December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Remailer Blocking and Negative Reputations
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just a quick note: Blocking the sources of messages deemed offensive is a "negative reputation" approach, easily bypassed by creating a new source name. (And this can be done easily by using another remailer first.) I'm not arguing for a positive rep system here, as I'm not sure how it would work. I just wanted to the note that the solution of blocking offending sources has limited use. (Unless the blocking propagates back to the first-non-remailer use...require remailers to cooperate on maintaining a black list.) --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo(a)toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tcmay

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: Anon III - RFM
by Tomaz Borstnar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Key for user ID: Tomaz Borstnar <tomaz.borstnar(a)arnes.si> 1024-bit key, Key ID BC52F895, created 1993/12/06 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hello! This is one of proposals for anonymous irc on IRC network called Undernet (servers: undernet.org, us.undernet.org, eu.undernet.org) Author is Denis Holmes (dholmes(a)rahul.net) - ------- Forwarded Message date: Wed, 16 Nov 1994 22:22:58 -0800 (Note, non-list mail) Hmm, I wasn't gonna just send ya the proposal again, but on second thought, I guess I will. I've put the test servers back up so you can see it if you want. My recommendation is that if there is a user desire for anonymity, having them post to the newsgroup or wastelanders would probably have the strongest impact. A statement of why they feel it is necessary and/or beneficial would be heard best I expect. I can give a couple reasons offhand why I didn't pursue this further: - - - Very few people expressed support for the idea. - - - It looked like I would be expected to upgrade it to the latest server level, yet I have not been provided with details of code changes despite my requests. And my suggestions to consult with others prior to any non-trivial code change (basically) have not been well-received. - - - Arguing about it became a waste of too much time. Well, that's not entirely true; one of the goals I was after has started to happen. Maybe that's a more legitimate reason than any of the others for laying off a bit. Subject: Anon III - RFM Revised summary of ideas for an anonymous IRC service. This proposal is dated 2 October 1994 (version III). Proposal: (n.) something put forth for consideration. RFM: Request For Mail. If you realize a way the service described below can be abused by users, please mail dholmes(a)rahul.net with the information, and be as specific as possible. Thoughts on how the service might be improved are also welcome. If needed, additional mail discussion will be used to try to determine the least intrusive solutions to problems received. A new revision or status will be posted to wastelanders when appropriate. Please do not send me your wonderful ideas on registering users, restricting mode changes, or other "problemless solutions" (unless requested or it concerns one of the particular points below). While these ideas may have merit, if they do not address specific abuses peculiar to this service, then they will most likely not fall into the category of "least intrusive solutions" being sought as described above. An implementation of Anon III is currently available for testing at jive.rahul.net port 5853. A standard Undernet server is connected to it and runs on port 5854. Please send me your observations, bug reports, and results (good and bad) from using various clients. The following points describe features of the proposed service, or restrictions to be placed on its users. "Registration" as used below refers to the normal process of a client signing onto a server and having its presence propagated across the net. * Use a special server to provide a high level of service, so that users are able to operate in the environment to which they are accustomed. After connecting to this server and registering in the normal fashion, a client becomes anonymous by sending a specific command to the server, upon which the server performs any checking, signs the user off the net, and reregisters the user. * Insure that each anonymous client is registered with a unique user@host combination so that individual users can still be banned from channels, ignored, etc. (User appears as anon376@<servername>, and must disconnect from the server (signoff) in order to change this. Also provides for banning of all anonymous users from a channel.) * Furthermore, a user becoming anonymous more than once within a certain period (let's say a day, for now, but this may vary at the admin's discretion) will receive the same anonymous identification on subsequent invokations after the first. This provides further protection against ban and ignore evasion. * Users of the service will