December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: <no subject>
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: From: Anonymous <remailer-admin(a)chaos.bsu.edu> : > Nice four posts of noise toady PM. Drop everthing? How 'bout stick it : > on your ftp site and shut up about it? Dork. : > : Heh heh. : Suggestion: Read the "How To" document for the remailers before : trying something like this next time, Nikolaos Daniel Willmore. Xenon always was careless about that sort of stuff :-) I dunno why he bothers with anonymous remailers though, all those rants recently about people sitting on the source of MacPGP were *obviously* from Xenon - he doesn't even attempt to disguise his writing style... G PS I suggested it half in fun a couple of weeks back, but I'm now nearly certain that uni == tmp ... I'm also starting to suffer this really weird paranoid delusion that uni and tmp are both t.c.may - it would explain why tc never has time to post much, he's too busy being detweiler ;-) PPS While in paranoid mode, I thought I'd mention that I've noticed some of Detweiler's mannerisms emanating from email in New Delhi of all places. Weird. I think I must be cracking up.

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thanks
by David C. Taylor 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks for all the replies on Dispersed DES - a bit wiser now, I have decided to junk that version of the idea (seeing as CBC probably provides a great deal more protection with seemingly much lower security cost). David C. Taylor

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Re: procmail
by Martin Janzen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tim werner <werner(a)mc.ab.com> writes: >> With procmail, you can associate arbitrary actions with a match, so no >> it would not have to be silent. > >Will anyone who has procmail working please send me an example of how you >use it? I am totally confused. OK. First -- just checking -- I assume you're running some version of UNIX. I'm using HP-UX 9.03 on an HP 9000 workstation, but everything should work pretty much the same on other systems. First, you have to tell the mail system that you want your mail to be filtered through the procmail program. You do this by creating a one-line file called ".forward" in your home directory: "| IFS=' '; /usr/local/bin/procmail -p" The quotes are necessary. Replace /usr/local/bin with the name of the directory in which you've installed the procmail program. Do a "chmod 644 .forward" to make sure that your mail software can read this file. Now you can create a ".procmailrc" file in your which tells procmail how to filter your mail. Here are some excerpts from mine: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # ~/.procmailrc # # Configuration file for procmail mail processing software # # General environment variables (You may not need all of these; see the # procmail(1) man page to find out what each one means. Of course, the # HOME variable should be set to your own home directory.) # HOME= /Home/janzen PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/bin:$HOME/bin MAILDIR = $HOME/Mail LOGFILE = $HOME/.procmaillog LOCKFILE = $HOME/Mail/procmail TMP= $HOME/tmp SENDMAIL= /usr/lib/sendmail TMPFILE= $TMP/procmail.$$ LOCKFILE= $HOME/Mail/.procmail # # First, toss out junk mail # :2H ^From:.*root@idacom.hp.com ^Subject:.*cron /dev/null # The ":" introduces a new "recipe". The "2" means that two expressions # follow. The "H" indicates that procmail should search the header only, # ignoring case. (The man page lists all kinds of other flags.) # # The first regular expression (regexp) matches a line containing "From:" # at the start of the line ("^"), then any arbitrary characters (".*"), # then "root(a)idacom.hp.com". # # Similarly, the second regexp matches a header line beginning with # "Subject:" and containing the word "cron" anywhere in the subject. # # The line following the last expression tells procmail where to save # the message. In this case, I save it to /dev/null, throwing it away. # (When you're first setting up procmail, I suggest saving unwanted # messages to ~/junk or something, until you're satisfied that your # recipes work as expected!) # # You can also forward matched messages to another user (eg. !joeuser@host) # or pipe them to a UNIX command (eg. |$HOME/bin/my_fancy_mail_processor). :2H ^From:.*cypherpunks detweiler /dev/null :2H ^From:.*cypherpunks subscribe /dev/null # # Now, sort mail from mailing lists into the proper folders # :1H ^From:.+cypherpunks Cypherpunks # Put all mail with a "From:" line containing the word "cypherpunks" into # the file $HOME/Mail/Cypherpunks. :1H ^TOcypherpunks Cypherpunks # "^TO" is shorthand for "^(To|Cc|Apparently-To):.*". This is supposed to # catch all destination addresses. :1H ^Return-Path:.+cypherpunks Cypherpunks :1H ^From:.*pgpmip PGPMIP :1H ^From:.*wnet.edex.edu.au PGPMIP :1H ^From:.*Extropians Extropians :1H ^TOExtropians Extropians ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One other thing: I like to get a summary each day, showing me what procmail has done. I do this by creating a script called procmailsummary.sh: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/sh # # Summarize the ~/.procmaillog file # # Use the LOGFILE variable if it's set; otherwise, use a default LOGFILE=${LOGFILE:=$HOME/.procmaillog} # Add a header to the message # (This also avoids sending a message with a null body, which confuses Elm!) echo "Subject: Procmail Summary" echo " " sort ${LOGFILE} | awk ' /^ Folder:/ { folder = $2; nbytes = $3; msgcount[folder] += 1; totalbytes[folder] += nbytes; } END { for (folder in msgcount) printf "Folder %s:\tsaved %d messages (%d bytes)\n", \ folder, msgcount[folder], totalbytes[folder]; } ' if [ "$1" = "-clear" ]; then rm -f $LOGFILE; fi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I then use crontab to schedule this script so that it's executed at 7AM every morning, and mails me the result. When I come in, I can see at a glance which mailing lists have new messages. (WARNING: If you're not running HP-UX, the crontab(1) command may not exist on your system, or may work somewhat differently. Also, on some systems you must be root to use cron. If you have problems, try "man cron" or ask your sysadmin to give you a hand.) echo '0 7 * * * /usr/local/bin/procmailsummary.sh -clear | elm -s "Procmail Summary" janzen' | crontab This should all be on one line. Replace /usr/local/bin with the name of the directory in which you've put the script. Make sure to do a "chmod +x procmailsummary.sh", to make the script executable. Finally, if you are using a mailer other than elm, replace the "elm ... janzen" command with something appropriate (eg. "mail janzen"). Now verify that the crontab command worked: crontab -l Hope that helps... -- Martin Janzen janzen(a)idacom.hp.com Pegasus Systems Group c/o Hewlett-Packard, IDACOM Telecom Operation

