December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Apology to Netscape.
by carolann＠censored.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Jeff Weintstein corrected me with: > This is what our press release said: > > An updated version of Netscape Navigator 1.1 for Mac OS > and Unix and Netscape Navigator 1.2 for Windows 3.1 and > Windows 95 will be available for downloading by existing > customers on the Internet next week. My apologies for the misquote. It only then makes the trading facts worse. Love Always, Carol Anne ps On the asides kind of things, do you realize the Netscape stock base of 5,000,000 shares is not a big sharebase? Coca-Cola's is 1,300,000,000. And by standards, your stock is really unstable. If Coca-Cola moves 3 points there'll be a trading halt, for the buying/selling imbalance will be too much. Even if only for 1 min. The trading halt gets the good or bad news onto "The Street". -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMGUCaYrpjEWs1wBlAQF9ZAP6AkMCsveSU/E8KFDi84urnAR2KlXT42rS l+9tHh33ZWbM6VmHUMkqelM11vc7zU1eWLhXlYHaoOqwGuTef9irQigbnr+HwYKL Px9480/Chm59RWCG6j4pp4d0xUQO9Pj0lbpIecn72eDYReRIgh5+MU0jOCNdUNLe RvP7XvYI570= =Nb9y -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Member Internet Society - Certified BETSI Programmer - Webmistress *********************************************************************** Carol Anne Braddock (cab8) carolann(a)censored.org 206.42.112.96 My Homepage The Cyberdoc *********************************************************************** ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [017/713] ------------------- M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M MF=O0H+*%(-S%&>S%+FS&<LS%3(Q&#W1"<]2%`H^;,]^1C$'HBN8PX$4SYAU^ MPGD<Q0ZLA0D+,`MCT!LA**4M[-JPAK9F?40!AJ,CW"'%DR#:'9?Q)3[%<DQ` ------------------------------------------------------------- for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/

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Amazon.com Books -- personal notification service
by eyes＠amazon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, as per your request, we at Amazon.com Books are notifying you of new books matching the following criteria: subjects include "Cryptography" The new books are listed at the end of this message. If you're interested in any of these books you can order them online at http://www.amazon.com/ Your most humble automated search agent, Eyes Amazon.com Books http://www.amazon.com/ P.S. Please don't forget that Amazon.com Books has over one million titles for you to choose from, many discounted 10 to 40 percent off the list price. If you have any online friends who might enjoy Amazon.com Books, we'd really appreciate you spreading the word! Thank you! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Advances in Cryptology--Eurocrypt-94 : Workshop on the Theory and Application of Cryptographic Techniques, Perugia, Italy, May 1994 : Proceedings)" by Alfredo De Santis List Price: currently unknown Subjects: Computer security, Cryptography Publisher: Binding: Hardcover Expected publication date: September 1995 ISBN: 3540601767 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Enigma : A Novel" by Robert Harris, David Rosenthal(Editor) List: $23.00 -- Amazon.com Price: $20.70 -- You Save: $2.30 (10%) Subjects: World War, 1939-1945, Secret service, Great Britain, Fiction, Cryptography Publisher: Random House Binding: Hardcover Expected publication date: October 1995 ISBN: 0679428879 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Pass It On! : All About Notes, from Secret Codes and Special Inks to Fancy Folds and Dead Man's Drops" by Sharon Bailly, Anne Canevari Green(Illustrator) List: $18.90 -- Amazon.com Price: $18.90 Subjects: Cryptography, Juvenile literature, Writing Publisher: Millbrook Pr Binding: Library Binding Expected publication date: September 1995 ISBN: 1562945882 ----- End of forwarded message from eyes(a)amazon.com -----

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Distribute a key, go to prison.
