December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: CNET Digital Dispatch Vol. 2 No. 38
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:12 AM 9/20/96, Rick Osborne wrote: >This week's c|net digital dispatch had the following top ten list. For >number 8, did they mean DES or is the EDS something I'm not aware of. I >figure it has to be because what does DES have to do with chat rooms? >>8. Perot's crack team of EDS hackers would get him >> in somehow. EDS = Electronic Data Systems, the company Perot formed in the 1960s. Acquired by General Motors, then spun off. Perot has not been connected to it for many years. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

other Lexis-Nexis databases
by bryce＠digicash.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A brief search of www.lexis-nexis.com reveals a few interesting details: 1. You can look up people in P-TRAK by SSN. 2. There are many other databases of personal information, including: a. "REZIDE", "searchable by congressional district, area code plus exchange, county, state, metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and dominant market area (DMA)" and "providing a detailed demographic portrait [...] including age, income, race, ethnicity, household composition, employment", a "White/Blue collar index" and a "family life-cycle code". b. "DCEASE", giving information including SSN about dead people. c. An assets database identifying real-estate or FAA-registered aircraft owned by people. d. Something called "P-FIND" which is advertised as "having greater detail [than P-TRAK] with regard to the individual's household (value of home, number of dependents)". This one appears in a newsletter from 1994, so the service may be discontinued (although of course the data still exists...). It would be a fun experiment and a good cypherpunk publicity stunt to test Lexis-Nexis out. Pick a demo victim, e.g. a journalist who is honest, smart and concerned about such issues, but not one who is too famous or rich. Use Lexis-Nexis (and possibly other resources) to learn all that you can about him/her. If he/she lives in a sparsely-populated area a narrow enough REZIDE search might give income, number of persons in household, marital status, age, schooling, ethnicity, vehicles owned, and employment, and that would be with a single search. Compile everything you know and send it to the victim, explaining how you got the information. Regards, Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMkJQCUjbHy8sKZitAQFb8AL/f2yQWv1R4QcftBF4khw0DZrd/szZqte3 UQ0HvjtAdjiVee7aLiumljMUqyMOzsXQlkWKh1/JXmbgVAVrsJGhZEFCyqbheUwP eqhP1QEYVHfjueQy1FlSb7U3f+VI2tzk =mky+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

(fwd) Strange telephone call
by frogfarm＠yakko.cs.wmich.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: vandy(a)avana.net (Vandy Terre) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.pagan,alt.revenge,alt.snowmobiles,ga.forsale,ga.general,misc.consumers.frugal-living,misc.rural Subject: Strange telephone call Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 14:27:05 GMT Organization: Tanglewood Farm Lines: 59 Message-ID: <323ffe3d.188173(a)news.avana.net> This message is being cross posted to several groups that I read in an effort to find an answer to my questions. Please email replies, not all posts make it to my server. If you must answer on the net, please trim headers. Okay, this is the story. I just received a strange telephone call. My caller ID system shows only 'OUT_OF_AREA-----000-----'. The female voice claimed to be taking a survey for the Department of Defense and that she was acting as a representative of my government. She did not say US Government or State Government, just 'your government'. When I said that there was no way for me to verify she was what she claimed, she gave me a business name, supervisor's name and an 800 telephone number. She claimed this survey had to do with a Department of Defense program named 'YATS' and told me that if my household did not qualify, then our telephone number would be removed from the calling list. She then ask the same question three different ways. The question was 'Is there anyone in your household between the ages of 16 and 24?'. When I said no for the third time, she said we did not qualify and hung up. So here are my questions. Was this a legitimate call? The government should already know exactly how many people are in my household. It is on my tax forms every year and many other places. Why would any government office or representative of a government office be making cold calls to unknown telephone numbers for any kind of survey? Who or what is 'Westat'? This is the name of the company this woman supposedly represented. The telephone number given to me is 1-800-638-8778. The same woman answered it as called me. Seems like a company doing a survey for the government would have more than one employee. Her supervisor's name is Chris Martin. Is she Chris Martin? In a single person office, I guess you would be your own supervisor. The woman never gave her personal name. This survey was supposed to be for the Department of Defense for a program named 'YATS'. What is YATS? My biggest question is, Is this a new face on an old scam? Instead of posing as the local fire department looking for donations, are the scam-artist now posing as the government? What a way to case a home in preparation for theft or running yet another scam of questionable legality. Yes, I am a very suspicious person. I have seen too many scams being run. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please answer by email. Please trim headers if answering on the net. Thank you. Any significantly advanced scam vandy(a)avana.net is indistinguishable from religion. Georgia, USA -- frogfarm(a)yakko.cs.wmich.edu (Damaged Justice) is officially declared Unmutual. "Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken."

