December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

remailer security, sendmail
by David A. Wagner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just read an interesting post on alt.hackers. Apparently you can figure out who's sending mail to who by repeatedly running the command /usr/lib/sendmail -bp. I just tested this out and it *seems* to work, as does running /usr/ucb/mailq repeatedly. How's that for an obscure feature? Does anyone run a remailer on a multi-user machine where sendmail is used? Is this sendmail feature a problem? If so, how would one fix it? (write a wrapper for sendmail? but that requires root access *sigh*) Am I missing something? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wagner dawagner(a)princeton.edu

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Re: usenet-to-mail
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >I'm better off if I keep taking classes, anyway. Don't know about the >rest of the folks on this list, but I don't feel like what I know about >computers today will carry me through retirement. > Hmmmmph. If you're gonna stay in school until you know enough about computers to carry you through retirement, you're gonna be there a *long* time. Best you can hope for is to be current when you get out, and keep up with it (or at least, not lose _too_ much ground each year as things evolve_. Dave Merriman - who remembers stuff like "64K? *64K*?! I don't know what I'd _do_ with 64K!" and when only the filthy rich had hard drives. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP public key and fingerprint. PGP encrypted Email welcome and encouraged. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. No?

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Back in the mists of time.....
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Having turned 40 earlier this month (jeez - if I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken care of myself :-), I'm apparently feeling the effects of Reagan's Disease. Could someone kindly refresh my memory as to when the Gummit decided it was okay to: * seize alleged drug money and not have to give it back unless the person could prove it was 'honest' money; * make banks and others tell them when someone moved more than $10,000; * take away our gold & silver coins for nickeled copper slugs (Kennedy-era, I believe; I seem to recall the tv coverage); * take us off the gold standard (Nixon?); Email preferred, so I don't waste any (more) bandwidth..... Dave Merriman - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP public key and fingerprint. PGP encrypted Email welcome and encouraged. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. No?

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Re: I Like ASCII, not MIME and Other Fancy Crap
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:49 PM 11/18/94, Timothy C. May wrote: >Personally, I like simple ASCII. No fancy fonts, no embedded graphics, >no Quicktime movies I have to watch, etc. But Tim, don't you believe in the march of progress? ;) (I agree. I retrieved some of those docs this issue arose over. I got a MIME doc, the header of which told me to fetch a translator, and when translated I text plain text. I know that simple ASCII will be overtaken by fancier tech, but why the hell encode plain text in a non-human readable format?) -j

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Re: I Like ASCII, not MIME and Other Fancy Crap
by Amanda Walker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Personally, I like simple ASCII. No fancy fonts, no embedded graphics, > no Quicktime movies I have to watch, etc. Do PGP key blocks bigger than the message body count as "fancy crap"? Fancy and Crap are both in the eye of the beholder :).