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- -=> Quoting In:tcmay@got.net to Harka <=- In> "Distribute a key, go to prison." In> Simple, by declaring that public keys themselves are crypto In> material, as the Brits did in their Trusted Third Parties In> draft proposal, and hence declaring that distribution of keys In> after the effective date of the legislation constitutes a In> violation. Give someone your key, either by placing it on In> keyservers or even by mailing it to them, and one has just In> "distributed" crypto. In> This will make the public key infrastructure essentially In> useless, as the public key servers go down, as corporations In> yank any directories they may have, and (possibly) as In> individuals stop putting PGP or S/MIME fingerprints or In> pointers in their messages. But then the same thing will happen as with "censored" web pages. Mirrors of key servers will be all over the world and render such laws kinda useless. You do have a point, however. I was thinking about a possible nightmare-scenario similar to that: Remailers (as crypto-providers and distributors) will be taken down in a syncronized effort in at least the western world. Non-government-approved crypto outlawed simultaneously. A few highly publicized cases of "violators" who use crypto anyway. Enough to scare the other 95 percent into complying. Once that happens it will be too late...at least for a few decades. Therefore crypto needs to be distributed and _used_ on a wide scale. Maybe spamming the Net (once :)) with PGP will at least make a nice publicity-stunt. Instead of "Adopt your legislator"-stuff it should be "Adopt your local computer-fellows" to use PGP, Remailers etc.. Those who have the resources should implement new remailers, key servers etc.. Cypherpunks don't whine! Cypherpunks have no need to be defensive! Cypherpunks write code! Ciao Harka ... "Use a Cipher - Be Free!" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBNBsDNzltEBIEF0MBAQGxTAf/WkPXY3Or4Ces2N0PGfmrdQL7G7lqqjyw AVZVJv4/gsSXuiIoRIOh7GjVBWRMX4xli1835cvXrwwnQnw1YmOcaMBHLNvQ6kVT FVv3BVc8rcP5l5uaqJsByWHjXDa7kmuRGrmzP6mv7ZBQRbaiqGZp0E2vDZpxjhND he3HLCSR2TIzyR/o1pzdwFQzvfOSZh42yU5ssFLEcF5C0L/1KYMUJxyYYQ7aZoJN vFBwO5rx+nk+csRRNGVoUTDZ3NcZWf46h21+Gc8BF2L4zQN/3p4FJUswBHEFO87Q hqhA10lSrHdH2Lfb3ypFPlee7L1oaAx0T8dgBds/51R8geMp7NwI8Q== =It/0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Amazon.com Books -- personal notification service (fwd)
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Amazon.com books (which someone mentioned here a few days ago) has a free personal notification service for new books of interest. They also claim not to sell your preferences if you so request. They have Springer-Verlag conference proceedings, and books by Hakim Bey. I spent a while telling them all about whose new books I'd like to hear about, and this came to me today. Adam ----- Forwarded message from eyes(a)amazon.com -----

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Re: Real issue of crypto controls: security or taxation loss?
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 13 Sep 97 at 20:53, iang(a)systemics.com wrote: > > Any comments about why we should *not* put most emphasis on the > > financial aspect of crypto? > > You answered it yourself. There are more palefaces than bright-eyed > injuns. > > Sun Tsu (from memory): select the battleground where you are strongest and > the enemy is weakest. > > A battle on the field of taxation is a wipeout. At least, on the field of > privacy, 4th amendment and so forth provides a few weapons for the Freedom > Fighters. Sorry to say, but I don't completely get you idiosyncratic language. My perception of it is that when you explain thoses things to productive individuals, i.e. individuals that get a lot of their money confiscated, most of them get quite interested while if you talk about the capability of talking dirty to your lover without your mother in law being able to know, they yawn faster than you can say "bit". Thus, IMO, brigning the discussion on the ground of taxation would be an attention getter. At least concerning the "guerilla" spreading of crypto, as Tim mentionned. Ciao jfa -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada JFA Technologies, R&D physicists & engineers Instrumentation & control, LabView programming. PGP keys: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon and: http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html PGP ID:C58ADD0D:529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 PGP ID:5B51964D:152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C

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Found on usenet: ACLU -- "Big Brother and the power of the Net"
by stevenw＠iglou.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Midpeninsula Chapter of American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California presents a free program, open to the public Speaker: Jim Warren, MicroTimes correspondent, originator of the West Coast Computer Faire, PBS Computer Chronicles and numerous other enterprises Topic: Big Brother and the power of the Net Time: Tuesday, October 17, 1995 at 8:00 pm Place: Mandarin Classic Restaurant; First & Main Streets, Los Altos There is no fee and no reservation is required for those coming just for the program, but this is the annual meeting of the Midpeninsula Chapter and is preceded by a reception and dinner that are open to the public, but for which a reservation is required (see below). 6:00 pm Reception and no-host bar 7:00 pm Dinner 8:00 pm Jim Warren speaks ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dinner Reservation Please return by Friday, October 6, 1995 Dinner reservation for ____ person(s) Check for $ _____ ($25 per person) is enclosed. Please make check payable to ACLU Mid-peninsula. Mail to: Iris Barrie If you have questions, call: 4250 El Camino, D-138 Iris Barrie at 415-856-0193 Palo Alto, CA 94306 -- Les Earnest (les(a)cs.stanford.edu) Phone: 415 941-3984 Computer Science Dept.; Stanford, CA 94305 Fax: 415 941-3934 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steven Weller | "The Internet, of course, is more +1 415 390 9732 | than just a place to find pictures | of people having sex with dogs." stevenw(a)iglou.com | -- Time Magazine, 3 July 1995

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Cypherpunks Lite
by hshubs＠BIX.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Would the person who does this, or someone who can point me at him, contact me via e-mail please?

