about my participation in their homosexual orgies. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: I beg you, PLEASE prove that 0.123456789101112131415 is IRRATIONAL
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:38 PM 1/19/97 -0600, snow wrote: > x=0; > x1=0; > x++; > x--; > > Would give you all int's, the only problem you have is granularity. Nice, but you have a typo, the result would be the same as x is both incremented and decremented before it can be output. I am assumming that the second block of code has it right. > x=0.00000000001; > y=0.00000000001; > x1=x; > x=x+y; > x1=x1-y; Also, I am assumming that the increment, decrement portion of the code should be in a loop. Otherwise this will result in exactly one value for x, and one for x1. The output of the first block is x=1, x1=0. The output of the second block is x=0.00000000002, y=0.00000000001, x1=0.00000000000. Also, the code does have other errors that don't "ring any bells" as they allow the mind to figure out what your intent is. Not unlike the many complaints in "The Far Side" where everyone complains that it is the female mosquito that bites people while ignoring that no mosquito has ever willingly walked into an appropiately scaled house wearing a hat.

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Re: GSM technology
by Nurdane Oksas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ADSL will be the best for movies... i can't wait . On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Lucky Green wrote: > At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: > > Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? > > I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. > > > > -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred > Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of > your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. > http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm >

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Re: GSM technology
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: > Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

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Re: I beg you, PLEASE prove that 0.123456789101112131415 is IRRATIONAL
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:38 PM 1/19/97 -0600, snow wrote: > x=0; > x1=0; > x++; > x--; > > Would give you all int's, the only problem you have is granularity. Nice, but you have a typo, the result would be the same as x is both incremented and decremented before it can be output. I am assumming that the second block of code has it right. > x=0.00000000001; > y=0.00000000001; > x1=x; > x=x+y; > x1=x1-y; Also, I am assumming that the increment, decrement portion of the code should be in a loop. Otherwise this will result in exactly one value for x, and one for x1. The output of the first block is x=1, x1=0. The output of the second block is x=0.00000000002, y=0.00000000001, x1=0.00000000000. Also, the code does have other errors that don't "ring any bells" as they allow the mind to figure out what your intent is. Not unlike the many complaints in "The Far Side" where everyone complains that it is the female mosquito that bites people while ignoring that no mosquito has ever willingly walked into an appropiately scaled house wearing a hat.

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Re: GSM crypto upgrade? (was Re: Newt's phone calls)
by Bill Frantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:41 PM -0800 1/16/97, Adam Back wrote: >Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> writes: >> At 4:39 AM -0800 1/16/97, Adam Back wrote: >> >- PIN for phone's RSA signature keys >> >> It is not clear you need signatures in the secure phone case. Eric >> Blossom's 3DES uses straight DH for key exchange with verbal verification >> that both ends are using the same key. > >How does Eric's box display the negotiated key to the user? (I don't >recall the pair I saw having displays). I have not seen the production box, I am going from my memory of Eric's preproduction description at a meeting last spring. I hope someone who knows what they are talking about will butt in here if I am wrong. The box has a 3 or 4 digit display which displays "something" about the 3DES key, where "something" is some of the bits, or a hash, or ... With 3 decimal digits, a MIM attacker has a 999 out of 1000 chance of getting caught. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Client in California, POP3 | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | in Pittsburgh, Packets in | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | Pakistan. - me | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Sandy and the Doc
by Bill Frantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:19 PM -0800 1/19/97, WinSock Remailer wrote: >Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> writes: > >> I hope if such a system is set up, people who use it will realize that >> email is not 100% reliable. Just because algebra.com sent mail to >> toad.com, doesn't mean that toad.com actually received it. A small >> fraction of a percent of these messages will be lost. > >Failing something catastrophic like a disk failure or a host down for >more than a week, this should not be the case. Almost every site >running sendmail has the Os ("SuperSafe") option set. That means >sendmail will not respond to a "." at the end of a DATA command with >SMTP code 250 until it has written the incoming message (and queue >info) to disk and called fsync. Thus, you may get 2 copies of a >message, but mail messages should not just disappear regularly at all, >even if the network goes down or a machine crashes. > >Non-sendmail MTA's tend to be even more strict about this, not even >allowing this behavior to be disabled. About 9 months ago, I lost somewhere between 50 and 100 email messages because they were written to a disk with a corrupted file system. Now failures of this kind may be in the category of "catastrophic disk failure", but in my unfortunate experience, they are not all that uncommon. Note that since I lost multiple messages due to one failure, tests of the form, "Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three or more is conspiracy" might say, "conspiracy" even for just one failure. The chances of this test criteria error increase for frequent posters. At 4:02 AM -0800 1/20/97, Toto asked: > Are there any critereon established, yet, as to what type of content >will be necessary for a letter to get 'lost'? See the above discussion of disk failure. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Client in California, POP3 | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | in Pittsburgh, Packets in | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | Pakistan. - me | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[microcurrency] >It will also not catch on until there are better standards involving >microcurrency transactions amongst the vendors. It would also help if >there was a single interface (or "helper app") for whatever vendor you >decided to go with. as I see it, I think there are a few key standards that need to be devised: 1. an html tag that indicates how much a link costs, probably in the <a href="" cost=xx> type syntax 2. modification of http to support a payment mechanism, by sending a token. 3. browser "piggy bank". there are other standards, such as how a person might get cash into their piggy bank etc., but most would be related to the above items. notice that we don't really need a good interoperable standard to begin with. often Netscape and MS invent tags that are not interoperable between them, and later standardization arrives at a consensus / convergence. as I see it, I think the browser manufacturers should just pick their favorite digital cash scheme (cybercash, digicash, whatever) that is easiest to implement, and do so, with the intention of integrating other schemes at a later date. >Currently every vendor of payment schemes has made it proprietary in some >way. (At least the ones I have seen.) This means that if the user visits >three different web pages, each using a payment scheme from a different >vendor, that user has to be signed up with all of those vendors. (Or at >least have their helper apps.) hence, a good opportunity for the browser manufacturer to remove all these additional complications and make it point-and-click simple. I agree, this is not going to be a total nonbrainer. but better the browser manufacturer do it for their software, allowing everyone who uses it to benefit, than every single cash user in cyberspace trying to replicate the same difficult series of steps to get their cash going. >I will not even go into the hastles of trying to set it up from the server >side. (The last payment scheme I installed (cybercash) was not very well >documented. The documentation on the web site contradicted the software >with the tar file. (And both were wrong at some point.)) Until these >payment schemes are easier to deal with for the web page provider, they >will not catch on. (There will also need to be more support for Internet >service providers with multiple vendors all on different payment schemes.) > >Until there is a single standard hammered out, micropayments will still be >few and far between. generally, that's what I'm calling for, some ad hoc standards being put into place immediately by the browser manufacturers, in the same way new tags are always being invented. standardization generally results *after* an initial, minimally constrained innovation phase, imho.

