December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Caribbean Internet Services? (yes!)
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Perry E. Metzger > Timothy C. May writes: > > Power in St. Thomas may not be back for a year in some parts. The roads, > > sewers, power lines, phone system, etc. will likely have to be completely > > rebuilt. > [...] > > I suspect "Caribbean Data Havens" and "Internet Sites" are further off than > > they were a few months ago. > > Not really. I suspect that phone company co-location and using buried > lines and your own generator would probably fix most problems if you > were "serious" about doing such a thing. We are not so bad off down here. Anguilla took a direct hit from Luis. Some of us have had to move computers into town for a week or two, but that is really it. Also, it has meant a couple weeks where we did not get as much done, but not months of setback. There is power and phone in town, cell phones work (give me a ring at (809) 497-7255), generators are not that expensive (like $600 for 5 kw). The utility polls have almost all been straightened or replaced already (2 weeks). The high-tension lines have already been strung to many places (like near my house). Anguilla should be rewired within another 6 weeks (we had the HMS South Hampton here for the last 2 weeks and now have 100 Royal Engineers helping out). Nobody was killed here. We all have our own cisterns so we have water, just bucket powered. The places that were hit hard were poor areas that some of the islands have, and people on boats. Also, some other islands will have water problems (not Anguilla). -- Vince Cate From Anguilla - A tax-haven in the Caribbean (or as they like to say, a "Zero tax jurisdiction") http://www.offshore.com.ai/anguilla http://www.aibs.com.ai/

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articles
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you could, please send me the name of the reporter and contact information for any articles you see regarding the netscape hack. Thanks, -- sameer Voice: 510-601-9777 Community ConneXion FAX: 510-601-9734 An Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.org (or login as "guest") sameer(a)c2.org

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netscape broken on NPR
by WOOD＠VAX2.ROCKHURST.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NPR reported on the security flaw in Netscape, 3:05 pm CDT. ------------------------------------------- | "Computers are boring and slow." | | | | David Wood | | Information Systems Specialist? | | wood(a)vax2.rockhurst.edu | -------------------------------------------

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Re: "Hackers"-- brief review and anecdote...
by Rev. Mark Grant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 17 Sep 1995, Brian Davis wrote: > Phill obviously presents one point of view, vigorously and well. What do > the rest of you think about a teen who, say, busts into a .edu site, > plays with the files, and ultimately brings the system down entirely for > 36 hours? Fun and games? Send him to his room, sans modem? Prosecute > him? Have a TLA hire him??? If it wasn't for ITAR the Net would already have secure encryption and authentication, and most such hacker attacks would be impossible (or at least impractical). Mark

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SUP_con
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

9-19-95. WashRag: "U.S. Agencies at Odds On Computer Exports." The State, Commerce and Defense departments are pushing for a loosening of federal controls on the export of U.S. supercomputers to all but a few developing nations, a move that would put extraordinary computing power into the hands of governments that have long been denied it. The proposal also has collected strong support from the computer industry but has provoked criticism from the Energy Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Advocates of the plan want President Clinton to announce the new, weaker export limits during a proposed visit to a computer factory in California's Silicon Valley on Thursday. [No crypto mentioned.] "French Nuclear Program Closely Tied to U.S. Sharing of Sensitive Codes, Access to California Labs to Expand." Despite its claims of developing an independent nuclear deterrent, France has long relied on the U.S. for some of the most sophisticated technologies needed to upgrade and maintain a modern nuclear arsenal. Although known to specialists, the U.S.-French nuclear links have been little discussed over the years. Officials are currently are trying to negotiate an arrangement under which the two sides will begin to share sensitive computer codes that describe how bombs behave when they are detonated. France needs the data to make full use of access to two sophisticated new U.S. nuclear weapons research facilities that Washington has quietly offered French weapons experts. Deux: SUP_con (15 kb)

