December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

NEW: Cypherwonks (fwd)
by Graham Toal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <Pine.3.87.9311290937.A20916-0100000(a)crl.crl.com> arthurc(a)crl.com "Arthur Chandler" writes: > I'm assuming, of course, that it's not a spoof. Oh come on, Julf is a European. Even if Lance doesn't have the sense to realise it would be called 'cypherWanks' within 10 seconds of the announcement, Julf certainly would. Obviously Arthur Chandler is An ARM of the MEDUSA :) G -- Personal mail to gtoal(a)gtoal.com (I read it in the evenings) Business mail to gtoal(a)an-teallach.com (Be careful with the spelling!) Faxes to An Teallach Limited: +44 31 662 4678 Voice: +44 31 668 1550 x212

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Re: New anonymous list member (?)
by an48848＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike McNally : m5(a)tivoli.com writes: > Is it an indication that LD's persistance has paid off that my first > reaction to the above (probably innocent) query was to egrep through > my archived cypherpunks stuff to see whether LD has ever misspelled > "familiar"? (He hasn't, as far as I can tell...) > Sigh. wELL, leT ME just SaY this. I intonenTonally misSpell and Change TYPEING StylES WHEN i wanT tO BE ANon. It MAkes THiNGs thaT mUch more DIFfiCulT. I HAVe a UtiliTY that DOEs thIs for ME. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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NSA Insecure Remailers
by analyst＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---Some stuff deleted, basically my concern that through traffic analysis of backbone internet traffic, at least the NSA can penetrate the security of anonymous remailers---- >probably only the NSA and some defense agency we haven't >yet heard of are actually performing this analysis right now. But >given the declining price of storage media, even saving everything on >magnetic media and paying $1000/gig, it only costs about US$8.7 million >to keep a year's worth of traffic headers around (media cost). > >So what? #So what indeed. # #Why oh why do we waste so much time seeking systems that are #mathematically unbreakable. You don't need mathematically unbreakable #systems to have a free market on the nets. # #It costs a minimum of $50K to start a federal criminal prosecution (that #is if the perp is inside the US). This means that the feds can only #afford a few tens of thousands a year. When you add incarceration costs #it quickly becomes very difficult. This being the case, they are #dependent on your obedience for law enforcement success. Like any #predator, the government must gain more energy from the kill than it #expends on the hunt. Otherwise it weakens and dies. All I was trying to point out with my post is what I saw as a flaw in my previous understanding of the depth of the security provided by anonymous remailers. There is a difference between relying on the mathematics of strong crypto to protect you from government spooks and prying bureacrats-- and relying on one's belief that- although one's security has been compromised, it will be too expensive or otherwise difficult for the government to use this information against you. It seems to me that anonymous remailers, despite my initial assumptions that they were cryptographically strong, are probably compromised by the ability of the NSA to monitor Internet backbone traffic, a hypothesis I would love to see disproved. Additionally, my understanding of the nature of the packet data that passes over the Internet backbones is weak; someone posted the other day that they felt the government would soon require that all data passing over the nets be addressed and labeled, enabling the Feds to monitor it--it is my understanding of networking that that day is here *now*. I want unbreakable security, untraceable communication and unforgeable digital cash--ALL of it mathematically guaranteed and none of it compromisable by some underpaid bureacrat who might decide to make a little money off of ME in his spare time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benjamin McLemore analyst(a)netcom.com --

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Help the NII (if you want to)
by Alan (Miburi-san) Wexelblat 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1993 13:56:09 -0500 (EST) From: richard chimera - 522.1 <carm(a)kong.gsfc.nasa.gov> To: hcil(a)cs.umd.edu, hcidc(a)cs.umd.edu, hciumd(a)cs.umd.edu, dis(a)umdd.umd.edu Subject: Help the NII (Natl Info Infrastructure) Article 12722 of comp.software-eng: Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,misc.int-property,misc.legal.computing Path: kong.gsfc.nasa.gov!cs.umd.edu!news.umbc.edu!eff!news.kei.com!eddie.mit.edu!news.mtholyoke.edu!world!srctran From: srctran(a)world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian) Subject: Patent Office seeks advice on information superhighway Message-ID: <CH7zIL.MA5(a)world.std.com> Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1993 20:56:45 GMT Lines: 41 Xref: kong.gsfc.nasa.gov comp.software-eng:12722 misc.int-property:2259 misc.legal.computing:4688 The Patent Office is soliciting suggestions and comments on intellectual property aspects of the National Information Infrastructure. (They had a public meeting on the 18th at the Patent Office). Some of the questions they seek comments on are: Is the existing copyright law adequate to protect the rights of those who will make their available via the NII? What statutory or regulatory changes, if any, should be made? Should standards or other requirements be adopted for the labeling or encoding of works available via the NII so that copyright owners and users can identify copyrighted works and the conditions for their use? Should a licensing system be developed for certain uses of any or all works available via the NII? If so, should there be a single type of licensing or should the NII support a multiplicity of licensing systems? What types of education programs might be developed to increase public awareness of intellectual property laws, their importance to the economy, and their application to works available via the NII. (More information can be found in the November 9, 1993 Official Gazette). You can send your ideas to the Patent Office up until December 10, 1993. Address your comments to: Terri Southwick c/o Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks US Patent and Trademark Office Box 4 Washington, DC 20231 fax: 703-305-8885 tel: 703-305-9300 Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service -- ************************************************************************** Greg Aharonian srctran(a)world.std.com Source Translation & Optimization 617-489-3727 P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178

