December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RRE: The InterNIC: a case study in bad database management
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've dropped a note to Jonathan Kamens pointing out that InterNIC is a monopoly, and therefore has no real reason to keep up any databases that don't directly generate money. -Allen From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 14-DEC-1996 02:53:56.61 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 16:44:21 -0800 (PST) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com Subject: RISKS DIGEST 18.67 RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Friday 13 December 1996 Volume 18 : Issue 67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 17:07:04 -0500 From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik(a)cam.ov.com> Subject: The InterNIC: a case study in bad database management (This message was also sent to comp.protocols.dns.ops .) The InterNIC (http://www.internic.net) is responsible for Internet domain name service for all top-level domains, as well as for second-level domains underneath all the old ARPA domains except MIL (EDU, GOV, NET, ORG, COM). Until a few years ago, domain registration services were provided by the InterNIC for free. That changed when they convinced the NSF that its grant money wasn't enough to cover their costs, so (amid much hubbub on the Net) they started charging $50 per year for any second-level domain registration, with the first two years (i.e., $100) payable in advance. According to <http://rs.internic.net/nic-support/nicnews/stats.html>, the InterNIC registered 638,788 new domains between August 1993 and September 1996. If I'm doing my math right, at $100 per domain, that's almost $64 million, or over $20 million per year. I would think that with that much money, they'd be able to provide competent service to their customers. Unfortunately, my experience has been that they're simply not doing an acceptable job. Some examples: ***** * Their automated systems do not function properly. They've introduced a PGP-based system for authentication of domain contacts. In other words, they allow domain contacts to register their PGP public keys in the InterNIC public-key database, and then requests which come from those contacts will only be accepted as authentic if they are signed with the corresponding provide key. Unfortunately, this system does not always work. Recently, I submitted a series of twelve database modification requests to the InterNIC in a single day. All of them were correctly signed with my PGP key. Of the twelve requests, three were returned to me in messages beginning, "We are not able to verify the PGP signed message that you sent us." To make matters worse, for one of those three failed requests, I received a message claiming the the modifications I'd requested had been completed, two days *before* I received the message informing me that they were unable to verify my PGP signature. I have asked the InterNIC multiple times why their system randomly fails to verify valid PGP signatures. They have not responded to my inquiries. Interestingly enough, another poster to comp.protocols.dns.ops claimed that when he asked an InterNIC on the telephone about their PGP authentication system, he was told that it is not currently working. That would seem to indicate that the InterNIC is aware that there are problems with it, and yet they continue to advertise it on their Web site without any indication that it might not work for any given request. * There are some data in the database which are impossible to update using the templates they provide. One of the types of data stored in the InterNIC database is hosts; in particular, hosts which act as domain-name servers for domains registered with the InterNIC have records in the database. Host records include an organization name and address associated with the host. And yet, the template for updating host records (available at <ftp://rs.internic.net/templates/host-template.txt>) does not have fields in it for updating that information! I believe that there are a couple of other record types in the database which have this same problem. This organization/address data has been described to me by an InterNIC employee as an "old hold-over;" it seems that new host records do not have organization and address data, but old ones do. Nevertheless, one would think that when switching to a new format for host records, the InterNIC would have either removed the obsolete data from the old records or established a procedure for updating it. Instead, the only way to update this information electronically is to send a plain-text message to hostmaster(a)internic.net explaining what you're trying to do, and then hope that whoever reads your message will be competent enough to understand what you're asking for and do the update by hand. Which brings me to my next point... * When asked how to do something that is not handled automatically by their templates, their staff give incorrect answers (or simply ignore the query) more often than they give correct answers. Of the twelve requests mentioned above, six of them were handled improperly by the InterNIC staff members who processed them. Iwn several cases, I received a response instructing me to use a particular template to make the changes I had requested, when in fact those changes had nothing whatsoever to do with the template they told me to use. I finally had to escalate my requests by sending "out-of-band" E-mail to an InterNIC employee who has resolved problems of this sort for me in the past, and she was able to "bounce" my requests to a high enough level that they actually got processed. Incidentally, the InterNIC introduced one or more typographical errors into the data I sent them when processing six of my twelve requests (i.e., when they were done processing my requests, six of the twelve records I asked them to modify had one or more typographical errors in them). I suppose that sending incorrect