December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

virus from fuck@yourself.up
by n.adao＠student.iag.ucl.ac.be 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I send an e-mail to fuck(a)yourself.up but i receive the message:host unknown. Could someone explain that to me please. P.S.: maybe I'm a beginner but I did't used the virus. You really must ve very stupid to unattach a .com file from a mail sent by "fuck(a)youself.up" --------------------------------------------------------- ADAO-CRUZ Nuno 11, rue du Paradis 1348 Louvain La Neuve ----BELGIUM--------- (010) 45 39 98 Business Student at the UCL University ---------------------------------------------------------

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EFF: Bernstein court declares crypto restrictions unconstitutional
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

COURT DECLARES CRYPTO RESTRICTIONS UNCONSTITUTIONAL Free Speech Trumps Clinton Wiretap Plan December 18, 1996 Electronic Frontier Foundation Contacts: Shari Steele, Staff Attorney 301/375-8856, ssteele(a)eff.org John Gilmore, Founding Board Member 415/221-6524, gnu(a)toad.com Cindy Cohn, McGlashan & Sarrail 415/341-2585, cindy(a)mcglashan.com San Francisco - On Monday, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel struck down Cold War export restrictions on the privacy technology called cryptography. Her decision knocks out a major part of the Clinton Administration's effort to force companies to build "wiretap-ready" computers, set-top boxes, telephones, and consumer electronics. The decision is a victory for free speech, academic freedom, and the prevention of crime. American scientists and engineers will now be free to collaborate with their peers in the United States and in other countries. This will enable them to build a new generation of tools for protecting the privacy and security of communications. The Clinton Administration has been using the export restrictions to goad companies into building wiretap-ready "key recovery" technology. In a November Executive Order, President Clinton offered limited administrative exemptions from these restrictions to companies which agree to undermine the privacy of their customers. Federal District Judge Patel's ruling knocks both the carrot and the stick out of Clinton's hand, because the restrictions were unconstitutional in the first place. The Cold War law and regulations at issue in the case prevented American researchers and companies from exporting cryptographic software and hardware. Export is normally thought of as the physical carrying of an object across a national border. However, the regulations define "export" to include simple publication in the U.S., as well as discussions with foreigners inside the U.S. They also define "software" to include printed English-language descriptions and diagrams, as well as the traditional machine-readable object code and human-readable source code. The secretive National Security Agency has built up an arcane web of complex and confusing laws, regulations, standards, and secret interpretations for years. These are used to force, persuade, or confuse individuals, companies, and government departments into making it easy for NSA to wiretap and decode all kinds of communications. Their tendrils reach deep into the White House, into numerous Federal agencies, and into the Congressional Intelligence Committees. In recent years this web is unraveling in the face of increasing visibility, vocal public disagreement with the spy agency's goals, commercial and political pressure, and judicial scrutiny. Civil libertarians have long argued that encryption should be widely deployed on the Internet and throughout society to protect privacy, prove the authenticity of transactions, and improve computer security. Industry has argued that the restrictions hobble them in building secure products, both for U.S. and worldwide use, risking America's current dominant position in computer technology. Government officials in the FBI and NSA argue that the technology is too dangerous to permit citizens to use it, because it provides privacy to criminals as well as ordinary citizens. "We're pleased that Judge Patel understands that our national security requires protecting our basic rights of free speech and privacy," said John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which backed the suit. "There's no sense in `burning the Constitution in order to save it'. The secretive bureaucrats who have restricted these rights for decades in the name of national security must come to a larger understanding of how to support and preserve our democracy." Reactions to the decision "This is a positive sign in the crypto wars -- the first rational statement concerning crypto policy to come out of any part of the government," said Jim Bidzos, President of RSA Data Security, one of the companies most affected by crypto policy. "It's nice to see that the executive branch does not get to decide whether we have the right of free speech," said Philip Zimmermann, Chairman of PGP, Inc. "It shows that my own common sense interpretation of the constitution was correct five years ago when I thought it was safe to publish my own software, PGP. If only US Customs had seen it that way." Mr. Zimmermann is a civil libertarian who was investigated by the government under these laws when he wrote and gave away a program for protecting the privacy of e-mail. His "Pretty Good Privacy" program is used by human rights activists worldwide to protect their workers and informants from torture and murder by their own countries' secret police. "Judge Patel's decision furthers our efforts to enable secure electronic commerce," said Asim Abdullah, executive director of CommerceNet. Jerry Berman, Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based Internet advocacy group, hailed the victory. "The Bernstein ruling illustrates that the Administration continues to embrace an encryption policy that is not only unwise, but also unconstitutional. We congratulate Dan Bernstein, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and all of the supporters who made this victory for free speech and privacy on the Internet possible." "The ability to publish is required in any vibrant academic discipline," This ruling re-affirming our obvious academic right will help American researchers publish without worrying," said Bruce Schneier, author of the popular textbook _Applied Cryptography_, and a director of the International Association for Cryptologic Research, a professional organization of cryptographers. Kevin McCurley, President of the International Association for Cryptologic Research, said, "Basic research to further the understanding of fundamental notions in information should be welcomed by our society. The expression of such work is closely related to one of the fundamental values of our society, namely freedom of speech." Effect of the decision Judge Patel's decision today only legally applies to Prof. Bernstein. Other people and companies are still technically required to follow the export restrictions when speaking or publishing about cryptography, or when speaking or publishing cryptographic source code. However, the decision sends a strong signal that if the government tried to enforce these rules against other people, the courts are likely to strike them down again. Judge Patel has specifically not decided whether the export controls on object code (the executable form of computer programs which source code is automatically translated into) are constitutional. Existing export controls will continue to apply to runnable software products, such as Netscape's broswer, until another court case challenges that part of the restrictions. Background on the case The plaintiff in the case, Daniel J. Bernstein, Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, developed an "encryption algorithm" (a recipe or set of instructions) that he wanted to publish in printed journals as well as on the Internet. Bernstein sued the government, claiming that the government's requirements that he register as an arms