December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Crypto's Role in Evil?
by mkj＠october.ducktown.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I agree with Tim that the future is likely to hold much evil -- as it always has -- and that privacy is unfortunately likely to play an important role in some of that evil -- as it always has. But my analysis of the problem has a subtly different perspective. We mustn't forget that, until very recently, strong, widespread privacy has been humanity's "default" condition. The evils to which Tim alluded would in my opinion be more accurately described as arising out of general advances in communication and consequent new market efficiencies. Progress always has two faces. The ob-crypto question here is, must we now rely upon pervasive LEA surveillance as humanity's only effective defense against the new evils created by technological progress? In other words, are we entering an era in which it is simply becoming TOO DANGEROUS to allow ourselves the traditional luxury of strong, widespread privacy? Many people, especially in government, seem to be answering the above question strongly in the affirmative. The Cypherpunks, on the other hand, have rallied around the idea that the unprecedented loss of privacy is itself an evil against which others pale by comparison. I admit it is a question which troubles me. I can only fall back on the principle that, as I believe Thomas Jefferson put it (quoting approximately from memory), "There is no ultimate safe repository for power other than in the people." Our only hope is in ourselves. --- mkj -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMHk4ZF11Wd4tm8clAQGFfwQAniCTN2dJ+3DrYHFXSq/dPfAzNggxkjlL r3ImCFcCA8JhXBUnGhon76eGtoAlAuuLMeFktACgI35TS+PU7oLtR/FRq68IxldD opnY+CA+4JstBkVHhnMfvW3UX4jZeo9MckaHdxwoZtwtM+D/pERw2Mb2M5r/uHA8 FQFfjsl1vBk= =kC7f -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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spam detector algorithm?
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I've been mulling over algorithmic/computational ways to spot spams for some time now. I think I might've come up with a way to represent messages (and compare representations) that would be useful to remailer operators who don't want to let spams (where "spam" == many messages with identical or very similar content) through their remailers. Any such technique will really only be useful at the last remailer in a chain, at least until people start sending encrypted spams (and there doesn't seem to be so much incentive for sending those). My proposed method is this: break the body of a message down into a list of words (with their frequencies). Eliminate words in that list which aren't in the "standard dictionary" (which ideally will contain many of the words used in the messages but doesn't need to have all of them). Alphabetize the list of words which remain. Plot a point in 3d space for each word in that list where its X coordinate is its position in the alphabetized list, its Y coordinate is its position in the dictionary, and its Z coordinate is its frequency (of appearance in the original text). This should produce a curve which "describes" the original text; messages which use many of the same words as the original (and don't use any new words) and have similar usage counts should produce similar curves. My assumption (which needs some testing) is that even moderately intelligent auto-spams (e.g., which assemble canned sentences into paragraphs or canned paragraphs into messages) are going to be similar enough that they'll eventually generate similar curves as other messages - the order in which the words appear doesn't matter (and isn't preserved). I'm also assuming that adding enough words to change the curve's shape would make the resulting messages nonsensical or wierd enough that they're unlikely to be useful for people who want their spams to get read. Evildoers solely interested in generating volume without coherence can just quote libertarian/objectivist texts (ha, ha, just a joke for all of you people who keep slamming "commies") or pick words/characters at random. I'm assuming - and this may be an erroneous assumption - that it's feasible to algorithmically describe and compare curves/lines in 3d space. My math is weak and spotty, but I think that's college-level (high-school, even?) math. It seems like one might compare equations which describe the curves for similarity (e.g., one curve might be x=2y+1 (in 2d space) and another might be x=2y+1.2, where "y=10" initially for each), and also compare the areas demarcated by the lines for similarity. My reason for including word frequency as a third dimension is to dampen the effect of an intelligent spammer throwing in a few early "A" words (e.g., "aardvark abcess absolute") or "Z" words to skew the curve. Any thoughts about this? Interesting? Stupid? Like I said, my math is weak. My intention is to try to cobble up a 2d version of this to see how it runs but I thought I'd see if anyone can point out why it can't work, or if it's useful enough that someone with a better math background than I've got wants to take this idea somewhere better. One side effect to the deployment of spam detectors may be that the remailer pinging services will need to move to using encrypted packets. It'd be possible for the remailer operators to identify and specially handle reliability