be logged. (It should be noted, however, that, in general, this information will not be released except as required by law. The purpose here is to assist the administrator in assuring appropriate use of the service.) * Disallow anonymous oper (IRC/server operator) status. (This means that opers becoming anonymous will also be de-opered.) This prevents unidentifiable discontent operators from disrupting the net. * Block CTCP CLIENTINFO and USERINFO requests. This protects against users deliberately attempting to cause other users to flood or overload their connections without being identified. * Block CTCP FINGER and USERINFO replies, to protect client anonymity. * Lower the flood detection threshhold for anonymous users, so they're killed more quickly upon trying to flood. * Detect reconnecting users who were anonymous (users connecting who disconnected less than [60] seconds ago and were anonymous) and prevent them from joining channels or sending messages/notices for [30] seconds. This will stop queued messages within the client (from a would-be flooder) while still protecting the user's anonymity. * Ability to allow or deny anonymity based on address. This allows the administrator to deny known abusers the privelege of using the service. * Disallow multi-mode changes (i.e. allow only one channel mode change per MODE command). Also allow mode change or kick only once every "few" seconds. This provides channel operators time to react if an anonymous user attempts to take over a channel. Ensor. +----------------+-------------------+------------------------------------+ | Dennis Holmes | dholmes(a)rahul.net | "We demand rigidly defined | | San Jose, CA +-------------------+ areas of doubt and uncertainty!" | +------=>{ Meanwhile, as Ford said: "Where are my potato chips?" }<=------+ - ------- End of Forwarded Message -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCVAgUBLsv+dlheSYu8UviVAQEzdAP7BHVj0RjYWrlTuTRdMfpCLTCuiKMW3PQf cj9t2x811Z1E1LLXl+45i7KTCjcygmdh8OdyTU0B/xCvivzwSTq+OeXhlUZ6+AdN TjPz1hUt+s/TDT1n2RRgKFHhKCTCw/UuI3yPVnRy+/+2Bkpai6byVBSXRqJiGa6X HiM4L4BdrBY= =WIGV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can someone please list the mail-to-news gateways that are available, and any discrepancies aboyr message acceptance based on SUBJECT: line. Thanks, - spooge

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CEB6 part 2 of 2
by Gary Jeffers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hunt around & read his read file. Files in this directory are not for export from the USA and Canada. secdev13.arj -- Secure Device file hosted device driver by Artur Helwig of the Netherlands. sfs110.zip -- Secure File system by Peter Gutman of New Zealand secdr13e.zip -- Secure Drive by Mike Ingle and Edgar Swank of the USA */ Chapter 6. Remailers & chained remailers. From: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204) Message-Id: <9408300753.AA22369(a)anchor.ho.att.com> To: CCGARY(a)MIZZOU1.missouri.edu Subject: Re: Using remailers, chained remailers? There's somebody who posts a remailer summary to the list about monthly. /* Text correction follows from Zarr -- Admin(a)anon.penet.fi (Admin of The Anonymous Contact Service) * There are three or four sets of remailers out there: * - anon.penet.fi, which gives you an account anNUMBER(a)anon.penet.fi * which people can reply to. Please, send a message to * ping(a)anon.penet.fi to receive an anon ID. You probably also want * to send a message to help(a)anon.penet.fi to receive the help file. * Its big use is for anonymous Usenet posting with working replies. end of text correction. */ some also support Usenet posting. Soda is pretty typical. - The cypherpunks remailers, which are mostly one-way no-reply mailers; - Various enhanced cypherpunks remailers, which have features like encrypted reply addresses you can attach at the end. You can get information on using the soda remailer by sending email to remailer(a)csua.berkeley.edu, with "help" somewhere in the posting; I'm not sure if it wants it in the Subject: or in the body. That's the remailer that posts from "Tommy the Tourist" with random NSA-bait at the bottom of postings. Here's a recent posting on getting status of remailers. Note that some really only remail once per day, so they may be working fine even if it says they're not. ---- Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 13:39:33 -0700 From: Raph Levien <raph(a)kiwi.CS.Berkeley.EDU> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: "finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu" now operational Hi all, I have written and installed a remailer pinging script which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, at http://http.