December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Think you're a hacker, eh?
by Bill Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, the only thing the pseudohackers seem to be able to do is forge-cancel postings that make them feel bad. So here it is again, with some extra data at the bottom. mjr(a)tis.com (Marcus J Ranum) writes: > > Sidewinder: > > Internet Security That Strikes Back > > Security software that strikes back? This sounds > cool. Is it like tcp_wrappers with the -retaliate option? > > :) > > mjr. No, it's actually Type Enforcement with the -patented option. :) :) Anybody wanting to bang into it for real can take a run at sidewinder.com (199.199.22.1 for the DNS-impaired). If we configured it with the product-level LOCKout I&A then nobody would get in far enough to bump into Sidewinder's defense in depth. So we left the door open a crack by allowing password-based logins (and what *are* those passwords? Well, hackerfolk, that's for us to know and you to find out). We particularly await the net.chatterers from the dank lowlands, who we invite to slip out of their wooden shoes, clear the pot fumes from their heads and show that xs4all can walk the walk as well as talk the talk. And of course we'd love to encounter Chaos Club (aka the Milli Vanilli of the Internet). Do hope that they can find time between press conferences to rememeber how its done. And our thanks to the uninvited visitors to sidewinder.com who helped us debug in the last couple of weeks. Pity that you can't enjoy the munged gifs of solar eclipses that we set up under hotcha file names as much as we enjoyed tracking your downloads. The breakin attempts were pretty pathetic (we thought the folks from oz were better than that, actually). Sorry to inform you that all that stuff you sniffed and saw was bogus. NetAdapts don't exist, nobody uses a STU-III to login on Internet, and the progress reports were a figment of our imagination. Hope you enjoyed the play as much as we enjoyed putting it on. Now please stay away and leave room in the log files for the next bunch of suckers. ---------------------- begin additional data ------------- Well, it's been pretty quiet here at the old secure site. Seems the vaunted hackers are real good at sniffing reusable passwords from bilgewater.edu and clueless.com but they're not so brave when it comes to running up against a real system. The official announcement is on Oct 11th, which is when we take sidewinder.com off the net. So, you self-proclaimed wizard hackers, you have until then to get to the machine which is on the other side of sidewinder.com. After that we play for keeps, and start putting you out of business one Sidewinder site at a time. So come on, wizzies, make our day. Or be forever exposed for what you are, a bunch of self-promoters who do the net.equivalent of snatching purses from old ladies and then crow about what a tough bunch of outlaws you are. Personal invitations have been sent to sexlessbe4all and the Chaos Chickenheart Club. The rest of you know who and what you are. able baker (bakerw(a)sidewinder.com)

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quantum-factoring talk at Columbia Univ. tomorrow
by stuarth＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Some cyherpunks readers who know their cryptography might be curious to see Rabin's talk as well as Peter Shor's. If you need directions by email you can send me private email (stuarth(a)netcom.com) ========================================================================== THE 24th THEORY DAY at Columbia University SPONSORED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1994 10:00 PROFESSOR MICHAEL RABIN Harvard University and Hebrew University "A New Paradigm for Hashing Data into Memory, and Applications" 11:00 DR DAVID KARGER AT&T Bell Laboratories "Approximate Graph Coloring by Semidefinite Programming" 2:00 PROFESSOR TOM LEIGHTON MIT "Multicommodity Flow: A Survey of recent results and algorithms" 3:00 DR PETER SHOR AT&T Bell Laboratories "Can Quantum Mechanics Help in Factoring Large Numbers?" Coffee will be available at 9:30AM. All lectures will be in the auditorium of the Schapiro Center for Engineering and Physical Sciences Research. This building is adjacent to the Mudd Building and entrance is from the campus. The lectures are free and open to the public. Call (212) 939-7000 for more information. Theory Day is supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

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REGIONAL MEETING
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, I've been having Cypherpunks-physical-meetings withdrawal since leaving the SF Bay Area. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to conjure up a venue nor enough folks for the Cypherpunks anniversary last month. For October, however, I've gotten a firm offer of the NYC living room of a local Cypherpunk (Hero of the Revolution). I also have compiled a list of a dozen and a half current C'punks and interested fellow travellers. Unless some problem comes up, we'll be getting together on the 8th of October at noon or so. If you are interested in attending, and we *haven't* communicated already, drop we some e-mail. Also, if you know anyone who might want to be on the Cypherpunks list, give me their contact info so I can invite them. We'll have ever so much fun. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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(n!)modx ...
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The nth derivative of x^n is n! ...