measuring packets but that seems broken. Ideally, they should be indistinguishable from ordinary remailer messages. At least until money is involved, nobody's likely to give them special treatment - but even relatively small charges for remailing would make it more attractive for a remailer operator to try to skew the results of the pinging services so as to direct more traffic to themselves (my remailer recently hit Raph's Top Three again and that always brings a big traffic hit - it'll probably drop out again pretty soon and things'll be slow again. If I was getting $.10 for every message, though, I might care more about keeping it in the top 3.) My initial plan would be to include code in a spam detector which simply MD5's messages which don't seem to have identifiable words, and watches for a repeat of those hashes in, say, the last 100 messages seen; this would force someone who wants to send an encrypted spam (or uses a spam-detecting remailer to reach a non-detecting remailer) from encrypting once and sending 1000 times; they'd have to encrypt 1000 times to send 1000 times, which may be enough of a performance drain on them to make spamming less attractive. My impression is (speak up if I'm wrong) that requiring encryption for the ping packets wouldn't be an enormous burden on the pinging services because the new generation of software sends fewer pinging packets such that the CPU time required isn't an issue. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMHnYyn3YhjZY3fMNAQFnAgP/fBEaa7SObeu9wyqMCO6OW8rEraOtmxRG ynWeZVVvrtHgwuaS0NlhU4IMHVj/Laks4n6bbEbNRktfl/F5+HBvova52JQhoUkb 7EjEsRh57OwXHuVxJl/zODIH+qNd9lZP6+Tv7Vk2/SXVj3oRFD1jIZBUx6rBBZvf ZOaimDcSemw= =LjFV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Software Patents are Freezing Evolution of Products
by Peter Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>Thesis: Software patents are a bad idea because they freeze the evolution >>too early and payment metering schemes are too difficult to arrange, which >>also helps to freeze evolution. Software patents are bad because customers >>cannot freely and without entanglements incorporate the ideas into their >>own products. The situation has become much worse with software, because >>there is no physical object which can be used to meter usage of a patent. Its nice to see a carefully reasoned argument. Consider, also reading http://www.verisign.com/faqs/id_faq.html http://www.verisign.com/apple/cis.html Comment: The thesis is fundamentally flawed in the case of publickey applications which provide or exploit digital signatures, as its assumptions are false, patently. However, a gem of truth is revealed; however, possible outcomes may be unpalatable as "pay-per-view". Crypto metering for commercial-grade systems is easy. A number of companies, including those who are bantering about the latest batch of payment protocols, are beginning to really understand that to combat intruder-in-the middle attacks of the commercial end-systems' keying material, its necessary to authenticate the source of keying material used for all subsequent security services. Contrary to the thesis, there are an ever evolving number of practical ideas upon the nature of security services and secure applications. (In fact, its ever harder to track the explosion of innovation which is actually happening.) To combat the threat which intruder-in-the-middle represents to the key exchange/agreement crypto underlying most applications, a notion of public-key certificates was formulated. The certificate is a certified end-system key. The evaluation of the certificate requires users to consider trust models, as someone "trusted" digitally signs the key to assert that the key is certified for purpose X. The number of trust models being propounded is astounding; the innovation wonderful to behold; contrary to the thesis. Two models are prevalent - the Kent RFC 1422 model which uses third-parties to base non-repudiation services, and the Zimmermann PGP model which does not use third-parties, and accomplishes something other than non-repudiation. Other models are in heated discussion! There is a little truth in the thesis that asserting upfront to the licensor the nature of your idea does hamper innovation. However, a solution maybe at hand. Note, anyway, that (a) RSA is an excellent public-key scheme which is free of patent restrictions anywhere in the world except US territories (b) personal use of RSA in the US is effectively unlicensed (see PGP/PGPfone) (c) RSAREF is a free reference implementation available for developers to innovate with, before deciding how to make their ideas commercially available (d) there are lots of competitive providers of RSA stuff supporting many form-factors and packaging styles. So either all innovation occurs in the US, else free public availability is not the key to idea generation. Both these conclusions are patently wrong, in my view. Whats a solution? Well there is a solution which gets rid of the up-front, tell-all requirement. Its called controlled certificate issuance. Given the importance of the certificate role, if one meters certificate issuance such that a postage-stamp fee goes to the licensor for each key used in any idea, for any purpose, however often or valuable-a-transaction, then the developer is effectively freed up - in terms of innovation. The keying material can be Diffie-Helman, knapsack, anything the