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Nuke 'em 'till they glow (8)
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My contribution to the collaborative future fiction: "The True Story of the InterNet" by Bubba Rom Dos, et al. Enjoy, Adam -- Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc` The True Story of the InterNet Part III Chapter 8 Nuke 'em 'till they glow Jonathan decadently lounged on the worn sofa swigging Bubbas special reserve straight out of the bottle. He burped and tossed the empty bottle to join the pile of kipple heaped in the corner -- an antique pentium-II 400 with it's case off, a huge heap of hydrocubes, a couple of busted flatscreen monitors, some empty pizza boxes. Leaning against the wall lay Bubba Rom Dos, snoring quietly, and clutching a half empty bottle of his special reserve. Jonathan lay back trying to brainstorm a direction to explore to find an exploitable bug in the Hewlett-Packard Fabasoft faba-code verifier. He was fast running out of ideas. The desire to find an exploit had arisen earlier that day when Bubba Rom Dos had tossed him a hydrocube which contained a particularly interesting deskfab 6 file. The file was named "nuke.fab". He couldn't rightly see where Bubba could have come into possession of the file, but Bubba wasn't too forthcoming on the subject, so Jonathan had contented himself with examining the contents of the 'cube. He had quickly become engrossed with the contents. Jonathan had a selection of bootleg PICS fabrication policy files, ranging from `under 18 months' (for construction of soft cudly toys with no easily swallowable parts) up to `military grade IV' (good for things like Forestry Commision SWAT team issue rocket launchers, and stealth helicopters etc, if you had a 10m3 volume fabricator and a few GigaWatts on your electricity meter). A good indication that the file was the _real thing_ was that it failed the faba-code verifier with even military grade IV PICS fabrication rating policy file -- the verifier refused to 'fab the file because it rightly diagnosed that it would result in the formation of fissionable material! (How Jonathan came to be in possession of a military grade IV PICS fabrication policy file is a story for another time). Now Jonathan also had a hacked fabber -- it was hacked to completely by-pass the PICS policy file rating system. This in itself was supposed to be impossible, but Jonathan had found that you could replace the FAPI module signature verifying key embedded in the flipper policy chip by placing a piece of sticky tape over pin 5 of the smart card contact and brute forcing the LEAF field which for some reason seemed to only use a measily 16 bit checksum, which took all of half an hour to brute force. You'd have thought they would have learned and increased the checksum size after Matt Blaze brute forced the clipper chip LEAF in the tessera cards. But in fairness, Jonathan's attack had one extra wrinkle: the sticky tape. Normally the flipper chip wrote a count of how many smart cards with failed checksums were inserted, and alerted the forces of darkness after 3 false tries, but the sticky tape took care of that. Jonathan supposed the designers had not considered that someone might place sticky tape over pin 5, the pin which was used to signal an insertion of the smart card. With that hack completed and the flipper policy chip instruction code manual which the cypherpunks had obtained dumpster diving in the Mykotronics dumpster, he was in business. He had then blown a new EPROM with a `customized' firmware, the policy chip accepted the `Circle of Eunuchs' FAPI module signature on the hacked EPROM, because there was now nestling comfortably at the heart of the NSA designed `tamper-proof' fabber flipper chip a DSS key which read: Circle of Eunuchs <coe(a)dev.null> The original key had read: NSA FAPI signature key <dirnsa(a)nsa.mil> So much for NSA security, Jonathan chuckled at the rememberance of that exploit. Anyway, for amusement value, and 1.3 MegaWatts of electricity later (the cowboy had given him a hacked power board account -- phree electricity, wheee!), Jonathan's industrial grade Hewlett-Packard deskfab 9GSII fabber had produced a nice matt black suitcase. Jonathan watched the instructional 3d-mpeg file included on the hydrocube, and spent a good hour in awe playing with the controls on the suitcase. Satiated with knowledge now that he knew how to operate all of it's modes, he was lying comatose on the sofa wracking his brains trying to overcome the next hurdle -- how to construct the perfect way to nuke washington DC. His plan so far was to spam each of