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Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> notice how much crypto really caught on when Netscape >> incorporated it, and how this action alone did more for >> the proliferation of crypto in cyberspace, almost, than >> all prior efforts combined. I think that microcurrency >> will be unleashed in a very similar way. > >I assume you are referring to secure web connections via SSL in talking >about crypto. In that case there was a very strong pent up demand for >the service. Customers were afraid to send credit card numbers and >other personal information across the web. Sellers were pressuring the >net server companies to do something to quell these concerns so on-line >selling could succeed. Netscape did it, and in the grand tradition of >the net, implementation beat design and SSL defeated SHTTP. neither has "beat" the other at this point. but this does show something I have always believed: companies should just invent ad-hoc, quick-and-dirty standards if full standards are not immediately available. it makes no sense to me to delay the introduction of some new feature because there isn't industry standardization. the case is often that the initial ad-hoc standards will tend to converge into a better standard down the road. I don't see standards as "forever". standards should be viewed as stepping stones to better standards. hence I think netscape and/or MS should invent a "plug and play" (i.e. trivial to use) micropayment standard immediately, regardless of what industry standardization does not or will exist. it wouldn't be pretty at first but standardization to better interfaces could ensue later. the main thing is to get it on the table, and get people using it, to create the demand. services are rarely developed unless there is a demand. hence I suggest that a *rudimentary* form of the service be first devised and implemented asap to increase demand for one with much more finesse. In its early >versions SSL had a lot of problems but it was a good enough solution for >what it needed to be. exactly. >The question is whether there is similar market demand for pay per view >web pages. don't think this is a valid question. the whole point of microcurrency is just decreasing the cost until people hit the page and don't care about the cost. hence I think there is a guaranteed market, because with microcurrency you can always shave off your price to virtually infinitesmal values (say pennies a hit) that will guarantee you will have at least some audience. Do web service operators think they can offer value added >services which will motivate customers to click through the for-pay link? I'm imagining just putting a teeny little transaction charge on top of every single hit that now exists. if it is small enough, consumers won't care very much. >There is also the issue of sellers learning to use the various payment >systems which are out there. Here again if Netscape and Microsoft would >just pick one then everyone could standardize on it, which would >increase acceptance a great deal. well, pick one payment scheme and then competing companies could adopt the same standard (but offer competing systems and features) >Ecash as it is implemented now has the problem that the customer has to >open a special bank account. What you need is a payment system where >you can use your existing VISA card and withdraw cash against it into >your electronic wallet. This is pretty close to the FV model but their >payment system is somewhat clumsy. exactly. someone who reengineered the whole thing from top to bottom and made it absolutely trivial to use-- I suspect the future of the browser wars will belong to the company that does this. again, I note it might be doable in a plug in, but as I said, I think browser manufacturers are eventually going to put it into their own code because of its sheer importance.

