December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

NYT on MS Network
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Laurie Flynn writes today twofer on MS Network and newbie 1/3 pres Robert Herbold. For combo send blank message with subject: NET_puf

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DNA solution to Hamiltonian circuit?
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

srctran(a)world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian): [on Internet Patent News Service] Scientist uses DNA sequences to solve Hamiltonian path problem of combinatorial mathematics, a precursor of the PTO's headache of including biotechnology in it software prior art searches. Think of Hopfield's paper on using neural nets for the traveling salesman problem to predict where DNA computing will end up. Uhh! This was in one of Greg's 'random list of story titles' - he's yet to provide details. As Hopfield didn't really 'solve' the TS problem, but made it easier to solve a class of maps, this may not mean that there will be any significant effect upon Cypherpunk tech based on NP-hard graph problems (such as Zero Knowledge proofs) - but it would be interesting to know _what_ it's all about. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." rishab(a)arbornet.org Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Estonian RSA chip
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

adam.philipp(a)ties.org (Adam Philipp): > Does anyone know any more details on the crypto chip listed in the HTML > http://jep.pld.ttu.ee/? It seems that this is a hardware PGP (uses RSA to > encrypt IDEA key) project. They mention having prototype available RSN, as > in December... or is this just some very interesting vapor-ware? Jyri Poldre (jp(a)jep.pld.ttu.ee - probably on the list) was talking about this in May, while working on the design; we had a little discussion on the application of RSA patents in Estonia. The description of the hardware was pretty detailed back then for vapour-ware. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." rishab(a)arbornet.org Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: I Like ASCII, not MIME and Other Fancy Crap
by amanda＠intercon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Now you're expecting me to hunt around for > viewers for .gifs and TIFFS and JPEGs and God knows what else you might want > to send me ? Actually, I'm not, any more than you're expecting me to hunt around for a copy of PGP just so I can verify your signature. Secondly, having to hunt around for viewers is something that has to do with your mailer, not MIME itself. For example, when I receive MIME email with images, they just appear inline with the text. Just because the easiest way for mailers like ELM to support MIME is to call out to metamail or the like doesn't mean that's necessarily how MIME was meant to be used... > .GIF is not part of the standard for the format of Internet email, is it ? Yes, it is. The MIME RFC specifies image/gif and image/jpeg as the standard formats for including images in Internet email messages. > I only switched to ELM a few months ago. I guess I'm actually getting pretty > comfortable with using it, which means it's time to ditch it. That's the problem with depending on UNIX :) :) Just as a reminder, I'll point out that I do in fact sympathize, which is why I refrain from using graphics, styled text, HTML links, and so on in my messages. I just have a strong disagreement with the sentiment expressed by Tim, where limiting email to what can be punched onto Hollerith cards is seen as a feature, not a bug. On the other hand, since designing UIs for Internet software is how I make my living, I'm no doubt biased in favor of it being a bug. Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation

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Re: Here's one for laughter
by Jonathan Cooper 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I know you don't need a lecture at your age---I was there recently. > But, what you have done for this administrator of your school sounds > quite illegal and most definitely immoral. Morality and legality mean one thing when your future is assured, and an entirely different one when your getting into college may depend upon the very people whom you would piss off by refusing. > Have you ever considered quitting your job to remove the legal and > moral questions surrounding the action, bringing the action to the > attention of the local media or helping the FBI nail the bastard. No. I'm a student, not a netadmin proper. And I *REALLY* don't need the headaches involved with getting the FBI involved, even if I thought it was a good idea, which I don't. I am extremely loathe to use the "authorities" on anyone, anytime. > Law related to communications) would do this administrator good. If And would do me extremely bad, unfortunately. > questionable sounds like grounds for an investigation. Threatening a > student to do the dirty work, makes me want to see this person of > power squirm like the dog he is. He is a wee bit of a twit, but on the other hand I would like to go to college and most of what I do is not reflected in my grades (2.3 GPA, 1370 SAT) for reasons which I won't go into here. Recommendations from the technical people at school are about all I've got, and I will do what I have to in order to get them. -jon ( --------[ Jonathan D. Cooper ]--------[ entropy(a)intnet.net ]-------- ) ( PGP 2.6.2 keyprint: 31 50 8F 82 B9 79 ED C4 5B 12 A0 35 E0 9B C0 01 )

