December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Militias
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just watched an hour-long special on CBS, "The Birth of a Militia," about the Rocky Mountain Militia is southern Utah. On nearly every issue I felt the militia members were right. Personally, I don't share their animosity toward Jews and blacks, but their beliefs are theirs to practice as they wish (including fighting laws which force them to mix with other races, as with laws which force them to hire those they have no desire to hire). I got so angry at their persecution that I felt like going out target shooting at my favorite range (open late at night). But since I went out shooting just this afternoon, I guess I'll stay home and rant. The militia member who was arrested, tried, and convicted of illegally owning a gun, evading the police, and driving without a license, apparently committed no serious crimes, by my standards. He didn't rob, he didn't rape, he didn't kill. As the Sheriff was quoted several times as saying, he "mouthed off." And apparently being a "skinhead" and a "militia member" is ipso facto proof of criminality. The Sheriff said he planned to get Johnny. Fuck them. Political crimes. Just like Bell. Maybe I will get in another hour of target practice tonight. The end times are coming. (BTW, the CBS piece left on this note: Johnny (didn't catch his last name) is holed up this evening in his compound, refusing to report for sentencing. The State Security Bureau, er, the Sheriff, says a shootout is likely.) --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: "Hackers"-- brief review and anecdote...
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:51 9/18/95, Steven Levy wrote: >No chance. The problem for me isn't that someone wanted to call a movie >Hackers but that it causes confusion in that for eleven years there has >been a preexisiting work by that name. There is a novelization of the >screenplay now in paperback, so when if a friend recommends that you buy >Hackers, you'll probably buy that one. (especially since Dell is >determined to do as little as possible for my own book). Normally when there can be confusion between a movie title and an existent book title (in that the movie could be a dramatization of the book based on general subject matter), the movie gets title clearance, pays a token release fee to the book's author, and puts up a title clearance credit in the movie credits. For an example of this, check out Bladerunner (based on "Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?" not "Bladerunner" [which was by a different author]) credits where the prior uses of the title were mentioned.

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Commercial RSAref
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First off, let me congratulate you on inking this deal. I hope that this will make a lot of interesting things possible, now that there is an RSAref toolkit outside the US, and also for commercial use in the US. I have a few questions, which I hope you can answer publically. Will there be a public, standard fee schedule? Many companies would like to be able to use RSA technology for a fee, and would like to know what that fee is without having to explain their plans in great detail to RSA. I know people who would like to be able to say, heres a check, we're shipping software using RSAref to 5000 desktops. Will you be adding access points to the software? I know that PGP required new interfaces, previously unpublished, and that use of unpublished interfaces was also a problem RSA had with Wei Dai's excellent Crypto++ library. Adam Jonathan Zamick wrote: | Well I've vaccilated between making a formal, dry announcement or | letting you all know my way. Given the general tenor (and individual | spirit) of many on Toad it is pretty easy to guess which path I chose. | So, first of all, here is to a productive future for encryption and | encryption technologies. Consensus Development and RSA Data Security, | have finalized the contract for Consensus to license and support | RSAREF(tm) for commercial use. | Lastly, we would like to hear suggestions and ideas on how to improve | RSAREF. We intend to remain responsive to requests, and welcome ideas | for the evolution of the RSAREF toolkit. "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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[NOISE] Unabomber - crypto-anarchist?!?
by Sherry Mayo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Found this quote from the Electronic Telegraph, the online version of a UK daily newspaper. (world news section, Weds 20th Sept) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et/access?ac=116192744309&pg=//95/9/20/wunab20.h… "Editors forced to print manifesto of Unabomber By Charles Laurence in New York ...The heart of his argument is that industrial society has led to ways of life for which people are fundamentally unsuited. He calls for a crypto-anarchic revolution and a new order based on small, village-style units." ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Uh? Crypto-anarchic? Surely he's not one of ours? ;-) ;-) ;-) Sherry ps You are supposed to register to read the ET but I registered as "cypherpunks" passwd "cypherpunks" - don't worry I didn't give the mailing list address.

