December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

ciphergroupies
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As one of ciphergroupies (call a spade a spade, the man said, and, frankly, I don't write code, much less cryto-code) I agree with Perry. While I understand that crypto isn't the only thing discussed on this list, it used be quite apparent to anyone who signed on to this list that strong crypto and its consequences was the the focus of the group. Some days it's very apparent that that is not the focus. My mail.torrent skills are pretty well advanced these days, because I sit on lots of mail groups. The first high volume one was cypherpunks, where I got my bones in such matters, and I've gotten pretty adept at thrashing the noise out of the way. However, it does seem that, like Tim said a while ago, we're getting a lot of forwards from other groups, which dilute the content here pretty significantly. I've done this myself. A lot. Not as much as I used to, but it still happens: I just forwarded here an announcement for a digital commerce conference in Texas, for instance. So, I have a few suggestions. First, we might try to be more considerate of the other's wetware, while developing our own, and try to limit our postings to this net to original contributions where possible, even if it's just a summary of something you've read. Write it in your own words, in other words ;-). I'm not saying rewrite instead of forward if the message is extremely crypto (or consequent) relevant, we get action messages from EPIC, for instance, which are mostly relevant (opinions of the efficacy of EPIC aside, of course). Second, if you have something which people here might be interested in, and it's vaguely tangental, post a pointer. The classic case here is someone, who shall remain nameless for reasons you'll see in a moment, who's brilliantly cryptic (!) pointers to his droid-fed article stash have been a very useful and pleasantly salient feature of the landscape here for more than a year now. You can point to an FTP file, a web page, have people ask for it in an e-mail reply from you, and if it's something er, professionally written, and want it handled er, gingerly, you can probably contact the above mentioned droid-master for his help in distributing your find. I just sent him such an article on dark fiber / frequency multiplexing which he pointed the group to within the last week. Not that you should choke the droid factory, mind you, but it can be done in a special circumstance. Perry seems pretty burned up, and he's burned up for the right reasons, not the least of which is that he's been busting his butt in a project which will encrypt the net at the very core: the TCP/IP layer itself. This is very very important, and people should pay attention to it, and help however they can. (It's also likely to make Perry insufferable -- deservedly -- pretty soon ;-)). Like everyone else, he subscribes to this group to learn more about crypto, and he's finding the crypto content dwindling, the "S1" discussion notwithstanding, and as someone who's invested a lot of time, energy, and emotions in this group, he doesn't sound happy about it. This is also compounded by the fact that while Perry is one of my favorite people here, Perry is also a grouch. I usually laugh when he goes over the top about something, because his polemics are some of the best I've ever seen. That doesn't make it any better if you're on the receiving end of such invective, and he's pissed off people who agree with him most of the rest of the time as a result. He's usually right, however, and he's a grownup, so I don't think he's going to change his tone anytime soon, and I've just learned to ignore his more inflamitory remarks as a cost of doing business with his not inconsiderable talents. That goes for several people around here, by the way, and it's a shame when they don't play well with others, but, like Perry, they're grownups. Another cost of doing business. So, in summary, point instead of forward where possible, particularly if it's not explicitly crypto or crypto consequent; a good immediate way to help the cause of crypto on the net is to bone up on this IPSP stuff and see what you can do to help, because it's very important; and Perry and other people here are grouches and can't seem to play nice with each other on occasion (So, what else is new? ;-)). Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- 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 <<<<<

2 1

Why DES in IPSEC ESP?
by Andy Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I suppose this is really addressed at Perry: Why was (single) DES chosen as the algorithm for the ESP part of IPSEC? If someone's IP traffic is being monitored and collected offline by some agency then they're going to get about a couple of hours of security while the special purpose key search hardware kicks into action. I know other algorithms can optionally be used, but surely it would have been better to have a second, stronger algorithm specified mandatory as well. - Andy +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Andrew Brown Internet <asb(a)nexor.co.uk> Telephone +44 115 952 0585 | | PGP (2048/9611055D): 69 AA EF 72 80 7A 63 3A C0 1F 9F 66 64 02 4C 88 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

3 3

CAC_kle
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

8-10-95. NYPaper Page-Oner: "With Internet Cachet, Not Profit, New Stock Is Wall St.'s Darling." A 15-month-old company that has never made a dime of profit had one of the most stunning debuts in Wall Street history yesterday as investors rushed to pour their money into cyberspace. The Netscape Communications Corporation became the latest -- and hottest -- company in the Internet business to list shares on the nation's stock exchanges. Shares of Netscape, which had been priced at $28 before trading began at 11 A.M. opened far higher -- at $71. The shares soon surged to as high as $74.75. It was the best opening day for a stock in Wall Street history for an issue of its size. But even more significantly, it was a sign of how the rush to commercialize the global computing web known as the Internet has created an investor frenzy not seen in the technology industry since the early days of the personal computer more than a decade ago. "There is a mania under way," said Michael Murphy, the editor of The Overpriced Stock Service, a newsletter in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The company's co-founder and chairman, who holds 9.7 million shares, ended up holding a stake valued at a half-billion dollars. Making his first fortune yesterday was Marc L. Andreessen, Netscape's 24-year-old vice president of technology and an inventor of its prize software. Based on yesterday's closing price, his interest in Netscape is worth more than $58 million. CAC_kle