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Quantum computers/Java of a different sort
by Mike McNally 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For all you quantum computer fans, see http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/html/970117c.htm -- ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Mike McNally -- Egregiously Pointy -- Tivoli Systems, "IBM" -- Austin mailto:m5@tivoli.com mailto:m101@io.com http://www.io.com/~m101 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ --------------32AF54C4607C Content-Type: MESSAGE/RFC822 Content-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970120133756.24006L(a)crl3.crl.com> Return-Path: <jchou(a)tivoli.com> Received: from tivoli.com by kenya.tivoli.com (8.8.4/jfy) id MAA02404; Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:50:23 -0600 (CST) Received: from corp.tivoli.com (corp.tivoli.com [146.84.1.6]) by tivoli.com (8.8.0/8.8.0-with-local-mods-ESMTP) with ESMTP id MAA08806; Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:50:23 -0600 (CST) Received: from tivoli.com (tivoli.tivoli.com [146.84.1.5]) by corp.tivoli.com (8.6.10/8.6.13) with ESMTP id MAA10846; Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:49:18 -0600 Received: from notes-brahms2.tivoli.com (brahms2.tivoli.com [146.84.3.4]) by tivoli.com (8.8.0/8.8.0-with-local-mods-ESMTP) with SMTP id MAA08787; Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:50:15 -0600 (CST) Received: by notes-brahms2.tivoli.com(Lotus SMTP MTA v1.05 (274.9 11-27-1996)) id 86256425.00673DAD ; Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:47:39 -0500 From: jchou(a)tivoli.com X-Lotus-FromDomain: TIVOLI SYSTEMS To: java(a)tivoli.com Message-ID: <86256425.00673B22.00(a)notes-brahms2.tivoli.com> Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:49:39 -0500 Subject: ScienceNOW www.sciencenow.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII jchou(a)tivoli.com 01/20/97 12:49 PM An advance in Java computing... http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/html/970117c.htm <BASE HREF="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/html/970117c.htm"> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>ScienceNOW www.sciencenow.org</TITLE> <META NAME="ScienceNOW www.sciencenow.org"> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#004080" VLINK="#649FDB" TEXT="#000000"> <TABLE Border=0 Width=100%> <TR VALIGN="top" ALIGN="center"> <TD> <A HREF="/cgi/redirect-ad.cgi?journal=sciencenow&ad=Knight%20Ridder%20ScienceB ase%20-%20Fish&url=http://krscience.dialog.com/&side=only"><IMG BORDER=2 WIDTH=220 HEIGHT=40 SRC="/ads/gifs/845499541.CDATAKRFISH.GIF"ALT="Knight-Ridder ScienceBase"></A></TD> <TD> <A HREF="/cgi/redirect-ad.cgi?journal=sciencenow&ad=Hewlett-Packard&url=http:/ /www.hp.com/info/hpcag8&side=only"><IMG BORDER=2 WIDTH=220 HEIGHT=40 SRC="/ads/gifs/850239381.gif"ALT="Hewlett-Packard Chemical Analysis"></A></TD> </TABLE> <P> <TABLE Border=0 Cellspacing=0 Cellpadding=0> <TR VALIGN="top" ALIGN="center"> <TD><A HREF="../home.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-home.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Home" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="./newstips.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-news.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="News Tips" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="../archives.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-arch.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Archives" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="./masthead.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-mast.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Masthead" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/science/scripts/feedback.pl"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-feed.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Feedback" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-sci.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Science Online" ></TD> </TABLE> <P> <TABLE Border=0 Cellspacing=0 Cellpadding=0> <TR> <TD WIDTH=100><A HREF="./970117b.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Prevstor.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Previous Story" ></A></TD> <TD WIDTH=100><A HREF="./970117d.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nextstor.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Next Story" ></A></TD></TR> </TABLE><P> <TABLE Width=100%> <TR> <TD WIDTH=100 ALIGN="center"><P><A HREF="/cgi/redirect-ad.cgi?journal=sciencenow&ad=SB:%20Science%20Online&url =http://science-mag.aaas.org/science/&side=only"><IMG BORDER=2 WIDTH=75 HEIGHT=75 SRC="/ads/gifs/845576920.CDATAONLINE2.GIF"ALT="Science Online"></A></TD> <TD WIDTH=100 ALIGN="center"><P><A HREF="/cgi/redirect-ad.cgi?journal=sciencenow&ad=SB:%20Next%20Wave&url=http ://www.nextwave.org/&side=only"><IMG BORDER=2 WIDTH=75 HEIGHT=75 SRC="/ads/gifs/845560987.CDATANXTWV1.GIF"ALT="Science's Next Wave"></A></TD> <TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="Center"><IMG HEIGHT=49 WIDTH=273 SRC="../assets/images/Scinowsm.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="ScienceNOW logo" ></TD></TR> </TABLE> <P ALIGN="RIGHT"><FONT SIZE="-1"> Friday, 17 January 1997, 7:00 p.m. </FONT></P><P ALIGN="Center"><FONT SIZE="+1"><STRONG> Quantum Computer in a Cup of Joe?<p> </STRONG></FONT></P> <p> Researchers have come up with a way to turn coffee and other mundane liquids into primitive quantum computers. The findings, reported in today's <i>Science</i> and in an upcoming issue of the <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i>, suggest a new approach toward conquering the Mount Everest of computing: a quantum computer that in a few seconds could perform calculations that would take billions of years on an ordinary supercomputer.<p> <A NAME="image1"></A><P><HR> <IMG ALT="Illustration" BORDER=1 ALIGN=LEFT HSPACE=20 VSPACE=10 SRC="970117-2.gif"> <BR CLEAR=ALL> <STRONG>Fresh-brewed. </STRONG>A prototype tabletop NMR quantum computer, showing the circuitry and the radio-frequency coil.<P> <FONT SIZE=-2>JOSHUA SMITH</FONT><BR> <HR><P>The key is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a technique for manipulating and measuring the spins of atomic nuclei that is already a mainstay of medical imaging and chemical analysis. The up-or-down spin of nuclei offers the two-bit logic system that a computer needs. What makes a quantum computer special, however, is quantum parallelism. In the strange world of quantum mechanics, the spin of a nucleus can be in both states, representing both bits, at the same time. That property should permit a quantum computer to perform calculations on incredibly large numbers of bits at once. And Neil Gershenfeld of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Isaac Chuang of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a second team, Tim Havel and Amr Fahmy of Harvard Medical School and David Cory of MIT, have found that it's easier to achieve this parallelism by using NMR in an ordinary liquid than in the exotic systems researchers have tried so far.<p> Cory, Fahmy, and Havel have actually built quantum circuits using a standard NMR spectrometer, while Gershenfeld and Chuang are gearing up experiments and hope to demonstrate quantum circuits and maybe even a simple computation by next summer. What can be done now can be done with easily available and affordable equipment--"off-the-shelf coffee cups, off-the -shelf liquids, off-the-shelf magnets, etc.," says MIT computer scientist Seth Lloyd.<p> "This NMR scheme is pretty slick stuff, but in the long run, they're going to have to find a particularly special molecule or state that allows them to extend it to large numbers," says Chris Monroe of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.<p> Indeed, the researchers note that fundamental obstacles may prevent the scheme from ever producing a practical computer. But "from the point of view of verifying the basic ideas and doing interesting physics," says Lloyd, a pioneer theorist in quantum computing, "it's fantastic." For more details, <i>Science</i> Online subscribers can link to the <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/275/5298/307">News story</a> in today's <i>Science</i>.<p> <p> <P ALIGN="CENTER"><A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/science/home/copyright.shtml"><FONT SIZE="-1">© 1997 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science</FONT></A></P> <TABLE Border=0 Cellspacing=0 Cellpadding=0> <TR> <TD WIDTH=100><A HREF="./970117b.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Prevstor.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Previous Story" ></A></TD> <TD WIDTH=100><A HREF="./970117d.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nextstor.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Next Story" ></A></TD></TR> </TABLE><P> <TABLE Border=0 Cellspacing=0 Cellpadding=0> <TR VALIGN="top" ALIGN="center"> <TD><A HREF="../home.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-home.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Home" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="./newstips.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-news.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="News Tips" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="../archives.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-arch.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Archives" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="./masthead.htm"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-mast.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Masthead" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/science/scripts/feedback.pl"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-feed.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Feedback" ></A></TD> <TD><A HREF="http://www.sciencemag.org/"><IMG HEIGHT=20 WIDTH=100 SRC="../assets/images/Nav-sci.gif" BORDER=0 ALT="Science Online" ></TD> </TABLE> </BODY></HTML> --------------32AF54C4607C--

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Re: a comment of Vulis's
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr Vulis made a comment that there was the threat of persons in favor of the moderator being able to get away with slander while those victims being unable to respond. I assume that the moderator will refrain from such action, but if something were actually cut, I could get it through anyway. At least until majordomo is secured against such intrusion. The list won't be truly secure until no one can request the subscription list. If I felt that I needed to get my message past the moderator, I would just request the complete listing of cypherpunks subscribers, copy that into the Bcc: field of eudora, and forge an address. Now my message would get through, my computer would probably be tied up for an hour or so distributing my statement, but my message would get through. The security necessary to counteract this would be to either make the subscription list unavailable, or delete the actual addresses from the list. For instance Sean Roach <roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu> would become Sean Roach. Now people could still see who was on the list, but couldn't use it to negate the established distribution system.

