December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Milgram & Authority
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com D >Don't you know how the US and UK physically turned back boatloads of D >people trying this? D > D >-- D >Dragon D > But these were people trying to travel en masse on (falsely acquired) immigrant visas. I was suggesting individual tourists overstaying. DCF Privacy 101 - A few years ago, Rebecca Schaefer told the State of California where she lived. Her killer used that information to find her and kill her. Only give out your address on a need to know basis. --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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Faking hostnames and inconvenient anon IP
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

joshua geller <joshua(a)cae.retix.com>: > [on IRC] > > Fraid not....it's a trivial matter to fake the username, and if yer a > > smart cookie, faking the hostname is just as easy. > > as far as I know, you have to hack the server to fake hostname. > > historically this practice has been frowned upon by the majority > of IRC administrators. Oh, there are other ways of faking hostnames, depending on your level of access to systems (your closest nameserver, for example). My point was that it's not quite as convenient to have anon IRC (or any other IP protocol) as it is to send anon mail through a remailer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in Voicemail +91 11 3760335; Vox/Fax/Data 6853410 H-34C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says: Support your right to bare arms! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Final version of Clipper Protocol Failure paper
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The "final" pre-print version (dated August 20, 1994) of my paper, "Protocol Failure in the Escrowed Encryption Standard" is now available. You can get it in PostScript form via anonymous ftp from research.att.com in the file /dist/mab/eesproto.ps . This version replaces the preliminary draft (June 3) version that previously occupied the same file. Most of the substance is identical, although few sections are expanded and a few minor errors are now corrected. I'd appreciate it if anyone who's citing the paper use this version. Only PostScript format is available. Sorry. This paper will be presented at the 2nd ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Fairfax in November. -matt

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Tessera
by perry＠bacon.imsi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw my first Tessera PC-MCIA card last night. Quite a scary piece of hardware. Its cheap, its fairly well engineered, and its based on our favorite escrowed key technology. "Mycotronics. We make fascism affordable." Perry

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 27 Apr 94 08:45:30 EDT, perry(a)bacon.imsi.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes - > "Mycotronics. We make fascism affordable." Perry, While I agree with your sentiment, it's "Mykotronx." - spooge

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Re: Tessera
by Phil G. Fraering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry, how do you know it's well engineered? Phil

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Re: Information on Internet/Cryptology
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yeah, the Internet is awfully big these days. (I started reading Usenet in the early 1980s when there was less than 1/2 MB per day of news and you could really read it all at 1200 baud :-) It's busier now...) For cryptography, the interesting places I know of are: - Usenet newsgroups: sci.crypt is the main technical crypto newsgroup talk.politics.crypto is the main random-discussion newsgroup alt.privacy.clipper is intended for Clipper discussions alt.privacy is a general-purpose priovacy newsgroup (there are others.) alt.security.pgp is for discussion of PGP and how to use it - cypherpunks mailing list (send mail to cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com to get help) is a fairly buysy (25-50 msgs/day) mailing list which deals with topics like writing crypto code, discussing protocols, using crypto to build privacy, political activism, etc. Signal/Noise ratio is usually pretty good. - ftp sites (file transfer protocol - log on as "anonymous", password=yourlogin, rsa.com - RSA's ftp site ftp.funet.fi - Finnish University Network ftp site, where most of the interesting code that's outside the US goes. garbo.uwasa.fi - Another good site in Finland; I think the name's right. ftp.csua.berkeley.edu (formerly soda.berkeley.edu) - home of the cypherpunks ftp archives ftp.eff.org - Electronic Frontier Foundation's ftp includes some crypto discussions There's also the World Wide Web, which I don't currently have software for, so I don't know if there are good Web sites yet (I've seen a lot of Web addresses go by, but most seem to really be ftp sites.) For finding code, "archie" is useful - telnet to ds.internic.net or archie.ans.net or archie.rutgers.edu , log in as archie, no password, and then type help to find out how to use it - it tells you where to find code for ftp. (Most archie sites actually tell you "There are too many users on right now, here's a list of other archie sites", and you randomly pick one in Korea or Israel or somewhere that's not too busy :-) Good luck! Bill # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp # 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