dealer and seek government permission before publication was a violation of his First Amendment right of free speech. This is required by the Arms Export Control Act and its implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. In the first phase of this litigation, the government argued that since Bernstein's ideas were expressed, in part, in computer language (source code), they were not protected by the First Amendment. On April 15, 1996, Judge Patel rejected that argument and held for the first time that computer source code is protected speech for purposes of the First Amendment. Details of Monday's Decision Judge Patel ruled that the Arms Export Control Act is an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech, because it requires Bernstein to submit his ideas about cryptography to the government for review, to register as an arms dealer, and to apply for and obtain from the government a license to publish his ideas. Using the Pentagon Papers case as precedent, she ruled that the government's "interest of national security alone does not justify a prior restraint." Under the Constitution, he is now free to publish his ideas without asking the government's permission first. Judge Patel also held that the government's required licensing procedure fails to provide adequate procedural safeguards. When the Government acts legally to suppress protected speech, it must reduce the chance of illegal censorship by the bureacrats involved. Her decision states, "Because the ITAR licensing scheme fails to provide for a time limit on the licensing decision, for prompt judicial review and for a duty on the part of the ODTC to go to court and defend a denial of a license, the ITAR licensing scheme as applied to Category XIII(b) acts as an unconstitutional prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment." She also ruled that the export controls restrict speech based on the content of the speech, not for any other reason. "Category XIII(b) is directed very specifically at applied scientific research and speech on the topic of encryption." The Government had argued that it restricts the speech because of its function, not its content. The judge also found that the ITAR is vague, because it does not adequately define how information that is available to the public "through fundamental research in science and engineering" is exempt from the export restrictions. "This subsection ... does not give people ... a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited." The failure to precisely define what objects and actions are being regulated creates confusion and a chilling effect. Bernstein has been unable to publish his encryption algorithm for over three years. Many other cryptographers and ordinary programmers have also been restrained from publishing because of the vagueness of the ITAR. Brian Behlendorf, a maintainer of the popular public domain "Apache" web server program, stated, "No cryptographic source code was ever distributed by the Apache project. Despite this, the Apache server code was deemed by the NSA to violate the ITAR." Judge Patel also adopted a narrower definition of the term "defense service" in order to save it from unconstitutional vagueness. The immediate effect of this decision is that Bernstein now is free to teach his January 13th cryptography class in his usual way. He can post his class materials on the Internet, and discuss the upcoming class's materials with other professors, without being held in violation of the ITAR. "I'm very pleased," Bernstein said. "Now I won't have to tell my students to burn their notebooks." ABOUT THE ATTORNEYS Lead counsel on the case is Cindy Cohn of the San Mateo law firm of McGlashan & Sarrail, who is offering her services pro bono. Major additional pro bono legal assistance is being provided by Lee Tien of Berkeley; M. Edward Ross of the San Francisco law firm of Steefel, Levitt & Weiss; James Wheaton and Elizabeth Pritzker of the First Amendment Project in Oakland; and Robert Corn-Revere of the Washington, DC, law firm of Hogan & Hartson. ABOUT THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a nonprofit civil liberties organization working in the public interest to protect privacy, free expression, and access to online resources and information. EFF is a primary sponsor of the Bernstein case. EFF helped to find Bernstein pro bono counsel, is a member of the Bernstein legal team, and helped collect members of the academic community and computer industry to support this case. Full text of the lawsuit and other paperwork filed in the case is available from EFF's online archives at http://www.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Crypto/ITAR_export/Bernstein_case/ The full text of Monday's decision will be posted there as soon as we scan it in.

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Re: The virus I got...
by Mark Rosen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> There was an e-mail sent to the list that had attached to it a virus. Well > lucky me I got. It was a .com file that apparently turns your files into > directories. I can't boot into Win95 since it turned my HIMEM.SYS into a > directory. So, I seem to have fixed that, but now it says "access denied" > and then prompts me with C:\>. Did anyone else get it? Has anyone heard > or fixed this virus? Yes. FIrst of all, NEVER run any executable you recieve that is just attached to an e-mail message like that. Unfortunately, my stupid trackpad on my laptop slipped and I too ran the file. Your registry has been deleted and it looks like every file that was not hidden in the Windows directory (or at least a lot of them) have been renamed and made directories. I suspect the file information still exists but is messed up. You probably won't ever be able to get it back. First you need to remove all of the rogue directories (type dir /w/o/p at c:\windows\ and then rmdir everything in brackets that looks like it was a file - it'll have a '.' in its name). You can then reinstall Windows 95. All of your configuration will be lost, but at least you're up again. I'm posting this to the list if anyone else has also run this program, but if anyone has any more questions, please e-mail mrosen(a)peganet.com. Did anyone find out a real e-mail address from this guy. I'd like to uhhh... cyberbeat him. Oh, and as far as I know, no virus was installed, though you should check for one just for good measure. Mark Rosen FireSoft - http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2690 Mark Eats AOL - http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/6660

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WARNING: VIRUS: [Was: Re: Encryption to the poors]
by Alexander Chislenko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The last message from Fuck(a)yourself.up contained a dirBomb virus as an attachment; file name GREETS.COM Make sure you don't execute it. Maybe, we should execute Fuck(a)yourself.up instead. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander Chislenko <sasha1(a)netcom.com> www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html Firefly Network, Inc.: <alexc(a)firefly.net> www.ffly.com 617-234-5452 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Password Keystroke Snarfer Programs
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Several articles on the PGP-users mailing list have discussed keystroke snarfers that unexpectedly grab and save keystrokes, including passwords, severely weakening any benefits from encryption. taoboy <taoboy(a)sprynet.com> mentioned Mac programs FileGuard and HiddenOasis and the SpellCatcher spell-check program's Ghostwriter feature, which he'd noticed had stuck his password into a disk file; he suggests that Windows machines probably have similar surprises. From: patm(a)connix.com (Pat McCotter) > Which is why, every once in a while, I do a search of my entire disk for my > PGP pass phrase and various other passwords I use. [....] I do this with > Norton DiskEditor. I have to upgrade to do this on my Win95 machine which I > understand is much worse than Win3.x in this area. Be careful - PGP goes to a lot of effort to overwrite your passphrase when it's done using it; Norton or grep or other disk-crawlers are unlikely to do so, because that sort of paranoia's not part of their job, and simply typing in a command in a command window will often get it saved in a command history file. So your search for the passphrase on disk makes it _more_ likely that some program will stash it on your disk... You could work around this by using a complex passphrase and adding a distinctive word to the end, e.g. "mumblefrotz foobaroid zarquon FINDTHIS", which doesn't become much less secure if the FINDTHIS gets left on the disk from your "grepemall FINDTHIS c:" command. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Cypherpunks as Philosopher Kings [was permanent invasion of privacy]