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Re: Anyone seen the 'quantum cryptanalysis' thread on sci.crypt?
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 11:21:45 -0700 >From: doug(a)OpenMind.com (Doug Cutrell) >I won't argue whether Shor's work will be implemented or not within any >given time period, but I thought that one of the most important properties >of it is that once (and if) achieved, the resources required to factor >increasingly large moduli lengths go up only polynomially, not >exponentially. The real roadblock might be that there are limits to how many bits there can be in a register. NIST's recent Quantum Computation conference included discussion of the expected lifetime of a computation (what fraction of a second the computation would have to complete in before the internal state space goes incoherent). The more bits are bound together, the shorter the lifetime of those bits, according to one result. However, the more bits you have the longer the computation has to be. This suggests that any given Quantum Computer technology point will lead to a maximum state size (likely in a small number of bits) for a given application. Trouble is, I'm not a quantum physicist, so my understanding of this is superficial. Any real physicists out there? - Carl

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Re: IN H.O.T. WATER
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> > negative, siege mentality. I believe there is a place, in every > community of fellow travelers, for humor and humanity. That's > Acapulco H.E.A.T., with dubious crypto and suspect technology, > has become an inside joke for Cypherpunks. When we watch it, we > see things the average person misses. This is something we > share, and something that helps create the lighter side of > Cypherpunk culture. Absolutely. ;-) You notice that I don't post 'please stop that' every time you come up with another H.E.A.T. bulletin. But more than one TV serial would be a bit much. Luckily David has assured me that his was only for one episode. He doesn't plan to do more, but others, as he says, are welcome! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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What is the PGP key for WIEN ?
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Where can I find the key for the WIEN remailer? It's not on the chaos gopher go or on soda

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Re: Anyone seen the 'quantum cryptanalysis' thread?
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:11 PM 9/28/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Alice switches to 15,000-bit moduli....the how much longer does it >take the Shor machine to do its thing? (Even if polynomial, what >factor?) > >I won't speculate further. The numbers are indeterminate, even to >Shor, I suspect. > >In any case, nothing for Cypherpunks to worry about in our lifetimes >(certainly not in my lifetime, and probably not in the lifetime of our >youngest members). It's easier to make an omlette out of eggs than to make eggs out of an omlette so encryption should remain well ahead of decryption. This differs from the popular view that decryption would eventually win the "war" with the encryption and devise a way of defeating *any* possible code/cipher. This "fact" was expressed in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars stories where he said that the Martians didn't use codes much because they were vulnerable. See also Sneakers in which we have a "black box" decyption device that can break any code. Also the guy who confronted me at the London conference last year and said "they broke the satellite movie coding system so why can't they break PGP?" I wonder where this idea comes from. DCF "Who was shocked, shocked by the end title sequence in Sneakers which features a newsreader describing how good commie liberals like the Robert Redford and Dan Ackroyd characters are using their decoding device to steal money from the Republican National Committee and transfer it to Greenpeace and all the usual suspects. Looks like those guys don't believe in democracy. That sort of thing is worse than the Watergate break in."

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Re: PGP hole
by Dr. D.C. Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> If you would, please send perhaps a breif "digest" of the thread. (Or > the entire thing, if that's easier.) The whole thread is much too long to post (and besides, it has nothing to do with bikinis or Fabio ;-) ). The gist of the problem seems to be that a signed cleartext message can be altered by adding spoofed text right after the BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE line. If the spoofed text is separated from the original text by a blank line or even a tab, PGP reports that the signature is good in spite of the added text. Apparently, the output file is a faithful version of the original message, but users who don't check that file might believe that the spoofed text was a part of the original message. I have not personally tried this yet, but the thread is full of comments from people who have, including some people who originally didn't believe it but later confirmed the existence of the problem themselves. The bug seems to be present in all versions (even the ViaCrypt versions have this problem). It has been reported as a bug to the MIT pgp-keepers. Caveat emptor. =D.C. Williams <dcwill(a)ee.unr.edu>

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Electronic Revolution and Guerilla Warfare?
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What with the governments of several nations around the world starting to get a bit heavy-handed with their populaces, I was wondering how a modern-day revolution could take place in a crypto-repressive society, and how the citizenry could sufficiently rattle/displace such a government so as to regain control over their destinies. For the purpose of discussion, I'd like to propose the following "environmental variables": > majority of the population unable/unwilling to do more than complain. > minority of the population not sure of how to fight the process, but willing to support those that do know. > some number (small) of those capable of crypto or other electronic mayhem depart the country in a short period bridging the implementation of repressive government controls and laws. > There are varying permutations of the crypto/electronic-capable, and the force-capable (ie, hackers-only to bomb-makers-only, and anything in between). > said government uses all means at it's disposal to try and apprehend those attempting to resist, as well as intercept communications, prevent damage to it's infrastructure and physical entities. > at the start of government "hostilities", all intra-national anon remailers are seized or shut down, and access to international ones is *heavily* monitored or blocked (yeah, I know, but we're gaming here!). > national identity medium (card, wristband, etc) in place and mandatory. > travel, currency, and information transfer restrictions (ie, no more "How to build a Backpack Nuke" or "How to hack the Tax Gestapo central computers" books :-) What problems would those willing to fight such government oppression be likely to face? How to deal with those problems? How to organize and exchange personnel/information? How to not get caught? How to avoid detection? What means/methods of, um, dissonance against such a government would be more/less effective? Under what various permutations of electronic/physical bushwhacking would the process be successful or not? Duration? Other than the obvious crypto/cyber/military disciplines, what other professions or specialized knowledge would be useful under what conditions? What blatantly obvious thing(s) have I left out? Dave Merriman - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP/RIPEM public keys and fingerprints. Unencrypted Email may be ignored without notice to sender. PGP preferred. Remember: It is not enough to _obey_ Big Brother; you must also learn to *love* Big Brother.

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