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"lifeguard(?)": bullet tracking system???
by rarachel＠prism.poly.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey guys, I heard a blurb on the radio a few days abo about something called "lifeguard" which can track the source of gunfire. My guess is that they use acoustics for this. I don't know how they can claim that it wouldn't be confused by non-gun noises, nor what silencers would do to this thing. They also mentioned that some models can be fitted with guns so as to auto matically return fire... Is this bullshit? Anyone else hear about this? I wish they'd given out more info on this thing... I heard this on WCBS (AM) in NYC... This can have some serious big brother is watching effects in bad neighborhoods. Such a beast could be fitted with a machine gun to simply fire wherever it hears a bullet come from, potentially killing anyone else who happens to be near the source of the fired gun, more likely a hostage with a gun to his head than the holder of the gun... :-( Ugh, if this is what the crime bill means, I'm all for legalizing drugs just to get the cops and criminals out of business... Shit if every pharamacy sold cheap drugs, or every liqour store, there'd be a gigantic drop ib drug related murders. Sure, the ammounts of stick ups and burglaries that liquor stores would suffer would rise, but, if the FBI, CIA, ??? are already involved in drug runnimg, they may as well make it legal and stop hiding their activities. (Of course if they did their economic strangleholds would drop)

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Re: New MacPGP2.3a has arrived.
by Nikolaos Daniel Willmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wrote, >:: >Request-Remailing-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com All right, we're both dorks. I'll ask politely. Will you please put the new MacPGP onto the Cypherpunks ftp site? It's on ftp.netcom.com in /pub/mpj/... only so far. I was contacted by whoever is releasing this thing about his/her woes in getting it out there. But as I have a new ITAR-clean ftp site/project, I'd like to not carry crypto code there. I've attracted a bunch of programmers with promises of a worry-free environment, and was trying to keep some distance from this thing. I gotta get back off this list, as all I'm seeing is the same old cynicism, inaction, and endless threads about money. That said, BTW, we're interested in what utilities and features you all would like to see from a large userbase of PGP users. - Nik

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New MacPGP2.3a has arrived.
by catalyst-remailer＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know you guys like to talk instead of act, but outside of your little debate club are real programmers building the future. One work has been completed, a debugged and AE aware MacPGP. Please release it, as it's source code is available. FTP to ftp.netcom.com and cd to /pub/mpj and read README to get the name of the directory. It's amazing that I've been at this a week and the rest of the world is playing with it already, but whenever I get news of your list, I hear there has been no action taken on this new release. BTW, the author in Germany will be updating this soon, and has finally decided to release source as well.