the `targets' with a word99 macro virus (thanks Bill Gates) in a document describing his `SFr 10,000,000 campaign contribution' which automatically spooled a mildly modified "nuke.fab" for fabrication, and turned off the fabbers status leds through a Hewlett-Packard firmware bug. Jonathan had all this down pat. (The modification to "nuke.fab" in case you were wondering was to put the suitcase in detonate with no bypass mode, with an initial count down of 30 seconds). The problem was -- all those congress-critters were bound to be running on a PICS fabrication rating below `national-security-emergency', and so the faba-code verifier would refuse to load the code. Worse still the non-hacked HP deskfab models after mandatory GAF (Goverment Access to Fabbers) was introduced would narc out the owner to the Feds within minutes, thereby alerting the dark forces as to what the plan was. The wall clock now read 3.30am. Jonathan dozed off to sleep dreaming of glow-in-the-dark congress-critters. ... "fifty-eight ... fifty-seven ... " Jonathan woke grogily to see a group of people huddled over a suitcase. In the middle of the group was Bubba Rom Dos grandiosely counting down, in between swigging from his bottle of special reserve and pressing buttons randomly on the suitcases control panel. Priscilla and Alexis were peering closely at the pretty flatscreen status display, making sage comments as to what the buttons might do, for all the world as if they were playing a video game. Jonathan came to his senses and screamed at the top of his lungs: "Nooooo!" and sprang to his feet. He almost fell over again as the effect of moving that quickly so soon after waking up hit him, his head swimming. All heads turned to face him. "Yaieeeeeeee!" yelled Jonathan, as he rudely barged his way to the suitcase control pannel, and began franticallly pushing buttons. After a short panic attack, he calmed down sufficiently to notice that the display read "no override". Having absorbed the entire instruction 3d-mpeg, Jonathan knew what that meant. The LCD display read 50 seconds. Bubba swigged another gulp of his special reserve, and said innocently "What's the problem?" Jonathan looked fit to explode, his pulse was racing and his head hurt horribly, "It's a nuke!" he screamed hoarsely, "and you've just armed it, and I can't disarm it, and you've got ..." his eyes tore to the display "45 seconds until you're vapourised." Priscilla was already running for the door screaming. Bubba belched loudly, and looked slightly ill. Alexis gulped and said "What now?". Bubba tosssed the empty bottle of special reserve on to the growing pile of kipple in the corner, and pulled a fresh bottle from inside his rain mac. "Lets think rationally here" said Bubba, calmly, pouring himself a shot of special reserve, "can't you um disable it, or um, un-fabricate it or something". A flash of inspiration hit Jonathan, seeping through his slowly waking brain (he was not a morning person). He flashed a grin to Bubba and walloped him hard between the shoulder-blades shouting, "You're a genius!" Jonathan then hugged Alexis lifting her off the ground. Bubba looked puzzled but pleased. Alexis looked a little worried. Jonathan looked at the display pannel on the suitcase "35 seconds". `No problem' he thought. He slammed the suitcase shut and practically threw it in to the HP deskfab 9GSII fabrication bay, and slammed the door shut. Then he grabbed the keyboard, and began typing at around 100 wpm. After a deathly long pause where the terabyte hydro drive light flickered intermittently, the fab drive hummed to life. The lights dimmed with the sudden increase in power consumption. A few seconds later the drive light blinked out, and the deskfab fell silent. "That," said Jonathan, stabbing the screen -rw-r--r-- 1 jon users 7516192768 Oct 4 10:12 tmp00001.fab where the words `tmp00001.fab' were emblazoned in green writing on a black background, "is an armed nuke". "Now, where was I?" mused Jonathan, and then remembering, rounded on Bubba, "Uh yeah, just where exactly did you find nuke.fab?" Bubba made an expansive gesture with his hands, and poured himself another shot. Throwing back the shot, Bubba said: "I got it off the web,", and began searching through the pockets to his rain mac, eventually pulling a scrumpled scrap of paper from his pocket, and handing it to Jonathan. "A kindly elderly gentleman with a 9mm uzi gave me this address," he explained. Jonathan looked at the badly scrumpled scrap of paper, and was just able to make out: http://jya.eternity/cryptome/nuke.fab Jonathan looked puzzled, the initials "jya" looked vaguely familiar to