3 2

Re: HipCrime as MetaSPAM
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:10 AM 9/15/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >5) "Anarchist Info" - sigh. Where do people get the idea that publishing >recipes for drugs and explosives is anarchist info? He didn't talk >about anarchy, or getting along without governments, or getting rid of them. >Also, he neglects to note that you can simply _buy_ potassium chlorate, >rather than having to (dangerously) boil down bleach and potassium chloride In addition: Potassium chlorate based explosives are not particularly safe or reliable, but worse than that, much worse, because of their relatively slow detonation rate, they are very ineffectual for smashing stuff and killing people, --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

2 1

REJ_ect
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

9-20-96. NYP Page One: "Cellular Industry Rejects U.S. Plan for Surveillance. Police Want Technology That Pinpoints Wireless Users Within a Half-Second." Markoff. The wireless communications industry voted yesterday to reject Government-backed technology that would make it possible for law enforcement agencies to keep closer tabs on cellular phone users. DoJ wants to be able for the first time to determine the location of a cellular phone caller within a half-second and almost instantly monitor the status of cellular-phone voice mail, conference calls and other wireless communications features. Yesterday's vote by a subcommittee of a network operators and manufacturers group called the Telecommunications Industry Association, came in response to a technical document the F.B.I. has been quietly circulating to industry executives since April. Known as the Electronic Surveillance Interface, the document specifies what wireless communications monitoring data must be accessible to law enforcement officials with a court warrant. ----- http://jya.com/reject.txt (8 kb) REJ_ect

1 0

Re: Re: [NEWS] Crypto-relevant wire clippings
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Adamsc(a)io-online.com Fri Sep 20 01:07:49 1996 Received: by bwalk.dm.com (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 20 Sep 96 01:24:03 EDT for dlv Received: from [206.245.244.5] by uu.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA09924 for dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com; Fri, 20 Sep 96 01:07:49 -0400 Received: from GIGANTE ([206.245.244.204]) by irc.io-online.com (post.office MTA v2.0 0813 ID# 285-17715) with SMTP id AAA186 for <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com>; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 22:07:13 -0700 From: Adamsc(a)io-online.com (Adamsc) To: "Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 96 22:07:34 -0800 Reply-To: "Chris Adams" <adamsc(a)io-online.com> X-Mailer: Chris Adams's Registered PMMail 1.52 For OS/2 X-Filtered: By PMMail 1.52 For OS/2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Re: [NEWS] Crypto-relevant wire clippings Message-Id: <19960920050709843.AAA186@GIGANTE> You are being gently flamed because. [X] you continued a boring useless stupid thread [ ] you repeatedly posted to the same thread that you just posted to [x] you repeatedly initiated incoherent, flaky, and mindless threads [x] you posted a piece riddled with profanities [ ] you advocated Net censorship [ ] you SCREAMED! (used all caps) [x] you posted some sort of crap that doesn't belong in this group [ ] you posted the inanely stupid 'Make Money Fast' article [ ] you threatened others with physical harm [x] you made a bigoted statement(s) [x] you repeatedly assumed unwarranted moral or intellectual superiority [x] you are under the misapprehension that this group is your preserve [x] you repeatedly shown lack of humor [x] you are apparently under compulsion to post to every threat [?] you are posting an anonymous attack >>> Thank you for the time you have taken to read this. Live n' Learn.<<< # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 "I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to play games on a computer in any case when the whole system is a game. Word processing, spreadsheets, telecoms -- it's all a game. And they pay you to play it." -- Duncan Frissell

1 0

Cellular Industry rejects US plan for surveillance
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Front page of todays New York Times. "But many industry executives and privacy-rights advocates disagree with the government's interpretation of the [Digital telephony] law. The industry says that the new cellular abilities would be burdensomely expensive to administer...." http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/cellular-phone-monitor.html Login, of course, is cypherpunks, password cypherpunks Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

1 0

Re: Re: CIA hacked
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Adamsc(a)io-online.com Fri Sep 20 01:14:30 1996 Received: by bwalk.dm.com (1.65/waf) via UUCP; Fri, 20 Sep 96 01:24:05 EDT for dlv Received: from [206.245.244.5] by uu.psi.com (5.65b/4.0.061193-PSI/PSINet) via SMTP; id AA10241 for dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com; Fri, 20 Sep 96 01:14:30 -0400 Received: from GIGANTE ([206.245.244.204]) by irc.io-online.com (post.office MTA v2.0 0813 ID# 285-17715) with SMTP id AAA199 for <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com>; Thu, 19 Sep 1996 22:14:03 -0700 From: Adamsc(a)io-online.com (Adamsc) To: "Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 96 22:14:25 -0800 Reply-To: "Chris Adams" <adamsc(a)io-online.com> X-Mailer: Chris Adams's Registered PMMail 1.52 For OS/2 X-Filtered: By PMMail 1.52 For OS/2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Re: CIA hacked Message-Id: <19960920051400906.AAA199@GIGANTE> You are being gently flamed because. [X] you continued a boring useless stupid thread [ ] you repeatedly posted to the same thread that you just posted to [x] you repeatedly initiated incoherent, flaky, and mindless threads [x] you posted a piece riddled with profanities [ ] you advocated Net censorship [ ] you SCREAMED! (used all caps) [x] you posted some sort of crap that doesn't belong in this group [ ] you posted the inanely stupid 'Make Money Fast' article [ ] you threatened others with physical harm [x] you made a bigoted statement(s) [x] you repeatedly assumed unwarranted moral or intellectual superiority [x] you are under the misapprehension that this group is your preserve [x] you repeatedly shown lack of humor [x] you are apparently under compulsion to post to every threat [?] you are posting an anonymous attack >>> Thank you for the time you have taken to read this. Live n' Learn.<<< # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 "I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to play games on a computer in any case when the whole system is a game. Word processing, spreadsheets, telecoms -- it's all a game. And they pay you to play it." -- Duncan Frissell