developer like. Whats the downside - well its like having a pay-per-view box on your company TV. Still, this is highly regarded by many industries and is the basis of much competition in the broadcasting & programming distribution industry. Some people, really object to pay-per-view. But then, some people object to inventors getting benefit from their discovery. One metering product is the BBN safekeyper. Metering certificates causes about as much hate mail, as MIT patent enforcement though. So beware about even thinking about reading the following pages for more information about the options and issues: http://www.verisign.com/faqs/id_faq.html - for digital ID material (lots of references) http://www.verisign.com/apple/cis.html - for metering and "simple" licensing How do we do away with the say-it-all-up-front restriction, which is currently the only means whereby the licensor can collect a negotiated fee? RSA DSI invested heavily in a hardware product for metering the issuance of those critical certificates. That is, any developer w

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Re: HTTP anon proxy pointers
by Jay Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:00 PM 10/9/95 -0500, Kevin L Prigge wrote: >I seem to recall that someone was working on an anonymous http >proxy a couple months ago. Pointers would be appreciated. Thanks. We had discussed this at the last Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting (BTW, when/where is the next??), and came to the conclusion that it would be technologically simple, but load inefficient, to implement in a large scale at this point. The main problem with anonymous http (or telnet, talk, etc) lies in the sheer amount of information being transferred, and the even larger amount of noise an anonymous site would have to generate to defeat traffic analysis. A mail message is usually under a few K, but with these larger systems you move into the multiple meg realms; to hide a single individual's (ie,) 3K/sec stream, a provider would have to generate many times that in cover traffic. We can force traffic to the user from network speeds to slow down to modem speeds, but that doesn't help the inbound crunch at all. Web sites don't generally generate much inbound traffic, but when coupled with dialups (such as in my case) this could lead to bad service to the local modem users. The good news is, with multiple anon redirectors bouncing traffic between them to further confuse an attacker, the number of users can grow an order of magnitude without any additional load, since the streams are hiding in the midst of other streams and far less random cover traffic needs to be generated. Software-wise, an anonymous http scheme could be implemented with a standard proxy server with remote host access restrictions and log analysis tools to charge the appropriate individuals for their usage (a la anon email postage stamp rolls). Down the road, cover traffic, ecash payment, encryption, and other nifty toys can be added. If anyone on this list is in need of anonymous http right now (even to tinker with it) I'd be willing to set up a free-use proxy, as long as you don't bring our server or our pipe to their knees. Mail me (privately if you wish) with the individual IPs/names of the hosts you'd be coming in from - no blanket domain names, please, unless they're your own personal network. If I see enough interest I'll have a proxy up by next week. Have I missed anything? -- Jay Campbell - Regional Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking (Santa Cruz Node) edge(a)got.net "Shoot the Fruit Loop" "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."

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Re: Crypto's Role in Evil?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:24 AM 10/10/95, Rob L wrote: >> > We mustn't forget that, until very recently, strong, widespread >> > privacy has been humanity's "default" condition. >> >> Not much privacy in village or tribal life. Even neighborhoods of >> earlier cities weren't very private. Neighbors always knew your business. >> > >Big difference is that your neighbors were usually looking out for you.. >not waiting to catch you doing something wrong.. >Even in the small town I live in, there is considerable privacy even >though everyone knows everyone else.. people tend to keep their noses out >of others business.. of course, if you offer to talk, then its fair game >for the side of the road interrogations <g> Ah, a very astute comment! Indeed, my chief concern--speaking for myself--is not hiding my activities from my neighbors, who, by the way, share my distaste for high taxes, big government, etc., but in ensuring that the various enforcement agencies are not aware of my activities. (And even then, my concern is a bit abstract, as I'm not--take my word--a pot grower, a money launderer, an arms dealer, or a terrorist. I have violated some laws about obtaining necessary permits, such as the ones needed to run a computer consulting firm in one's home, but I don't fear a pre-dawn raid by the jack-booted thugs over this.) Priuacy is mostly needed to protect against the government, or those who inform to the government, because it is manifestly the government that throws people in jail for doing "illegal" things, not one's neighbors. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: netscape mail starts java attachments upon get new mail...
