December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Forged messages part of "Operation"?
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"greg(a)ideath.goldenbear.com" writes: >Someone recently posted a forged message with my name on it to the >Cypherwonks list. In the future, all of my messages will be sent >PGP-clearsigned. Please ignore (or mail to me) any messages which >aren't - particularly if they appear to support Detweiler and his >totalitarian schemes, which this particular forgery did. > >The header of the message in question was a byte-for-byte duplicate >of an authentic header from a message I did write; apparently our >favorite cyberspatial lunatic has moved beyond just signature blocks. This message forging may be about to become a major problem. In his last post "Current Operational Status", S.Boxx spewed forth: (I hereby flame myself for quoting Detweiler - so don't bother) ---snip---snip--- Operation Octopus - this is the multiple pseudonym and agent project. We plan to have at least a dozen (hence the name) posting simultaneously to many different lists and the newsgroups. But the overhead on this is very significant, and it will take us awhile to gear up and build the infrastructure to the point we can `engage'. You have seen more of these agents lately `out there', but our coordinated attack will take some more planning. Operation Duplicity - extremely top secret. Let's just say, you will be seeing double, and triple, and quadruple, and ... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ---snip---snip--- If he starts flooding the newsgroups, what can we do about it? I'd watch for forged messages and posts, and if you don't have a key on the servers, check to make sure a forged one isn't posted. --- Mike

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Twelve year flashback to Admiral Bobby Inman
by gnu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

San Jose Mercury, January 8, 1982 (EIGHTY-two), page F-1 CIA boss assail high-tech leaks [The Washington Post] WASHINGTON -- Adm. Bobby R. Inman, deputy director of the CIA, Thursday predicted a "tidal wave" of public outrage and laws restricting scientists if scientists do not agree to voluntary "review" of their work by intelligence agencies. Scientists had better cooperate in making some of their papers secret voluntarily, or they will face tough laws restricting them, Inman told a panel session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Scientists should beware that there are congressional investigations now in progress that will point up the "thoroughly documented" fact that in the buildup of Soviet defense capability "the bulk of new technology which they have employed has been acquired from the United States," Inman said. When the details of this "hemorrhage of the country's technology" come out in public, Inman said, there will be a "tidal wave" of public outrage that will lead to laws restricting the publication of scientific work that the government might consider "sensitive" on national security grounds. "The tides are moving, and moving fast, toward legislated solutions that in fact are likely to be much more restrictive, not less restrictive, than the voluntary" censorship system he has suggested, Inman said. When he was director of the National Security Agency, the codemaking and breaking intelligence agency, Inman led an effort to get prominent private researchers to submit their papers on the mathematical theory of codes to his agency before publication. The NSA also briefly put secrecy orders on some of the private code research in recent years. But in April 1981, cooperation among the National Science Foundation, the American Council on Education and the NSA resulted in a voluntary review system under which scientists can submit their papers to NSA for review and receive a judgement on whether they possibly contain information damaging to the national security. Since then, about 25 papers have been reviewed and none had problems, according to Daniel Schwartz, until recently chief counsel for the NSA. "There are other fields where publication of certain information could affect the national security in a harmful way," Inman said. These include the fields of "computer hardware and software, other electronic gear and techniques, lasers, crop projections and manufacturing procedures." ------- The above news article ran twelve years ago. His tidal wave of crypto censorship didn't appear; instead, a wave of support for free expression ran through the scientific and library community. About half of the technical societies amended their by-laws to disallow closed or censored meetings or conferences. I wonder if Admiral Inman feels the same way today, as he faces Senate confirmation hearings as Secretary of Defense. Will we be seeing the same sort of proposals? How does he feel about export controls on cryptographic software? What should be done with the Skipjack program? If you wonder too, please ask your Senator to ask him about it. Seriously. John

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Re: Forged messages part of "Operation"?
by plaz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Mike Ingle says: >> If he starts flooding the newsgroups, what can we do about it? > >If he starts forging mail from other people, he's committing a crime >and we can get his system administrators to pull his account. > >Perry Any plans or tips on how to prove it in court? _______________________________________________________________________ Geoff Dale -- Cypherpunk/Extropian -- Plastic Beethoven AnarchyPPL - Anarch (Adjudicator) ExI-Freegate Virtual Branch Head plaz(a)netcom.com 66 Pyramid Plaza plaz(a)io.com Freegate, Metaverse(a)io.com 7777 "Subvert the domination paradigm!"