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Re: anti-clipper t-shirt
by Eric Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: I've already ordered my "1984" T-shirt, but saw the reference to another : anti-Clipper T-shirt, as well. What are the gory details on the non-1984 : shirt (price, where to order, size(s?), etc). I think that was probably my shirt you are referring to (the "original" 1984 shirt :-). Both John Blair and I were at CFP '94, and we both got the "We're behind schedule" line from a NSA employee who was representing only himself at the conference. The shirt idea I had was to take the Big Brother Inside logo that has been floating around, and use that for the front of a "anti-clipper" shirt, as you put it. On the back, I originally planned to use a !Key Escrow (the words Key Escrow inside a universal red circle/slash), but decided to use the "We're behind schedule" instead. Who knows, maybe there is another shirt in the making... My shirts are supposedly printed (I haven't seen them yet). I've received several orders, but I have been deliberately circumspect on the list; I made one "RFI" (request for interest) to cypherpunks. All the rest of my "advertising" has gone to those who initially expressed interest via email. To see John's .gifs: http://phoenix.aps.muohio.edu/users/jdblair/t-shirt.html (for those who don't have it, John is jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu) To see my .gifs: ftp://pmip.maricopa.edu/pub/1984.gif ftp://pmip.maricopa.edu/pub/bbi.gif If you are interested in ordering a shirt from me, send email. --Eric

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Re: Crypto scripting language
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: peace(a)BIX.com > I wrote a cryptographic scripting language that has been implemented in > a commercial product. I hesitate to post it here due to its length. > If there is a place to send it where it can be archived for public > down-load, I could do that. I am in the process of writing it up for > a symposium, but have other things that I would rather do. If I could > modify it to improve it's integration w/ telescript, I would like to > do it, but I don't have telescript, does anyone here have it? I'd like to hear more about your scripting language. You could post it for ftp to soda.berkeley.edu, or if it is something which should be export- controlled you could consider asking mpj(a)csn.org to put it up on his U.S.-only site. In the mean time, perhaps you could describe the language here. What is its syntax like? Interpreted or compiled? What kind of special crypto support does it have? If you actually own the rights to it, I'm sure we would be interested in looking at it. Re Telescript: I sent away a few months ago for General Magic's press kit. Telescript is a scripting language which they describe as being like "Postscript for net communications" (not an exact quote). Later this year, PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants, like Newton) will be released which run GM software, including the Magic Cap software. Magic Cap provides a graphical user interface that is said to be easier to use, with pictures of desks, buildings, etc. for the user to tap on. It will also run Telescript for its communications. As I understand it, users will use Telescript to write agent scripts, which will then be sent into the net where they can seek out information, negotiate payment if necessary, even trade or sell things. RSA is used for authen- tication and protection. It appears that these agents will require special software platforms where they will run. They won't just be able to surf the internet as it is today. Instead, they will only run on Telescript servers, where typically sellers of goods, services, and information will have their own agents waiting to make deals. AT&T is starting up a special network specifically for this purpose called PersonaLink. (It will also do ordinary email, presumably, as this would be a subset of agent capabilities.) In considering whether Telescript could become a new standard for commun- ications and networking, one flaw I see is that it appears that the software itself must be proprietary. This would suggest that it will be difficult to see Telescript servers spread through the Internet as WWW or gopher has done, for example. The internet as it is today does not mesh that well with pro- prietary software. Perhaps GM has a strategy for this but my impression is that they intend to create their own network and put their efforts there. I don't have any information on the language itself, so it's hard to judge its suitability for crypto based protocols. The RSA authentication and encryp- tion is built in at some level, but I don't know whether it is transparent (which would make it hard to replace) or explicitly called from the scripts (which might suggest that other alternatives could be hooked in). But the fact that the language is communications-oriented, and perhaps there- fore is already set up to deal with the unreliability and delays we often see with electronic communications, could be a good starting point. Hopefully when the PDAs hit the shelves in a few months we will start to see more infor- mation on Telescript. Hal

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Re: Milgram & Authority
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan writes: > Privacy 101 - A few years ago, Rebecca Schaefer told the State of > California where she lived. Her killer used that information to find her > and kill her. Only give out your address on a need to know basis. The San Francisco papers had a few articles a week ago about the San Francisco police giving out somebody's address from motor-vehicle records to her ex-boyfriend who was stalking her, as well as other private data - he got the information several times as she moved around. It's supposedly a misdemeanor, but of course the computers don't keep track of who requested what data, so they don't know which cop you can't trust. (Anybody who tries stalking me using motor vehicle records will either wonder how I keep all my furniture in that little box, or else have to figure out how to find my streeet address from my mailing address, not that that's real hard...) Bill

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