by jps＠monad.semcor.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone remember the problem IBM had back ~10 years on X'mas, when someone sent an embeded 'script' greeting card to multiple 'profs' addresses? When the mail was opened the 'script' procedure was executed, resulting in the card being forwarded to everyone in the recipient's address book. It didn't take too many interations of this to drag IBM's net to it's knees. Given JAVA's i/o capabilities, I'm a little concerned about mating it with my mail reader. jps -- Jack P. Starrantino (215) 674-0200 (voice) SEMCOR, Inc. (215) 443-0474 (fax) 65 West Street Road jps(a)semcor.com Suite C-100 Warminster, PA 18974

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java security concerns
by cmcmanis＠scndprsn.Eng.Sun.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry pointed out the standard set of concerns that anyone should have with Java. About the only thing I'd care to dispute at the moment is that Java is a "large complicated" application. It is in fact less than 20K lines of C code. And while it is true that applications of even this size are difficult to prove safe, there has been an effort to break that problem up into components such that each "layer" can be proven safe and where that layer is used that safety carries over. Let me give you an example: There are three "parts" of the Java system: o Java Bytecode o Java Runtime o Java Virtual Machine. At a "meta" level there is the Java Language and the compiler that converts it into byte codes however for the purposes of a security discussion those are irrelevant since the browser in this case receives byte codes and the compiler at the other end is presumed suspect. So one way to approach this analysis is to look first at the bytecodes. One of the things you will discover is that Java is *not* a general purpose language. It lacks crucial features such as introspection and anonymous memory access. So you might ask "How can anyone write anything useful in it then?" and that is a fair question. The answer is that it does have one loophole and that loophole is the 'native' keyword on a method description. Basically, if you need a general purpose feature (like object inspection) you can get it with a native method. "So I write a native method to delete your files, what does that buy me?" you might ask. Well Java is also a _late binding_ language. Thus the binding of external method references (which native methods are by definition one) can be identified at bind/link time (which always occurs on the client) and optionally rejected. The next level of inspection is all of the classes that, through one of their methods, actually call a native method. Those can be analyzed closely and there are relatively few of them (about 28). The final level of inspection is the virtual machine interpreter. Its operation as a giant switch statement can be inspected for valid code design. It isn't all that large and a team of three can inspect it in under a week. If the layers work, the system works. We encourage any questions on security or identifying any "holes" to be sent to java(a)java.sun.com for our immediate attention. --Chuck However, Java is also late

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Re: Patents etc
by Jay Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>IMHO What's needed is a) a good way of measuring usage and b) a realistic >attitude on the part of patent holders as to the value of their patents. > >A good example of how not to do it is the current mess that governs the >music indistry (which very similar problems with copying and incorporation >of material [sampling] all be it in a context of copyright rather than >patents). > >Ted Nelson did a lot of work on this for xanadu and his ideas on >transcopyright are worth exploring further. One interesting (but maybe off-topic) facet of client-side applets (a la Java) is the fact that publishers can define proprietary protocols and file formats, and change them as often as they want, giving a sort of minimal protection against casual duplication and re-publishing. With a bit more work, the formats could make true transclusions efficient and easy to apply, and help increase the amount of serious/commercial information available to the public. This is nothing new, I suppose... Java (from a user point of view) isn't that much different than IntelligentPad, which from what I understand was the client system the Xanadu people were working with recently. -- Jay Campbell - Regional Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking (Santa Cruz Node) edge(a)got.net "Shoot the Fruit Loop" "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."

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Re: netscape mail starts java attachments upon get new mail...
by Jay Campbell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>OBcrypto: in one of the Java papers I saw a refrence to use of RSA >signitures to allow browser users to say things like "I trust Sun >(or Tim May) to write applets that use Foo not to harm me". It >wasn't in the public release of HotJava because of licencing >constrints. Any speculation on whether Netscape will (eventually) >support that feature? If this is the case, my big hope is that Netscape doesn't limit /this/ trust system to a pre-approved set of corporate entities I'll (as a private individual) have to pay $300 for if I want my apps to do anything more than bounce faces around a user's screen. A model allowing multiple entities to put a stamp of approval (possibly with some sort of hash/checksum to match an app in question against an approval certificate) /would/ make things easier for the user, though, allowing them to set up a set of blanket rules instead of pausing and pondering a particular programmer's trustworthiness every new site he visits... a la Tim's Dirt Cheap Java Security Approval Company. Please don't nail me on semantics; I use all above terms loosely. -- Jay Campbell - Regional Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking (Santa Cruz Node) edge(a)got.net "Shoot the Fruit Loop" "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."