by attila＠primenet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Currently, I am not sure what the charter of cypherpunks really stands for, if anything. As it stands, the list has a far more erudite group than the list it probably should be. certainly more privacy and social engineering issues resulting from the deprivation of privacy than code. I don't believe Cypherpunks was ever intended to be a technical forum; I was not on for the first few months so I missed the formative discussions of the elitist few, most of whom, other than founder tcmay, have left for greener pastures. In the beginning years, there was a substantial amount of crypto code, etc. passed around and argued. However, the few of us who do code, do not generate enough messages relating to code to warrant a list; therefore the passionate interests which travel as coders' baggage seem to explode and others, some technically competent and some not, join the list and the circus goes on. Frankly, I have hired and "mind-fucked" (pardon my french, for lack of a more descriptive expression) scores of hacker grade philosophers. That is exactly where it runs: they are philosophers first and creative coders second. As to their knowledge of philo- sophy, and the direction of their creative talents to a logical and usable conclusion, they score a fat zero as by and large they are geeks and idealistic social nerds. --hence the need for subtle background manipulation to make these philosopher-coders think your design is actually their great philosophic-coder design. Yes, and _never_ assign two of them to the same compartment: the code never works --absolutely will not share tasks. Common interface boundaries? No problem for their minds, but too creatively selfish to code associative modules. For that reason alone, I hold C++ in contempt: a black box that is _supposed_to_ to look for 'this' and give you 'that.' C++ is an ignorant managers ultimate wet dream: "reusable code containers for disposable programmers." For some reason, Bjorn elucidated a strenuous objection to my statement. <g> For what it's worth, the above is my perception of cypherpunks: an interesting collection of philosopher kings, some of whom are putting their convictions to the means of thwarting the common enemy. It is no accident most subscribers, and certainly all the doers, are anti-government with a preference for social anarchy, the anarchy tempered by some level of realization that the mass of humanity can not govern itself in a society which is inherently evil. However, if the Libertarian Party can not field a better candidate than Harry Brown, anarchy, or a premature dictatorship, it will be. The US is in the last laugh of the oligarchy at this point in time. In <1.5.4.32.19961218084853.005de95c(a)popd.ix.netcom.com>, on 12/18/96 at 12:48 AM, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com said: ::Attila wrote, :: symposium were Dr. Jack C. Westman of the University of :: Wisconsin-Madison, author of "Licensing Parents: Can We :: Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect?" and Professor David T. :: Lykken of the University of Minnesota, author of "The :: Antisocial Personalities." Westman and Lykken are the :: most prominent advocates of a system of parental :: licensure in which parents would have to be certified :: "competent" by the government before being permitted to :: raise a child. :: ::and blanc wrote :: Someone needs to remind this Senator Lykken what happened in Romania, :: when the beleaguered citizen-units finally took their 'noble', social :: engineering leader Ceausescu, put him up against a wall and :: shot him. :: I do not believe they gave him the benefit (?) of the wall. Ceausescu, like all "communist" dictators of this century, was just that: a dictator falsely claiming to be the 'Great Father' who will right all the wrongs, put too many chickens in each pot, and generally hold your hand while his local version of the Gestapo permanently eliminates dissent. It appears to works until the state has drained the natural and human resources of value, further accelerated by corruption and the increasing apathy of the people who no longer produce more than a subsistence living at best. ::Fortunately, Lykken appears to just be a professor, not a legislator, ::so he can spend your money but can't tell you what to do. ::He's obviously also a subject of his book...... out of curiosity I was poking around a bit; he apparently has legislative backers. I would be surprised if the bill made it out a subcommittee hearing. however, his theory melds nicely with the intentions of superbitch; there is no doubt in my perception of her '...Village' --superbitch is heading for the nursery of "Logan's Run" and the surrogate nanny super-machines. --35+ years ago the book? I did not see the movie which may or may not have been able to deal with the concept of enforced euthanasia at age 21. Super- bitch must have seen the movie too many times, or slept with the book in her early pubescent dreams. ::Before we go licensing parents, we ought to license people who ::want to be Big Brothers...... License them? Why license them before we hang them? ::[This didn't seem to be cypherpunks material any more...] Actually, it is: invasion of privacy; no secure communica- tions, and all the other falderol. - -- I'll get a life when it is proven and substantiated to be better than what I am currently experiencing. --attila -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: Encrypted with 2.6.3i. Requires 2.6 or later. iQCVAwUBMrgsD704kQrCC2kFAQH53gQAomp4242ItlDhZpLijYtsyrq/ZQNFRljs GRxBjNJeKX2FgId9B5LOg+nhSQ2WUI8m26km8Qlo2pnqjJVDa+aSCJg70ljHqBrT vDKBx/IHX9LeJGgFsjUBz//qJvclwt2Amk678/vm72c8yXF1nECc8d2JaFPDbrXB BC2r6AkTN9s= =sbYD -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Big Brother moves to Oregon
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here is something you may not have heard about. The new drivers licences in the state of Oregon have a digital picture on them. You get one on your licence and the state keeps on on file. Any time the police need to pull up information on you, your picture comes up along with it. (The police are supposed to have this capability in their vehicles any day now, if not already.) This plan is being put into place as fast as they can and over 70+ million over budget. (They expect to have all of the Department of Motor Vehicles offices hooked up in a couple of months.) And the "Drivers Licence Number" has been replaced with a "Customer Number". (Had to have a bit of newspeak creep in there somewhere I guess...) Oregon used to be a nice place to live. Lately they have been the experementing ground for some of the most draconian laws in the country. "Welcome to the New Global Village. You are Customer Number 6." --- | "Spam is the Devil's toothpaste!" - stuart(a)teleport.com | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com|

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Earl Edwin Pitts, $224,000
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.cnn.com/US/9612/18/fbi.spy/index.html FBI agent spied for Soviet Union, Russia. "He also provided a stolen FBI handset to a telecommunications device used to transmit classified information," Too bad he didn't have access to the Clipper database. That would have helped us find its free market price. Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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Echelon: The Global Surveillance System (fwd)