answers is better than how things were a few months ago -- then, if you sent a request that the person who read your message did not know how to answer, he/she simply ignored it and sent no response whatsoever. * There are some data in their database which are impossible to update using their current procedures. Imagine this scenario... Joe Admin at Foo, Inc. is responsible for system administration, including DNS administration. He therefore has a contact record in the InterNIC database indicating that he works for Foo, Inc., and he is listed as a contact for various domain, network, and host records, in the InterNIC database. Now, he leaves the company and takes a new job, with no further contact with Foo, Inc. He doesn't bother to update his contact record in the InterNIC database before he leaves. Foo, Inc. would rather not let records remain in the InterNIC database claiming that Joe works for them when in fact he does not. Therefore, they want to contact the InterNIC and tell them, "Look, the information in Joe Admin's contact record which says that he for us is incorrect. You can confirm this by attempting to send E-mail to the address in the record, or by calling the phone number in the record and asking to speak to him. The person who answers will confirm that he no longer works there. Please either delete the contact record completely or remove the information in it which associates Joe Admin with Foo, Inc." Sounds reasonable, right? Well, unfortunately, the InterNIC has *no procedures whatsoever* for allowing a company to remove contact information which incorrectly lists them. I attempted to do just what I described, i.e., to get the InterNIC to remove the contact record for a former employee of OpenVision who no longer works here, and who I cannot contact to ask him to update his own record (and considering that it's not hurting him in any way, I don't see that he'd have any incentive to update it even if I could ask him to). After several rounds of E-mail with the InterNIC, they called me on the telephone to discuss what I was trying to do. Once on the phone with them, I was "bounced up" through several layers of InterNIC staff, until I was finally able to speak to a woman who was perfectly willing to admit that yes, the scenario I described was a somewhat common one, and yes, it was perfectly reasonable for a company not to want the InterNIC database to associate non-employees with the company, but no, there's no way for anyone but the owner of a contact handle to update it. "Perhaps we need to establish a procedure for that, and I'll be glad to discuss that for you with our customer service manager, but we don't have one right now," she said, and she did not offer to make an exception and handle my particular request manually without the blessing of a "procedure". Presumably, this means that I could edit my own contact handle to indicate that I work for any company that I want, and that company would have no way to get the InterNIC to remove the fraudulent information. Similarly, presumably, that means that (to be a little morbid for a moment), if someone listed in the InterNIC database dies, there's no way for anyone else to get the InterNIC to remove the deceased's record from the database. When I pressed the woman about this, she said to me, "If you're a network administrator at this company, you presumably have control over the mail server" (an assumption which is not always true, and indeed isn't true in this case; although I can ask the people who administer the mail server to make changes and hope that they'll listen, I don't have the ability to make the changes directly). "Well," she continued," if you send us a mail message which claims to be from the former employee, asking for his record to be deleted, we'll process it." "Let me get this straight," I responded. "You're telling me that I should forge E-mail to your system in order to delete this record." She confirmed that interpretation. I said, "Surely you see the absurdity of that." She responded, "Well, obviously, ideally we wouldn't want anyone forging requests to our system, but in this case, that's the only way for you to delete the record." "What if the former employee had associated a PGP key with his contact record before he left the company." "Well, in that case, you'd need his private PGP key in order to delete the record." "But surely you know that's impossible -- the whole point of PGP is that only the owner a private key has access to it. Even if I had access to the file in which it was stored, I wouldn't know the correct password to unlock it." "Well, in that case, there would be no way for you to delete the record." ***** There are a number of countries with strict laws about the collection of private information in computerized databases. Database maintainers are required to seek permission from all individuals who have data about them stored in the database, to guarantee the security of the database, and to establish working procedures for keeping the data in the databases up-to-date. The United States has few such laws (there are laws about specific types of databases, such as credit and medical records, but no laws about databases in general). Until I started dealing with the InterNIC, I didn't see much point to them. Well, I've changed my mind. the InterNIC proves rather clearly that left to their own devices, companies will not maintain databases in a responsible manner. Incidentally, nowhere on the InterNIC's WWW site can I find the address or telephone number of the governmental office which oversees their grant and handles complaints about their services. Several months ago, I sent them E-mail asking for them so that I could file a complaint, to be considered the next time their grant comes up for renewal. Like many of my other messages to them, that request was ignored. Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik(a)cam.ov.com ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 18.67 ************************