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Re: LACC: Account sharing leads to false imprisonment
by J. R. Valverde (EMBL Outstation: the EBI) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Amazing! If I'm allowed to express my opinion! >Thought you might like another perspective: > >... >> A GORRIE STORY >> >> Here's the background: in October of 1994, Hirsh's stepbrother, a U of > What I find so amazing is the fascinating arguments exposed here. Let's see... First, let me say I start from a different point of view. I see the University as a place for forming people and distributing ideas, not juts the ideas of the "Establishment", but all kind of ideas. A place for the free interchange of all ideas and the formation of new persons. Now, all your message transpires a special horror against the dispersion of "anti-establishment" ideas. Of things that one could find "disturbing" from some point of view... Oh well, I wonder what it would have been if the arabs in Spain had only translated the Koram in the middle ages, instead of translating all the ancient wisdom and preserving it for all of us. Even if it conflicted with *their* beliefs. It would have been great not to have Aristotles or Plato at all. Just the Koram. >From your message, it looks like you want instead the Spanish Inquisition back: if someone distributes strange ideas -anarchist, communist, etc...- that person is a risk for the stablishment and should be punished. Isn't it? >Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and being easy to catch doesn't make >you innocent of a crime. > Yeah, but not showing volunteer to hide, expressing opinions openly, is not being easy to catch, it's being confident in one's freedom of speech and on the democratic system to protect it. Even in spite of overzealous system administrators. >> facility computer, received a complaint from someone at the University >> of British Columbia about The Anarchives being posted to net news. The >> person wanted it stopped. > >Interstate transport of stolen (presumably copyrighted) property, possible >violation of national laws of both nations. Unauthorized use of the >computers at the University of British Columbia. > Well, I don't know if that was copyrighted property. But, if it was, it was up to the (C) holder to decide what actions if any to take. BSD-Unix is copyrighted code, but I wouldn't say that all the copies around are illegal, or stolen. Unauthorized use? May I say that if that person asked someone (whomever) for permission, then it is whoever gave permission (if any) who should be pursued instead? I guess that if a poor guy is sold the Golden Gate, it is not that poor guy's fault as much as the "seller's". Ah, but that guy was distributing "anarchistic" information: he must have been pretty bad intentioned then. No one should have "unauthorized ideas" and even less dare to distribute or share them. I see. Great that if someone complains about the distribution of 'X' kind of ideas there's always a willing sysadmin to hunt the witch instead of defending freedom of speech. Great. >> have different last names, Gorrie concluded a larger hacker conspiracy >> was afoot. > >Reasonable assumption. The only way to find out different would be to >violate the users' privacy by reading their mail, etc. > What? May I suggest that, if the account has a owner, and a system manager, and all that, those people should be asked prior to jumping to conspiracy theories? The same kind of reasoning lead many innocents to die with the Spanish Inquisition: hey, they were plotting with the devil against god laws. Sorry, but I think a phone call to the implicated persons can easily clear all those doubts without "electronic surveillance" as you propose. >Collected possible evidence. A good idea. Allerting potential criminals > Yeah. I suppose that if they were expressing distrubing ideas, they were "potential criminals"... What else could they possibly be? >If he turned out to be a terrorist who was planning to blow up a >building, you would have called this a tremendous piece of police work, >they could have written a million-selling book, and you would hail the >sysadmin as a computer age hero. > Great! I guess that prettily summarizes all: "if" he had turned to be a "fill in your fears here". Just the same as it was with the Inquisition, if they were good guys they shouldn't fear torture or dying for God. And it was better to torture innocents than allowing any "potential bad guy" to get along. >So Hirsh agreed that he had been illegally using the computer system >and the case was settled with a monetary fine. > I bet so. Under torture many innocents also confessed. And faced with a multimillion dollar trial which, if you can't afford- will take you to jail (which can be a real torture), I guess that most innocents will prefer to go along with a smaller fine. It's often better to be alive and free than being the dildo of a homsexual homicidal maniac in jail. Or visiting the dungeons of the Inquisition. Of course, if instead of distributing 'X' files he had just killed his wife and her lover, and were multimillionaire, it would have been quite different. Wouldn't it? >> After subjecting Hirsh to complete and devastating public humiliation, >> U of T was now pleading for discretion. > >After Hirsh broke the law, he is trying to get even for being caught by >harassing the people who caught him. > So, after one person was faced with an humongous bill, dispropor- tionate, faced to an expensive trial he couldn't afford and forced into an agreement that's being sold as a confession, and being publicly given a walk around the city dressed as a damned heretic, he shouldn't have even the right to complain. Obvious. We don't want the faith in the Inquisition to diminish, do we? --- Look, I don't really know about the case. But I do really understand one thing: if this guy hadn't posted what some person considered were "pernicious ideas" he would have never been tracked down, villipendiated and taken to trial. I don't care about if he was using public resources for something they shouldn't be. That's something else to be discussed. Is it wrong to use a University to spread ideas, specially when the mainstream media avoid them? I won't comment on that. But that someone can start a witch hunt 'cos some other one is posting some special kind of information... Let's say, I can't consider that justification enough. So. I think you have made a great point for the defense of cryptography: if we want to have free thought and free speech, and avoid a new Inquisition, that's the only way. But I'm sure that if these guys had encrypted their messages that would have been taken more as a demonstrationof their *evil* purposes. After all, if they had nothing to fear, why hide? Why avoid torture? But they didn't hide, and we have seen... yes. Long life to thought control! jr -- These opinions are mine and only mine. Hey man, I saw them first!

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