1 0

Re: "S1" encryption system (was: this looked like it might
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> On a fair number of occassions I have been told that federal type folks > have made statements to the effect that there is no such thing as a "TOP > SECRET" classification of US government docs. Since really secret things > tend to get neither confirmed nor denied, I am inclined to believe this. > Thus SECRET is the top classification in today's government/military. If > anybody knows otherwise I would be interested in the information. > JWS Well, I held an active SECRET clearance until last November. This is how I remember it. There are three basic levels of classification - Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. There are many sub-categories, such as FOUO (For Official Use Only), NOFORN (no foreigners), COMSEC (Communications Security) etc. Within TS, data may be placed in 'compartments', the names of which may themselves be classified, and separate clearance is needed for each compartment. Orthoganal to that is the existance of three separate agencies which provide clearance - the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and the NSA. If you had a DoD clearance, that did not cut much ice with the spooks - you needed to have a separate investigation to their standards (though the actual groundpounding and investigation was done by the same organization for all three). Finally, there was 'need to know'. It didn't matter if you had a Tippy Toppest Secret clearance, signed by the directors of the NRO, NSA, and DoE; if there was a piece of classified information which was not relevant to your work, you didn't get it. (One of the problems with the system is that this leads to a lot of duplicated effort). While I did not get to see Top Secret data (and in fact, avoided classified projects whenever possible), TS was a very real classification level at least until late last year. The only explanation I can think of for your claim above is that most TS data is not simply 'TS'; it usually has various endorsments, such as which compartment it's in. Peter Trei

1 0

Cerf: Building a Barrier-Free Net
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, July 27, 1997, Money & Business, p. 12. Viewpoint Building an Internet Free of Barriers Vinton G. Cerf Vinton G. Cerf is senior vice president for Internet architecture and engineering at MCI Communications. He is a co-inventor of the computer networking protocol TCP/IP, which has become the language for Internet communications. When the subject is global networks like the Internet, the magic word is "seamlessness." Seamless global communications represents the technological promised land of major network providers like mine. For the consumer, seamlessness means unimpeded, smooth, clear communications among all points within a network and among all networks. To the extent that it has developed, seamlessness has been the sine qua non, the essential element, behind the fast-growing Internet. It is the essence of the links of the World Wide Web. The Internet, after all, is not a network, or even a medium, in the traditional sense, but a network of nearly 200,000 networks and a medium of media, encompassing all the long-established ones while creating entirely new types. The more seamless we make the Internet and, for that matter, the global information infrastructure, the quicker we will harness the immense potential. Although high hurdles of technology and infrastructure stare us in the face, obstacles of the political and public policy variety are equally daunting. Many policy makers fail to grasp that the very seamlessness already found on the Internet, coupled with its basic digital nature, makes it almost impossible to monitor or regulate its flow of information in a hierarchical way. Notwithstanding the efforts of certain countries, Big Brother would have real problems doing his dirty work on the Internet. Still, well-meaning policy makers try to extend longstanding social goals to the Internet through heavy-handed, market-distorting mandates when industry-led strategies could be more effective. Of greatest concern to the Internet industry today are the many legal quagmires and incoherent policy patchworks that hinder Internet commerce. Achieving full seamlessness of Internet networks will be impossible if the networks' builders must maneuver through inconsistent laws and policies. Not only are the policies of many nations in conflict, but so are policies within nations -- and to such an extreme that some seem mutually exclusive. A good example is encryption policy. Encryption technology scrambles digital communications to make them indecipherable to anyone except the intended receiver. The users range from businesses that transmit confidential data to individuals who send personal E-mail messages. Widespread availability of encryption is a prerequisite for enhancing security and privacy on the Internet, for engendering a mature electronic marketplace and even for helping the work of law enforcement. Yet governments resist removing old restrictions on the export and use of encryption technology -- rules that date from the cold war -- even as they proclaim pro-market intentions and stress greater Internet privacy and security as priorities. Fortunately, growing numbers of key policy makers in the advanced democracies are showing a clearer, more technologically sophisticated understanding of the Internet. They grasp that while government financed the start of the Internet, the absence of government has largely allowed it to take off like a rocket. Within this group are members of Congress like Senators Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, and Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Representative Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, who are pushing to liberalize encryption export controls. Another is Ira C. Magaziner, the White House adviser who oversaw the development of a major Administration policy paper, released earlier this month, on electronic commerce. The paper, which advocated a largely hands-off approach by Government to Internet regulation, is a breakthrough in electronic commerce policy. Its perspective is properly global; its delineated goals, highly commendable. Particularly laudable is its proposal to designate the Internet as a tariff-free zone. The Internet is now perhaps the most global and democratic form of communications. No other medium can so easily render outdated our traditional distinctions among localities, regions and nations. While the Internet increasingly knows no boundaries, it still knows barriers all too well -- obstacles that are too often born of technological ignorance leading to incoherent public policy. The world cannot afford policies that impede the development of the Internet, diminish its utility and limit its social reach. And much more could be at stake than seamless digital networks. We may find that the more we succeed in removing barriers to Internet communications, the more we may help reduce those other, far more important obstructions to human communications -- the ones that divide nations and estrange demographic groups. That, ultimately, could be the most far-reaching, enduring benefit of an unfettered global Internet. ----- Readers may submit opinion articles to Viewpoint and articles on personal experiences to From the Desk Of, Money and Business, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York 10036, or send E-mail in care of viewpts(a)nytimes.com or fromdesk(a)nytimes.com. All submissions become the property of The Times. They may be edited and may be republished in any medium. If manuscripts are accepted for publication, authors will be notified within too weeks. [End]

