December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Remailers: The Next Generation
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perhaps the following nested headers might be more cost-effective to quantizing message length: Pad-Me-By: 3289 (Add 3289 random bytes to the end of this message) Truncate-Me-To: 1433 (Remove all but the first 1433 byte of this message.) The message would then change size as it traveled thru the mixes.

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Mad Dog
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) >We may succeed in getting Detweiler blocked at >Colorado State--not that I am advocating this-- `succeed'? Hey Mr. Rotten Big Mac, call off your mad dog pit bull P.Metzger from attacking the PostMan. Get a new leash for him. What do you feed him to make him so vicious, anyway? And it *really* pisses me off that you would send *tentaclegrams* from e.g. szabo(a)netcom.com to the PostMan to get my account yanked. Imagine that! Nonexistent people attempting to censor someone. The nobodies attempt to make me a nobody. The phantoms attempt to kill me. ``What a strange place the net is becoming.'' -- Medusa I've had this account for 4 1/2 years, and I have put out more than half a dozen FAQs from here and answered thousands of inquiries about them. Should I forward all future requests to *your* address when you succeed in getting my account yanked? Would you like me to *retract* all the FAQs I have ever written, because they indicate my address as a contact point? Would you like to compose the form letter that explains to everyone that L.Detweiler has been Censored in Cyberspace? Or maybe you would like to take over the handling of the SQUISH contest too, instead of forwarding all that crap to *me*. Go to hell, Medusa.

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A Message to my Enemies
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, Enemies. You have succeeded in scaring my postmaster with your ranting and raving about `harassment', `anonymous death threats', and `libel' from anonymous posts. You have come very close to convincing him that somewhere in ASCII text coming out of remailers and my own address (supposedly there is some correspondence) lies illegal strings, and that I am allowed to post as long as what I say is `true'. I don't understand why the cypherpunks have suddenly become so fascinated by these subjects, regarding the subversive uses of remailers. When I brought them up long ago, about a year ago, when I first joined the list, no one was interested. I talked about restricting the abuse of remailers, so that the antisocial and psychopathic uses could be minimized or even prevented. Obviously, in designing a remailer, the subject of `what to pass through' is a rather obvious consideration, that operators have mostly wholly neglected. When are you going to codify your Cypherpunk Code of Ethics, and explain what constitutes a death threat, a libelous message? Or is it just that the rule is, if I type it it is a violent death threat, and libelous harassment, but if anyone else writes it there is nothing wrong? Will the rules be devised at the next Cypherpunk Meeting? Will Mr. May or Mr. Hughes (list moderator) grace us with some eloquent proclamation on the subject? Will Mr. Gilmore favor you with some enlightened musings on the topics? When are you going to police your remailers to keep that which you call `illegal' from passing through them? You weren't interested in `ethics' when I proposed them many times, but I am certainly delighted with your newfound piousness. * * * But I am not just handing you the standard L.D. rant about Cypherpunk Hypocrisy above (even I am growing tired and bored of pointing out your stellar and freakish hypocrisies out so often and so easily). I am writing to tell you some GOOD NEWS (for you): last week you succeeded spectacularly in attempting to censor me at my current account. My account is still hanging by a thread. Mr. Dempsey told me he would allow me to keep it under the constraint that the `noise stopped' from his mailbox. But this is obviously something I cannot guarantee (I didn't really have any other choice at the time than to say that I would do my best), and in fact you have the power to yell some more and perhaps cast the `final stone' that kills me `here'. But I tell you, tear down this Temple and in three days I shall raise it up. Why are you so maniacally attempting to get me to lose my favorite account? Do you think it will prevent me from posting? From using your remailers? From continuing my crusade? Aren't you being just a tad bit naive beyond your usual hypocrisy? Isn't that you *religion*, that if someone wants to smuggle something in Cyberspace, there is no stopping them? Would you like me to get a netcom account? or several? or do I already have several? Would that make your day? Don't you think that losing my account of 4 1/2 years would really kind of piss me off, way beyond my current wrath? That things might get *really* ugly? So, you have a choice. Continue to harass my postmaster, and perhaps even succeed in censoring me from my native address, the very first Death caused by Cypherpunk Hypocrisy, and *really* piss me off. Or, leave Mr. Dempsey alone, and figure out more proactive ways of dealing with whatever is troubling you. Ironically, I have suggested many myself, over my lifetime on the list and recently. The choice is up to you.