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Re: Wired Integrity
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:35 PM 12/13/1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: >> What is troubling is that it is written by Sandy Sandfort who >> works at C2Net.... > >...At the time I wrote and submitted the article I neither worked >for Sameer... Thank you for the clear explanation. Just so you know, I did not doubt your integrity for an instant. Wired should have appended a short paragraph explaining the possible conflict of interest. The Little Green Man

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Radikal: raid in the netherlands
by tank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

PRESS-DECLARATION 14-12-96 After the German authorities tried to force their censorship on people's thoughts and writings worldwide on the Internet, Germany now tries to prosecute a person who lives in the Netherlands for the making of the left-wing newspaper Radikal. In the morning of the 11th of December there was a houseraid in the village of Vaals (The Netherlands). In the raid ten local police-officers, a high officer from the Maastricht-court, two LKA (Landes Kriminal Ambt) German officers and two BKA (Bundes Kriminal Ambt) German officers took place. The 16 German and Dutch officers forced themselves into the house with the help of a lock specialist. The only person at home during the raid only noticed it after some time when the room next to her was already being searched. The german and dutch police refuged to explain the reason for this raid. German autorities refered to the dutch ones for explanations and the other way around. It was only after insisting that they explained the search warrant came from the german authorities in Karlsruhe. During the two hour raid two personal computers, floppy-discs, foto's, a pamflet and some Radikal stickers were seized. During this whole operation it was not clear against who or what this action was aimed and why this house was searched. It only became clear after the raid when another person came home from his work and phoned his mother in Aachen (Germany). At his mothers house there was also a house raid going on, nothing was taken there. At this house-raid six LKA officers took part and in a paper they declaired to have reasons for this raid because of evidence found in the raid in Vaals. "During the raid at the suspect's house evidence was found (...) that show the suspect (...) is using the house of his mother as well". This evidence consisted of his mother's car papers. The declaration paper alsow showed the purpose of the raid: " The search for Radikal publications, subscribers lists and financial information". The suspect is being charged with the making and distributing of the left wing newspaper Radikal. A newspaper that is forbidden only in Germany . The supposed involvement with a political magazine, forbidden in Germany, apparently is enough for the Dutch authorities to work for the German juridical apparatus. This means that the German idea of law and order concerning magazines leads to the joint persecution of a Spanish citizen living in the Netherlands. Although the magazine is entirely legal in the Netherlands. The dimension of the German-Dutch cooperation within the framework of the new "European Security Policy" is shown here in a very clear way. It shows that an attempt is made to completely redefine the persecution, across all borders, of politically unwanted people. Solidaritygroup Political Prisoners P/o box 3762 1001 AN Amsterdam The Nertherlands <tank(a)xs4all.nl>

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radikal: raid in the netherlands
by tank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