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A Prayer For Swiss Banks
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This happened a year ago but I couldn't resist posting it in light of the current political attacks on the privacy of Swiss banks. MANILA, Philippines (Feb 24, 1996 9:45 p.m. EST) - Former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos presided over a bizarre ceremony on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary of the People's Power revolution that forced her and her corrupt husband into ignominious exile. Marcos -- notorious shopaholic, convicted criminal and now a legally elected member of the Philippine Congress -- asked God to bless Corazon Aquino and other leaders of the 1986 revolt. But she also asked the Almighty to enlighten Swiss bankers holding some of the estimated $5 billion the Marcoses and their cronies are accused of looting from the national economy. "May the Lord enlighten ... the Swiss banks -- that they might uphold justice and preserve the integrity of their own laws and the laws of confidentiality, trust and basic decency between the banks and their clients," she said in a speech. Two Swiss banks holding some $475 million linked to the Marcoses are currently embroiled in a row over what to do with the money. The Philippine government wants it back but a U.S. court has ordered it distributed to victims of human rights abuses during the late Ferdinand Marcos's 20 years in power. ***** DCF -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQCVAgUBMuPAIIVO4r4sgSPhAQFhSQQAiLrFwcvR0CxiZDrG1f6RSysX8ypxe2y4 Az2MejxFj4ACZIw9lCN98pxRwM8QwEQnCo+RKpMEchurk1bx0EEK749+kxpccsw2 qi+VW1lhBLV38YyzAm0vRwK1pwsKuW/E0UjMOvfTfQynRljohiLvLxQDMJ4DQLHi qi+R9K2Gpr0= =wmjK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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"Technical data" exemptions in new crypto regs
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Can anyone who knows more than I do answer this? --Declan] --- Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:45:44 -0500 (EST) To: declan(a)well.com (Declan McCullagh) From: Solveig Bernstein <sberns(a)cato.org> What have the new crypto regs done to the "technical data" and the "public domain" exemptions from ITAR? The problem is this: as I understand it, the Commerce Dept. regs exempt teaching and print presentations generally, but these exemptions do not apply to "encryption software." Does this mean that the exemptions do not apply to *teaching about* encryption software or *publications about* encryption software? Or *only* that the exemptions do not apply to diskette-contained source code or object code. In other words, the new regs might completely decontrol teaching and publication of something like Professor Bernstein's Snuffle. On the other hand, the new regs might, like ITAR, restrict teaching and publication of Snuffle (as well as publication of source code in diskette format). The purpose of the question is to understand whether a First Amendment challenge to the new regs is a First Amendment challenge to a restriction on *teaching, publication, and program distribution* or just a challenge to a restriction on *program distribution.* Solveig Bernstein, Esq. (202) 789-5274 (202) 842-3490 (fax) Assistant Director of Telecommunications & Technology Studies Cato Institute 1000 Mass. Ave. NW Washington, DC 20001 ------------------------- The Netly News Network http://netlynews.com/

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Re: Question on Diffie-Hellman patent
by Andrew Loewenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim Dierks writes: > Here's a summary of some relevant crypto patents: > > Name Number Filed Issued Expires > > Diffie-Hellman 4,200,770 Sept. 6, 1977 Apr. 29, 1980 Sept. 6, 1997 > Hellman-Merkle 4,218,582 Oct. 6, 1977 Aug. 19, 1980 Oct. 6, 1997 > RSA 4,405,829 Dec. 14, 1977 Sept. 20, 1983 Sept. 20, 2000 So who's planning on throwing a big party on Sept. 6th? Will Jim Bizos be celebrating? :-) andrew

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Re: GSM technology
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: > Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

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Re: Question on Diffie-Hellman patent
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: > Tim Dierks writes: > > Here's a summary of some relevant crypto patents: > > > > Name Number Filed Issued Expires > > > > Diffie-Hellman 4,200,770 Sept. 6, 1977 Apr. 29, 1980 Sept. 6, 1997 > > Hellman-Merkle 4,218,582 Oct. 6, 1977 Aug. 19, 1980 Oct. 6, 1997 > > RSA 4,405,829 Dec. 14, 1977 Sept. 20, 1983 Sept. 20, 2000 > > So who's planning on throwing a big party on Sept. 6th? Will Jim Bizos be > celebrating? :-) I'll call dibs on that. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Server Authentication
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:26:05 -0800 (PST) > From: Eric Murray <ericm(a)lne.com> > Subject: Re: Server Authentication > > I think that you can get access to the server's certificate. > I know you can from the CGI interface. Unfortunately it's the > raw ASN.1 encoded certificate, so you would have to ASN.1 decode it. > Bleah. > > If the SSL handshake completes, then you can assume that the client > has verified and authenticated the server certificate. The only problem > would be that the authentication might not be up to the plugin's standards- > i.e. a connection to www.foo.com is somehow intercepted by > www.ripoff-plugins.com. The server www.ripoff-plugins.com presents a cert > who's name is www.foo.com. The browser correctly presents a pop-up dialog > noting the discrepancy, and the luser operating the client clicks > on the 'OK' button, allowing the SSL handshake to finish. Oops. Isn't LDAP v3 supposed to answer some of these questions related to server authentication as well anonymity of the users site (if desired)? Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: GSM technology
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Steve Shear <azur(a)netcom.com> writes: >> [very useful explanation of GSM TDMA, and the new HSCSD] > >64 kbit/s tied to ISDN is very nice technology. > >> ENCRYPTED GSM LINKS >> If the GSM phone includes a data port, as some already do, just connect >> your laptop, dial your ISP and 'push' the encrypted traffic over that link >> (e.g., using TCP/IP and PGPfone). > >This would obviously be possible, but to my mind reduces the appeal of >the system. Not every one has a laptop. [snip] Retrofitting the stonger encryption (e.g., IDEA) to some existing GSM phones may be practical (as I've discussed in previous postings), but unless the service providers support the stonger crypto (seems very unlikely at the moment)parties at the other end of the line will need an Eric Blossom-like device or a laptop running PGPfone. I can see no way around this. > >Also, the cell phone tarriffs may be higher if you need higher >bandwidth to get the software only voice codec implementations in >PGPfone to produce equivalent full-duplex voice quality to that >expected from a digital mobile phone. I may be wrong, but the faster laptops are already able to support the GSM codes and rates in PGPfone (or could). However, most of the service providers may only be offering 9.6kb/s GSM data links at this time, and this would surely impact voice quality. If or when 28.8kb/s data is common via GSM voice links via PGPfone should be better than the default GSM coded voice. --Steve PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear (N7ZEZ) | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Lamarr Labs | Voice: 1-702-658-2654 7075 West Gowan Road | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet, electronic currency and wireless development 1935 will go down in history! For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead in the future! --Adolf Hitler

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Server Authentication
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:26:05 -0800 (PST) > From: Eric Murray <ericm(a)lne.com> > Subject: Re: Server Authentication > > I think that you can get access to the server's certificate. > I know you can from the CGI interface. Unfortunately it's the > raw ASN.1 encoded certificate, so you would have to ASN.1 decode it. > Bleah. > > If the SSL handshake completes, then you can assume that the client > has verified and authenticated the server certificate. The only problem > would be that the authentication might not be up to the plugin's standards- > i.e. a connection to www.foo.com is somehow intercepted by > www.ripoff-plugins.com. The server www.ripoff-plugins.com presents a cert > who's name is www.foo.com. The browser correctly presents a pop-up dialog > noting the discrepancy, and the luser operating the client clicks > on the 'OK' button, allowing the SSL handshake to finish. Oops. Isn't LDAP v3 supposed to answer some of these questions related to server authentication as well anonymity of the users site (if desired)? Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: GSM technology
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Steve Shear <azur(a)netcom.com> writes: >> [very useful explanation of GSM TDMA, and the new HSCSD] > >64 kbit/s tied to ISDN is very nice technology. > >> ENCRYPTED GSM LINKS >> If the GSM phone includes a data port, as some already do, just connect >> your laptop, dial your ISP and 'push' the encrypted traffic over that link >> (e.g., using TCP/IP and PGPfone). > >This would obviously be possible, but to my mind reduces the appeal of >the system. Not every one has a laptop. [snip] Retrofitting the stonger encryption (e.g., IDEA) to some existing GSM phones may be practical (as I've discussed in previous postings), but unless the service providers support the stonger crypto (seems very unlikely at the moment)parties at the other end of the line will need an Eric Blossom-like device or a laptop running PGPfone. I can see no way around this. > >Also, the cell phone tarriffs may be higher if you need higher >bandwidth to get the software only voice codec implementations in >PGPfone to produce equivalent full-duplex voice quality to that >expected from a digital mobile phone. I may be wrong, but the faster laptops are already able to support the GSM codes and rates in PGPfone (or could). However, most of the service providers may only be offering 9.6kb/s GSM data links at this time, and this would surely impact voice quality. If or when 28.8kb/s data is common via GSM voice links via PGPfone should be better than the default GSM coded voice. --Steve PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear (N7ZEZ) | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Lamarr Labs | Voice: 1-702-658-2654 7075 West Gowan Road | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet, electronic currency and wireless development 1935 will go down in history! For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead in the future! --Adolf Hitler

