December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

FIX_rsa
by Matt Thomlinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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patent licenses
by Mixmaster 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Simon Spero <ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu> writes: >Well, if you're using RC4, you're probably using some sort of public-key >based key exchange, which you're probably going to need to licence, and >BSAFE is the easiest way to do that, so RC4 is pretty much a freebie If the Diffie-Hellmann patent covers all kind of public key crypto, you need a license from Cylink, i.e. BSAFE is not enough, and if it doesn't you can use El Gamal without a license.

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rsa bought!!! [fwd]
by David Lesher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Security Dynamics To Acquire RSA In Transaction Valued At Approximately $200 Million CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 15, 1996--Security Dynamics Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SDTI) and RSA Data Security, Inc. today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Security Dynamics to acquire RSA, a Redwood City, California vendor of encryption software. The transaction is intended to be carried out by the merger of RSA and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Security Dynamics in a tax-free transaction accounted for as a pooling of interests. For the year ended December 31, 1995, RSA had revenues and net income of approximately $11,600,000 and $950,000, respectively. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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security dynamics buys pkp?
by bugs＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As I was trying to wake up this morning I heard an announcement on CNBC that Security Dynamics purchased the RSA guys. It was evidently a stock swap and not a cash deal (interesting). Later Mark Hittinger Netcom/Dallas bugs(a)freebsd.netcom.com

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Re: Trojan Horse Loose On The Internet
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:40 PM 4/15/96 +0800, Ramli Bin Jaafar wrote: >According to several reliable sources there is a deadly virus on the >Internet. This is NOT a hoax! >CAN ANYBODY CHECK THIS OUT, PLEASE.. > >Note: The reliability of all information below is UNKNOWN. > >WHAT: >Virus Alert: PKZIP 3.0 Trojan Loose on the Internet Not again! There is a trojan that claims to be a new version of PKZip. (Actually there is a long list of them.) The program you are refering to here is about three years old or more! Some of them destroy hard drives, some of them do not. (One I have seen is pretty buggy.) The reasons these warnings have started to crop up again is that the program was sighted by someone who did not remember the last go around with these trojans and wrote a panic type broadsheet. The posting is now curculating on every newsgroup and mailing list on the planet. (At least once.) I expect that it has attained "The Shergold Effect" and taken on a life of its own. As for the data on the released versions of PKZip, there is a Windows version (2.01 I think) that you do not have listed and is available from the PKWare site. There are also non-pkware unzippers that are not trojans. (Translated over from the Unix world. They are useful for handling long file names. (Something the PKWare version does not always do gracefully.)) Facts are useful, but the panic style of the warnings on this problem make things worse, not better. --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon

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Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by Paul_Koning/US/3Com%3COM＠smtp1.isd.3com.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Re spoofing the system. If you think about the geometry of the >problem, the delay to be induced for each satellite is a time >varying function of the satellite's position, the reference site, >and the target. It will vary from positive to negative values for >many satellite passes. It can be precomputed, but the precomputed >adjustment will be in error by some amount due to the orbital >perturbations mentioned in the original article. Fine, but that doesn't address the point missed by the original article, which is that you don't need to precompute this stuff. It's easy to compute in real time (under a second) which eliminates the perturbations issue. You don't need to worry about inability to predict those if you're not predicting but rather measuring/correcting in real time. paul !----------------------------------------------------------------------- ! Paul Koning, NI1D, C-24183 ! 3Com Corporation, 1-3A, 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough MA 01772 USA ! phone: +1 508 229 1695, fax: +1 508 490 5873 ! email: paul_koning(a)isd.3com.com or paul_koning(a)3mail.3com.com ! Pgp: 27 81 A9 73 A6 0B B3 BE 18 A3 BF DD 1A 59 51 75 !----------------------------------------------------------------------- ! "Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ! -- and miss!" ! -- Robert A. Heinlein, "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" ! in "Time Enough for Love"

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GPS privacy/ECM
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been following the recent discussion on Denning's GPS I.D. plan and had some thoughts: I wonder what the pro-govt anti-privacy types would do if some obnoxious group started publishing a list with the home/work GPS of say various congresspersons/senatepersons? Since cruise missile's already use GPS to find/destroy their target, how long do you figure before some terrorist group use's this ever cheaper tech to trigger one of it's devices? <car bombs, the poor man's air force> What defences are there? Just how small/inexpensive could a home GPS/ECM system be? Personnel dithering? Locally transmitting your own public key encrypted location. This is thoughtfood only. Brian

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TOG_oon
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

4-15-96. FT: "Chatter control in cyberspace. US universities are the testing ground for free speech issues on the Internet." A report on celebrated cases: Cornell, Virginia Tech, Memphis, Jake Baker. "Nearly all the university cases in the US so far have had sexual overtones." Among other commentators quoted, Declan says, "There's a very disturbing trend out there to try to control what students say online." Peter Toren of DoJ says, "I think we can expect this controversy to go on for some time." TOG_oon

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[NOISE] Consolidation of threads ...
by olbon＠dynetics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

OK, I have a proposal that consolidates two threads that have been discussed recently. How about proposing legislation that mandates that a byte is now 9 bits instead of 8. This would allow the ninth bit to be the decent/indecent bit, thereby solving all of our problems. Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: on web page Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 TANSTAAFL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Distributed Key Breaking
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:18 PM 4/15/96 +0100, Mark Cooke wrote: >Just as a quick thought - given the prevelance of Web Browsers - has >anyone considered writing a Java Applet that would could run key space >searches and factoring in an easily distributed manner. > >This would seem to be a 'reasonable' way to gain access to more CPU power >- even though the Java code would not be as efficient as a native app. >Perhaps as a supplement to the more 'traditional' methods that have been >used in the past. This approach will become even more "reasonable" as just-in-time compilation and native code Bignum packages get distributed. Regards - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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