December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Catch-22
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Since E-mailing a few copys of my 3DEA-PGP.ZIP file >and having said file posted on two FTP sites. >"ftp.wimsey.bc.ca" and "ripem.msu.edu" >It seems that the tax man sees $ in his eyes. >I received a nice package with letter from... > United States Department of State > Bureau of Politico-Militart Affairs > Office of Defence Trade Controls >So, it came to their attention that I need to pony up $250 >in order to "register" with said office. Problem is they >want proof of my business in order to register. But, I don't >have a business. What is it then. When bureacracies do silly things, the best recourse is to seek media attention.

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L D WELLER
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

C'punks, For what it's worth, CompuServe lists L D Weller (71011,1743) as being in American Fork, UT (between Salt Lake City and Provo). S a n d y

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Re: Catch-22
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>You lucky guy. >I'd suggest talking with someone who _has_ had to report to one said >offices in the past and enlist their suggestions, perhaps Grady Ward. Thats what comes from putting your real address and name on stuff you give away.

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Tuna fish and spam sandwich
by cjl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am curious about what is happening on alt.test. Someone is apparently forging letters containing the line: I am (insert True Name and address here) from a large list of account names and sending them through anon(a)penet.fi to alt.test. If the address is not previously registered with penet.fi it generates a new acct number (thus the long list of messages with sequential acct nums anXXXXXX) however every once in a while there will be a message (they are all 43 lines long, and have the subject "tuna fish test numero nnn" making them easy to spot from real anon.testers) that will have an account number that is out of sequence (e.g. a much lower number). It would seem that this is revealing the anon acct numbers of people who have already got accts at penet.fi. There are a number of messages posted to alt.test from apparently real acct addresses saying that they never requested anon accts. and generally disavowing all knowledge of how the "tuna fish" messages ended up posted. Does this form of "lunch-sack" attack really work? By spamming penet.fi with "tuna fish" messages with forged From: lines can one really get the true names and corresponding anon acct numbers of people from a list of addresses? If this is possible then I'm sure it wouldn't take long for one of you mail-gurus to whip up some code to download a "who cypherpunks" and feed it through a spam grinder to recover true names. So much for trusting a Finnish Identity Escrow Agent. HH C. J. Leonard ( / "DNA is groovy" \ / - Watson & Crick <cjl(a)welchlink.welch.jhu.edu> / \ <-- major groove ( \ Finger for public key \ ) Strong-arm for secret key / <-- minor groove Thumb-screws for pass-phrase / )

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No SKE in Daytona and other goodies
by an25067＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1) I've got Daytona running on a machine right next to me. It doesn't feature any type of key escrow. Come to think of it, it doesn't support data encryption. The version I have is build 683, which is supposed to be the next-to-last, so it's unlikely MS will suddenly start adding new stuff, especially since they're already late. The _real_ danger is that SKE will be added to "Microsoft At Work," their proposed protocol for tying copiers, fax machines, and other office gear to computers. 2) Word on the street is that someone already holds a trademark for the term "Tessera" and that they have told NSA to cease and desist. Anyone with access to one of the trademark search services can confirm this, but I haven't yet. 3) Food for thought: we've seen hardware & software key escrow, but I don't remember seeing any mention of DNA or blood escrow, like what Judge Ito has ordered in the Simpson case. Get those samples stashed away now. I wonder if I can get Duncan to supply a DNA sample on my behalf? - that one guy ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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Re: (fwd) Possible compromise of anon.penet.fi
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Roy wrote about the attack on annon.penet.fi: > >I think this might be a forked attack... trying to flood penet with >traffic, and also outing people who have used penet for anonymous >traffic previously. This is a good argument against maintaining a >double-blind database (and in favor of systems like soda.berkeley.edu's >remailer with its 'response block' strategy). > I am not sure I understand the outing part of the attack. If you have a PW set for your anon ID then how can someone else fake your mail? If you use no PW, then you need to wake up anyway. Perhaps outing would be what it takes. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Just say NYET to kneejerking
by nzook＠math.utexas.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I must admit that I'm disappointed. I figured that I would take some hits, but for people to only scan a post before reaching for the lighter... Highlights of the post: 0- I'm a pro-elctronic privacy religous rightist. (Someone didn't even get THAT right...) 1- We are rapidly approaching a point that there will be a broad-based demand for censorship. If the net is to survive in a recognizable form, we have to head this off. Specifically, BBS sysops have been drug into court on porno or aiding the deliquency of a minor charges. I advance the proposition that we need to establish a system that will allow sysops to be able to brush these attacks off. 2- The censorship that I advance is censorship _by parents_ _for their own children_. Only. People have talked about cable boxxes and telephones. Are you not aware that many cable companies offer boxes with a (physical) key that must be present in order for certain channels to come through? That the phone companies currently allow customers to disallow outgoing 900 calls? My idea is to implement a net-equivalent system--household by household determination of what will be allowed into their homes. 3- In this system, the work to determine which parts of the net to allow/ disallow access to falls entirely on the parents. 4- I believe that this system could be used to gain the protection sysops deserve. Look at the system. Imagine you were trying to sue/prosecute a sysop who utilized such a system. One what basis could you attack? All decisions to allow access were determined by the parent. The sysop genuinely attempts to verify that adults are adults. Let me repeat. This system is an attempt to cut of an almost certain attempt by some to censor the net. If we can get this in place, if we can get legislatures to recognize the system, we should be able to defeat censorship attempts by people who, from the net's point of view, are on the margins of society, but, from the nations point of view, are only slightly "right" of center. For those of you who wish to attack me on this, I must insist that you read my proposal, _in its entirety_. I am re-posting the article in case you deleted it. I want the net to continue to function as is, with further extensions. I want to be able to let my kids (when I have them) on this same net, w/o being asked "What's bestiality?" I am not about to demand that net users modify their behavior to accomdate me. I want a system in place so that sysops aren't forced to constantly overlook their entire system in order to avoid legal hassles. Nathan A nation that fears guns in the hands of its citzens.... should.