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e$ spam: New First Virtual mailing list
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: nsb(a)nsb.fv.com >Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 21:47:20 -0500 (EST) >Original-From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(a)nsb.fv.com> >To: www-buyinfo(a)allegra.att.com, com-priv(a)psi.com, edi-new(a)tegsun.Harvard.EDU >Subject: New First Virtual mailing list >X-UIDL: 785388160.006 > >We have set up a new mailing list, fv-users, for public discussions >about First Virtual's payment system and associated products and >technologies. To subscribe send mail to fv-users-request(a)fv.com, with >the single word "subscribe" in the subject. > >For any of you who haven't heard about First Virtual yet, we're a >fully-operational system that lets anyone on the Internet buy or sell >information using real money, without requiring any special software or >encryption. For more information, send mail to info(a)fv.com or spider >over to http://www.fv.com. > >-- Nathaniel Borenstein > Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings Incorporated > > ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: I Like ASCII, not MIME and Other Fancy Crap
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:58 PM 11/20/94 -1000, NetSurfer wrote: >Attachment converted: Amanda Logo Sig.GIF (GIFf/JVWR) (00003952) It was funny(?) the first time. Stop it. You're annoying people. Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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1st Draft Mixmaster chaining instructions
by lcottrell＠popmail.ucsd.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Here is the first draft of the instructions for using Mixmaster to build remailer messages. I am posting it to give a flavor of what the program does, and to request comments, both on the features and on the clarity of the help file itself. Instructions for using Mixmaster to create type 2 remailer messages. I assume that you have either compiled Mixmaster, or that you have acquired a precompiled copy. While you do not need PGP to use Mixmaster, it is useful for key management, and is required if you desire security of the content of the message you are sending (which will be visible to the last remailer). Theory and purpose of remailers: The purpose of anonymous remailers (hereafter simply remailers), is to provide protection against traffic analysis. Traffic analysis is the study of who you are communicating with, when, and how often. This reveals more than you might expect about your activities. It will indicate who your friends and colleagues are (and they can be told apart by looking at the times you contact them). What your interests are, from which catalog companies you contact, and which ftp and WWW sites you visit. Traffic analysis can even reveal business secrets, e.g. your frequent contact with a rival could give hints of an impending merger. Remailers protect your email from traffic analysis. The original remailers did this by removing all headers, except the subject line, from any message you sent to them and then forwarding them a destination of your choice. The recipient of such a message would not know who had sent it. The addition of encryption to this scheme gave significant protection from attackers who simply look at passing messages for to and from fields. Passing a message through several remailers in a row is much better, but still vulnerable to an attacker who can watch messages go into and out of each remailer. Two more elements are required: messages must be reordered within the remailer before being forwarded (this is being done by a few of the old style remailers), and all messages must be indistinguishable. This last is the primary improvement with the type 2 remailer, Mixmaster. Using type 2 remailers: The trend towards ever more complicated remailer message formats has been clear for some time. Several programs have been written to automatically build messages which will be remailed by several remailers. This process is called chaining. With type 2 remailers it is no longer possible to create these messages by hand. Mixmaster takes a message you wish to send, a list of remailers to chain it through, and a final destination, and builds the packet which the remailers will use. For simplicity I will first describe the interactive use of Mixmaster, then I will discuss how it can be controlled through command line arguments. Interactive use of Mixmaster: If you run Mixmaster with no arguments, you will be prompted for all the required information. First you will be asked to specify the final destination of the message. This is the full email address where you want your message delivered. Remember that the message is being sent by the last remailer in the chain, so you must specify the full internet address (e.g. name(a)machine.place.com) you may not use local mail aliases. You may enter multiple recipients on separate lines. Hit return on a blank line to stop entering destinations. You must have at least one. Next you will be asked to enter any headers you want to have inserted before the message. These are those lines at the beginning of email messages, like From: fred(a)bedrock.univ.edu, or Subject: Party invitation. If you want your message to have a subject when it is delivered, you must enter a line Subject: your subject here. Note that Subject must be capitalized, with the : and space as shown. A subject header can be added by using the -s command line argument. When you are done entering headers, hit return (it is OK to have zero headers). You will now be presented with a list of remailers through which