by jamie＠comet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Found this on another mailing list. jkd -------------------------------------------------------- EXPOSING THE GLOBAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM by Nicky Hager ------ The article as it appears in hard copy in the magazine also includes the following sidebars: --"NSA'S BUSINESS PLAN: GLOBAL ACCESS" by Duncan Campbell --GREENPEACE WARRIOR: WHY NO WARNING? and --NZ's PM Kept in the Dark by Nicky Hager ********Hager's book "secret Power" is available from CAQ for $33.******* ----------- [See end] IN THE LATE 1980S, IN A DECISION IT PROBABLY REGRETS, THE US PROMPTED NEW ZEALAND TO JOIN A NEW AND HIGHLY SECRET GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM. HAGER'S INVESTIGATION INTO IT AND HIS DISCOVERY OF THE ECHELON DICTIONARY HAS REVEALED ONE OF THE WORLD'S BIGGEST, MOST CLOSELY HELD INTELLIGENCE PROJECTS. THE SYSTEM ALLOWS SPY AGENCIES TO MONITOR MOST OF THE WORLD'S TELEPHONE, E-MAIL, AND TELEX COMMUNICATIONS. For 40 years, New Zealand's largest intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) the nation's equivalent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) had been helping its Western allies to spy on countries throughout the Pacific region, without the knowledge of the New Zealand public or many of its highest elected officials. What the NSA did not know is that by the late 1980s, various intelligence staff had decided these activities had been too secret for too long, and were providing me with interviews and documents exposing New Zealand's intelligence activities. Eventually, more than 50 people who work or have worked in intelligence and related fields agreed to be interviewed. The activities they described made it possible to document, from the South Pacific, some alliance-wide systems and projects which have been kept secret elsewhere. Of these, by far the most important is ECHELON. Designed and coordinated by NSA, the ECHELON system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. Unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country. It potentially affects every person communicating between (and sometimes within) countries anywhere in the world. It is, of course, not a new idea that intelligence organizations tap into e-mail and other public telecommunications networks. What was new in the material leaked by the New Zealand intelligence staff was precise information on where the spying is done, how the system works, its capabilities and shortcomings, and many details such as the codenames. The ECHELON system is not designed to eavesdrop on a particular individual's e-mail or fax link. Rather, the system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and using computers to identify and extract messages of interest from the mass of unwanted ones. A chain of secret interception facilities has been established around the world to tap into all the major components of the international telecommunications networks. Some monitor communications satellites, others land-based communications networks, and others radio communications. ECHELON links together all these facilities, providing the US and its allies with the ability to intercept a large proportion of the communications on the planet. The computers at each station in the ECHELON network automatically search through the millions of messages intercepted for ones containing pre-programmed keywords. Keywords include all the names, localities, subjects, and so on that might be mentioned. Every word of every message intercepted at each station gets automatically searched whether or not a specific telephone number or e-mail address is on the list. The thousands of simultaneous messages are read in "real time" as they pour into the station, hour after hour, day after day, as the computer finds intelligence needles in telecommunications haystacks. SOMEONE IS LISTENING: The computers in stations around the globe are known, within the network, as the ECHELON Dictionaries. Computers that can automatically search through traffic for keywords have existed since at least the 1970s, but the ECHELON system was designed by NSA to interconnect all these computers and allow the stations to function as components of an integrated whole. The NSA and GCSB are bound together under the five-nation UKUSA signals intelligence agreement. The other three partners all with equally obscure names are the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in Canada, and the Defense Signals Directorate (DSD) in Australia. The alliance, which grew from cooperative efforts during World War II to intercept radio transmissions, was formalized into the UKUSA agreement in 1948 and aimed primarily against the USSR. The five UKUSA agencies are today the largest intelligence organizations in their respective countries. With much of the world's business occurring by fax, e-mail, and phone, spying on these communications receives the bulk of intelligence resources. For decades before the introduction of the ECHELON system, the UKUSA allies did intelligence collection operations for each other, but each agency usually processed and analyzed the intercept from its own stations. Under ECHELON, a particular station's Dictionary computer contains not only its parent agency's chosen keywords, but also has lists entered in for other agencies. In New Zealand's satellite interception station at Waihopai (in the South Island), for example, the computer has separate search lists for the NSA, GCHQ, DSD, and CSE in addition to its own. Whenever the Dictionary encounters a message containing one of the agencies' keywords, it automatically picks it and sends it directly to the headquarters of the agency concerned. No one in New Zealand screens, or even sees, the intelligence collected by the New Zealand station for the foreign agencies. Thus, the stations of the junior UKUSA allies function for the NSA no differently than if they were overtly NSA-run bases located on their soil. The first component of the ECHELON network are stations specifically targeted on the international telecommunications satellites (Intelsats) used by the telephone companies of most countries. A ring of Intelsats is positioned around the world, stationary above the equator, each serving as a relay station for tens of thousands of simultaneous phone calls, fax, and e-mail. Five UKUSA stations have been established to intercept the communications carried by the Intelsats. The British GCHQ station is located at the top of high cliffs above the sea at Morwenstow in Cornwall. Satellite dishes beside sprawling operations buildings point toward Intelsats above the Atlantic, Europe, and, inclined almost to the horizon, the Indian Ocean. An NSA station at Sugar Grove, located 250 kilometers southwest of Washington, DC, in the mountains of West Virginia, covers Atlantic Intelsats transmitting down toward North and South America. Another NSA station is in Washington State, 200 kilometers southwest of Seattle, inside the Army's Yakima Firing Center. Its satellite dishes point out toward the Pacific Intelsats and to the east. *1 The job of intercepting Pacific Intelsat communications that cannot be intercepted at Yakima went to New Zealand and Australia. Their South Pacific location helps to ensure global interception. New Zealand provides the station at Waihopai and Australia supplies the Geraldton station in West Australia (which targets both Pacific and Indian Ocean Intelsats). *2 Each of the five stations' Dictionary computers has a codename to distinguish it from others in the network. The Yakima station, for instance, located in desert country between the Saddle Mountains and Rattlesnake Hills, has the COWBOY Dictionary, while the Waihopai station has the FLINTLOCK Dictionary. These codenames are recorded at the beginning of every intercepted message, before it is transmitted around the ECHELON