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Re: "Hackers"-- brief review and anecdote...
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> 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). >The non-responsive answer is stricken from the record. :-) >You mean "secure" as Netscape was secure from sameer et al.? I don't think it's non-response, I just think you don't understand yhour expert witness. If not for the ITAR then I could distribute my secure applications as a binary library with the security part as source. When you got Netscape you'd read the security code or ask local experts to do so. You'd verify that the code was correct (or at least not stupid). You'd then compile the security code and link it against the main object module and away you'd go. If you didn't have a C compiler, you'd get a binary from someone you trusted. Of course, all this would be going on in parallel at thousands of sites around the world. Everyone looking at the code, finding holes, reporting them, fixing security bugs, and so on. But ITAR won't let you do that. Or netscape would just make calls to the common open multiple-crypto API that existed in a shared library in your machine. But apparently the ITAR won't even let you do this. /r$

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WWW: Unabomber Manifesto
by Damaged Justice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Unabomber Manifesto as published in the September 19th Washington Post Special Supplement is available in a slightly HTML-ized version at http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~frogfarm/unabomb.html I welcome all comments on both the form and the content of this page. -- http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~frogfarm ...for the best in unapproved information To be a skeptic is to refuse to be a victim. "This is my .sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine." Freedom...yeah, right.

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Re: Big Brother is watching
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:43 AM 9/4/97 +0200, Anonymous wrote: ... >>With this wonderful sucess, We can all look forward to this items being >>placed in our domiciles in order to further protect us from crime. > >And I'll give my kids a can of spray paint and a ladder. Maybe I'll offer >bonus prizes if they can figure out an inventive, undetectable way to disable >the fucker. ... In Altus, it is illegal to sell spray paint to persons under the age of 18. That makes two violations of their rights that I know of. The curfue which was enacted a couple years ago being the first. All because the local politicians are fully aware that they are too young to vote.

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Re: "Hackers"-- brief review and anecdote...
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>The question was, essentially, what do you think should happen to a >teenage hacker ... Oops. Sorry for the mistake. /r$

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Crypto Law Survey updated
by Bert-Jaap Koops 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have just updated my survey of existing and envisaged cryptography laws and regulations. See the Crypto Law Survey at http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/lawsurvy.htm This update includes: -update on Australia (Walsh recommendations), Denmark (report by Expert Committee), France (decree deemed imminent), Sweden (Inspection for strategic goods), US (Bernstein decision, Junger amended complaint) -change on Singapore (unclear availability domestic crypto) -URL added to Sweden (export law) -FAQ added -lay-out restyled Besides, I have added to my homepage pages on my research (crypto & crime) and on key recovery and PKIs. I've also added a collection of links on these areas. See: http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/research.htm Comments are as always welcomed. Kind regards, Bert-Jaap --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bert-Jaap Koops tel +31 13 466 8101 Center for Law, Administration and facs +31 13 466 8149 Informatization, Tilburg University e-mail E.J.Koops(a)kub.nl -------------------------------------------------- Postbus 90153 | This world's just mad enough to have been made | 5000 LE Tilburg | by the Being his beings into being prayed. | The Netherlands | (Howard Nemerov) | --------------------------------------------------------------------- http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/bertjaap.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Verification of Random Number Generators
by David Van Wie 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 19 Sep 1995 09:04:29 -0700 "Erik E. Fair" wrote: -------- >> >> Just an idle thought: it might be possible to do a probabalistic >> verification of a RNG by sampling it over some number of samples, and >> statistically analyzing the sample space. This would be analysis under the >> model of "RNG as black box" as opposed to (or rather, if you're smart, in >> addition to) code inspection & review. Any statisticians among us? >> >> Erik Fair >> The problem with a statistic is that it assumes an independent variable. If the variable is not truely independent (which happens with some frequency in real world analysis), any purported statistical result is meaningless (undefined, to be more precise). Clearly, the hack of netscape relied on the fact that the vairable was not independent. >But statistical tests of randomness alone do not make a good RNG. >At least, not for cryptographic use. A cryptographically secure >RNG is also unpredictable, i.e., computationally unfeasible to >predict the next random bit will be given the algorithm, and not >reliably reproduced, i.e., multiple runs with the exact same input >do not generate the same sequence. This is almost right. Statistical tests work fine if they are conducted on independent variables. dvw

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