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RE: GSM technology
by Blake Coverett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky wrote: > I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and > is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. NorTel isn't exactly Canada's phone company. NorTel manufactures telecom equipment. It is however 51% owned by BCE, which owns or has controlling interest in Bell Canada and several of the regional carriers as well a huge mess of other telco stuff. ISDN is available fairly widely in my area of the country, but I'm not aware of an commercially available ADSL UUNET Canada has been conducting ADSL trials in a couple of cities, but that's all I've heard of thus far. regards, -Blake (who would love to be proved wrong as the price sounds great)

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Re: Airport security [no such thing]
by Alan Bostick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What started this thread off was Lucky Green's observation of the beerkegs getting through the security checkpoints at the Oakland Airport. Just yesterday I flew from Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport to Oakland, on Southwest Airlines. My partner and I were (we thought) checking in just in time to be in the second boarding group. (Explanation of Southwest's lo-tech allocation of seat choice elided). An unacompanied woman was the next person ahead of us in the line. She presented the gate agent with *four* tickets and *four* IDs. "Where are these other people?" the agent asked. "They're parking the car," said the traveler. The agent gave her all four boarding passes; and my companion and I were bumped to the third boarding group. The woman in front of us was white and middle-class-looking, traveling with what appeared to be her family. One wonders what would have happened were she a swarthy man wearing robes and a burnoose. Or if she were just wearing shabby clothes. -- Alan Bostick | To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height mailto:abostick@netcom.com | of elegance. news:alt.grelb | Jean Genet http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~abostick

2 1

Re: Dedikend Cut's and such (fwd)
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate allegedly said: > > > Forwarded message: > > > > Did a little research, Dedekind Cut's and such use Integers to define a > > > SPECIFIC Real to a arbitrary BUT FIXED resolution. They do not define the > > > set of Reals. > > > > They do. The set of all numbers representable by a DC is precisely > > the set of reals. > > Then you are saying that using Dedekind Cut's it is possible to define the > ENTIRE set of Reals? I am assuming that entire includes all those Reals > which aren't representable by any algorithm and of which we can't even speak > (even though we are). > > Another pretty nifty trick. Yep. "Define" is not the same as "generate". Algorithms "generate". -- 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: Take it to sci.math
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc Weber wrote: > And as everyone on this list acutely knows, neither math, science, nor > politics has anything to do with crypto. I agree. Let's stick to discussions of crack-crypto Ebonics, and child-crypto PigLatin. Toto

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Re: Sandy and the Doc
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Frantz wrote: > Note that since I lost multiple messages due to one failure, tests of the > form, "Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three or more is > conspiracy" might say, "conspiracy" even for just one failure. The chances > of this test criteria error increase for frequent posters. It sounds like you're laying the groundwork for debunking CypherPunk conspiracy myths before they even appear. Not that I'm the paranoid type (but I 'would' be interested in knowing exacly where you 'claim' you were when J.F.K. was shot). Toto

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Re: GSM technology
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green wrote: > > At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: > > Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? > > I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. SaskTel also offers this type of access, at around the same price. As long as they had a monopoly on the citizens of the province, they gouged people in the boondocks $ 6.00/hr for basic access to the InterNet. Now that they have competition, and need to have competitive rates to stay in business, they are acting like they are the consumer's best friend, instead of rip-off shitheads. Toto

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RE: GSM technology
by Blake Coverett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky wrote: > I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and > is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. NorTel isn't exactly Canada's phone company. NorTel manufactures telecom equipment. It is however 51% owned by BCE, which owns or has controlling interest in Bell Canada and several of the regional carriers as well a huge mess of other telco stuff. ISDN is available fairly widely in my area of the country, but I'm not aware of an commercially available ADSL UUNET Canada has been conducting ADSL trials in a couple of cities, but that's all I've heard of thus far. regards, -Blake (who would love to be proved wrong as the price sounds great)

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Re: UNS_top
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young wrote: > Governments in China, Burma and > Singapore have already tried to discipline this on-line activity with > minimal success. Do you have any pointers to information in regard to this, or are you just being a goddamn tease? Toto

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Re: GSM technology
by Asgaard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Adam Back wrote: > into the data port. You can't fit the laptop and GSM phone > combination into your shirt pocket. What are you going to use for a With a reasonably sized shirt pocket you can fit a Nokia 9000 Communicator into it: a combination of GSM phone and 386 computer, with 6 MB storage (OS and default applications use 4 of those) and 2 MB RAM. It runs fax, SMS (Short Messages Services), a Terminal, SMTP, IMAP4, MIME1, WWW and telnet. The operative system is GEOS (tm) 3.0. I guess it's not very programmable though (and there is no PGPhone implementation for GEOS) and data speed is only 9600 bps. And there is probably no connection between the mic/speaker and the computer. But it's only 173 x 64 x 38 mm, and perhaps the next generation of such devices might be interesting for reengineering into secure end-to-end crypto phenes? Asgaard

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Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Jane Jefferson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Also Sprach Adam Back: > > It is my belief > that his posts can only be understood in a "meta" sense -- he is > engaged in a highly complex cryptographic experiment. People who read > and respond to his individual posts are the unwitting subjects in his > experiments. His posts and the responses to them are actually the > data-set for a thorough cryptanalysis of mailing list threats. His > current topic under investigation is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks > on mailing lists. I agree that this is what is being done, but the experiment dorsn't have as much to do with cryptanalysis as much as it has to do with sociology. The limits here are not mathematical and static, they are social and based on the limits of tolerance of both the group and the individual. > I await with interest the last phases of Dimitri's experiment, when > the cypherpunks list becomes a moderated forum. That appears to be the main brunt of his efforts, to "push the envelope" of free speech in order to force it's definition. Perhaps to exhibit the necessity for a controlling authority, and thus justify the existence of the various agencies which are trying to control the flow of information in this country and elsewhere. > I hope Dimitri's selfless efforts in furthering understanding of DoS > attacks on mailing lists is properly acknowledged when he publishes > his findings on completion of his experiments. I also hope that > Dimitri will document his recommendations for mailing list > configuration and management in light of his experiments. I would not say that what he is doing is a bit selfless, the Clipper Chip crowd are probably lining his pockets in a big way. That's acknowledgement enough for me. :-/ "In peacetime, a warlike man sets upon himself." -- Nietzsche -- Marcus: "They'll try to kill you." | Xena: "Oh, I still have a few tricks | "Here we GO!!!" left up my sleeve...I don't | -- Jane's Addiction have any sleeves!" -- Xena bloopers |