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html Please do not take the uptime figures too seriously, at least for another week or so. The script has only been running reliably for a few days. Please let me know about any other remailers which I missed. I've only included remailers which can mail to arbitrary addresses, so I already know chop and twwells are missing. If you've got a Web page, please feel free to include a link to this page. If you think your Web page is relevant to the subject of remailers, let me know and I'll link it in. Comments and suggestions welcome! Raph Levien ------- # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp # 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465 Chapter 7. Current problems in Crypt. 1. We need an Internet Chat PGP system for conversations in real time. /* HEY! ITS LOOKS LIKE WE'VE GOT IT! SEE CHAPTER 10. */ 2. Has Arsen Arachelian really solved the problem of discovery of crypt in steganograpy by statistical examination of the least significant bits in his WNSTROM? I have seen no debate on this. 3. If the Feds capture the internet & put their anti-privacy hardware & protocols in place & outlaw remailers, does anyone have any idea how to build secure & effective remailers? A "Fortress remailer"? 4. If the above possibility happens & Cyperpunks' list is outlawed, does anyone have ideas how to make a "Fortress list"? /* Currently, we have Fortress Cryptography & State Sufferance remailers, mailing lists & newsgroups. We must have Fortress: remailers, mailing lists & newsgroups! */ Chapter 8. Text sources. Section 1. Books. Part 1. Simson Garfinkel's PGP book. From: Stanton McCandlish <mech(a)eff.org> Subject: O'Reilly PGP book Date: Wed, 7 Sep 1994 13:38:58 -0400 (EDT) coming soon, PGP hits the mainstream: PGP: Pretty Good Privacy by Simson Garfinkel 1st Edition November 1994 (est.) 250 pages (est),ISBN: 1-56592-098-8, $17.95 (est) PGP is a freely available encryption program that protects the privacy of files and electronic mail. It uses powerful public key cryptography and works on virtually every platform. PGP: Pretty Good Privacy by Simson Garfinkel is both a readable technical users guide and a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at cryptography and privacy. Part I of the book describes how to use PGP: protecting files and email, creating and using keys, signing messages, certifying and distributing keys, and using key servers. Part II provides background on cryptography, battles against public key patents and U.S. government export restrictions, and other aspects of the ongoing public debates about privacy and free speech. -- <A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/mech.html"> Stanton McCandlish </A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org"> mech(a)eff.org </A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/"> Electronic Frontier Fndtn. </A><P> Online Activist Part 2. Bruce Schneier's cryptography book. The best book in cryptography is: APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schneier Loompanics advertising copy follows: In Applied Cryptography, data security expert Bruce Schneier details how programmers can use cryptography - the technique of enciphering messages - to maintain the privacy of computer data. Covering the latest developments in practical cryptographic techniques, the book shows programmers who design computer software and systems we use every day. Along with more than 100 pages of actual C source code of working cryptographic algorithms, this pratical handbook: * Explains data encryption protocols and techniques currently in use and likely to be used in the future. * Offers numerous present day applications - from secure correspondence to anonymous messaging. * Includes numerous source code fragments and shows how to incorporate them into larger programs. * Discusses related issues like patents, export laws, and legal rulings. And much more! 1994, 7 1/2 x 9, 636 pp, Illustrated, indexed, soft cover. APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY: $44.95 (order number 10062) $4.00 for shipping and handling. UPS ground. Additional $7.50 if you want UPS w day air(blue)- that would be $11.50. Loompanics Unlimited PO Box 1197 Port Townsend, WA 98368 /* Part 3. William Stallings PGP book. From: William Stallings <ws(a)shore.net> William Stallings says that his new book will be out in a few weeks. d The book's foreword is by Phil Zimmerman who highly praises the book & e states that he prefers it to his own documentation when he needs to look something up! The book's table of contents, then the foreword follows: | Bill Stallings | PGP key available at | also from Stable | Comp-Comm Consulting | gopher.shore.net | Large Email Database | P. O. Box 2405 | in members/ws | contact | Brewster, MA 02631 | | key(a)Four11.com Protect Your Privacy: The PGP User's Guide William Stallings (Prentice-Hall, ISBN 0-13-185596-4) Table of Contents Foreword by Phil Zimmermann Acknowledgments Reader's Guide to the PGP User's Guide Chapter 1 Protect Your Privacy! 