him from his reading of old cypherpunks posts. Ah, yes, it was that Architect guy, John Young, who kept getting into trouble over hosting materials that the feds didn't like. So he was using the eternity service now. Now the panic was over Jonathan resumed his position on the couch, allowing himself to recover from the previous nights hacking session. "Say Bubba," Jonathan said with his eyes closed, "do you have any ideas of how to by-pass the Fabasoft faba-code verifier on an HP deskfab?" Bubba finished his mouthful of strong spirits, "Huh? Wassat you say?" Jonathan explained to Bubba and Alexis the events of the night before and of the plan to nuke washington DC, and party-way through Priscilla returned, looking a bit sheepish for deserting them at such a crucial time. "So," said Alexis, "You used the deskfab to copy the armed nuke, hence disabling it?" "Sure, that's a standard function", said Jonathan, "it's a bit like a 3d photocopier, only you can set it to unfabricate the object being copied at the same time." "Well," pressed Alexis, miles ahead of Jonathan, and not needing the mini-lecture on deskfab functionality, "couldn't you copy a deskfab?" Jonathan opened his eyes from his inert position on the couch. "Uh, I dunno, yeah I suppose so...." Then Jonathan saw the light, a second time that day: "Heh, yeah, okay!" he enthused, "that's a cool idea Alexis." Alexis and Jonathan excitedly started unplugging the deskfab from the unix box. "Carry these," said Jonathan and thrust upon Bubba a laptop, the hydrocube containing tmp00001.fab, and a bundle of interface leads. Jonathan and Alexis proceeded to lug the desk fab out back, and down into the basement. Bubba and Priscilla followed puzzled as to what the excitement was. In the basement was an ancient looking Sun unix box. The screen was one of those huge glass tube affairs. Beside it sat what looked like a refridgerator with clunky looking dials on it. Jonathan powered up the Sun box. Suprisingly enough it actually booted, and 10 minutes later, after an agonisingly slow process where it went through checking (fscking) all it's ancient hard drives, which wirred and clicked noisly, it came up, and the prompt said: Welcome to toad.com login: Without hesitation, Jonathan logged in as `gnu', and immediately typed in a password. He was in. Bubba and Priscilla exchanged glances. Jonathan explained, "I shoulder surfed the password when John logged in when I was at the physical cypherpunks meet in my grandpas study all those years ago." "This," he said patting the minifridge sized machine humming noisily in front of them, "is his old machine, `toad.com', old home to the cypherpunks list." Next Jonathan lugged his deskfab into the refrigerator affair, which apparently was an antique deskfab, sat the lap top on top of it, and hooked the laptop up to the deskfab, and inserted the tmp00001.fab hydrocube into the laptops hyro drive. Then he wandered off in search of a portable power source. He came back lugging an emergency power module `liberated' from the electric company at some point in the past. He hooked-up the power module to the HP deskfab. "Now," said Jonathan, "the timing on this is a bit delicate", I think there's only around 20 seconds left on the nuke. Jonathan set the laptop on time delay to instruct the deskfab to refabricate the primed nuke with 20 seconds left to pop time, but not to start doing that for around 1 minute. Then he slammed the refrigerator sized fabricator door shut, and began typing in earnest on toad.com. The refrigerator started humming, and toad.com's drive started buzzing frantically. "Gee I hope the transfer rate on these mechanical drives is good enough to copy it before it fabricates the nuke", opined Jonathan. Jonathan started typing again. "Shit! we're gonna run out of space!" he said. And started typing frantically rm -rf'ing anything that could be rm -rf'ed without stopping the machine. He rm -rf'ed /usr/src, and /usr/spool/ and a bunch of other stuff. He made it with half a gig or so spare, and who knows how few seconds to spare. The refrigerator-sized deskfab stopped humming, and the hum of the contained HP fabber had stopped too as it had been rudely unfabricated by the antique fabber. Jonathan was pleased with himself now. "That," said Jonathan, with a stabbing motion -rw-r--r-- 1 gnu users 8589934592 Oct 4 10:42 donation.fab where the words `donation.fab' were emblazoned on the clunky glass screen, "is a freshly fabricated top of the range HP deskfab 9GSII, which is just about to fabricate a suitcase nuke, which will pop a few seconds after being fabricated". "But will it pass the