network, allowing analysts to recognize at which station the interception occurred. New Zealand intelligence staff has been closely involved with the NSA's Yakima station since 1981, when NSA pushed the GCSB to contribute to a project targeting Japanese embassy communications. Since then, all five UKUSA agencies have been responsible for monitoring diplomatic cables from all Japanese posts within the same segments of the globe they are assigned for general UKUSA monitoring.3 Until New Zealand's integration into ECHELON with the opening of the Waihopai station in 1989, its share of the Japanese communications was intercepted at Yakima and sent unprocessed to the GCSB headquarters in Wellington for decryption, translation, and writing into UKUSA-format intelligence reports (the NSA provides the codebreaking programs). "COMMUNICATION" THROUGH SATELLITES The next component of the ECHELON system intercepts a range of satellite communications not carried by Intelsat.In addition to the UKUSA stations targeting Intelsat satellites, there are another five or more stations homing in on Russian and other regional communications satellites. These stations are Menwith Hill in northern England; Shoal Bay, outside Darwin in northern Australia (which targets Indonesian satellites); Leitrim, just south of Ottawa in Canada (which appears to intercept Latin American satellites); Bad Aibling in Germany; and Misawa in northern Japan. A group of facilities that tap directly into land-based telecommunications systems is the final element of the ECHELON system. Besides satellite and radio, the other main method of transmitting large quantities of public, business, and government communications is a combination of water cables under the oceans and microwave networks over land. Heavy cables, laid across seabeds between countries, account for much of the world's international communications.. After they come out of the water and join land-based microwave networks they are very vulnerable to interception. The microwave networks are made up of chains of microwave towers relaying messages from hilltop to hilltop (always in line of sight) across the countryside. These networks shunt large quantities of communications across a country. Interception of them gives access to international undersea communications (once they surface) and to international communication trunk lines across continents. They are also an obvious target for large-scale interception of domestic communications. Because the facilities required to intercept radio and satellite communications use large aerials and dishes that are difficult to hide for too long, that network is reasonably well documented. But all that is required to intercept land-based communication networks is a building situated along the microwave route or a hidden cable running underground from the legitimate network into some anonymous building, possibly far removed. Although it sounds technically very difficult, microwave interception from space by United States spy satellites also occurs.4 The worldwide network of facilities to intercept these communications is largely undocumented, and because New Zealand's GCSB does not participate in this type of interception, my inside sources could not help either. NO ONE IS SAFE FROM A MICROWAVE: A 1994 expos of the Canadian UKUSA agency, Spyworld, co-authored by one of its former staff, Mike Frost, gave the first insights into how a lot of foreign microwave interception is done (see p. 18). It described UKUSA "embassy collection" operations, where sophisticated receivers and processors are secretly transported to their countries' overseas embassies in diplomatic bags and used to monitor various communications in foreign capitals. *5 Since most countries' microwave networks converge on the capital city, embassy buildings can be an ideal site. Protected by diplomatic privilege, they allow interception in the heart of the target country. *6 The Canadian embassy collection was requested by the NSA to fill gaps in the American and British embassy collection operations, which were still occurring in many capitals around the world when Frost left the CSE in 1990. Separate sources in Australia have revealed that the DSD also engages in embassy collection. *7 On the territory of UKUSA nations, the interception of land-based telecommunications appears to be done at special secret intelligence facilities. The US, UK, and Canada are geographically well placed to intercept the large amounts of the world's communications that cross their territories. The only public reference to the Dictionary system anywhere in the world was in relation to one of these facilities, run by the GCHQ in central London. In 1991, a former British GCHQ official spoke anonymously to Granada Television's World in Action about the agency's abuses of power. He told the program about an anonymous red brick building at 8 Palmer Street where GCHQ secretly intercepts every telex which passes into, out of, or through London, feeding them into powerful computers with a program known as "Dictionary." The operation, he explained, is staffed by carefully vetted British Telecom people: "It's nothing to do with national security. It's because it's not legal to take every single telex. And they take everything: the embassies, all the business deals, even the birthday greetings, they take everything. They feed it into the Dictionary." *8 What the documentary did not reveal is that Dictionary is not just a British system; it is UKUSA-wide. Similarly, British researcher Duncan Campbell has described how the US Menwith Hill station in Britain taps directly into the British Telecom microwave network, which has actually been designed with several major microwave links converging on an isolated tower connected underground into the station.9 The NSA Menwith Hill station, with 22 satellite terminals and more than 4.9 acres of buildings, is undoubtedly the largest and most powerful in the UKUSA network. Located in northern England, several thousand kilometers from the Persian Gulf, it was awarded the NSA's "Station of the Year" prize for 1991 after its role in the Gulf War. Menwith Hill assists in the interception of microwave communications in another way as well, by serving as a ground station for US electronic spy satellites. These intercept microwave trunk lines and short range communications such as military radios and walkie talkies. Other ground stations where the satellites' information is fed into the global network are Pine Gap, run by the CIA near Alice Springs in central Australia and the Bad Aibling station in Germany. *10 Among them, the various stations and operations making up the ECHELON network tap into all the main components of the world's telecommunications networks. All of them, including a separate network of stations that intercepts long distance radio communications, have their own Dictionary computers connected into ECHELON. In the early 1990s, opponents of the Menwith Hill station obtained large quantities of internal documents from the facility. Among the papers was a reference to an NSA computer system called Platform. The integration of all the UKUSA station computers into ECHELON probably occurred with the introduction of this system in the early 1980s. James Bamford wrote at that time about a new worldwide NSA computer network codenamed Platform "which will tie together 52 separate computer systems used throughout the world. Focal point, or `host environment,' for the massive network will be the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. Among those included in Platform will be the British SIGINT organization, GCHQ." *11 LOOKING IN THE DICTIONARY: The Dictionary computers are connected via highly encrypted UKUSA communications that link back to computer data bases in the five agency headquarters. This is where all the intercepted messages selected by the Dictionaries end up. Each morning the specially "indoctrinated" signals intelligence analysts in Washington, Ottawa, Cheltenham, Canberra, and Wellington log on at their computer terminals and enter the Dictionary