1.1 What is PGP? 1.2 PGP Versions Part I HOW PGP WORKS Chapter 2 Basic Principles of PGP 2.1 Conventional Encryption 2.2 Public Key Encryption 2.3 Secure Hash Functions Chapter 3 Sending and Receiving PGP Messages 3.1 PGP: The Big Picture 3.2 PGP is Not E-Mail 3.3 Public Keys and Private Keys 3.4 Digital Signatures 3.5 Compression 3.6 Message Encryption 3.7 E-Mail Compatibility 3.8 The Order of Operations in PGP Chapter 4 PGP Features 4.1 Multiple Recipients 4.2 Encrypting Local Files 4.3 The Display-Only Option 4.4 Wiping 4.5 Protecting Text Files 4.6 Signature Options Chapter 5 Key Generation and Secret Key Management 5.1 Creating Public/Secret Key Pairs 5.2 Secret Key Management Chapter 6 Public Key Management 6.1 Exchanging Public Keys 6.2 Certifying Public Keys 6.3 Owner Trust and Key Legitimacy Part II USING PGP Chapter 7 DOS PGP: Getting Started 7.1 Getting Started 7.2 Key Generation 7.3 Signing Your Key 7.4 Extracting Your Key 7.5 Preparing a Message for Transmission 7.6 Processing a Received Message 7.7 Adding Keys to Your Public Key Ring 7.8 Certifying PGP Chapter 8 DOS PGP Reference 8.1 Message/File Processing 8.2 Key Management 8.3 Miscellaneous Commands and Options 8.4 The config.txt File 8.5 Using a DOS Shell Chapter 9 Macintosh PGP: Getting Started 9.1 Getting Started 9.2 Key Generation 9.3 Signing Your Key 9.4 Extracting Your Key 9.5 Preparing a Message for Transmission 9.6 Processing a Received Message 9.7 Adding Keys to Your Public Key Ring 9.8 Certifying MacPGP Chapter 10 Macintosh PGP Reference 10.1 PGP Messages Window 10.2 Help Menu 10.3 File Menu 10.4 Key Menu 10.5 Options Menu Chapter 11 Windows PGP 11.1 WinPGP 11.2 PGP WinFront PART III Supplemental Information Chapter 12 The Building Blocks of PGP 12.1 Conventional Encryption: IDEA 12.2 Public Key Encryption: RSA 12.3 Secure Hash Function: MD5 Chapter 13 Choosing Your Passphrase 13.1 How to Guess a Passphrase 13.2 How to Choose an Unguessable Passphrase Chapter 14 Where to Get PGP Chapter 15 Public Key Servers 15.1 How to Use Public Key Servers 15.2 Where to Find Public Key Servers 15.3 Stable Large EMail Database (SLED) Chapter 16 PGP 3.0 Foreword by Philip Zimmermann This book is about Pretty Good Privacy, a program I created to encrypt e- mail using public key cryptography. PGP was electronically published as free software in 1991. Little did I realize what this project would lead to. PGP has become the worldwide de facto standard for e-mail encryption. I've admired Bill Stallings's writings in computer science for some years before PGP, and here he is writing a book about my program. How can I talk about how great his book is, without, by implication, talking about how great PGP is? It's hard to write a foreword for his book about PGP without sliding into some measure of self-indulgence. I've been so close to this project for so long that I sometimes lose sight of the scope of what PGP provides. I got the manuscript for Bill's book in the mail the other day -- the book you are holding. Sitting down with it, flipping through it, endless pages of diagrams, the formal treatment of it, services provided by PGP. It wasn't till I saw his book on PGP that I could step back and see PGP as others see it. The breadth of it. As a software engineer, I'm used to either documenting my own software, or having a random company tech writer document it. All software engineers get that. But having William Stallings do the manual for your software -- it's sort of like having your portrait done by a world-class artist. There are a very small number of software packages that have far- reaching political implications. Most software that fits in such an influential category has negative effects on our civil liberties. For example, government intelligence agencies use a software package called PROMIS, which is a powerful tool of governments to track people's activities, movements, spending, political affiliations, et cetera. Now that is a piece of software with far-reaching political implications. Mostly bad ones. Then there is the software that the Medical Information Bureau uses to classify people who file medical insurance claims, to put them on a medical "black list", so that they cannot purchase any medical insurance ever again. That software has far-reaching political implications -- enough to raise a large- scale backlash in our society to do something about it. In most cases, it seems that software that has powerful political effects is software designed to strengthen the strong and weaken the weak. But PGP also has far-reaching political implications. Mostly good ones. In the Information Age, cryptography affects the power relationship between government and its people. The Government knows this all too well, as evidenced by their recent policy initiatives for the Clipper chip, which would give the Government a back door into all our private communications -- an Orwellian "wiretap chip" built into all our telephones, fax machines and computer networks. PGP strikes a blow against such dark trends, and has become a crystal nucleus for the growth of the Crypto Revolution, a new political movement for privacy and civil liberties in the Information Age. This government has