6 8

Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Jane Jefferson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Also Sprach Adam Back: > > It is my belief > that his posts can only be understood in a "meta" sense -- he is > engaged in a highly complex cryptographic experiment. People who read > and respond to his individual posts are the unwitting subjects in his > experiments. His posts and the responses to them are actually the > data-set for a thorough cryptanalysis of mailing list threats. His > current topic under investigation is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks > on mailing lists. I agree that this is what is being done, but the experiment dorsn't have as much to do with cryptanalysis as much as it has to do with sociology. The limits here are not mathematical and static, they are social and based on the limits of tolerance of both the group and the individual. > I await with interest the last phases of Dimitri's experiment, when > the cypherpunks list becomes a moderated forum. That appears to be the main brunt of his efforts, to "push the envelope" of free speech in order to force it's definition. Perhaps to exhibit the necessity for a controlling authority, and thus justify the existence of the various agencies which are trying to control the flow of information in this country and elsewhere. > I hope Dimitri's selfless efforts in furthering understanding of DoS > attacks on mailing lists is properly acknowledged when he publishes > his findings on completion of his experiments. I also hope that > Dimitri will document his recommendations for mailing list > configuration and management in light of his experiments. I would not say that what he is doing is a bit selfless, the Clipper Chip crowd are probably lining his pockets in a big way. That's acknowledgement enough for me. :-/ "In peacetime, a warlike man sets upon himself." -- Nietzsche -- Marcus: "They'll try to kill you." | Xena: "Oh, I still have a few tricks | "Here we GO!!!" left up my sleeve...I don't | -- Jane's Addiction have any sleeves!" -- Xena bloopers |

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Re: GSM crypto upgrade? (was Re: Newt's phone calls)
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:41 PM 1/16/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > >Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> writes: >> As long as the man in the middle can't imitate a familiar voice, >> this procedure is reasonably secure. > >This is the approach taken by PGPfone also. If the value of the >conversations was high (>$100,000?) passable voice imitation wouldn't >be that hard I suspect. I have long considered how easy it would be to use a sound card to modify the human voice to match within certain tolerances the voice of another. There are currently on the market, phones specifically designed to modify the voice of the user so that kids can answer as adults, women can answer as thier own protective boyfriends, bosses can answer anonymous calls as the secretary, etc... There are currently on the market keyboards that allow you to sample some real world sound and use it as a voice in your music, (the model I saw, a toy produced by Radio Shack, simply sped up or slowed down the sound to achieve this.) I have thought, if a machine were to take the incoming voice, analize (apologies for spelling) it to get a spectrum signature, a pattern that can be added or subtracted from another, and could then add the difference between that and the victims signature to the users voice, then real-time, on-the-fly con jobs would be easy. The only thing that the user would be responsible for would be the accent, and the day-to-day vocabulary of the victim. I told a friend about this and he confirmed that such was available if you knew where to look.

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Re: Newt's phone calls
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:07 PM 1/20/97 -0500, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: >Depending on the country and bank you can probably perform almost >any transfer you like by fax. I moved my pension from one bank >to another simply by sending a fax. I have done similar transactions >with Swiss, German and UK banks. > >For some reason the fax is considered to be a practically >infallible authentication device. Quite why is beyond me since >it should be obvious to anyone that all one needs to fake a >fax is a photocopier, document signed by account holder, paste >and scissors. You get everything needed on a signed cheque. > A check is no good, most checks are now printed on paper with special lines that are supposed to become obvious after copying. A signed letter or even a mailing envelope would probably be better. Also, scotch tape makes those pexky shadows disapear like magic. My dad uses it to make multiple versions of make-up math tests that trivially look like the origional in order to goad persons who were sick on test day so that they could get the answers from someone else into printing down those answers and getting less than random probability. (multiple choice)

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Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:46 AM 1/20/97 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: >[microcurrency] >>It will also not catch on until there are better standards involving >>microcurrency transactions amongst the vendors. It would also help if >>there was a single interface (or "helper app") for whatever vendor you >>decided to go with. I am not sure that is feasible. Single interface, perhaps. Sun's Java Wallet is step in this direction. Single helper app, not a chance. The systems are too different, and do not share a sufficient number of properties, to use the same helper app. >as I see it, I think there are a few key standards that need >to be devised: > >1. an html tag that indicates how much a link costs, probably in >the <a href="" cost=xx> type syntax This could be done, but is, IMHO, too inflexible. >2. modification of http to support a payment mechanism, by sending >a token. Take a look at PEP and UPP. This may not be what you are looking for, but it is a start. Available at any IETF draft repository. [...] >>Currently every vendor of payment schemes has made it proprietary in some >>way. (At least the ones I have seen.) This means that if the user visits >>three different web pages, each using a payment scheme from a different >>vendor, that user has to be signed up with all of those vendors. (Or at >>least have their helper apps.) The systems are *not* interchangeable due to fundamental differences in the design. This is not a software/UI issue. I do not expect the signup requirements to last much longer. To give just one example, take a look at the current discussions on dev-lucre, a list for the Unofficial Cypherpunks Implementation of Ecash. [Sorry, I don't have the archive URL.] http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu/ntlucre/ has the latest version. The list is currently discussing an ActiveX Ecash control. With -lucre, you no longer need to sign up with an issuer. Assuming an ActiveX control, the client software installs itself. As to the merchant software, Stronghold already ships with Ecash support built in. Netscape has announce that Navigator will ship with CyberCash. There is definitely movement at the browser/server end. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

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Re: Airport security [no such thing]
by drose＠azstarnet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan Bostick wrote: [...] >She presented the gate agent with *four* tickets and *four* IDs. "Where >are these other people?" the agent asked. "They're parking the car," >said the traveler. The agent gave her all four boarding passes; and my >companion and I were bumped to the third boarding group. > >The woman in front of us was white and middle-class-looking, traveling >with what appeared to be her family. One wonders what would have >happened were she a swarthy man wearing robes and a burnoose. Or if she >were just wearing shabby clothes. My guess is that you and your companion would have been further discommoded, with the possible concomitant saving of your lives.

