December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

SWM seeks cryptographer
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend of mine who works for a publisher of kids' books is looking for a real (professional) cryptographer to interview for an upcoming book. I'm not sure of all the details, but I think they want to ask you what crypto is all about, how it works, why it's used, etc. I think he said they'll even include your photo in the book. Anyway, this is sketchy, but you can get more details by talking to him. He's a good friend and a nice guy (and very sympathetic to the cypherpunk cause). Feel free to contact him directly at: rusty(a)panix.com His name is Rusty. Thanks. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com

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Re: Announcing - The DigitaLiberty Forum
by dmandl＠bear.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: <root(a)phantom.com> You're infringing on hundreds of people's liberty by mailbombing dozens of inappropriate mailing lists with this junk (I got _two_ copies, and I'm only subbed to one of those lists). I might almost be intrigued if there were a shred of a concrete proposal of some kind in here, but of course there isn't: it's just the usual vague Libertarian pipe dreams. But any time I see a manifesto this long-winded, jargon-filled, and devoid of tangible ideas, that's exactly what I expect. My favorite quote: > launch other programs, and begin our virtual migration from the > swamp of coerced collectivism. Best of all, there will be no need to > physically move to 'Galt's Gulch' or escape to a floating 'Freedonia'. We > can all participate in this exodus without hastily quitting our jobs or > disrupting our lives. Whew, _that's_ a relief! When I achieve complete liberty I certainly don't want it to make me quit me job or disrupt my life in any way! --Dave.

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BACKING E$
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sun, 4 Dec 1994, Jim McCoy wrote: MC|IAs far as a real system goes, you will never see on running on a machine |in the US in the near future; in addition to the regulatory BS involved in |making magic money useful you would run into all kinds of wonderful |gambling laws and regulation. Which is why the digital money with the most chance of succeeding will be cyber-marks, -francs or -pounds, not cyber-dollars. Work with the currency of a country with fewer regulatory agencies. The chances of being allowed to stay in business increase directly as the number of government witchhunters decrease. Personal note here: in the past, I have been involved in several anti- govt ventures, always with a view to altering the status quo in favor of freedom fighters and kindred spirits. Some are still going strong, others have been victims of harrassment and even in some cases raids.. Of the unsucccesful ventures - the ones that were closed down by Big Brother Sam - the true reason has always been that we were too smart and getting away with whatever we were doing at the time. So instead, govt found some bogus charge to shut us down with. (In one of the cases they bombed us with orchestrated tax audits, one after another. Later, we were hit with Willful Failure to File something new they called an Environmental Impact Report; this was in a case of knocking down a storage shed! If you think this is "BS", get the last case: On TV, we had an associate promise a free bonus gift to the first 100 callers to a promotion. Upon shipping, we decided to give away the free bonus to *all* callers, a few thousand all told. This amounted to felonies of fraud, mail fraud and enough to put our associate away for up to 10. Of the succesful ventures, all have had one thing in common: they have been headquartered abroad. Our people there have had both Scotland Yard and Dutch police look over the operations, always on the request of the Americans. We have even had an Inland Revenue investigation, requested by the IRS. In all cases, the govt went away empty handed and as good friends - agents even apologized for the inconvenience. Their word to their U.S. colleagues: "We will not shut down someone who is not doing anything illegal. We may not agree with their political aims, but this in itself is insufficient basis for prosecution." ObCrypto: Anarcho-capitalists take note here, 1. In the U.S., the totality of federal regulations now comes to 202 volumes numbering 131,803 pages. "They" can *always* find something in there to shut you down with. Their aim is to seize what you have and put you out of business because you are not giving in to their demands. 2. Abroad, regulations are oftentimes of the common sense variety. If you are a crook, you can and will be shut down. But if - like me - you are honest, hardworking and just happen to not agree with U.S. policies of oppression, then you will be free to run your affairs as you see fit. 3. If the operator of a succesful digital cash currency achieves for his money more than play-money status, he will be intimidated into providing traceability. Sorry: there is no way he can insulate himself even with prior legal briefs and a team of top lawyers. I have been through it personally. We even had a bank in the seventies. If the bureaucrats target you, they *will* get you. Sure, you can fight. You won't win. Conclusion: I only see 'untouchable' digital cash of having integrity and a decent rate of survival if based abroad. Personal experience tells me that it should be pegged to the pound sterling. A futuristic twist with more widespread appeal to non-Europeans would be to peg it to the ECU although marketing could be tough this side of the common currency (year 2000?). If pegged to the ecu, HQ should still be in London. Have James Capel or some such handle the escrow account to guarantee real-money backing and -conversion. Individual accounts can be located anywhere and should stay out of mainland U.K. Sorry for the length of this post. Early choices now could mean the difference between future success and the alternative: headaches + the eventual inevitable caving in. "Capt'n Bob" Am still looking for a pseudonymous address. Suggestions welcome.