1 0

PGP Tools on Linux
by Rev. Mark Grant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Did anyone ever get PGP Tools working on Linux ? I can compile it, but it has a marked tendency to get SEGVs when destroying fifos... Mark

2 2

Re: "S1" encryption system (was: this looked like it might be interesting)
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Futplex sez: : BTW, the code has been posted to Usenet by a Frank Falstaff -- look for : message ID <40b8tk$cj4(a)news.xs4all.nl> in sci.crypt (Wed, Aug. 9, 1995). : His article refers to a message ID (namely <40b50l$oa8(a)utopia.hacktic.nl>) : that differs from the message ID of the copy sent to c'punks. So it looks : like there was at least one additional recipient. That's a minimum of 5 : originals so far.... The remailers at utopia.hacktic.nl use news.xs4all.nl as their newsserver, all messages get an "news.xs4all.nl-ID", all mail ID's will have "utopia.hacktic.nl" in it. -- Alex de Joode Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, Inc.

1 0

commercial advance vcrs
by Alex Strasheim 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This isn't directly relevant to crypto, but it is a scheme to allow people to filter out unwanted media content. Has anyone heard of it, and does anyone know how it works? This is from TV Guide: CHEERS to commercial-free TV, or more exactly, Commercial Advance VCRs. Check it out: this month, RCA will unveil a VCR that skips past virtually all commercials during playback of a recorded show. Imagine: three minutes of commercials will whiz by in 10 seconds. The downside? This summer, commercials may be the most interesting things on network tv. -- Alex Strasheim, alex(a)proust.suba.com

1 0

Re: Dir.Byway Virus (NewsClip)
by ab411＠detroit.freenet.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

turner(a)telecheck.com writes: >Seems like a good-press piece for a small anti-viral software >company. Just one small pick to nit: Actually, Dr. Sol's AVTK is consistently one of the very top DOS virus scanners, in terms of percent of known viruses it catches. >anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com said: >> Bitton said the company's "Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit" will >> remove the virus from infected computers. New versions of the Toolkit >> for DOS, Windows, OS/2, and NetWare are slated to ship in late >> summer. S&S also plans Fall 1995 introductions of Toolkits for >> Macintosh, SCO Unix, Windows 95, and Windows NT server and >> workstations. > >Windows NT has an abstracted and object oriented design. User mode >programs no longer have access to the hardware (ie., you no longer >have access to the boot sector, and cannot hook an interrupt). In >short, viruses are much less likely to function under NT, yet these >blood-sucking people can't wait to introduce software for it... I can't speak for S&S, but I'd bet that what they are introducing is a scanner for archives of MS-DOS programs hosted on NT systems. Although it may be that NT-specific viruses have started appearing. (The restrictions on file access don't slow the spread of file infectors all that much -- it's enough for them to infect those things they have write permission for. I think the good Dr. Cohen has done some research on this?) In any case, this is more appropriate for comp.virus than cpunks. -- David R. Conrad, ab411(a)detroit.freenet.org, http://web.grfn.org/~conrad/ Finger conrad(a)grfn.org for PGP 2.6 public key; it's also on my home page Key fingerprint = 33 12 BC 77 48 81 99 A5 D8 9C 43 16 3C 37 0B 50 No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.

1 0

noise pollution, conspiracy theory, Perry's pet peeve
by Bryce Wilcox 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > You have become an impediment -- a lump of rock in the highway. You aren't > part of the solution -- you are part of the problem. I have to concur on this point. Posting conspiracy tracts to cypherpunks, or posting algorithm ideas to the conspiracy list, only serves to dilute the primary function of the list in question. J. Orlin Grabbe's actions in this respect are harmful (though of course I don't think they are malicious.) Bryce signatures follow: + /. island Life in a chaos sea / bryce.wilcox(a)colorado.edu ---* -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta iQCVAwUBMCosBvWZSllhfG25AQFWlQQAocyn68Ehj6S2gGvPnhnMglrWdKFsw3s8 +eJWlMMVsXfV7NVAezoxVaia5Uw0kXCc0liQRmXz/T5jJQHI/ko2PxQQ7PI2TeRa RiEM327boHr87WrtJO+3jInqjGDgjKkiBXW07QNZjvZudlEdm05XLGtJeVSRmIFJ xKvbLVj5v5M= =B1KZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0