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The Cypherpunks' Electronic Book
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

THE CYPHERPUNKS' ELECTRONIC BOOK (CEB) C'punks write in sand - the cure sssss aaa nnn n nn n n ddd d sss aaa aaa nnn nn nnn n n ddd d sss aaa aaa nnn nnn nnnn dddd sss aaaaaaaaaaa nnn nnn nnn n n dddd sss aaa aaa nnn nnn nnn n dddd sss aaa aaa nnn nn nn nn ddd dddd d d sss aaa aaa nnn nnn nn dd dddd aaa aaa nnn nnnn ddd dddd dd THE CURE Ok, its not quite as bad as that but its bad! As we all know the Cypherpunks' list is not archived, indexed, or hard back bound. Information that cannot be found is useless. Tim May has recently volunteered to make a list of privacy software. Congratulations for that! That is certainly a step in the right direction. I don't wish to be overly critical of the Cypherpunks' list as it is surely the best electronic privacy list & better than any corresponding newsgroup on the Internet. I am merely pointing out a solution to its greatest deficiencies & how to greatly improve it. I have an idea (CEB) that would get us a very workable knowledge base fast. First, it is not that practical to archive the list. Its too big, no one wants to do it, too much of it is junk, & files that are valuable today are time dependent & become tomorrow's junk. The only good reasons for archiving the whole list are for history & entertainment. My idea for a good Cypherpunk knowledge base is a "Cypherpunks' Electronic Book" ("CEB") that would have named chapters that are indexed, refereed, & continuously updated. Contributors would have their items signed. These chapters would consist of: 1. List of privacy software & locations. 2. State of the Art. 3. Current significant problems. 4. Capabilities & Dreams (things we can do, things we want to be able to do). 5. Reputations of people by name, their products & achievements. 6. PGP's state of affairs. All chapters would be refereed & all chapters of large size would be indexed. There would be a collective index for the whole CEB. LIST OF PRIVACY SOFTWARE & LOCATIONS In the software listing, in addition to listing where software can be found, we could also have reviews by Cypherpunks so we could know each package's quality. STATE OF THE ART In the State of the Art chapter, we would list only the best software of its kind. It would of course include reviews of each piece & its fitness for its job. Each piece would be indexed by name, category, & author. CURRENT SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS In the Current significant problem's chapter, we would have a list of the particular current problems as well as general problems to solve & tactics for carrying out the Cypherpunks' mission. We could list who was working on these problems & how far they had gotten. We could also state a difficulty level to each problem. Many problems would be only partially solved or solved in a not entirely satisfactory way. For those hoping to make contributions to electronic privacy, this chapter would provide a list of targets. CAPABILITIES & DREAMS In the Capabilities & Dreams chapter, we would have a compilation of things that we are currently able to do as well as things that we hope to be able to do in the future. A good example is how far we are with anonymous digital money. Is anybody actually using it? Do we have useable money systems available but unused? Do we have users beating down our doors for a working digital money system not yet developed? Do we have anonymous digital barter & what is being bartered? REPUTATIONS OF PEOPLE BY NAME, THEIR PRODUCTS & ACHIEVEMENTS The reputations chapter is a much needed who's who of the electronic privacy world. We would know who had made heavy contributions to electronic privacy & who the proven capable are. Much needed recognition would be provided to the productive. This chapter would serve as a reputations grade lister for the more outstanding people. I would also suggest that their public keys, if any, be included. This chapter would provide some much needed justice. PGP'S STATE OF AFFAIRS PGP in its various versions is a topic that rates its own chapter in CEB. What versions are compatible? What versions are good? What versions are endorsed by Phil Zimmerman? For what versions do we have source code? What versions are legal & where? The PGP versions would require some thoughtful indexing. Then, there are the patches to PGP versions to make them compatible with other versions & for bug fixes & upgrades. THE CEB WOULD BE WRITTEN QUICKLY & WOULD GROW This Cypherpunks' Electronic Book could be written very quickly. It would be written in parallel with many Cypherpunks writing in different sections in different chapters. We would not have to start out big. The first edition could be a high quality booklet. New editions could be published weekly or even daily due to the fact that its medium is electronic. The booklet would have immediate value with its first edition as permanent continuously