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Cylink
by anonymous＠freezone.remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WSJ, Sept 19, 1995. Cylink Claims Right To Key Technology Involving Encryption Sunnyvale, Calif. - A Silicon Valley company asserted a legal claim to a key technology for protecting electronic commerce, following an arbitration ruling. Closely held Cylink Corp. said the ruling gave back to the company control over two key Stanford University patents regarding public-key encryption, a technique for scrambling data from theft or eavesdropping. A panel of three arbitrators, asked to settle a dispute between Cylink and RSA Data Security Inc., dissolved a five-year partnership between the two that pooled their encryption patents. RSA, a closely held company based in Redwood City, Calif., is the dominant supplier of encryption software, with users that include Microsoft Corp., Novell Inc., Netscape Communications Corp., Apple Computer Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. The arbitrators ruled that RSA hasn't had the right to sublicense the Stanford patents since 1990. Cylink said it would seek royalties from companies that have licensed software code from RSA and are redistributing it, arguing that they are infringing the Stanford patents. -----

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Financial Services Technology Consortium
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend found this... Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text Bob: I was looking for a web site for Shawmut/Fleet Bank and could not find one. But I did come across this which I thought might be of particular interest to you... http://www.llnl.gov/fstc/index.html It is the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), which is a consortium of financial services providers, national laboratories, universities, and government agencies who sponsor and participate in non-competitive collaborative research and development on interbank technical projects. Cheers, Will --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: ASCII unabomber paper attribution and FTP address (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: lmccarth(a)cs.umass.edu (L. McCarthy) > Subject: Re: ASCII unabomber paper attribution and FTP address > Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 15:10:48 -0400 (EDT) > > Actually it's: > > ftp://ftp.ai.mit.edu/pub/users/misc/unabomber > > It isn't as of 4:28 Central...:( Anyone got a clue as to where it has flow to? Jim

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Re: Encryption algorithms used in PrivaSoft (fwd)
by lmccarth＠cs.umass.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Confirming suspicions that PrivaSoft is a security-through-obscurity outfit: > From: David Clavadetscher <clav(a)deltanet.com> > Subject: Re: Encryption algorithms used in PrivaSoft > > Dear L., > > At this time our crypto engine is patented and proprietary. If you tell me > the intent of your interest I will see what other information we can provide > to you. Call me if you like. [...]

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My Day
by iagoldbe＠csclub.uwaterloo.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, my brain's pretty frazzled about now (and I still have a pretty dense paper on xFS to read and summarize for 9am tomorrow for my OS class) from all the press that's gone after me today. The ones I wrote down (I believe sameer wanted a list; I have names and numbers for some of these, too, bt it was pretty hectic: get off the phone, go to my terminal, note that I have 20 new mail messages from people wanting interviews or info, and answer the phone because it's ringing again.): NY Times WS Journal SF Chronicle CNN (camera crew) Marketplace (NPR) SF Examiner Kansas City Star Chronicle of Higher Education Boston Globe Newsweek (or WiReD; it was Steven Levy) and at least half a dozen more. Not to mention the job offers, one call that I couldn't decipher (it sounded like one of those AI's that you see roaming the net every so often, only on the phone), and email in French (je suis canadien, but I was still amazed I could understand it). Sorry for the blathering, but that's how I feel just now. BTW: the line we tended to stress was "public availability of source to at least the security bits", but who knows how it will come out? Holger.Reif(a)PrakInf.TU-Ilmenau.DE (Holger Reif ) was kind enough to verify that the SunOS 4.1.3 version of Netscape generates its keys in _exactly_ the same way as Solaris and HP-UX; he says he'll test other architectures tomorrow. I suspect any big-endian machine with the lrand48() function (which is used in key generation on Solaris/HP-UX; it's disguised in unssl.c as the macro mklcpr()) will be the same. Other Unix flavours should require only minor changes. I'm still interested in what Windoze clients do (other than lose). - Ian "So how _did_ Netscape's stock do today?"

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