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Archiving mail-lists...
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Folks, I am bringing up a inet node in my house in the near future (would have been this week but software bugs were discovered) and over the next year I am going to add a r/w CD (Tahiti to be specific). This drive holds either ISO- 9660 or 1G formats. The plan at this point is to archive the usenet newsgroups (all 4k+ of them) and then once a year make like 500 regular CD copies and resell them. I am looking at adding mail-lists of general or unique intererst, because of this I am strongly looking at adding the cypherpunks list. I would be interested in a discussion on the mail-list on this issue. Please refrain from sending personal mail. In particular do you think such a archive without every members permission is un-ethical? Would a archivist necessarily need the permission of the mail-list sponser? Thanks for any opinions or insight.

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Re: PGP docs - where?
by consensus＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:40 PM 1/22/94 -0800, Jeremy Smith wrote: >The zipfile pgp23docA.zip at aql.gatech.edu is corrupted. I was >wondering if anybody knew of another site where I might find a working copy? > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Jeremy Smith -*jersmit(a)eis.calstate.edu*- > Please leave your name and number after the seizure. > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- It may not actually be corrupted. I noticed that when I logged on manually that the files were all compressed with gzip, an gnu zip-like compression utility. However, when I used Mosaic to download the files Mosaic showed them without the gzip identifier, and downloaded them thinking they were ordinary files. However, they were in fact compressed with gzip. I suspect that they have some kind of software that spoofs some ftp clients into giving ftp'ing an uncompressed version, but the spoofing does not work with other ftp clients so you get gzip versions. ..Christopher Allen ..Consensus Develoment Corporation ..4104-24th Street #419 ..San Francisco, CA 94114-3615 ..(415) 647-6384 Fax ..(415) 647-6383 Voice ..email: consensus(a)netcom.com ..mosaic frontpage: .."ftp://netcom.com/pub/consensus/www/ConsensusFrontDoor.html"

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Mr. Remailer Operator Responds
by L. Detweiler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Yes, we have been thinking about this sort of thing (protecting against >sabotage/abuse/etc). Unfortunately, we haven't come up with any brilliant >ideas. I'm attaching a post of only a few days ago that addresses the >future of the cpunks remailers. I think it answers a lot of your points. It is interesting, thank you. I really drool over anything by the Big Macs. >You still didn't answer my point about other modes. Is the postman >responsible when a threatening letter arrives in your mailbox? No. Is AT&T >responsible when a bomb threat is 'anonymously' phoned in? No. If the >phone company did not exist, perhaps terrorists would have to drop >threats in person. Does this mean that the phone company should be >outlawed, because it allows abuse that would otherwise not exist? I will answer your questions. YES. The postmaster and the mail office and AT&T are RESPONSIBLE for PROVIDING ALL INFORMATION THAT EXISTS when some illegal communication has been detected. That is, if someone has been sending violent death threats, these communications services are RESPONSIBLE TO PROVIDE INFORMATION. Sometimes no such information exists because of the *inherent infrastructure*. E.g. with mail, it is possible to send an anonymous letter. E.g. with phones, it is possible to make anonymous telephone calls. Instances of my claims are common. The post office may be contacted by law enforcement officials attempting to track the origination of mail. The telephone company may be subpoenaed to provide information on calls. >No, because the functionality of the phone system is such that its >plusses are greater than the abuses it makes possible. Such is the case >with the remailer system. You completely neglect the subject of *design*. Whoever *designs* these systems *chooses* whether traceability is inherent to the design. And a sense of morality and ethics is central to this decision. A communication system is not simply something that Exists and must be Tolerated. A system is something that is *designed* to meet *criteria*. And sometimes the criteria is, how do we prevent *illegal* uses? Mr. Remailer Operator, YOU CHOOSE. are there ILLEGAL USES OF THE REMAILERS, like HARASSMENT, BOXXIAN DEATH THREATS, LIBEL? or are there NONE? Tell me what world I live in. It is so confusing for me when you take contradictory positions. Cypherpunks, a year ago, and for many months, you essentially said to me: there is nothing illegal in ASCII text alone. But you have screeched and shrieked at me and my postmaster and anyone who will listen to you that anything *I* write is a violent death threat, harassment, a libelous post that is ILLEGAL and that I should be CENSORED. one person told my postmaster that it was ok for me to post as long as what I said was TRUE. What if I say, cyberanarchists are slime? Is that true? Is that Satire? Are the Cypherpunks the new Truth Police. Oh, what ridiculously funny hypocrites you all are. imagine that a certain string of letters is illegal! That it should cause the author to be *censored*! *even* if he used a remailer! What a shocking concept! I am deliberately evading the question of whether libel, death threats, etc. *exist*, that is, *illegal* postings. Our legal system certainly seems to think so-- death threats are illegal in the postal mail. Surprise! How many of you knew that? And recall that there are *limits* on free speech-- you cannot advocate violence, or attempt to instigate a riot legally, for example. Could someone be so kind as to post the law? I think cyberspace will change some of these boundaries in a significant way. But as long as You, Cypherpunks, say that Libel and Death Threats and Illegal ASCII Text Exists and should be Banned, I think I will believe you, because you do have some experiences in the area, and you seem to have started to grasp the consequences of your decisions, and even the idea that your *decisions* have *consequences*.