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Book Review pointer...
by michael shiplett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

sci.crypt contains a book review of _The Hobbyist's Guide to COMINT Collection and Analysis_, written and published by Tom Roach. Sounds like it may be interest to some folks here. michael

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Ideal digital cash system?
by Johnathan Corgan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On page 123 of Applied Cryptography Bruce Schneier cites the work of two cryptographers and the digital cash system they invented that satisfies all six properties he listed on the same page. In his words: The authors consider this the first ideal untraceable electronic cash system. The reference [674] is: T. Oamoto and K. Ohta, Universal Electronic Cash Advances in Cryptology--CRYPTO '91 Proceedings Berlin: Springer-Verlag 1992 pp. 324-337 Is anyone here familiar with this work? Has anyone tried to implement this protocol in some manner? Also how would I go about obtaining the text of this work either in written form or online? ======================================================================= Johnathan Corgan "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" jcorgan(a)netcom.com -Isaac Asimov PGP Public Key: http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~bal/pks-toplev.html Or send email to: pgp-public-keys(a)pgp.ai.mit.edu Subj: GET jcorgan ======================================================================= -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLuVcyU1Diok8GKihAQGuIwP+KaH0arHX1MADCi+KHMWjSCq3VNoUR1O1 aIBagedXbegdXmzkcmdTebgfKYQKpZN3Ple8Bt1k3KzXepS/gcIZUGWeN7P5c+tC 2/zFbTLYhl+BCjZpRZ2PnxTZWYASUYoKnZ1sXeh18bYPxtR+g9BSCmleau1W5d/g yAi2QSuxdBg= =gTBc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Good times virus thing-a-ma-bobber
by Just call me Flame-bait 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jon Care (iijon(a)iiit.swan.ac.uk) is believed to have said: >Was this a real message, or is someone having us on? I mean, come on, who >seriously describes themselves as "MacGuru" AND puts in their anonymous >email address as well :) > >Not very anonymous now is it? I'm sorry, I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to have fun _and_ be on this list. The MacGuru was picked up here on campus, and since I rarley send mail off campus, I usually forget to turn it off. As far as having the anon address in my sig, L. McCarthy <lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu> said: >I think the idea is that email sent to an anXXXXX(a)anon.penet.fi address will >be anonymized by the penet server, so you can establish a conversation >channel with MacGuru here without setting up a reply block through some >remailers. In some newsgroups where anonymous posting is common, listing of >several "anonymous" email addresses in .sigs is also common. I did this for the exact same reason. If someone wants to mail me anonymously, they have the option to just mail my anon account. What's so wrong with that?? >The message itself reeks of the typical chain letter-- oh please send >this to absolutely everyone you know with email! It'll help them lots! > >Yeah, whatever. Someone (I'm not sure who) brought up the point that the file could actually be an ANSI bomb. It seems to me that for the IBM and clone users on the 'net, this could be something that they would want to watch out for. Now we all know that it wasn't real (and many of you just "knew" it wasn't), it doesn't matter, does it? -=-=-=- Adam J. Gerstein MacGuru to the stars Available at: GERSTEIN(a)SCSU.CTSTATEU.EDU MACGEEK(a)SCSU.CTSTATEU.EDU A GERSTEIN(a)AOL.COM MACGEEK(a)eWorld.com an41389(a)anon.penet.fi (for anonymity) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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Breaking the NSA
by Tony.Gurnick＠nzdairy.co.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you really want to test NSA. Encrypt some crypto code with pgp in an overseas public key(IE: non-us) then email the code to someone out of the us. This way you will find out 1 of 2 things. 1. That pgp is unbreakable by the NSA - Rsa with fairly log keys take so much work the nsa cant crack it with huge computers. This is a good thing - Idea, even though it is new, is a secure algorithm for the above reasons - You wont get in trouble as you are only sending random bits out of the country not code 2. PGP is BREAKABLE by the NSA (OUCH!) - You get in deep shit! or 3. PGP is breakable by the NSA but they dont tell anyone! (HMMM) - Well this would be an interesting one! - Since they are the ones that imposed the ITAR rule in the first place (them or the us gov) they have a prob! If they knew you were exporting crypto because they cracked pgp they could not convict you as that would imply they cracked pgp and they would tell the whole world what they can & cannot crack. It would be a big bummer for RSA and IDEA but at least we`d know! T