system. After keying in their security passwords, they reach a directory that lists the different categories of intercept available in the data bases, each with a four-digit code. For instance, 1911 might be Japanese diplomatic cables from Latin America (handled by the Canadian CSE), 3848 might be political communications from and about Nigeria, and 8182 might be any messages about distribution of encryption technology. They select their subject category, get a "search result" showing how many messages have been caught in the ECHELON net on that subject, and then the day's work begins. Analysts scroll through screen after screen of intercepted faxes, e-mail messages, etc. and, whenever a message appears worth reporting on, they select it from the rest to work on. If it is not in English, it is translated and then written into the standard format of intelligence reports produced anywhere within the UKUSA network either in entirety as a "report," or as a summary or "gist." INFORMATION CONTROL: A highly organized system has been developed to control what is being searched for by each station and who can have access to it. This is at the heart of ECHELON operations and works as follows. The individual station's Dictionary computers do not simply have a long list of keywords to search for. And they do not send all the information into some huge database that participating agencies can dip into as they wish. It is much more controlled. The search lists are organized into the same categories, referred to by the four digit numbers. Each agency decides its own categories according to its responsibilities for producing intelligence for the network. For GCSB, this means South Pacific governments, Japanese diplomatic, Russian Antarctic activities, and so on. The agency then works out about 10 to 50 keywords for selection in each category. The keywords include such things as names of people, ships, organizations, country names, and subject names. They also include the known telex and fax numbers and Internet addresses of any individuals, businesses, organizations, and government offices that are targets. These are generally written as part of the message text and so are easily recognized by the Dictionary computers. The agencies also specify combinations of keywords to help sift out communications of interest. For example, they might search for diplomatic cables containing both the words "Santiago" and "aid," or cables containing the word "Santiago" but not "consul" (to avoid the masses of routine consular communications). It is these sets of words and numbers (and combinations), under a particular category, that get placed in the Dictionary computers. (Staff in the five agencies called Dictionary Managers enter and update the keyword search lists for each agency.) The whole system, devised by the NSA, has been adopted completely by the other agencies. The Dictionary computers search through all the incoming messages and, whenever they encounter one with any of the agencies' keywords, they select it. At the same time, the computer automatically notes technical details such as the time and place of interception on the piece of intercept so that analysts reading it, in whichever agency it is going to, know where it came from, and what it is. Finally, the computer writes the four-digit code (for the category with the keywords in that message) at the bottom of the message's text. This is important. It means that when all the intercepted messages end up together in the database at one of the agency headquarters, the messages on a particular subject can be located again. Later, when the analyst using the Dictionary system selects the four- digit code for the category he or she wants, the computer simply searches through all the messages in the database for the ones which have been tagged with that number. This system is very effective for controlling which agencies can get what from the global network because each agency only gets the intelligence out of the ECHELON system from its own numbers. It does not have any access to the raw intelligence coming out of the system to the other agencies. For example, although most of the GCSB's intelligence production is primarily to serve the UKUSA alliance, New Zealand does not have access to the whole ECHELON network. The access it does have is strictly controlled. A New Zealand intelligence officer explained: "The agencies can all apply for numbers on each other's Dictionaries. The hardest to deal with are the Americans. ... [There are] more hoops to jump through, unless it is in their interest, in which case they'll do it for you." There is only one agency which, by virtue of its size and role within the alliance, will have access to the full potential of the ECHELON system the agency that set it up. What is the system used for? Anyone listening to official "discussion" of intelligence could be forgiven for thinking that, since the end of the Cold War, the key targets of the massive UKUSA intelligence machine are terrorism, weapons proliferation, and economic intelligence. The idea that economic intelligence has become very important, in particular, has been carefully cultivated by intelligence agencies intent on preserving their post-Cold War budgets. It has become an article of faith in much discussion of intelligence. However, I have found no evidence that these are now the primary concerns of organizations such as NSA. QUICKER INTELLIGENCE, SAME MISSION: A different story emerges after examining very detailed information I have been given about the intelligence New Zealand collects for the UKUSA allies and detailed descriptions of what is in the yards-deep intelligence reports New Zealand receives from its four allies each week. There is quite a lot of intelligence collected about potential terrorists, and there is quite a lot of economic intelligence, notably intensive monitoring of all the countries participating in GATT negotiations. But by far, the main priorities of the intelligence alliance continue to be political and military intelligence to assist the larger allies to pursue their interests around the world. Anyone and anything the particular governments are concerned about can become a target. With capabilities so secret and so powerful, almost anything goes. For example, in June 1992, a group of current "highly placed intelligence operatives" from the British GCHQ spoke to the London Observer: "We feel we can no longer remain silent regarding that which we regard to be gross malpractice and negligence within the establishment in which we operate." They gave as examples GCHQ interception of three charitable organizations, including Amnesty International and Christian Aid. As the Observer reported: "At any time GCHQ is able to home in on their communications for a routine target request," the GCHQ source said. In the case of phone taps the procedure is known as Mantis. With telexes it is called Mayfly. By keying in a code relating to Third World aid, the source was able to demonstrate telex "fixes" on the three organizations. "It is then possible to key in a trigger word which enables us to home in on the telex communications whenever that word appears," he said. "And we can read a pre-determined number of characters either side of the keyword."12 Without actually naming it, this was a fairly precise description of how the ECHELON Dictionary system works. Again, what was not revealed in the publicity was that this is a UKUSA-wide system. The design of ECHELON means that the interception of these organizations could have occurred anywhere in the network, at any station where the GCHQ had requested that the four-digit code covering Third World aid be placed. Note that these GCHQ officers mentioned that the system was being used for telephone calls. In New Zealand, ECHELON is used only to intercept written communications: fax, e-mail, and telex. The reason, according to intelligence staff, is that the agency does not have the staff to analyze large quantities of telephone conversations. Mike Frost's expos of Canadian "embassy collection" operations described the NSA