PRESS-DECLARATION 14-12-96 After the German authorities tried to force their censorship on people's thoughts and writings worldwide on the Internet, Germany now tries to prosecute a person who lives in the Netherlands for the making of the left-wing newspaper Radikal. In the morning of the 11th of December there was a houseraid in the village of Vaals (The Netherlands). In the raid ten local police-officers, a high officer from the Maastricht-court, two LKA (Landes Kriminal Ambt) German officers and two BKA (Bundes Kriminal Ambt) German officers took place. The 16 German and Dutch officers forced themselves into the house with the help of a lock specialist. The only person at home during the raid only noticed it after some time when the room next to her was already being searched. The german and dutch police refuged to explain the reason for this raid. German autorities refered to the dutch ones for explanations and the other way around. It was only after insisting that they explained the search warrant came from the german authorities in Karlsruhe. During the two hour raid two personal computers, floppy-discs, foto's, a pamflet and some Radikal stickers were seized. During this whole operation it was not clear against who or what this action was aimed and why this house was searched. It only became clear after the raid when another person came home from his work and phoned his mother in Aachen (Germany). At his mothers house there was also a house raid going on, nothing was taken there. At this house-raid six LKA officers took part and in a paper they declaired to have reasons for this raid because of evidence found in the raid in Vaals. "During the raid at the suspect's house evidence was found (...) that show the suspect (...) is using the house of his mother as well". This evidence consisted of his mother's car papers. The declaration paper alsow showed the purpose of the raid: " The search for Radikal publications, subscribers lists and financial information". The suspect is being charged with the making and distributing of the left wing newspaper Radikal. A newspaper that is forbidden only in Germany . The supposed involvement with a political magazine, forbidden in Germany, apparently is enough for the Dutch authorities to work for the German juridical apparatus. This means that the German idea of law and order concerning magazines leads to the joint persecution of a Spanish citizen living in the Netherlands. Although the magazine is entirely legal in the Netherlands. The dimension of the German-Dutch cooperation within the framework of the new "European Security Policy" is shown here in a very clear way. It shows that an attempt is made to completely redefine the persecution, across all borders, of politically unwanted people. Solidaritygroup Political Prisoners P/o box 3762 1001 AN Amsterdam The Nertherlands <tank(a)xs4all.nl>

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Chek it out
by Zer0.Faith.Inc.＠website.chek.it.out 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/2608 It's Kool, but still under construction.

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Re: Redlining
by Matthew J. Miszewski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 09:32 AM 12/12/96 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: >Matthew J. Miszewski wrote: >> >(Those who don't believe me should get "Love Supreme" by John Coltrane >> >and listen to it carefully about 20 times. There are layers and Just for the record, I didn't say this. I believe it was Red. The thread has become so convoluted that I am only sure it wasnt me. ;-) Matt -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMrLSibpijqL8wiT1AQHEoQP/f+G82ePBn6dlm7jgiaYZTalSm2xMAYEd S/wExEh86p0knbt4+fMmREQGR7PXyNJPyDknqSEkmyTh38QfwBwsuF20zEiUM4I2 gXR8e2zeuW1kB1L51PacusxSoAqR7FqIb2euwTlZ+K3GnZVpFPZmdZn03GaTGsvC yVfTehKEE2w= =QcKO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Appropriate Topics for Cypherpunks
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:54 AM 12/13/1996, Rob Carlson wrote: >To make this on topic, how does this apply to cryptography and >crypto-politics? This issue is a foundation of our discussions here. >Shall we accept anecdotal evidence such as the "If you only knew what >we knew" arguments? What is more reliable: IPG's claims that their >product is an OTP because they say it is or Bruce Schneier's book >that can be used to point out the fallacy's in their claims? I'm sure Rob Carlson already realizes this, but just in case let's be very clear that a discussion of the value of anecdotal evidence is so on topic to this list that it isn't funny. We are talking about trust models. The reason that the Net is a fundamental threat to the established social order is that it will probably result in a worldwide change in trust models. For one thing, we are now learning just how venal and corrupt the world leadership really is. At the same time, cross-border relationships and trust are flourishing. The rise of anonymous identities raises the question of how we can "trust" somebody we have never met. This immediately leads to the question of why we trust other people we haven't met, such as the President, or scientists, or whomever. It turns out our reasons for "trusting" these people are not as solid as some of us once believed. The attempts to crush strong cryptography - especially if it implies anonymity with strong authentication - is an attempt to undermine the trust developing between disparate groups of people. And, in a sense, that is what politics has always been about: the subversion of trust between groups of people so they can be played off each other for the benefit of the few. Back to what is appropriate to this list: What the cypherpunks is suffering right now is not an excess of well written articles that are off topic. I suggest that anybody who feels very strongly that they are not seeing articles of the appropriate content follow Rob Carlson's example and show the rest of us how it is done. Red Rackham