updated sources of electronic privacy knowledge are badly needed. I would suggest that Tim May could be one of the first writers with his software list. In order to get something published early, Tim could list only the best of the software in the first edition. It would be good if Tim could have a critique to go with each software piece. CEB - CURRENT, CONTINUOUSLY UPDATED, & REFEREED As far as I know, the Cypherpunks' Electronic Book would be the only current, continuously updated, refereed electronic privacy knowledge base on the Internet. As various Cypherpunk writers contributed to it it would grow in value. It would become THE electronic communications privacy knowledge base. MAJORDOMO IS THE TOOL We could use Majordomo as the book's distributor. With some small modifications, Majordomo could do a lot for us. I would suggest that Majordomo be modified so that it advertised CEB by name with each query. The CEB would be available from Majordomo as one of its files with the full instruction: get cypherpunks CEB . When the CEB became very large individual chapters could be offered. Each chapter would have its own index. There would be a collective index for the whole CEB. MAJORDOMO DISTRIBUTES AUTOMATICALLY Majordomo could also be programmed to send out a Majordomo file every week that explained how to use Majordomo & what it had to offer. This would keep newbies from asking a lot of questions. Our Majordomo would also develop a reputation as the distributor of the Internet's best knowledge base for crypt software locations, evaluations & electronic privacy concerns. Later, Majordomo could be programmed to automatically send out daily or weekly updated versions of the Cypherpunks' Electronic Book to related interest groups such as Sci.Crypt & Politics.Crypt. Note: From this point on in the text, I will use the term CEB to denote Cypherpunks' Electronic Book. CEB WOULD BE *THE* REFERENCE KNOWLEDGE BASE CEB would be THE reference for the statuses for all the Cypherpunks' concerns. Researchers would know immediately what the status was of their area of work. People who wanted to use electronic privacy products would know what the best products were, where to find them, & what their capabilities were. C'punks wanting to make a contribution to the tech- nology would find where the significant problems were & what needed to be done. People wanting to find out the reputation & products of a C'punk could do so quickly. The location of everything of current value to electronic privacy could quickly be found in CEB. CEB IS A BADLY NEEDED COUNTERPART TO THE CYPHERPUNKS' LIST CEB is a badly needed counterpart to the Cypherpunks' list. Our list is disorderly, huge, & things get lost in it. For instance, recent- ly, there was a post about PGS (pretty good PGP shell). It was stated that PGS was a very good product. But, if we are distracted by interest- ing threads & monthes pass, we might have a terrible time finding PGS. With a well indexed CEB, we would immediately find PGS. Another example is WNSTORM. This is a greatly needed piece of software. After some months pass, we may wonder "is WNSTORM any good?", "who wrote it?", "where can I find it?", "what was its name?", "has it solved the patter- ened lower order bits problem?", "has it been obsoleted by another steganography program?".With a good CEB, we could immediately know the answers to these questions. Another example is the Windows implemen- tation of PGP. I only found out about it because I made a post suggest- ing that a good Windows implementation of PGP could greatly popularize encryption. Julietta, then sent another post saying that that software had not been done well from a user friendly point of view. Is Julietta right? Is it user unfriendly or not? With a refereed CEB we would know. With a comprehensive CEB, I would have known of its existance. CEB WOULD BE "FINISHED" & PROFESSIONAL The CEB would constitute a "finished" product. It would look pro- fessional, refereeing would guarantee its quality, & it would have a feeling of completeness magnitudes beyond the list. It would also give experienced & skilled Cypherpunks their own medium without being swamp- ed out by the work of the less capable - a joy for the Elite & Elitists! CEB CAN START NOW All that it takes to start CEB is some cooperation from Eric Hughes in making some changes to Majordomo & in appointing referees. We've got the material to start typing immediately. CEB can start out as a high quality booklet. It will grow as C'punks add to it & we might very well wind up selling yearly editions of it to Loompanics & other quality pubs. Possibly, later, CEB could finance the Cypherpunks' mailing list. Many capable C'punks are tired of having their best work buried & would gladly contribute to CEB. Anybody got any ideas? Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers Cypherpunk PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWAAAYYY BBBAAACCCKK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE!