computers they used, called Oratory, that can "listen" to telephone calls and recognize when keywords are spoken. Just as we can recognize words spoken in all the different tones and accents we encounter, so too, according to Frost, can these computers. Telephone calls containing keywords are automatically extracted from the masses of other calls and recorded digitally on magnetic tapes for analysts back at agency headquarters. However, high volume voice recognition computers will be technically difficult to perfect, and my New Zealand-based sources could not confirm that this capability exists. But, if or when it is perfected, the implications would be immense. It would mean that the UKUSA agencies could use machines to search through all the international telephone calls in the world, in the same way that they do written messages. If this equipment exists for use in embassy collection, it will presumably be used in all the stations throughout the ECHELON network. It is yet to be confirmed how extensively telephone communications are being targeted by the ECHELON stations for the other agencies. The easiest pickings for the ECHELON system are the individuals, organizations, and governments that do not use encryption. In New Zealand's area, for example, it has proved especially useful against already vulnerable South Pacific nations which do not use any coding, even for government communications (all these communications of New Zealand's neighbors are supplied, unscreened, to its UKUSA allies). As a result of the revelations in my book, there is currently a project under way in the Pacific to promote and supply publicly available encryption software to vulnerable organizations such as democracy movements in countries with repressive governments. This is one practical way of curbing illegitimate uses of the ECHELON capabilities. One final comment. All the newspapers, commentators, and "well placed sources" told the public that New Zealand was cut off from US intelligence in the mid-1980s. That was entirely untrue. The intelligence supply to New Zealand did not stop, and instead, the decade since has been a period of increased integration of New Zealand into the US system. Virtually everything the equipment, manuals, ways of operating, jargon, codes, and so on, used in the GCSB continues to be imported entirely from the larger allies (in practice, usually the NSA). As with the Australian and Canadian agencies, most of the priorities continue to come from the US, too. The main thing that protects these agencies from change is their secrecy. On the day my book arrived in the book shops, without prior publicity, there was an all-day meeting of the intelligence bureaucrats in the prime minister's department trying to decide if they could prevent it from being distributed. They eventually concluded, sensibly, that the political costs were too high. It is understandable that they were so agitated. Throughout my research, I have faced official denials or governments refusing to comment on publicity about intelligence activities. Given the pervasive atmosphere of secrecy and stonewalling, it is always hard for the public to judge what is fact, what is speculation, and what is paranoia. Thus, in uncovering New Zealand's role in the NSA-led alliance, my aim was to provide so much detail about the operations the technical systems, the daily work of individual staff members, and even the rooms in which they work inside intelligence facilities that readers could feel confident that they were getting close to the truth. I hope the information leaked by intelligence staff in New Zealand about UKUSA and its systems such as ECHELON will help lead to change. CAQ SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: CAQ (CovertAction Quarterly) has won numerous awards for investigative journalism. In 1996, it won 4 of "Project Censored" top 25 awards for investigative reporting. CAQ is read around the world by investigative reporters, activists, scholars, intelligence buffs, news junkies, and anyone who wants to know the news and analysis behind the soundbites and headlines. Recommended by Noam Chomsky; targeted by the CIA. Each article in the 64-page magazine, which is in its 19th year of publication, is extensively footnoted and accompanied by photographs and graphics. For a single issue, send $6. A one year subscription: US $22; Canada/Mexico $27; Latin America/Europe $33; Other areas $35. A two year US subscription is $38 Please send check or money order in $US to: CAQ 1500 Massachusetts Ave. #732 Washington, DC 20005, USA Mail, phone or fax Mastercard or Visa with address info and expiration date Phone: 202-331-9763 Fax: 202-331-9751 E-mail: caq(a)igc.org CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITES: http://mediafilter.org/caq http://www.worldmedia.com/caq ------------------------------

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C2NET ANNOUNCES STRONGHOLD 2.0, BUNDLED THAWTE CERTIFICATES
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For Release: December 19, 1996 C2Net: Douglas Barnes, +1 510 986 8770, cman(a)c2.net UK Web: Dave Williams, +44 0113 222 0046, dwilliams(a)ukweb.com Thawte Consulting: Mark Shuttleworth, +27 21 975 4675, marks(a)thawte.com C2NET ANNOUNCES STRONGHOLD 2.0, BUNDLED THAWTE CERTIFICATES Oakland, CA -- C2Net Software, an Oakland-based security software company, announced today the beta release of Stronghold 2.0. Stronghold is currently the second most popular commercial webserver on the Unix platform, according to the Netcraft survey of webservers on the Internet. (see: http://www.netcraft.co.uk/survey/) Bundled With Thawte Certificates ================================= Additionally, C2Net and Thawte Consulting cc, a certificate authority based in South Africa, jointly announced a bundled product: a Stronghold webserver and a Thawte server certificate. The bundle will sell for $545; Stronghold alone lists at $495. Thawte's main competitor, Verisign, sells web server certificates for $290; similar certificates are $100 when purchased separately from Thawte. "We can now offer our customers the convenience of one-stop shopping when setting up a secure web site," said C2Net President Sameer Parekh. "Thawte is now poised to be a significant competitor to VeriSign, and we think that competition in this area is very healthy and will bring greater value to the entire Internet" Certificates are used for secure connections to authenticate the server to the client. People using Netscape and Microsoft browsers can connect to sites using both Thawte and VeriSign certificates because the "root certificates" for these companies come pre-loaded with the Netscape and Microsoft browsers. New Features in Version 2.0 =========================== Stronghold 2.0 is adding a number of new features users have been asking for. "We've redesigned the security interfaces and built on the new Apache 1.2 code base," commented Mark Cox, Stronghold product manager at UK Web. "Stronghold has had many productivity and performance enhancements and it is now fully compliant with the new HTTP/1.1 standard." The HTTP/1.1 standard is a significant update to HTTP/1.0, the protocol that governs how web browsers and web servers communicate. HTTP/1.1 brings many new features to the table, including improved content and language negotiation, improved persistent connections, and better recovery from interrupted transfers. (For more information on HTTP/1.1, see http://www.apacheweek.com/features/http11/) Stronghold 2.0b1 also incorporates a number of popular features from the Thawte webserver, Sioux, including more flexible directives for specifying security properties and improved certificate-based authentication. A subsequent beta version of Stronghold 2.0 will contain a full-fledged grapical configuration manager, based on the one in Sioux, as well as support for the latest version of the SSL protocol, known as SSLv3. Merged With Sioux ================= Along with the bundling agreement, Thawte and C2Net have merged their webserver products, Sioux and Stronghold. "This gives us a chance to focus more of