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Re: Remailers: The Next Generation
by jerry＠terminus.dell.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <2hq9sv$cdq(a)uudell.us.dell.com> you write: >From: jim(a)bilbo.toad.com (Jim Miller) >Message-Id: <9401212232.AA06926(a)bilbo.suite.com> >Date: Fri, 21 Jan 94 16:32:13 -0600 >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Re: Remailers: The Next Generation > >Since the remailer system works better (harder to track messages) as >message traffic increases, then perhaps the remailers should circulate >bogus messages around the mix in order to sustain a minimum level of >traffic. As more real messages enter the system, the remailers would >decrease the number of bogus messages they issue. > >How would a remailer tell the difference between a real message and a >bogus message from another remailer? It wouldn't, but that's ok. All a >given remailer cares about is the number of messages coming in versus the >number messages that constitute a "good" level of traffic. If a remailer >isn't seeing enough traffic, it would issue some bogus messages that would >pass through a random set of remailers and eventually come back to itself. Hm... actually what one could do is set up a remail/DC-Net combination, maybe this has already been suggested in a different form, but first you set up your anon-net, as a virtual ring topology between your remailing sites. Alice wants to send an annonymous message to Bob, such that Bob can reply back without revealing Alice's email address. First off, Alice public key encrypts a message to remailer site "Zeta". This message contains an encrypted message block to remailer "Iota". This message block contains a reply header to remailer "Epsilon". Zeta receives a message encypted to it. It decrypts the messages picks a new remailer, at some random distance (n/2 + R) hops away. In this case remailer "Gamma". Zeta encrypts the message to "Gamma" and inserts it into the anon-net ring. When Gamma receives the message, it takes it, decrypts it, puts the plain message(still encypted by Alice to "Iota") back in. Iota gets the message, re-addresses it to yet another remailer chosen at random, "Delta". Iota actually builds the final outgoing mail message and that is what is encrypted to "Delta". Delta takes the message and mails it to Bob. (Alice of course first encrypted the message with Bob's public key). Bob can of course reply to the message by prepending the "Epsilon" message block to his reply, and using encrypting remailing to some remailer, "Sigma", Bob can reply to Alice's message, protecting Alice's identity in several different ways. Because of the remailer ring using a random number of hops, i.e. the distance (N/2 + R, where R is between N/2 - 1 and 1), message latency is random. Because each message is ecrypted to the upstream neighbor, direct monitoring is foiled. By using a fixed size message, say ~100K, and each site padding any data to the fixed size and including that in the encrypted data sent to the upstream site, an outside agency can't monitor packet size to determine anything. No even if a spy is in the net, say a remailer at "nsa.gov" any messages passing through are protected by the difficulty of the encryption. The site will know which remailer sites on the ring are being sent to, but because the the random remailer step in the middle it can't even tell if the message is incoming or outgoing. Two sites i.e. "fbi.gov" and nsa.gov, could work together, but still not getting useful information most of the time. Thus, as long as the entrance port to the ring is not a spy no one knows you are sending anonymous mail. And assuming the exit port is not a spy no one knows Bob is receiving aonymous mail. Just by putting a few of these ring nodes in places like Finland, or even on commerical backbone sites(Alternet, Sprintlink, etc) makes government monitoring more difficult(or even non government monitoring). I think this can actually be improved on by hiding the internal ring identities, but my brain is not working as well as I would like and I can't find any detailed info on the "dining sterlight net". Actually I think something like this might work well at the socket level to give a higher bandwidth to directly connected sites, using mail and mail agents to simulate a token ring network, is not the most efficient usage of bandwidth, particularly with things like message length restrictions. I've been wanting to set up and play with remailer's but, my unix host doesn't want to allow |'s in .forward's or the sendmail aliases. (I'm assuming this is a feature due to the sendmail bug from several months ago, I haven't had time to learn sendmail or ask our resident sendmail expert how to fix it). -- Jeremy Porter ----------------- Systems Enginneering ---- Dell Computer Corp. --- jerry(a)terminus.us.dell.com -------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Support your Second Amendment rights to encryption technology.