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Re: Anybody got a procmail recipe?
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Sam Kaplin writes: > Does anyone have a procmail recipe which will forward all incoming mail > messages to a shell account to a specific usenet news group? Couldn't you just use, for example, soc.singles(a)myriad.pc.cc.cmu.edu as the contents of your .forward file ? - - -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines; I know that that ain't allowed" --Talking Heads - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLuV2EGf7YYibNzjpAQFKwwP+JfZabMUdW4ZjOwlJmFdXibXTW725baok xAIKMLl4zti8BvM90YpdYy5ILps9JR4W+XE8deHfhwRjti0sim7bt43Vgp8V3a2z DwrAXb0B20xpPgAH3XotIVCVYb0rTGy5LsHk2NBU9K/Ufvx2RyGLB8d2nvqaqCW5 yjhR6/JBJ+Q= =/FT8 - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLuV3QSoZzwIn1bdtAQES8AF+OIvMZrlwK2pdU5nCCawU93M/j1kbs2Ye DYR/7GKWphvABSWBE2/lcOvkCJUT+zfZ =j1pP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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2048 bit key generation with 2.6.2
by jltocher＠CCGATE.HAC.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I changed my system date (Ho! Ho! Ho!) in order to test the generation of 2048 bit keys. Key view shows the key as having 2047 bits. Can someone tell me what's goin' on? Please reply by E-Mail; I'm currently not on the list because of the volume. Regards, John ______________________________________________________________________________ John L. Tocher THE CITY-a bounded infinity. A labyrinth where JLTocher(a)CCgate.HAC.com you are never lost. Your private map where every PGP Fingerprint: block bears exactly the same number. Even if you CE 72 1A 11 07 47 35 35 lose your way, you cannot go wrong. --Kobo Abe 9A C1 DE EA 64 21 BC 94 "The Ruined Map" ============================================================================== To get my PGP key send mail with subject "Get Key" ==============================================================================

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Warning about a message I may have sent
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I may have accidentally sent a message to the list that I was intending to send just to myself, from my offline mailer Eudora (as opposed to elm, which I'm now on). As usual during any time Netcom is crowded, it is apparently not accepting connections from toad.com, and so I am not seeing traffic sent to the list (No, I don't need any of you to offer to send it to me...it'll arrive when toad retries the connection some hours from now and Netcom deigns to accept it. A run-of-the--mill mistaken message would not be an issue, but this a BIGGIE, a 43K file of a paper I just completed that I was planning to offer as an attachment to a mail message. So, I was testing the whole thing. But I may've typed in the list name instead of mine. Oh well. If it arrives, it's the text only version of a paper submitted to the "Imagina 95" conference to be held in February in Monte Carlo. I guess random posts to the list are the Monte Carlo method in action. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo(a)toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tcmay

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