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Re: PGP .DLL
by Jonathan Cooper 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> How do you plan to prevent passwords, plaintext, etc. being saved > in swap files, etc.? Munge the memory where they've been stored. There is really no way to protect absolutely, especially on something as unsecure as a PC where someone malevolent could just install a keyboard logger... It comes down to a "how-much-is-enough" question. -jon ( --------[ Jonathan D. Cooper ]--------[ entropy(a)intnet.net ]-------- ) ( PGP 2.6.2 keyprint: 31 50 8F 82 B9 79 ED C4 5B 12 A0 35 E0 9B C0 01 )

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Re: School Admins
by Jonathan Cooper 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> You definitely shouldn't be doing that! Unless you make it very clear to > the users that they should not have any expectation of privacy when using > the school's computers, then e-mail is covered by the Electronic Like I've told other people, it's easy to be objective when the rest of your life isn't on the line. But my college plans _DIRECTLY_ involve these people, and I can't afford to piss them off. And yes, the students now know that they're being logged, and I've taught them to use cheesy crypt(1) encryption to handle it. -jon ( --------[ Jonathan D. Cooper ]--------[ entropy(a)intnet.net ]-------- ) ( PGP 2.6.2 keyprint: 31 50 8F 82 B9 79 ED C4 5B 12 A0 35 E0 9B C0 01 )

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Re: PGP .DLL
by Jonathan Cooper 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I'm way behind on messages currently, so maybe somebody mentioned > this... but have you looked at RSAREF? I know the license is > restrictive, but take a look at it architecturally. That is basically the way that I'd envisioned it functioning. Details have to be nailed down... anyone who is interested in helping, please mail me so we can take this chatter off the main cypherpunks list. -jon ( --------[ Jonathan D. Cooper ]--------[ entropy(a)intnet.net ]-------- ) ( PGP 2.6.2 keyprint: 31 50 8F 82 B9 79 ED C4 5B 12 A0 35 E0 9B C0 01 )

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Making Terminal Remailers Foreign
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

THIS TEXT FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY. I DO NOT ADVOCATE THE BREAKING OF ANY LAW OR OF PROVOKING CIVIL LAW ACTIONS. MAKING TERMINAL REMAILERS FOREIGN Dear Cypherpunks, I have been concerned about the security of remailers & their ops & I think I have found a scheme to give them an extra magnitude of safety. With some little reflection, it is obvious that an indiscreet user could compromise the safety of a remailer & its op. The reckless user could violate local laws or could provoke civil legal actions, or could be "politically or culturally indiscreet". My general software solution could give a safety net to the remailer w/ op. Firstly, I would like to provide a small glossary: Collector remailer - The 1st remailer in a remailer chain. Fortress remailer - A remailer that, due to technological devices, is safe from all political, legal, & technical attacks. An ideal - no such thing yet. Hardened remailer - A remailer with security between that of a State Sufferance remailer & a Fortress remailer. Does not allow itself to be used as a domestic terminal remailer. It may have other political & technological safeties as well. This kind of remailer is the subject of this post. Inner link remailer - An inner remailer; between the collector & the terminal remailers. State sufferance remailer - A remailer that has no political or software safeties. Allows itself to be used as a domestic terminal remailer. Terminal remailer - The last remailer in the chain. My plan concerns making the terminal remailer more secure. Obviously, the terminal remailer takes the most heat & needs more security. The extra security should be easily achieved by putting code into the remailer that says: "If mail being delivered to another remailer, then continue; If mail being delivered to a foreign country, then continue; If mail being delivered to a a domestic end user (not remailer), then deliver that mail to a foreign remailer & instruct it to deliver to end user." This scheme would insure that for that remailer, all mail deliveries would be foreign. If there were legal or political problems, then that remailer would be protected by its foreign jurisdiction. This safety would not be bulletproof, but it would greatly raise the cost of hassling the remailer. A cautious remailer operator might choose a remailer in a country with really bad diplomatic relations with his own host country. This scheme has the advantage that it could be easily implemented by the concerned remailer operator without depending on cooperation by others. It would also seem to be a fairly simple coding problem. Due to the extra security provided to the terminal remailer, the remailer user should also be more secure. In fact, I believe it would make the whole chain more secure. PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWAAAYYY BBBAAACCCCK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE! Gary Jeffers

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test file
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is only a test file.

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