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More on remailers
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wrote an automated script to ping the following remailers: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com catalyst(a)netcom.com elee7h5(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu remailer(a)chaos.bsu.edu hh(a)cicada.berkeley.edu hh(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu ebrandt(a)jarthur.claremont.edu remailer(a)merde.dis.org Results were a bit faster with the automated program than before: Here they are: Test #1: Sat, 29 Jan 1994 12:52:58 -0500 (EST) nobody(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu 12:53:56 (+0:00:58) catalyst-remailer(a)netcom.com 12:53:57 (+0:00:59) nobody(a)shell.portal.com 12:53:57 (+0:00:59) nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu 12:53:59 (+0:01:01) remailer-admin(a)chaos.bsu.edu 12:54:06 (+0:01:07) nobody(a)cicada.berkeley.edu 12:54:09 (+0:01:11) nobody(a)soda.berkeley.edu 12:54:13 (+0:01:15) nobody(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu 12:54:16 (+0:01:18) remailer(a)dis.org 13:05:35 (+0:12:37) nobody@eli-remailer 15:32:51 (+2:39:53) Test #2: Sat, 29 Jan 1994 17:18:36 -0500 (EST) nobody(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu 17:19:04 (+0:00:28) catalyst-remailer(a)netcom.com 17:19:06 (+0:00:30) nobody(a)shell.portal.com 17:19:07 (+0:00:31) nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu 17:19:19 (+0:00:43) remailer-admin(a)chaos.bsu.edu 17:19:19 (+0:00:43) nobody(a)cicada.berkeley.edu 17:19:24 (+0:00:48) nobody(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu 17:19:31 (+0:00:55) nobody(a)soda.berkeley.edu 17:19:42 (+0:01:06) remailer(a)dis.org 17:20:43 (+0:02:07) nobody@eli-remailer 17:49:23 (+0:30:47) Results seem to vary depending on current network load and other factors, but some remailers do seem to be generally faster than others. I didn't test elee7h5(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu since it always batches its messages and sends them out at midnite. remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com only accepts encrypted mail so I'll have to try that one seperately sometime. Note: hal(a)alumni.cco.caltech.edu forwards to hfinney(a)shell.portal.com Also, 00x(a)uclink.berkeley.edu forwards to hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu This makes these addresses a little slower, but I guess it helps foil traffic analysis a bit... Are there only 12 cypherpunk remailers plus two forwarding addresses? There were over twenty at one time... Please let me know if I've missed any.