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HP48 Crypto
by Dan McGuirk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm interested in finding out what cryptographic tools, if any, are available for the HP48 calculator. I think someone mentioned that they were developing a challenge authentication system using the HP48 to ameliorate the problem of sending cleartext passwords during telnet sessions. Is this project still being worked on? Also, are there any multiple-precision math libraries available for the 48? Thanks for any information...

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signing nyms
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Under the conditions Deadbeat described (long tradition of posting from anon-server with pgp signatures/keys, keys on the key server, etc., I might be willing to sign such a key. I wouldn't use my regular key to do it - I'd create one or more nym-signing keys, so people could tell that I know I'm signing a nym's key and it's less reliable than signing a physically-known person's key. To do it right, though, I'd have to have been saving keys for a while from that nym, since it's really hard to tell if a set of postings have really been from the same source, or if it's just a recent impersonation. I'd certainly need to send mail to the nym through the anon-server. I'd be a lot more comfortable, though, with a signature from the anon-server runners, since they at least know the real-side email address, and since they could also do something like automatic collection of signatures. It's still tappable, though, unless the anon-server only accepts encrypted mail on the non-anonymous side. Bill

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CP-austin addresses?
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know the subscribe addresses for the Austin cypherpunks lists? -- Stanton McCandlish mech(a)eff.org 1:109/1103 EFF Online Activist & SysOp O P E N P L A T F O R M C R Y P T O P O L I C Y O N L I N E R I G H T S N E T W O R K I N G V I R T U A L C U L T U R E I N F O : M E M B E R S H I P @ E F F . O R G

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No Subject
by archie＠phantom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Help with encryption needed Can someone point me towards a set of C functions along the lines of: char *encrypt (cleartext_string, key); char *decrypt (encrypted_string, key); Where encrypt would return the encrypted string and decrypt would return the decrypted string. The stronger the encryption the better. Thanks.

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mix
by jon＠balder.us.dell.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anybody have source code to Istvan Mohos "mix" programs? I have the binaries but I lost the source a while back. It's kind-of a fun encryption algorithm because it's a transposition cypher rather than a stream cypher -- the result set contains exactly the same characters as the input set. Jon

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Re: Two items from recent magazines...
by pierre＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Jonathan Corbet <corbet(a)stout.atd.ucar.EDU> > > > W.R.T. using "fake" inventors. It's illegal to file a patent application > > without the true original inventor's name on it. If it can be proven that a > > company did this, it is liable for treble damages and the lawyer who filed > > the application can be disbarred. > > It's not the inventors who are faked, according to the article -- it's the > companies for whom they work. > [...] so as to make it hard for their > competitors to see what they are up to. Just a remark, that for large companies (I'd call them "groups"), the groups are formed of so many differently named entities that even insiders can't figure it out. This is because these large (usually older) groups have formed by buying and selling other companies, branches and divisions of companies. After each purchase, pride, economic interests (brand names), or traditions are such that the old names survive, or are munged into new names. I would expect it is very rare when an old name simply disappears. So, what was a company name, may become a division name in two different holdings that bought each half of the company. And if that same name was used for, say light bulbs and TVs before the split, then after the split, it is still used for the same items. Except they now come from two different companies... still following? The result is that even insiders in large groups have a hard time figuring out which part of the company is working on what, or even which brand names are produced by your company. Let alone which patent belongs to whom, or has been licensed from whom, or which non-disclosure agreements exist between which project and which project. All this simply to point out that at least some of this "hide and seek" game in patents is probably not even voluntary. From working for one of these groups (in several differently named "entities"), I think an external company could actually have an easier time piecing it all together than any insider (including at the top levels). (Thus a business idea, (although I think that is an extropians thread :-) A business that makes contacts with individual projects of a large "holding" or multinational, setting up non-disclosure agreements with each, then constantly cross references this data to put in contact groups of the holding that could benefit from knowing about each other. Individual projects (and their hierarchy) usually do not have enough short term incentive to devote much man-power to keeping in touch) Pierre. pierre(a)shell.portal.com

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