done all they can to stop the emergence of a worldwide encryption standard that they don't have a back door into. And that same government has placed me under criminal investigation for unleashing this free software on the world. If indicted and convicted, I would face 41 to 51 months in a federal prison. Despite the pressure the Government has brought to bear against PGP (or perhaps because of it), PGP has become the most widely used software in the world for e-mail encryption, used by a variety of activists, and anyone else needing protection from the powerful. It's also used by ordinary people to protect their personal and business communications from prying eyes. PGP may have a future as an official Internet standard, as the Internet Engineering Task Force develops an interest in it. No one who wants to work in the area of Internet e-mail privacy should neglect studying PGP. Because of the "fax machine effect", more people who want to encrypt their e-mail are getting PGP because everyone else who encrypts their e-mail is already using it. Naturally, I want people to read the Official PGP User's Guide, which comes with the electronic distribution package of PGP (also in book form from MIT Press), because I wrote it. Also, I'm more entertaining and personable in my book. And more political. But Bill Stallings' book is more comprehensive than mine, more thorough, covering more detail, with a lot more diagrams. He's really good at completely nailing it down in a book. In fact, I'll probably use his book myself as my preferred reference to PGP. Philip Zimmermann Boulder, Colorado PGP Fingerprint: 9E 94 45 13 39 83 5F 70 7B E7 D8 ED C4 BE 5A A6 */ Section 2. Rants. For good rants FTP to soda.berkeley.edu /pub/cypherpunks/rants Section 3. CYPHERNOMICON - Tim May's "official" Cypherpunks' FAQ. This is a giant (1.3MB uncompressed) faq by Tim May. To get it by anonymous ftp: ftp to ftp.netcom.com /pub/tcmay - This directory has it & its associated files. Chapter 9. Cypherpunks' mailing list. getting on etc.. >>>> help This is Brent Chapman's "Majordomo" mailing list manager, version 1.92. In the description below items contained in []'s are optional. When providing the item, do not include the []'s around it. It understands the following commands: subscribe <list> [<address>] Subscribe yourself (or <address> if specified) to the named <list>. unsubscribe <list> [<address>] Unsubscribe yourself (or <address> if specified) from the named <list>. get <list> <filename> Get a file related to <list>. index <list> Return an index of files you can "get" for <list>. which [<address>] Find out which lists you (or <address> if specified) are on. who <list> Find out who is on the named <list>. info <list> Retrieve the general introductory information for the named <list>. lists Show the lists served by this Majordomo server. help Retrieve this message. end Stop processing commands (useful if your mailer adds a signature). Commands should be sent in the body of an email message to "Majordomo(a)toad.com". Commands in the "Subject:" line NOT processed. If you have any questions or problems, please contact "Majordomo-Owner(a)toad.com". Chapter 10. IRC chat strong encryption? Section 1. prig (cryptical)'s contribution. Do we really have this capability now? According to following post we do! This info has not been verified yet. You may want to experiment for yourself. Section 1. prig(cryptical)'s offering. From: prig0011(a)gold.tc.umn.edu Subject: IRC Encryption There was a thread a while back about encrypted conversations on channel #freedom on irc. I came across the software I believe they are using. Its a package called Circ, and it is available from archives of comp.sources.misc volume 38 issue 10. It is interesting in that it uses RSA for key exchange, and triple DES for the encryption. The Circ package includes an earlier implementation "socks" which is a stand alone encrypted irc client. I think this is what they use on #freedom. This is an interesting tool for a couple of reasons. irc can be as anonymous as you want to make it. There are ways of hiding what site you're coming from, your real username, you can change your nick often as you want, and it's got a high enough usage that you can lose yourself in a crowd. It supports background file transfers. You can create a channel and lock it to uninvited people. It is supported pretty much net-wide, if you can telnet, you can irc. Interesting stuff, and I'll be playing more with it in the near future. BTW: my nick is cryptical on irc. :) /* Section 2. Ed Carp's offer. According to Ed Carp, the package has been around for a long time & he's had it on his system for monthes. Ed says: "If anyone wants it, they can email me and I'll send it to them, tarred, gripped, and uuencoded." Ed Carp is ecarp(a)netcom.com */ PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK! WWWAAAYYYY BBBAAACCCK! BBBEEEAAATTTT STATE!

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How to do foreign transactions.