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Interesting item from Nwlibertarians@teleport.com
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 17:44:32 -0800 (PST) >From: James Ogle <joogle(a)netcom.com> >Subject: NWLibs> LP: Browne's Vote Annulled, Chudov Still PM >To: Jack Dean <JackDean(a)webworldinc.com> >cc: usa-par(a)netcom.com, ichudov(a)algebra.com, rjschundler(a)aol.com, > nwlibertarians(a)teleport.com, brockman(a)netcom.com >Sender: owner-nwlibertarians(a)teleport.com >Reply-To: nwlibertarians(a)teleport.com > > >To: Jack Dean >Cc: Usa-par(a)netcom.com Listserver Members and Other Libertarians > >It turns out that according to Jack Dean, a campaign worker with the Harry >Browne in '96 campaign, the eballot vote for Igor Chudov (Libertarian - >OK) cast from HarryBrowne@HarryBrowne'96.com address, which was forwarded >to Mr. Jack Dean by me, was a fake - so the two votes are shaved off the >Chudov total. Can anyone speak with better authority on Browne then >Mr. Jack Dean, and say the Browne did cast the vote? On a positive >note however, Tim Ladd (Pot - CA) has agreed to list Mr. Chudov as his >first choice, so Mr. Chudov stays as PM for the time being with five votes. > >The new vote totals are shown below. > >BTW, a special welcome to the usa-par(a)netcom.com list to Evan Colletti >(Pot - NV), who joins the list from Reno NV, as a founder of the NV-PAR >and the Nevada Pot Party. > > --James Ogle > >On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Jack Dean wrote: > >> >> You wrote: >> >> >Jack, i just received this email from Mr. Harry Browne. Will you >> >please confirm with him that he did indeed cast the vote? >> >> No, he didn't. It appears to be a faked e-mail message. I'll be >> investigating how it was done. >> >> Sorry. >> >> Jack >> >> >> ************************************************************************** >> J. Harris Dean | voice & fax> 714/870-5585 >> 2217 Vista del Sol | pager with voice mail> 714/935-3638 >> Fullerton, CA 92831 | e-mail> JackDean(a)webworldinc.com >> ************************************************************************** >> "LIBERTY is something you cannot have, unless you are >> willing to give it to others." - William Allen White > >---------------------------------------------------Votes for PM of USA PAR > > > ====**** ************************** ****==== > ====*** * THE 3RD USA PARLIAMENT * ***==== > ====== ************************** ====== > > Igor Chudov Taoiseach > >----------------------------------------------------------------------------- >For Immediate Release January 20, 1997 > > RESULTS OF VOTING FOR TAOISEACH > > Vote For # Of Vote For >MP Vote For PM Secretary Seats Rules >------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Monty Truitt 1 Monty Truitt 1 James Ogle > 2 James Ogle 2 Monty Truitt > 3 Donald Duck 3 Micky Mouse 1 no >Daniel Brockman 1 Valerie Madriaga 1 James Ogle > 2 Igor Chudov > 3 Mike Bogatirev > 4 Zachary Quest 2 yes >Mike Robinson 1 Daniel Brockman 1 James Ogle > 2 Steve Michael 2 Mike Robinson > 3 Mike Robinson 1 yes >Nathan Brown 1 John Mayer 1 James Ogle > 2 Michael Banon 1 yes >Patrick Seats 1 Patrick Seats 1 James Ogle > 2 Daniel Brockman 2 Gary Swing 1 yes >Kerby Hensley 1 Locke Heemstra 1 James Ogle 1 >Jack Clayton 1 Steve Michael 1 James Ogle > 2 Jack Clayton 1 yes >Igor Chudov 1 Daniel Brockman 1 James Ogle > 2 Igor Chudov 1 yes* >James Ogle 1 Daniel Brockman 1 James Ogle > 2 Igor Chudov > 3 Nathan Brown > 4 Zachary Quest 2 yes >Bruce Daniels 1 Daniel Brockman 1 Gary Swing 8 yes >Gorden Hartman 1 Daniel Brockman 2 James Ogle 3 yes >John Mayer 1 Steve Michael 1 James Ogle 1 yes >Mike Bogatirev 1 Daniel Brockman 1 James Ogle 2 abstain >Gene Marsee' 1 Valerie Madriaga 1 James Ogle 1 abstain >Locke Heemstra 1 Lock Heemstra 1 James Ogle > 2 Daniel Brockman 1 yes >Shirley Bradshaw 1 Bruce Daniels 1 James Ogle > 2 Valerie Madriaga 1 >Lloyd Llewellyn 1 Igor Chudov 1 >Eli Rozicki 1 Nathon Brown 1 >Laura Booth 1 Nathan Brown 1 James Ogle 1 yes >Ann Atkerson 1 Newt Gingrich 1 James Ogle 1 >Steve Duby 1 Steve Duby 1 James Ogle > 2 Nathan Brown > 3 John Mayer > 4 Laura Booth 1 >Greg Farley 1 Nathan Brown 1 James Ogle 1 >Tim Ladd 1 Igor Chudov 1 James Ogle > 2 Nathan Brown >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Total 35 > > >*Voted yes on rules and other rules, and wrote in "Create USA PAR Web Page". > >Results As Of 1/20/97 > >Daniel Brockman (17 votes) Declines To Stand >Igor Chudov Elected Prime Minister - 5 votes >James Ogle Elected Secretary - 25 votes >Rules Approved - 23 votes > >--James Ogle, secretary > USA Parliament > > > Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Menwith Hill / NSA
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've just heard from Duncan Campbell (who made the documentary), he'll send me a copy of the script which can be put on the web. I'll let people know when it's available. Copies of the tape can be ordered from his company: IPTV Ltd 1 Meadowbank Edinburgh EH8 8JE Scotland, UK E-mail : duncan(a)gn.apc.org Tel : +44 131 659 6566 Cost is \pounds 14.50 stg + any postage costs for outside UK - \pounds 5 will cover it. They have no NTSC versions in stock but can make them from the master. Provided they get orders for at least 10, the cost will be the same. They accept payment in US$ cheques as well as \pounds stg cheques; no credit cards, sorry. He is, in theory, on holiday for another month or so and only has intermittent net connectivity, so please don't flood him with email just yet. Peter.

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Re: GSM crypto upgrade? (was Re: Newt's phone calls)
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:41 PM 1/16/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > >Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> writes: >> As long as the man in the middle can't imitate a familiar voice, >> this procedure is reasonably secure. > >This is the approach taken by PGPfone also. If the value of the >conversations was high (>$100,000?) passable voice imitation wouldn't >be that hard I suspect. I have long considered how easy it would be to use a sound card to modify the human voice to match within certain tolerances the voice of another. There are currently on the market, phones specifically designed to modify the voice of the user so that kids can answer as adults, women can answer as thier own protective boyfriends, bosses can answer anonymous calls as the secretary, etc... There are currently on the market keyboards that allow you to sample some real world sound and use it as a voice in your music, (the model I saw, a toy produced by Radio Shack, simply sped up or slowed down the sound to achieve this.) I have thought, if a machine were to take the incoming voice, analize (apologies for spelling) it to get a spectrum signature, a pattern that can be added or subtracted from another, and could then add the difference between that and the victims signature to the users voice, then real-time, on-the-fly con jobs would be easy. The only thing that the user would be responsible for would be the accent, and the day-to-day vocabulary of the victim. I told a friend about this and he confirmed that such was available if you knew where to look.