our energy on our certificate business," said Mark Shuttleworth of Thawte Consulting. "By doing this, our two companies will be better able to compete in both the web server and certificate- issuing markets." Existing Sioux customers will be able to upgrade to the new version of Stronghold for $95. Upgrade Policy ============== Starting today, users who purchase Stronghold will be guaranteed a free upgrade to 2.0 when it gets out of beta testing. Other existing Stronghold users will probably need to pay a $95 upgrade fee, depending on when they purchased the product. Stronghold is developed outside of the United States, and is distributed within the US and Canada by C2Net (http://stronghold.c2.net/) and in the rest of the world by UK Web (http://stronghold.ukweb.com/) All versions of the product use uncompromised, full-strength cryptography. Background ========== C2Net (previously known as Community ConneXion, Inc.) is the leading provider of uncompromising security on the Internet. In addition to Stronghold (http://stronghold.c2.net/) C2Net also markets SafePassage Web Proxy (http://stronghold.ukweb.com/safepassage/) a product that allows users of popular web browsers to use full-strength cryptography worldwide. UK Web Limited is a leading Internet services company specialising in server technology, Internet security, business solutions and effective site design. They are the international distributors for both Stronghold and SafePassage products. Portions of Stronghold were developed by the Apache Group, and were taken with permission from the Apache Server http://www.apache.org/. Stronghold also includes software developed by Eric Young (eay(a)mincom.oz.au) Contacts ======== C2Net: Douglas Barnes, +1 510 986 8770, cman(a)c2.net UK Web: Dave Williams, +44 0113 222 0046, dwilliams(a)ukweb.com Thawte Consulting: Mark Shuttleworth, +27 21 975 4675, marks(a)thawte.com New with Stronghold v2.0b1 http://stronghold.c2.net/get/beta/ == Security In Stronghold 2.0b1 we've upgraded to the latest SSL and cryptography library, with a number of performance improvements, particularly in the DES implementation. The security/SSL architecture in Stronghold has been rewritten to take advantage of the Sioux source code base and the various features in Sioux. SSL client authentication has been improved. Regular expression-based matching of client certificate information to determine access control is possible. Stronghold now has an API for certificate to username mapping so that client certificates may be mapped to standard usernames. Session ID caching is now more robust. The sessiond is no longer needed, because the session ID cache is within the same address space as the server processes. == Ease of Use The Stronghold documentation has been revised and improved greatly since the last release. The 2.0b1 documentation is now three hundred pages long and will grow to include more extensive documentation for the final release. The documentation is available in both PostScript and HTML formats. The server has more command line options which provide information about the server. In particular, you can get a list of all the modules in the server or a full listing of all configuration directives that are supported by that binary. Compiling the server to add/remove new modules is also much easier. The Configure script automatically detects which operating system the server is running on and sets the compilation flags appropriately. Stronghold is now easier to install, with more verbose text during the install. Stronghold now comes with binaries for a number of useful management utilities, such as htpasswd, htdigest, and dbmmanage. == Functionality Stronghold is now compliant with HTTP/1.1, the latest in web protocol technology. Stronghold is the first commercial webserver to support HTTP/1.1. Stronghold 2.0b1 includes the lastest beta version of Apache (1.2b2), which includes a number of improvements, in addition to a large number of bugfixes. The server status page has been improved include additional information, including virtual hosts and client side certificates. The status page is also much more readable. Stronghold has a more fully-functional server-side includes mechanism, including the "eXtended Server Side Includes" SSI format. Stronghold provides server admins the ability to easily setup cookie-based user tracking so the admin can see what path through their site the users have been taking. It is now possible to restart the server and reload the configuration files without interrupting connections which are currently in progress. Stronghold is now compatible with the NCSA "Satisfy" directive for access control. CGI scripts are now "unbuffered". By unbuffering the CGI scripts it is possible to do things using normal CGI that were previously only possible using "nph". More information is available to ErrorDocument handlers about the cause of the error via the use of the ERROR_MSG environment variable. == New Bundled Modules Stronghold now bundles PHP, a very powerful language for dynamic content and database connectivity. PHP provides for database connectivity to mSQL, Postgres95, Solid, and mysql servers. Using PHP, Stronghold can now generate web pages on the fly using a very powerful C-like language for processing forms input, database queries, etc. Stronghold now bundles with SWISH/WWWWAIS search engine for indexing and searching through web sites. Stronghold now comes with the proxy module enable by default. The proxy module has also been significantly improved since the previous version. A full-featured URI rewriting language that allows server administrators to define rules for transforming URIs. Support for the DigiCash ecash protocol is now built into the server. Using this module it is possible to set up an ecash-accepting shop on the Internet without an actual account with an ecash-issuing bank. == Configurability It is now possible with Stronghold to configure the server such that user's CGI scripts are run under their own UID, with their own permissions, instead of the UID of the server, with the same permissions as the rest of the server or other CGI programs run by other users. Many directives now support regular expressions, so configuration options can be set based on regular expression matching criteria. The new <Files> container allows server adminstrators to set configuration options on a much finer basis, down to individual files in directories. Server administrators can now set environment variables based on which web browser the client is using. These environment variables can be used to deliver different web pages, or work around bugs in various different browsers. Configurable logging is now the default, and has been enhanced. It is now possible to create a number of different logfiles each with their own configurable logging format. It is also now possible to setup a virtual host which listens to more than one IP number, or more than one port. It is easier in Stronghold 2.0b1 to debug CGI scripts. The server administrator or CGI author can configure logfiles where CGI error messages and diagnostic information get stored. The entire server can protect itself from runaway CGI scripts by configuring in the resource limits for CGI that are now available in Stronghold. Server redirects are more configurable. The client can now be told whether or not a redirect is temporary, permanent, or if the requested object is completely gone. The "Options" directive is much more configurable. It's possible now using the "Options" directive to add and remove options from the current set of "Options" merely by prepending a '-' or '+' to the option name. There is now a configuration directive to set and remove HTTP headers. Using this directive various directories or various files can have custom headers attached if the server administrator wants to easily support some of the many HTTP extensions. The configuration file can include directives which are turned on or off conditionally depending on whether or not certain modules are compiled into the server.

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