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

someone keeps sending me amusing messages encrypted with key ID 548D21. either you have failed to find my proper key ID or have succeeded in your practical joke.

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Re: Crypto not being used where needed
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Although I sincerely agree that the data should be encrypted, is it really that easy to intercept cellular phone calls? I thought you had to go to considerably more effort than programming a scanner to pick up these transmissions - I don't know much about cellular phones, but I thought they hopped frequencies and so forth such that it was a real pain to listen in. Yes, it's really easy to monitor cellular calls. They only hop frequencies when you move between cells -- and most cop calls will be within a single cell, simply because most of the queries happen *after* they've pulled someone over. Things will change somewhat with the so-called personal communicators, since they'll use much smaller cells -- but the basic problem is still the same.

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Re: Crypto not being used where needed
by peter honeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

it is trivial to monitor cellular calls. until recently, bearcat scanners included this capability. and i have seen it done on an oki 900 handheld. peter

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IIA, more info
by szabo＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This just in: -------->snip<-------- The message below was written by a friend who works at UUNET: --- begin included message --- Actually, we set them up. They appear to be real. Note, this is not an endorsement!!! I have no dealings with iia.org directly. I know only what I've heard around the office. They dropped big bucks for a router just for this service. The guy who sent that message appears to have been looking in all the wrong places. Military hosts tables are infamous for their incompleteness and for their tremendous lag time. Whois does indeed have this site's info, and has since December! The sender probably looked in the DDN whois DB which is only for MILITARY SITES. The correct site to check for everything else is rs.internic.net. [ken@rodan(tcsh):107] whois iia.org International Internet Association (IIA2-DOM) 30 South First Avenue Highland Park, NJ 08904 Domain Name: IIA.ORG Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Bochicchio, Charleen (CB45) char(a)JOY.ICM.COM +1 202 387 5445 (FAX) +1 202 387 5446 Record last updated on 01-Dec-93. Domain servers in listed order: MARY.IIA.ORG 198.4.75.9 NS.UU.NET 137.39.1.3 The InterNIC Registration Services Host ONLY contains Internet Information (Networks, ASN's, Domains, and POC's). Please use the whois server at nic.ddn.mil for MILNET Information. Someone in our office did send for info and did receive it, though I do not know how long it took for them to reply. Ken Dahl ken(a)uunet.uu.net UUNET Technologies, Inc. ...!uunet!ken --- end included message --- BTW, I faxed the company an account request back in October (and again in November) but have yet to hear anything from them. Peter Johansson peter(a)cs.umbc.edu -------->unsnip<-------- Your guess is as good as mine! d3 `-{> ---- +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Pics OnLine MultiUser System 609/753-2540 HST 609/753-2605 (V32bis) | | Massive File Collection - Over 45,000 Files OnLine - 250 Newsgroups | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: Forged messages part of "Operation"?
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Geoff Dale asks regarding forged signatures and id's: >Any plans or tips on how to prove it in court? Several of us on the list discussed this issue a month or so ago, covering everything from computer-based text analysis tools which derive the probability that two writing samples (one from a known author and one from an anonymous author) were produced by the same individual. Another list member indicated in private email that sentence length and grammar were also fairly invariant, so you could use those measures to build a case. If you'd like more information, I'd be happy to send you some of the list traffic from that discussion. The real question, as Tim May and others have pointed out numerous times, is whether involving the heat is the best way to take care of problems. If we can't learn to effectively stamp out blatant abuses ourselves, then there's no hope for evolving the net.community. I personally think Julf took a much-needed step in shutting down an12070, though there's still the matter of Colorado State. -- Best regards, Curtis D. Frye - Economic Analyst, Software Alchemist, Aspiring Author cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org "If you think I speak for MITRE, I'll tell you how much they pay me and make you feel foolish."