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Why it is legal to export PGP under ITAR
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The US ITAR law exempts many things from export restrictions, among them, materials availiable in public libraries. It gives no special definition for a library. My American Heritage Dictionary defines "library" as, among other things, "An orginized collection of recorded data arranged for ease of use." IOW, an ftp site. Which means that if a program is available from a public ftp site, you're legally allowed to export it. :)

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Annoucement for Australian Crypto Radio Documentary
by mgream＠acacia.itd.uts.edu.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Largely of interest to the Australian -- can we be counted on one hand ? :-) -- audience. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- *PRESS RELEASE* *PRESS RELEASE* *PRESS RELEASE* tales from the crypt =============================================== `There's nothing new about cryptography' ... Bill Caelli. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National `Radio Eye -- Documentary Features' Sunday Night, June 12th 8:20pm ... presents ... ``TALES FROM THE CRYPT'' Rosie Cross <rx1(a)sydgate.apana.org.au> & Matthew Gream <M.Gream(a)uts.edu.au> (Mixed by John Jacobs) (Sounds by Rob Joyner Jnr) `Cryptography is a very political technology' says Phil Zimmermann, author of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), a computer software program to scramble and protect your most vital electronic messages. Complex algorithms such as those used in PGP now give individuals the ability to carry out conversations locked away from the prying eyes of the most determined Law Enforcement and National Security Agencies. Fearing a widespread loss of effectiveness, these agencies had their wishes granted last year with the US Governments release of the electronic `Clipper Chip'. This insidious device, to be planted in phones and facsimiles, may scramble voice and data between both ends of a connection, but contains a backdoor so these agencies can retain their surveillance edge. Despite assurances by the Government and proponents of the scheme such as leading cryptographer Dorothy Denning, the reaction has been clearly negative as evidenced by echos of dissent across cypherspace. These assurances are easily refuted by John Perry Barlow from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Dave Banisar from the now Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) [*], representing two of the most active groups opposing Clipper. Viewed from the Australian perspective, Jennifer Seberry describes the Clipper proposal as applying `an atomic bomb, where a drop of ointment is needed' and Trudi McIntosh describes a Government looking on `with interest'. To Roger Clarke, an Australian expert on privacy issues and new technologies, Clipper seems unlikely, but he warns about complacency in his assessment of the possible ramifications for individuals in electronic societies where systematic surveillance and mass matching could serve as a tool of the totalitarian state. In protecting ourselves from an Orwellian society, the need to extend the physical concepts of anonymity into the information world become of increasing importance. The work of David Chaum towards Digital Cash, and truly anonymous payment systems can steer the information superhighways past the military-industrial complex. In the end, the issue isn't about `cryptography', it's about fundamental rights to privacy and freedom from arbitrary intrusion by an increasingly hostile state. --- [*] Formally with Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQBVAgUBLfGDssFkzaa0vXnhAQFW4wH/Sa8KlS92O8plZO0nO1rnrXTF3IWMu7JD T8rVRLm8wunBzwt6DDGMzKPTMAMB/MOpjqISz+wFvKcV6UeyofLRiA== =WVKl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQBNAi3xQ7gAAAECALAfA6WqWIqRBhvq6gKDVPKYAoEAO7Zr2C1/fYUOtTdxz7d6 uvmKRBzEV+Sys7Blf1ja4gioX46KwWTNprS9eeEABRO0JlRhbGVzIEZyb20gdGhl IENyeXB0IC0tIFJhZGlvIE5hdGlvbmFsiQCVAgUQLfFDy5lab34em41tAQF1ngQA u66CMVni7n5LRLqAISxYC9gWC7/AU9l8MYaYvR7D91OcAIzfyCGvJBGGEedSnURh q8mPSy43E1n4c0ihBhLlfvvU3ABFLqvCOwznkJjqWqC7XckJRZVJceaniGyf9KE1 scx1IgvpdjDPVvrLOifwEBbzctv8OU6QcB+2ejvKfQM= =dZMI -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -- Matthew Gream Consent Technologies Sydney, (02) 821-2043 M.Gream(a)uts.edu.au

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Re: The Illogic of Clipper
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15:27 6/5/94 +0100, Ed Carp [SysAdmin] wrote: >I'm sorry, but I just don't understand the government's position on >Clipper. After all, the best way for people to ensure that the >government's not going to listen in on their communications is to not use >Clipper. Now, unless it was a crime to use anything other than Clipper, >the government couldn't do a thing about it. I think that NSA, FBI & CIA hope that Clipper will become a de facto standard resulting from its being required for certain kinds of interactions with government agencies. If this were to happen non-clipper products would have a more difficult time attaining a critical mass. The real purpose of Clipper can thus be stated as an attempt to prevent the success of some de facto standard that the government could not tap. I recall hearing someone from NSA say something very much like this. ...

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