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NYET objections
by nzook＠math.utexas.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: NYET objections There were two objections raised so far that could actually apply. 1) Kids will talk about what they want to talk about. That's true, unavoidable, etc etc etc. Also irrelevant. I'm not talking about censoring what leaves a home. I'm talking about parents themselves limiting what comes in. I'm talking about a parent deciding that Jonny doesn't need to know a.s.b even exists. If a parent decides that some newsgroup or some file system contains info they don't want coming in, they kill it themselves, from their own home, for their own kids. ONLY. 2) What about crossposts? I intended to specifically mention crossposts. A message that was crossposted from/to a forbidden group is itself not displayed.

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Re: Cryptosplit note
by rarachel＠prism.poly.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is precisely what I like about cypherpunks. I came up with an urge to write a simple crypto split beast, and in posting it and publishing it, I have caused others to polish up their old code, and post up far better software. :-) I love this list. :-) Whoever said that cypherpunks don't write code was a fool. :-)

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The penet compromise
by roy＠sendai.cybrspc.mn.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I wrote earlier that I thought the penet attack was a forked strategy intended to out anon users and flood anon.penet.fi. Now I'm not so sure it was forked. I remember trying an experiment a while back, where I posted a message to alt.test and saved all the replies. There were less than a dozen. misc.test provides much better response. That lessens the probable impact of the return traffic to a rough multiplier of 10. And given the time spread (my experiment yielded replies over 4 days), I don't know if this can be counted on to yield a denial-of-service attack. (I suppose it's possible the perp might be trying to spam penet in the original sense, by trying to overrun arbitrary limits in the server) That leaves outing as the motive. Now I'm wondering if the idea is to out as many people as possible, or if the perp is searching for a particular party or parties. The formation of the messages (from reports... I don't get alt.test locally) appears tailored for some kind of automated data collection. - -- Roy M. Silvernail [ ] roy(a)sendai.cybrspc.mn.org PGP public key available by mail echo /get /pub/pubkey.asc | mail file-request(a)cybrspc.mn.org These are, of course, my opinions (and my machines) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAwUBLjh9+hvikii9febJAQFMqwP7B1fmRFT2BHSh1N4PseiexsxZOcQ4xxJz HzddvlkcditxGjdOUMD3HAzosIKr1IBj0mk1N9bnE2L6nBR4L6583wF551CTOEVD h9SvPp10N+FDT34DmYsb9yGoL7OXMK5Bov76++liE16NEaIdI5YvspCZ1hdcjzH0 Zhq2tV+Vhhw= =Frx+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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