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Internet billing scam?
by szabo＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DNS indicated that this organization does in fact have one site, mary.iia.org. Even so, this is not enough for me to trust them with my credit line. This conclusion may apply to many other, more legitimate-looking operations that spring up in the near future. This demonstrates that privacy is only one reason to go to digital cash; the biggest reason may be the massive fraud commonplace in the current electronic system. Online billing is moving towards this incredibly insecure system where our $multi-thousand credit lines are exposed by giving out their short "keys" to numerous unknown entities. Nick Szabo szabo(a)netcom.com Forwarded from COMMUNET: Date: Tue, 4 Jan 1994 16:18:44 -0500 >From: Scott A. Ward 703-614-4719 <wards(a)AMOMEGA.ACQ.OSD.MIL> To: Multiple recipients of list COMMUNET Subject: Warning: International Internet Association A company calling itself the International Internet Association, and billing itself as "the largest non-profit provider of free Internet access in the world" has started advertizing in the Washington, D.C. area, and offering free Internet accounts to individuals who will FAX them, among other things, a credit card number. As an active member of the Member Council of the National Capital Area Public Access Network (CapAccess), I wanted to find more about this organization that supposedly has offices NOT THREE BLOCKS FROM CAPACCESS. Here's the result of my search for the IIA. 1. Their address, listed as "Suite 852 - 202 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W. Washington D.C. 20006", is actually a post office box at Mailboxes, Etc. 2. The company lists no incorporation, trademark or service-mark licenses. 3. They claim your E-mail address would be <userid>@iia.org. However: a. No iia.org is listed in the hq.af.mil hosts table b. No iia.org is listed in the acq.osd.mil hosts table c. No iia.org is listed is the INTERNIC 'whois' database d. No iia.org is listed using the INTERNIC 'netfind' Internet lookup In other words, IIA.ORG does NOT, at this time, exist. 4. Although they apologize profusely in the application, they state that "Without receiving a credit card number, the IIA _cannot_ process an account." 5. Although I have left a message on their voice-mail system, I have received no response from them. (they also apologize in the voice mail that, due to demand, they are operating at a 3-week backlog for applications.) I cannot judge an organization in advance. However, I do think it highly suspicious that, to use their propaganda, "The International Internet Association is able to make this service available through generous private donations, and the extraordinary dedication of its membership." I can say that I am not convinced this organization exists, and highly discourage any Internet user from sending information until you make certain that the IIA is real. =======================================================================

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Filing Income Taxes Electronically
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded from alt.internet.services: I've been involved with electronic tax filing (EFT) for six years now. I develope and sell a tax filing package which allows you to basically enter the data from a completed return and transfer directly to the IRS or to one of our transmission sites. This is a tax filing not a tax prep program. Our main market is tax preparers who buy the program and transmitt direct to the IRS, tax preparers who register with us and transmitt returns to us to transmitt to the IRS and tax preparers who fax us returns and we enter the data and transmitt. As for specifics, yes you need a bell 208 modem to send directly to the IRS. The IRS has several transmission sites all over the country which processes everybody`s returns. And they have a set schedule of when a refund is sent. Basically returns are processed every Tuesday night. What this means is that if your return has been sent and passed the IRS acceptanced tests by Monday night the IRS will process it Tuesday and if you do direct deposit it will be in your bank account in 10 days, if you have it mailed it will be mailed in 12 days. So if you do file electronicaly DO NOT get a Refund Anticipated Loan (RAL) unless your electricity is already off :-). A RAL will get you your money in 3 to 5 days at pre-fixed fee which averages to be about a 150% loan interest rate for a at most 7 day loan. If your interested in doing EFT from your home IBM or clone let me know. We also work with non tax preparers who have registered with the IRS to do electronic filing and have a electronic filing indentification number (EFIN). The IRS can give you these rather quickly, they do a background check to see if you do not owe back taxes or have been convicted of any felonies and if that works you get a EFIN. Once you have an EFIN we can work with you to set you up for EFT. Basically if you transmitt to us we give you the software and charge you per return. What you do is find your clients ( and they are your clients you must see then personally and have them sign a EFT form which gets sent with their W2s to the IRS by you ) enter there returns with our software and send to one of our transmission sites. If interested or any other questions relating to EFT let me know. Dave Hotlosz no sig never had one never needed one, which means I`ll have to get one ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about this anonymous remail service, send mail to remail(a)tamsun.tamu.edu with the word "remail help" as the only words in the subject field.

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