1 0

Re: All Bets Off
by pjb＠ny.ubs.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

actually, i understood that he was an insurance salesman. -paul > From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Fri Sep 20 06:43:59 1996 > Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 17:19:44 -0400 (EDT) > From: The Deviant <deviant(a)pooh-corner.com> > To: Daniel Christopher Miskell <DMiskell(a)envirolink.org> > Cc: Rabid Wombat <wombat(a)mcfeely.bsfs.org>, cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: All Bets Off > Organization: The Silicon Pirates > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type> : > TEXT/PLAIN> ; > charset=US-ASCII> > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Content-Length: 754 > > On Thu, 19 Sep 1996, Daniel Christopher Miskell wrote: > > > Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 11:30:32 -0400 > > From: Daniel Christopher Miskell <DMiskell(a)envirolink.org> > > To: Rabid Wombat <wombat(a)mcfeely.bsfs.org> > > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > Subject: Re: All Bets Off > > > > >On Tue, 17 Sep 1996, Jeff Davis wrote: > > > > > [lots of quoting rm'd] > > > > > Tom Clancy is not a military-hired brain, but to make his novels realistic and > > to do justice to the people he portrays, he does a LOT of research. He is a > > highly respected author, and I have no doubt that his statement is based on > > his personal findings, collected for a previous novel. > > > > I beleive he was also a Capain in the Navy... > > --Deviant > Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement. > > >

1 0

Re: 56 kbps modems
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I checked the Rockwell home page, which has a pointer to the press release. It isn't very technical, but gives some good clues. It looks like they're doing an interesting trick. The modems aren't designed for use like traditional modems, where the same equipment is on each end. Instead, there is a digital interface on one side of the phone call (like at an Internet Service Provider). The consumer side modem has a traditional analog interface. The rest of this is speculation and fantasy on my part. So, think about it. The analog side will generate voltages and send them to the local central office, where they will be digitized and sent to the destination central office digitally. There, they will be patched into one channel of a T1 line (out of 24) and sent digitally to the ISP's "modem bank". Equipment is already available (and in use all over the uunet network) that plugs T1 into a board full of digital signal processors, decodes each of the 24 channels (each channel running any modem signalling protocol, or ISDN), handles PPP packet framing, and gateways the resulting packets to/from an Ethernet. Now for Rockwell's trick, you get the DSP's in the two modems to talk to each other. They can run some simple coding scheme (say ordinary 2400 baud modem for this example) to pass digital data back and forth while they're negotiating the full blown deal. First, the analog side sync's up with the clock for the 8000 samples/sec that the central office is digitizing (into 8-bit samples). You can do that by sending one voltage and then switching to another; the far side can tell you whether you switched on a sample-boundary or not (was there a sample "in between" before it settled to the new value?). OK, then, in each sample slot, the analog side can send one of 256 different voltages. The digital side can tell it the 8-bit values it received. Then fine-tune that to sending 128 different voltages, taking particular care around the ones that got distorted the first time. As long as you can find 128 distinct voltage levels that the central office will reliably digitize, you're done. You're sending 7-bit samples at 8000 samples/sec. Do something similar for the analog receive side, and you can start passing user data at 56K. If the robbed-bit stuff gets in the way of seeing 128 distinct voltage levels in every byte, you can send solid zeroes or solid ones in each direction and see which bits they're stealing out of which bytes. Use most of the 8 bits available in the other bytes (you can find e.g. 200 different voltage levels that will work), and in the stolen byte, you can find e.g. 100 voltage levels that work. This is more bits than using 128 voltage levels in every byte, and in fact you can probably get closer to 64 kbits/sec than to 56 kbits/sec, depending on the analog qualities of the wire to your central office. A nice trick! It won't speed up analog-modem-to-analog-modem connections, but those will increasingly be a smaller and smaller fraction anyway, as the digital infrastructure becomes cheap. And of course the 56K modems will just be DSP's with decent A/D and D/A interfaces, so they can run all the old analog protocols too, in the case that the phone line isn't digitized, or if they want to talk to an old modem. John

3 2