faba-whatsit verifier?" asked Alexis. "Er are you sure this is a good idea?" asked Priscilla. "Of course it is," said Bubba. "That's a good question Alexis," Jonathan said ignoring the other chatter, "I'm not real sure. I think it should pass because, well, the faba-code verifier isn't _that_ smart, right. I mean to realise that it will build a HP deskfab, which just happens to have freshly downloaded instructions to build fissionable material patterned into it's memory modules, I mean that's like solving the halting problem right?" Bubba cleared his throat, "If I might make a suggestion here", he said, "now that the high falutin' theoretical stuff is out of the way, the obvious thing to do is try it and see." "A splendid suggestion", said Jonathan, begining to type once more, "very good Bubba, the empirical hackers approach." So Jonathan tried it, and saw. He typed: To: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net Bcc: president(a)whitehouse.gov Bcc: freeh(a)fbi.gov Bcc: feinstein(a)congress.gov ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_01BCB88F.57968E50" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_01BCB88F.57968E50 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, Please accept our campaign donation of SFr 10,000,000 in used swiss francs. Just double click on the enclosed attachment in your mail reader, and it'll print out the donation file attached in an HP compatible fabber. You'll need quite a large fabber, as SFr 10,000,000 is quite bulky. Kind regards, The Circle of Eunuchs ------=_NextPart_000_01BCB88F.57968E50 Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="donation.fab" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 Content-Description: donation.fab (DeskFab 6 Document) Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="donation.fab" AasdfAAzxcvAAA1234AA0M8R4KGxGudfghAApoiuAAASDFAertyAPgADAP7/CQAGAsdfgAwrtfAA zxcvAAA1234AA0M8R4KGxGudfghAApoiuAAASDFAertyAPgADAP7/CQAGAsdfgAwrtfAAdfAAzef [snipped to save space] 4AA0M8R4KGxGudfghAApoiuAAASDFAertyAPgADAP7/CQAGAsdfgAwrtfAAdfAAzefzxcvAAA123 ------=_NextPart_000_01BCB88F.57968E50 Bubba, Alexis and Priscilla wandered back up stairs to wait and see, whilst Jonathan sat working on a strategy of how to edit the donation.fab file to get back his laptop, and the top of the range HP deskfab 9GSII without also nuking himself. He reckoned all he'd got to do was edit out the memory module from the deskfab, by editing donation.fab, and then he'd have it all back with out the nuke. Jonathan become engrossed in the task at hand. ... In a splendidly appointed, luxurious penthouse suite, rich in the trappings of wealth and power, in the heart of Washington DC, a bloated congress critter was eating well at the trough. His whores were attentive, dressing him for breakfast, and he had just been bribed $1,000,000 by a telephone company special interest group to throw a few billions in corporate welfare their way. And that was just before breakfast, before he had even got out of bed! Now it appeared he had something he should attend to urgently something that had come on his `email address' what-ever one of those was. A minor aide bustled in. The aide seemed quite excited, and explained in fawning tones that a special interest group had mailed him lots of Swiss Francs, SFr 9,000,000 in fact, but that there was something strange... there was no request for favors. He said it was just being printed out now, and perhaps there would be a note with the money. The congress critter, puffed contentedly on the hookah which one of the whores had lit for him, hmm, yes he could see that this was going to be a good day. <Fade to blinding white light>

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Re: The Fortezza random number generator is not trustworthy
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A nice addition to any Netscape RNG hacks is the comment that, while Netscape may have a bug in their RNG, it's detectable and fixable; the NSA may have a BUG in theirs, and only they'll know for sure... >> Yes Fortezza cards can be instructed to produce a random number through one >> of its library calls (someday they'll have a real API). One of the >> diagnostic tools I had tested this function. What algorithm do they use? >> Haven't a clue. Sources say that the RNG implementation may vary from vendor >> to vendor (i.e., GTC, Spyrus, Mykotronix, etc.). John Gilmore's comments on CAPSTONE, subliminal channels, and FOIA blackouts certainly add depth to this suspiciousness. I'd initially not been too worried about the Fortezza (besides the obvious Master Key problems) because the NSA is letting the