by jamesd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First and foremost: A chain is as strong as its weakest link. So you do not use a consultant who works in the country where you are making your money. Repeating this for anyone slow witted. If you are making money in the USA, and wish to perform transactions outside the USA that you would prefer to remain private YOU DO NOT TRANSACT THROUGH A USA CONSULTANT. DO NOT USE A USA BASED CONSULTANT! The American IRS, and other bodies hostile to privacy, regularly go after such consultants, accuse them of real or imaginary crimes, threaten them with jail and sometimes with a rubber hose, and force them to sing like canaries. Worse still, a great many of them continue right on in the financial consultancy business while continuing to sing like canaries. So first and foremost you do not use a consultant that is subject to the violence of those that you most fear. Use a friend or a relative who is in a foreign country. Blood is thicker than water, relatives are better. No suitable relatives? Subscribe to foreign financial newspapers, and read the ads, subscribe to some of the newsletters advertised or reviewed in those newspapers. You might wish to subscribe to AGI PO Box 4010 6304 Zug Switzerland. This advertises stockbrokers, banks, and mutual funds all over the world that accept international transactions. That is a suggestion, not a recommendation. Do your own homework, and check your family tree for relatives dispersed around the world. OK, what comes second. Well second, third, fourth and fifth, same as above, do not use a consultant who is subject to the violence of those you most fear. Somewhere way down the list ... About thirty seventh down the list: All financial institutions that are beyond the violence of those you fear the most, are good. All of them! All of them! Even in countries quite hostile to privacy, they do not turn over financial information en masse to a foreign power, even when that foreign power is the USA. Say you fear the USA the most, and you have a bank account in another country. Say you have a bank account in Australia, a country with high taxes, absolutely no banking privacy, a country that routinely and regularly grovels to the USA. Even so, the ones you fear still have to find out that the account exists, information that they discover in the USA and *then* they have to ask their opposite number in Australia, "Hey, I did a favor for you, can you do a favor for me, pretty please with sugar on top?" If the enemy already have that kind of information on your financial doings, and they are keen enough on getting you that they are willing to do things that are special and out of the ordinary, then your goose is cooked anyway, regardless of whether your account is Australia or Liechtenstein. So who gives a tinkers dam? What points one to thirty seven boil down to is quite simple. The key question about any financial institution is: Can the revenuers kick down the door and pistol whip the operator if he fails to make everything in his computer totally and completely available to the revenuers? It really is that simple. If you are afraid of USA revenuers, then the difference between a USA bank, and a USA financial privacy consultant is so slight that it is not even worth thinking about. The difference between a Swiss bank and an Australian bank is small. The big difference is the difference between a USA entity and a foreign entity. Ignore all the mysterious arcane legalistic complexities uttered by the self proclaimed financial experts. It really is not very complicated at all. Simply apply the pistol whip question. Nothing else counts for very much. If a financial institution fails the pistol whip test, then its computers have a line to the IRS echoing everything that happens. If they do not have such a line now, they will very soon. If it passes the pistol whip test, then there is no line to the IRS. The IRS might be able to get information if they ask nicely about a particular person, but they will have to ask nicely and they cannot simply say: "Dump everything you have to our computers and make sure it is in a form that our computers like, and if something makes our computers hiccup, you're gonna sweat." I repeat: The key question is "Can they kick down the door and pistol whip the guy who owns the computers?" All other questions, such as what does the law say, and what legal system the institution operates under, are comparatively insignificant. Now obviously some banks are better than others. For most people this is not an important difference, but there is a difference. Now if you are a big time drug dealer living in exile, yeah, you had better worry about the fine detail of a nations banking secrecy laws. In that case the difference between Switzerland and Liechtenstein might be important to you. But fussing over the details of a countries banking laws is like worrying about sources of randomness in session keys. It is not likely to make the slightest difference in practice. Of all the banks that have some degree of secrecy, Swiss banks are the best, not that they have the strongest secrecy, but because they are real banks, they are not just post office boxes, and the same laws apply to everyone. Your money is safe in Switzerland not because they are trying to lure foreign hot money -- in fact they are trying to exclude foreign hot money. You almost have to sneak your money into Switzerland in the same way you sneak it out of the US. Your money is safe in Switzerland because Swiss property is safe in Switzerland. In Switzerland you are protected by Swiss liberty, not by foreign privilege. For your enemies to get information about your Swiss bank account, they are going to have to know what you have been up to. And, knowing what you are up to, they are not going to merely have to ask a favor, as they would in most countries. They are going to have to go before a foreign court. They are going to have to jump through legalistic hoops that they did not write in a court that they cannot control. They will have to deal with powerful people on those peoples home ground. They are profoundly