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Re: Airport security [no such thing]
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan Bostick wrote: [...] >She presented the gate agent with *four* tickets and *four* IDs. "Where >are these other people?" the agent asked. "They're parking the car," >said the traveler. The agent gave her all four boarding passes; and my >companion and I were bumped to the third boarding group. > >The woman in front of us was white and middle-class-looking, traveling >with what appeared to be her family. One wonders what would have >happened were she a swarthy man wearing robes and a burnoose. Or if she >were just wearing shabby clothes. My guess is that you and your companion would have been further discommoded, with the possible concomitant saving of your lives.

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jane Jefferson wrote: > Also Sprach Adam Back: > > I await with interest the last phases of Dimitri's experiment, when > > the cypherpunks list becomes a moderated forum. > > That appears to be the main brunt of his efforts, to "push the envelope" > of free speech in order to force it's definition. Perhaps to exhibit > the necessity for a controlling authority, and thus justify the existence > of the various agencies which are trying to control the flow of > information in this country and elsewhere. If what you say is true, then Dr. DV K's efforts are quite possibly the most important issue being addressed in this conference, because behind free speech, lies the most important issue of all--when does it start, and when does it stop. Cryptography, above all, enables the ability of a group or an individual to keep their communications secret, safe from prying eyes. The military-industrial complex proclaims this necessary for the purposes of state-security, and denies that it is used in order to keep their 'sins' from being exposed. (If you believe this, then please contact me by private email regarding an ocean-front property I have available in Tucson, AZ. If you act quickly, I will throw in a set of the Amazing Ginzu Knives as an added bonus.) The crypto-cognizant citizen proclaims cryptographical ability as a means of empowering their rights of free speech. The more intelligent of them recognize as misinformation the government's feeble claims that they cannot successfully investigate someone moving tons of illegal drugs into the country unless they have the capacity to eavesdrop on the private correspondences of 'all' of their citizens. (Which is the equivalent, in my mind, of claiming that AIDS cannot be held in check without knowing the details of all of the citizens sex-lives.) In short, I believe that if the issue of free speech is not one of the central issues on the CypherPunks list, then the list is merely one more heartless, unfeeling extension of the Great Machine which is grinding inexorably forward toward the day when we will all have its numbers tattoo'd on our forearms. As far as I am concerned, any CypherPunk who believes that the socio/politico issues surrounding cryptography are not important enough to be an integral part of this list is falling into the same type of trap as those who think that they can become good cryptographers without becoming good cryptanalysts. Those who seek to become merely cryptographers seem to think that 'numbers rule'--those who seek to be able to analyze the end-result of those 'numbers' realize that the minds, hearts and souls 'behind' those numbers tell the story of how people think and feel, and the motivations behind their cryptographical intent. (And also reveals where their vulnerabilities lie.) Thinking that cryptography is about 'numbers' is akin to thinking that equality is about 'skin-color'. > "In peacetime, a warlike man sets upon himself." -- Nietzsche "In times of war, a peacelike man sets upon others." Bubba Rom Dos Toto

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Re: Newt's phone calls
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:07 PM 1/20/97 -0500, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: >Depending on the country and bank you can probably perform almost >any transfer you like by fax. I moved my pension from one bank >to another simply by sending a fax. I have done similar transactions >with Swiss, German and UK banks. > >For some reason the fax is considered to be a practically >infallible authentication device. Quite why is beyond me since >it should be obvious to anyone that all one needs to fake a >fax is a photocopier, document signed by account holder, paste >and scissors. You get everything needed on a signed cheque. > A check is no good, most checks are now printed on paper with special lines that are supposed to become obvious after copying. A signed letter or even a mailing envelope would probably be better. Also, scotch tape makes those pexky shadows disapear like magic. My dad uses it to make multiple versions of make-up math tests that trivially look like the origional in order to goad persons who were sick on test day so that they could get the answers from someone else into printing down those answers and getting less than random probability. (multiple choice)

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Re: [Math Noise] (fwd)
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate allegedly said: > > > > Infinity does not have a predecessor, so it makes no sense to > > count back from it a finite number of steps. > > If infinity does not have predecessors (ie is immune to normal arithmetic > operations) then it is not possible for a sequence to approach it by adding > a finite amount to succesive terms in order to approach it. This means that > a sequence can not meaningfuly be asymptotic with infinity (meaning I have to > be able to draw a asymptote, at least in theory, in order to demonstrate the > limit). Jim, the problem here, as elsewhere in your posts, is that you confuse the prosaic meaning of terms with the mathematical meaning. "Approaching" infinity is sort of inane, mathematically speaking, but if it did have a meaning, it wouldn't mean "getting closer to". > > If one constructs the Ordinals, which are isomorphism classes of > > well-ordered sets, and the Cardinals, which are equivalence > > classes of equipotent sets, one will automatically end up with > > all sorts of transfinite numbers. > > If infinity is not a number, how is it possible to have a definite number > (ie transfinite) which is larger than it? > > My contention is that number theory as you present it is playing fast and > loose with the concept of infinity not being a number or visa versa. Your contention is precisely what you are doing. The term "infinity" means several things mathematically speaking, but the various meanings are precise. Your comments demonstrate that you don't really know what those precise meanings are, and thus it is difficult for people who are used to them to communicate with you. So perhaps you could define *exactly* what you mean by "infinity"? -- 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: Airport security [no such thing]
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Recall that all security is economics. The airlines want the appearance of security without having to pay for it. The '3 questions' ("Pack your luggage? let it out of your sight? Taking any gifts?") originated with El Al, where they are the introduction to a very expensive (and privacy invading) set of screening questions. The El Al people are trained to watch you as they ask the questions, and respond to signs of lying or rehersal. The Americans read the questions off the screen, and pay no attention to your answers. The market, however, is irrational*, and airlines prefer to have government imposed regulations over having to actually figure out what works, and do it. *The market is irrational because statistics on what airlines are safer than others is closely held knowledge of the FAA. Adam Alan Bostick wrote: | She presented the gate agent with *four* tickets and *four* IDs. "Where | are these other people?" the agent asked. "They're parking the car," | said the traveler. The agent gave her all four boarding passes; and my | companion and I were bumped to the third boarding group. | | The woman in front of us was white and middle-class-looking, traveling | with what appeared to be her family. One wonders what would have | happened were she a swarthy man wearing robes and a burnoose. Or if she | were just wearing shabby clothes. -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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