military use them for Defense Messaging Service. However, if the RNG might be different for different vendors, the non-military versions may be using a weak RNG, which the NSA has a backdoor to. Alternatively, the RNGs may all be the same, but there may be an option that the military can use to get full-strength random numbers while the public, not knowing this, gets weakened ones (e.g. the first n bits of the RNG may be random, and the next N-n bits may be a strong hash, while there are N-n real random bits in another register if you ask for them nicely.) On a technical note, I would have thought that Fortezza and/or CAPSTONE used some sort of hardware RNG, i.e. noisy Zener diodes or whatever. I've seen it mentioned on this list that some other NSA secure phones, such as STU-III, do that. #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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Re: Nightmare Scenario: Public Key Distribution Controlled
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim wrote: > "Distribute a key, go to prison." > How does the New World Order limit the use of strong crypto without "key > recovery" when so many copies of older, pre-ban crypto are already out > there? > Simple, by declaring that public keys themselves are crypto material, as > the Brits did in their Trusted Third Parties draft proposal, and hence > declaring that distribution of keys after the effective date of the > legislation constitutes a violation. Give someone your key, either by > placing it on keyservers or even by mailing it to them, and one has just > "distributed" crypto. > This will make the public key infrastructure essentially useless, as the > public key servers go down, as corporations yank any directories they may > have, and (possibly) as individuals stop putting PGP or S/MIME fingerprints > or pointers in their messages. > How possible is this? Recall that the British proposal formally classified > key material, the keys themselves, as cryptographic products. The language > of the current unSAFE and Procto-CODE draconian bills, still changing of > course as committees rewrite them to be more Big Brotherish, is vague on > what constitutes crypto. I agree with the gist of this nightmare view, but don't think it describes the British TTP proposal very well. 140 These proposals - aimed at facilitating the provision of secure 141 electronic commerce - are being brought forward against a background ha ha ha 1122 Encryption services_ is meant to encompass any service, whether 1123 provided free or not, which involves any or all of the following 1124 cryptographic functionality - key management, key recovery, key 1125 certification, key storage, message integrity (through the use of 1126 digital signatures) key generation, time stamping, or key 1127 revocation services (whether for integrity or confidentiality), 1128 which are offered in a manner which allows a client to determine a 1129 choice of cryptographic key or allows the client a choice of 1130 recipient/s. My giving you my key does not provide you with 'choice of cryptographic key or ... recipient/s' as I read it. But if I signed your key and distributed it, that would probably be a certification service (to you) in which you had chosen the key to be signed. Also if I gave you 2 keys of mine I think that would be banned, because you'd have a choice. This certainly does discourage effective use, but I don't think the current wording is quite so dire as to outlaw distribution of a single key. I'd also say that when an ISP carries my emailed key to someone they are providing a transport service, and not a cryptographic one. The 'or allows the client a choice of recipient/s' looks to me like a direct reference to remailers. As to signing non-key material; a service would be if someone I know brought something (a photo for me to certify true likeness, a will for me to witness their signature ...) and I signed it for him to indicate something to others. Signing my outgoing letters is not normally considered a service. My checking the signatures on my incoming mail is probably not a service, even if it forms part of the decision on whether to reply. As to self-signing a key; it may be permitted following the model of the above paragraph, or not. I believe the proposal is deliberately vague for FUD - and is bad law, regardless of the bad content. I mentioned the difficulty of deciding exactly what would be banned by this proposed law in my article: "Ruritania Discovers Motor Transport". Check the ar...BANG -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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