reluctant to do this. It makes them feel weak and helpless. Unless they know you are up to something *and* they have serious hots for you, they are not going to do it. So unless you are a foreign dictator that the US might wish to overthrow, or unless you got the IRS chief's daughter pregnant and skipped town, you really do not need to give a dam. And if you attract their attention, and seriously upset them, then nothing is safe. They will obtain the key to that Liechtenstein safety deposit box by bribery, illegal methods, and by threatening people with massive baseless lawsuits. (This happened to one famous tax resister. The King of Liechtenstein will tell them to go eat shit, but a lawyer in Liechtenstein will roll over like a puppy dog.) Or they will lock you up in solitary, with your only source of conversation being thirty hour chat sessions with IRS agents with bright lights shining in your eyes, until you are willing to confess that you killed Kennedy and you were Jack the Ripper and you damn well give them the key. Which brings to point thirty eight, the least and slightest of the matters you should keep in mind. Obviously some institutions and some countries are more vulnerable to persuasion and pressure by foreigners than others. I am told the King of Liechtenstein is strongly resistant. Doubtless this is true. But if there are two financial institutions, and one is a major Swiss bank, and one is actually a lawyer operating a mail drop, guess which one rolls over first, even if the lawyer is located in Liechtenstein. One needs to consider both the reputation of the country and the reputation of the institution. (You might also consider that, on the other hand, the hole-in-the-wall lawyer in Liechtenstein can give you facilities that achieve much the same thing as a fiduciary account at a price you can afford, whereas a big Swiss bank would not give you a fiduciary account unless you had serious money. Yet again you might consider that something like a fiduciary account is ridiculous overkill for most people) But I repeat, compared to the vast difference between someone they can pistol whip, and someone they cannot pistol whip, the difference between two people, neither of whom can be pistol whipped, is very slight. It really does not matter that much. Just get your money out of gunshot. Legal technicalities would only matter if the government gave a shit about legal technicalities. Once your money is out of gunshot, it really does not make a very big difference where you put it. Go for decent rates of return, and ignore too-clever-by-half secrecy schemes. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from jamesd(a)acm.org the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.

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Online Fraud Case Settled
by LAURENN%smtpgate＠earth.wri.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

EDUPAGE - Nov. 17, 1994 ONLINE FRAUD CASE SETTLED Chase Consulting has agreed to reimburse customers who paid it $99 for a credit repair program advertised over American Online. The Federal Trade Commission chairman says: "The commission wants to make it clear that advertisers on the information superhighway will be held to the same standards as advertisers in other media." The case represents the FTC's first legal effort to prosecute online fraud. (Wall Street Journal 11/17/94 A4) ************************************************************************ Educom -- Transforming Education Through Information Technology ************************************************************************ Written by John Gehl & Suzanne Douglas. V: 404-371-1853. F: 404-371-8057

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Re: DC net Implementation
by acspring＠knoware.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Using a central node to coordinate the DC-net traffic requires that the >participants trust that central node. If the central node is evil, >I think there are things it could do to identify message senders. For >example, instead of doing a single collation of N messages, it could >do N collations of N-1 messages, and find out who sent a message by >seeing in which collation that message doesn't show up. > A collation of N-1 nodes will always produce garbage; the whole set is needed for the message to fall out. Example C wishes to broadcast the number 10. A sends 5 to B B sends 11 to C C sends 7 to D D sends 14 to A A sends 14 - 5 = 9 to Central node B sends 5 - 11 = -6 C sends 11 - 7 + 10 = 14 D sends 7 - 14 = -7 Central node computes 9 - 6 + 14 - 7 = 10; Collating the subset ABC yields 17 Collating ABD yields -4 ACD yields 16 BCD yields 1 What Jim McCoy was talking about (I think: please correct me) was that there are attacks on this protocol, that can prevent messages from being transmitted; or alter messages in transit. Example: B wants to jam the transmission. He simply violates the protocol. A sends 14 - 5 = 9 to Central node B sends 5 - 11 + 8 = 2 (the +8 is static) C sends 11 - 7 + 10 = 14 D sends 7 - 14 = -7 Now the message sums up to 18, instead of 10 as C intended. Worse than that; If B knows that 10 is going to be broadcast, he can force the message to be any value he wants, by properly choosing his jamming signal. There's an even nastier trick you can play with the vanilla DC protocol. Two adjacent members can conspire to set up a 3rd. Let's say the DC Cell gets busted by the Feds for posting the illegal number 10 to the Internet. The guilty party is C, but C and D can lie about the number they shared and make it look like A. C testifies, "I received an 11 from B and sent a -3 to D" D testifies, "I received a 3 from C and sent a 4 to A" That makes A's calculation look off by 10, the number of the message. A testifies, "You liar! You gave me 14!" Who's lying? I'm not sure is these constitute bugs or "features" of the DC protocol; since the goal is to obscure the source of the message, allowing jammers and spoofers may preserve plausible deniability at the cost of network reliability; then again, maybe I'm just being lazy. -- You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately. Thank You.