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Re: soda.berkeley.edu back.
by catalyst-remailer＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hollander stated some reasonable concerns about my using the Cypherpunk remailers.... I have every intention of trying to be as responsible about this as I can be. I may sound cocky about it at times but I am doing that on purpose to try to get some attention to my questions. I am genuinely interested in which remailers can take some traffic. You all DID ask for more traffic. Here are some random thoughts. 1) Five 40K mails sent at in a row, maybe 3-5 sec. apart doesn't feel like I'm mail-bombing a remailer. Were these 400K I'd feel pretty guilty. If I'm feeling like testing limits, I might send 20 mails instead (to myself) but so far this hasn't caused even a glitch. Soda and cicada seemed to go down out of the blue, not in the middle of one of my tests. Soda just added a delay of an hour so that's not really "dead", but cicada did have a heart attack once and bounced a few mails before recovering. 2) I will never send this package of five mails (~18-46K each) to any mailing list unless I do it by sad mistake. I am receiving 6-12 or more messages a day with Subject "Bomb me!", so I wouldn't call this unsolicited. The only time a person will get the package without asking me personally for it is if they post to Usenet or this mailing list asking where to get info on PGP. If you are worried about this I could certainly switch to just sending a note for them to send me a "Bomb me!". 3) Before I send off a round in the morning (usually about 5-6 "Bomb me!"s), I send a small "Ping!" message to all the remailers on the list below to make sure they are working. 4) Here is a list of remailers that I am considering and my experience with them. I am personally only interested in fast ones (less than 1 hour delay). I have tagged a header onto each of my mails telling people NOT to reply to the remailer address and to try again the next day if one part doesn't get through. 1 hh(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu <-[Very fast.] 2 elee7h5(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu <-[Very fast.] 2 hfinney(a)shell.portal.com <-[Fast. Warning header.] 1 hh(a)cicada.berkeley.edu <-[Very fast, may die and bounce mail.] 1 hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu <-[Very fast, may add an hour.] ? catalyst(a)netcom.com <-[Fast. Warning header.] 2 ebrandt(a)jarthur.claremont.edu <-[Fast, often adds an hour.] ? nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu <-[Fast, but removes Subject header!] ? remailer(a)chaos.bsu.edu <-[Fast, but removes Subject header!] 1: Remailer accepts only plain text headers. 2: Remailer accepts both plain text and encrypted headers. 5) I am trying to get a perl script to output csh shell variables instead of printing to the screen. Help. I want to make the remailing route random, thus. Alan Barrett has just posted what I think is an answer to how I could do this. Maybe I should do the entire thing within perl? I'm not having much fun reading 'man perl'. 6) Question: should I or should I NOT chain each piece between two remailers. Will this increase the load? It is certainly what I've heard people dreaming about here. I have a mental block concerning what the effect on remailer load this would have. 7) I would appreciate, as would many, a short list of remailers and some specs about their qualities and an idea of who is running them, and how stable they have each been in the last year. catalyst(a)netcom.com seems durable, and yet I'd never heard of it till someone just mentioned it in this mailing list. Are soda and cicada indeed fragile (should I use them)? When they are up I seem to be able to use them without a problem. Why is jarthur sometimes very fast and other times adds an hour or more delay? -Xenon P.S. Remailer stablility is especially important when chaining remaliers, since bounced messages will never get back to you. I feel that a next generation of remailers should not just be concerned with security but with total internet-like e-mail reliability, as well an easy return address option so I can use them with more people. I think command-line interfaces are going bye bye fast, for those who will be the majority of e-mailers in the near future.

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Remailer Tearline Conventions
by anonymous＠extropia.wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Though this subject came up some months ago, I never noticed any final decision. Is there now an accepted tearline convention for the generic cypherpunks remailers? The mail handler here and at most of my other accounts automagically adds the host address and/or my address to all outgoing mail, which is...well..._counterproductive_ when sending mail to a remailer. The extropia remailer by accepting encrypted messages avoids this problem, but most of the other remailers seem to have no provisions for excluding extraneous text and address footers. Was there ever a "8<----(cut here)" arrangement agreed upon and incorporated into the remailers? Thanks.

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