you can chain your messages. The order in which you choose them is the order in which they will be traversed by your message. You may choose up to 20 of them, but remember that the reliability and speed of the chain diminish as the number of remailers in the chain increases. Four is a reasonable number of remailers to use. It is fine to use a given remailer more than once in your chain. Press return on a blank line to stop entering remailers. Finally you will be asked what file you want to send. This must be an ASCII file. You may either enter the name of an existing file, or you may choose to enter the message directly by typing "stdin" as the file name. This is intended for use by scripts. There are no editing capabilities when using stdin. Enter the end of file character (EOF is ^D) when you are done entering the file. Mixmaster will now build the type 2 remailer packet, and send it to the first remailer in the chain. Command line arguments to Mixmaster: Mixmaster [-c] [in.filename] [-f] [-s "subject"] [-o "outfile"] [-to a(a)b.com] [-l 3 2 6 ...] -c this indicates that chaining rather than remailer functions are desired. It is a NOP since chaining is the default operation. "filename" if a filename is given, then this will be used as the input file. As in the interactive mode, you may choose "stdin". No filename will be prompted for. -f filter mode. All prompts suppressed, but input still accepted as described in the interactive section. The remailer list must be specified on the command line. -s "subject" Adds a subject line to the message. The user should NOT include Subject: in this string. Mixmaster will not prompt for other headers if -s is used. -o "outfile" Specify an output file rather than sending the message to the first remailer automatically. If outfile is "stdout", then the remailer packet will be printed to stdout. -to foo(a)bar.org specifies the final destination of the message. Only one destination can be specified. Mixmaster will not prompt for other destinations if -to is used. -l 4 3 5 ... Specifies the list of remailers to chain through. This must be the last argument on the command line. A maximum of 20 remailers may be specified. Mixmaster will not prompt for other remailers if -l is used. - -------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell who does not speak for CASS/UCSD loki(a)nately.ucsd.edu PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Encrypted mail welcome. Home page http://nately.ucsd.edu/~loki/ Home of "chain" the remailer chaining script. For anon remailer info, mail remailer(a)nately.ucsd.edu Subject: remailer-help "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLs/ymFVkk3dax7hlAQFKqgP9Enq5xOZm2Dm1WudNeRjssV/VeJ7YLr0V 2n5ZaRnMaPqHe5efeMY3N7Ry1YoqGaQdYfD7Ar9koDUFPA0Lizh9QtDSLdeG8IVv RWcz7CxWjtt02yc1/PLY3TO9b3VRb0zSFzcwu0QBI17ZVK+rF6cT/SEuZFAjgW9D CJ5rWJH25Vk= =i4cN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Erratic Primitives of Shifting Parameters
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Apparently the Army War College has some choice views on the citizenry. Caveat: This item apeared in talk.politics.guns, from a self-described Idaho Minuteman. If these things offend you, read no further. Erratic Primitives of Shifting Parameters need encryption, too. --Tim > Xref: netcom.com talk.politics.guns:166397 > From: Terry.Liberty-Parker(a)libertybbs.ima.infomail.com (Terry Liberty-Parker) > Date: 18 Nov 94 12:20:07 > Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns > Subject: Govt's New Enemy > Message-ID: <294_9411181451(a)ima.infomail.com> > -=> Note: > Forwarded (from: AEN_NEWS) by Terry Liberty-Parker using timEd. > Originally from PHIL HURLEY (176:200/36.0) to all. > Original dated: Nov 18 '94, 11:24 > > * Original to ALL of 1:3624/7, on <Nov 10 23:28> > * Forwarded on <Nov 17 09:23> by Terry Buyers of 1:3624/7 > > The New Enemy > > "Parameters", the journal of the Army War College, has > published an article by a Maj. Ralph Peters which identifies > the next "enemy" of the "Politicized" Bill/Hillary Clinton > military as U.S. Patriots, defined as the "Warrior Class". > Patriots are described as "Erratic Primitives of Shifting > Allegiances, Habitated to Violence with no stake in Civil Order". > > > /////// Minuteman of Idaho \\\\\\\ > Grapevine BBS (208) 884-1226 > > > --- > # Synchronet # GRAPEVINE BBS * BOISE, IDAHO * (208) 884-1226 > SEEN-BY: 231/110 382/91 502 804 3624/7 6800/15 > > ___ GoldED 2.41 > - Origin: Texas Patriot (PRN 176:200/36) Dallas TX (214)495-6699 (176:200/36)

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DNA solution to Hamiltonian circuit?
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

srctran(a)world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian): [on Internet Patent News Service] Scientist uses DNA sequences to solve Hamiltonian path problem of combinatorial mathematics, a precursor of the PTO's headache of including biotechnology in it software prior art searches. Think of Hopfield's paper on using neural nets for the traveling salesman problem to predict where DNA computing will end up. Uhh! This was in one of Greg's 'random list of story titles' - he's yet to provide details. As Hopfield didn't really 'solve' the TS problem, but made it easier to solve a class of maps, this may not mean that there will be any significant effect upon Cypherpunk tech based on NP-hard graph problems (such as Zero Knowledge proofs) - but it would be interesting to know _what_ it's all about. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." rishab(a)arbornet.org Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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