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Cash
by dwa＠mirage.svl.trw.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From alt.2600... In article 8imYglW00iV8M5q0dV(a)andrew.cmu.edu, Andrew Lewis Tepper <at15+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> writes: > Imbedded in 1991 series $20 bills (and I assume all later and higher > bills) are thin plastic(?) strips with metallic writing on them. If > you're careful you can remove them with a razorblade by slitting the > bill's top edge and gently pulling it out. I've heard that airports will > soon have "Money Detectors" that will count total cash carried per > person. I'd like to figure out how the system works. I also think it > would be cool for people to collect all the strips in any money they > ever came in contact with and keep those in their wallets. Soon it would > look like everyone was walking around with $100K's of cash, rendering > their system useless. > > Andy > In article oh9(a)crl2.crl.com, eric(a)crl.com (Eric Fredricksen) writes: > Anarch (anarch(a)cse.ucsc.edu) wrote: > : They're in tens, too (don't know about ones and fives). I've never been > : able to remove one completely, but I've exposed the ends. Do you know > : how many there are in each bill, and where? I know in tens there's at > : least one, about a fifth of the way in from the left side (looking at > : the front). > > They're easy to remove. Just rip the bill diagonally from the edge to > the strip on either side of it, and pull the little triangle you just > made. The strip comes with it. Show it to your friends. > Assuming this is true, it would seem that even good, old fashioned, paper currency doesn't provide the level of anonymity that one would think. Scary... Dana W. Albrecht dwa(a)mirage.svl.trw.com

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Re: Cash
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:25 PM 11/18/94, Dana Albrecht wrote: >>From alt.2600... > >In article 8imYglW00iV8M5q0dV(a)andrew.cmu.edu, Andrew Lewis Tepper ><at15+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> writes: >> bill's top edge and gently pulling it out. I've heard that airports will >> soon have "Money Detectors" that will count total cash carried per >> person. I'd like to figure out how the system works. I also think it This one has been flying around ever since the strips were put in place. It has been refuted as techically infeasable. (I don't remember the exact arguement, it had to do with the strips being mostly nonreactive and there being no real way to count how many/what denomination is in a stack.) >Assuming this is true, it would seem that even good, old fashioned, >paper currency doesn't provide the level of anonymity that one >would think. Scary... Also, realize that some places to look for that strip and if you pull it it might not be accepted (most places that check only look at $50s and $100s, though). -j

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DECEMBER '94: Object/Document Security BOF
by Eric Blossom 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Group Name: Object/Document Security BOF (ios) IETF Area : Security Area Date/Time : Wednesday, December 7, 1994 0930-1200 =============== The purpose of this BOF is to present information and to discuss ideas associated with document/object security, store and forward security, and third-party security services. The general idea of creating protected objects (e.g. signed documents, encrypted files) which can be accessed and transferred by a variety of applications is being discussed in several contexts - store and forward extensions to GSSAPI, PEM-MIME work, www security, etc. We would like to discuss requirements and constraints for a general capability for protected objects and explore the need for a common approach to providing these types of services. The BOF is scheduled for 9:30am Wednedsay December 7th. The IOS (Information Object Security) BOF is within the Security Directorate. If you're interested in this area, we hope you can attend. We are planning to present some of our ideas on the requirements and goals for general protected objects as well as details on an Information Object Security project BBN is currently working on for ARPA (short summary below). This project has developed security tools for protection of documents and objects as well as for invoking and performing trusted third party services. We're looking for anyone else who would like agenda time to either present specific work/ideas or to discuss requirements and other contexts for protected objects. If you'd like to volunteer either send a message to jlowry(a)bbn.com or just show up and we can sort out the agenda there. Finally there will be a discussion to determine whether there is interest in continuing. Should a mailing-list be formed ? Is there enough interest and focus to attempt creation of a working group charter ? After the BOF, we're prepared to demonstrate prototype IOS tools for any interested parties. ******** IOS Project These tools allow the users to apply multiple parallel and sequential signatures and annotations to objects/documents, and to provide access control and confidentiality protections to these objects/documents. There are a number of utilities available to perform certificate validation and maintain a cache of certificates. Included in the tool set is an ASN.1 to C++ compiler. Third-party services are also under investigation and the issues of a trusted time-stamp server, third-party involvement in non-repudiation, and proof of delivery, submission, and receipt are addressed. Documents describing the IOS project tools and architecture are available for anonymous ftp from the server ftp.bbn.com in the directory /pub/outgoing/ios_docs.

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