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Re: Race and IQ
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:30 PM 12/13/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: >(For the curious, I am persuaded that there are minimal differences >in "intelligence" between the several or many races, but that >cultural and sociological factors strongly affect upbringing, >learning, interest in doing well in school, ability on standardized >tests, success in business matters, and so on.) The question is certainly interesting scientifically. Some Africans exhibit skills which are not found elsewhere. For example, in some African societies, I am told, there are people who can do things like play a drum with the left hand to 13 beats a measure and do something like 17 beats a measure with the right hand. Those who aren't amazed by this should try doing three beats on the left hand with two on the right. Call me when you master it. ;-) If you lived in a society where this skill was considered an important component of social success, most of us would appear to be retarded. (Consider, for example, the ancient Chinese civilization. Appointment into the imperial bureaucracy occured only after the applicants passed elaborate tests regarding their knowledge and interpretation of poetry. That was the entire qualification.) It has been claimed that African societies have never been "civilized" in the sense of developing large bureaucracies and cities. When many people make this claim there is an implication that the more with it peoples did this. But is that so reasonable? Read reports of life in European cities in the 18th century, before running water and before sewage systems. Give me the country any day! Many of the readers of this list are anarchistically inclined. When we hear that African societies have tended to be anarchistic, we should applaud their wisdom and insight. Perhaps these people could teach the rest of us a few things. (And maybe teach Hilary Clinton a few things. Is there a history of welfare states in Africa, or did they practice voluntary anarchistic communal charity on the level of villages?) It is not out of the question that once the human genome is decoded and its relationship with human intelligence understood that we will find that Africans beat out everyone else. (Incidentally, I question the claim that African societies never developed cities and bureacracies. The Egyptians are the most prominent example. Mathematically adept and literate they prospered for a couple thousand years. A better run than the Romans managed! We tend to think of Egyptians as being sort of like Europeans. I believe this is because Europeans invented Egyptology. Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but Egypt is in Africa. What is more, if you study Egyptian statuary, you will find many examples of distinctly African looking royalty. Also, I know that cities like Timbuktoo were centers of Muslim learning and were large enough to have streets and houses. We may know little about them because Europeans were not allowed to visit, and also for racist reasons.) Scientific questions aside, it isn't clear why the racial link to intelligence matters. What are we going to do differently if it turns out that, on average, for genetic reasons, Albanians are less quick on the uptake than other people? The link between intelligence and success is not at all clear. We generally consider mathematicians and computer programmers to be smart, but in terms of total life competence, large numbers of these people live less than ideally. There are many instances in which I prefer to hire somebody who is less intelligent, but better equipped to play on the team, better organized, or just less of a primadonna. The eugenicists propose murder. This doesn't make any sense at all. We all have friends who are both smarter and dumber than ourselves, yet we don't plot their murder. Intelligence is just an excuse for what these people really want to do. If God came down and told us that there was no genetic basis for intelligence, next week there would be some other reason for the same policy. On the flip side are those who want to help the unfortunate with the time and labor of others. A racial link to intelligence will not increase my sympathy for such schemes. The upshot is: If you respect the rights of others, it doesn't matter. Now for some entertainment. Oliver Wendell Holmes, when he was a judge in Virginia, ordered the forcible sterilization of several young women. The state would wait until they became ill and then when they were admitted to a hospital, they were sterilized under the guise of giving them some other operation. Holmes claimed that the grandmothers of the women were imbeciles, their mothers were imbeciles, and that they were imbeciles. His great line was "Three generations of imbeciles are enough!" Curiously, it turns out that the word "imbecile" was a euphemism for "illegitimate". Know your doctor! Red Rackham

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Chek it out
by Zer0.Faith.Inc.＠website.chek.it.out 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/2608 It's Kool, but still under construction.

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Re: Firewalls
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The only `culture' Timothy May possesses is that cultivated from his foreskin scrapings. )_( [@ @] Timothy May |/ \| \O/

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