December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Deployment
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > So, anyone want to volunteer to port Privtool to Windows ? > Uh, pardon my ignorance, but what is privtool, and why is it > a good thing to port it to windows? > (As compared to the task of integrating PGP into microsofts > mail tool.) It's an open-system mail tool resembling Sun's mailtool with PGP support added. Open-system tools are one of those vanguard things :-) (So are convenient GUI-development tools.) I no longer have a nearby Sun machine to play on, so I haven't played with it, but if it's got a well-done interface it's worth porting or stealing concepts from to include in other systems. I've heard that Microsoft's new mail tools are far less brain-damaged than the Microsoft Mail I've grown to know and hate, which assumes any message that's more than a few lines will be an attached document with maybe some optional intro and leftover mail headers, and chokes on messages with more than 30K of text in the body (choking badly on more than 64K). (Apparently, part of the reason for this evil is the fault of Visual Basic and/or Visual C++, which are convenient GUI development tools...) On the other hand, integrating it into Free Eudora for Windows would be pleasant, if that's doable (I forget it source is available.) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com

2 1

Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 (fwd)
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:59 PM 7/16/95 +0100, Andrew Spring wrote: >RICO question: i thought that the idea of RICO is to confiscate assets of >racketeers that are derived from criminal activities. PGP and remailer >software is distributed free. so would RICO seizures even apply (yes I >know this doesnt' always stop the FBI)? You _were_ using that software on a _computer_ weren't you? Guess it's one of your racketeer's tools, so we'll have to take it for ourselves, er, um, for evidence and protection of national security.... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com

1 0

Re: A Chronology on crypto bans
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:08 PM 7/16/95 -0400, Dave Banisar wrote: >Someone asked why is there such a flurry recently on banning crypto in >recent months. This is not a recent issue. There have been almost non-stop >attempts for the last 15 years. True, though there have been more and louder calls for banning crypto as it becomes more widely used, and as the Internet and electronic commerce make its use more relevant. The number of cats running around outside of bags has been increasing, so the effort of the politicians to herd them back in has become more and more noticeable. A lot of it has been good public relations but the Good Guys as well - back in the late 70s, when I started following it, crypto was mostly for spooks, bankers, and academic math nerds*; PGP and the government's persecution of Phil have made a lot of people aware that the stakes are high and the Bad Guys are serious, and the Clipper Chip sounded enough like "The Feds want to tap my phone" that the general public could understand, a bit, that this was something that affected them... It's also been technology - real crypto needs computers, and computers have gone from million-dollar room-fillers that you might use at work or university to appliances you can buy at WalMart, like tv sets, which your kids use for school, if you don't count game machines, which your kids can buy at K-mart... Suddenly a third of the country's got a machine they can do real crypto on, and for 10 bucks a month they can be on a world-wide email network. And it's mostly the _rich_ third of the country, who might want to do their home banking somewhere a bit less taxing than before. Oh, yeah, there's also drugs - folks might want to use the Home Shopping Internet for more than just fake jewelry :-) * at the time, I was an academic math nerd designing banking networks at the phone company, and my department also did studies for spooks... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com

1 0

NSA and NatSec Looks
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's a pretty good recent overview of NSA -- history, organization, operations and, best, facilities -- at: URL: http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/fas/irp/nsa/ This is part of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) web site, cited here by Jim Gillogly in connection with the VENONA papers. There are links to a bounty of other information on national security and governmental secrecy. Among many sweetmeats, the homepage on "Cyberstrategy" may be of interest (John Pike's project): URL: http://www.fas.org/pub/gen/iswg/cyberstr.html

1 0

List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service 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, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail, which is available at: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/premail/premail-0.33.tar.gz For the PGP public keys of the remailers, as well as some help on how to use them, finger remailer.help.all(a)chaos.taylored.com This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"vox"} = "<remail(a)vox.xs4all.nl> cpunk pgp. post"; $remailer{"avox"} = "<anon(a)vox.hacktic.nl> cpunk pgp post"; $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"portal"} = "<hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"alumni"} = "<hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"bsu-cs"} = "<nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu> cpunk hash ksub"; $remailer{"rebma"} = "<remailer(a)rebma.mn.org> cpunk pgp. hash"; $remailer{"c2"} = "<remail(a)c2.org> eric pgp hash reord"; $remailer{"penet"} = "<anon(a)anon.penet.fi> penet post"; $remailer{"ideath"} = "<remailer(a)ideath.goldenbear.com> cpunk hash ksub reord"; $remailer{"hacktic"} = "<remailer(a)utopia.hacktic.nl> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"flame"} = "<remailer(a)flame.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp. hash latent cut post ek reord"; $remailer{"rahul"} = "<homer(a)rahul.net> cpunk pgp hash filter"; $remailer{"syrinx"} = "<syrinx(a)c2.org> cpunk pgp reord mix post"; $remailer{"tower"} = "<remailer(a)tower.techwood.org> cpunk pgp post"; $remailer{"ford"} = "<remailer(a)bi-node.zerberus.de> cpunk pgp"; $remailer{"hroller"} = "<hroller(a)c2.org> cpunk pgp hash mix cut ek"; $remailer{"vishnu"} = "<mixmaster(a)vishnu.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord"; $remailer{"crown"} = "<mixmaster(a)kether.alias.net> cpunk pgp hash latent cut mix ek reord"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"spook"} = "<remailer(a)spook.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"gondolin"} = "<mixmaster(a)gondolin.org> cpunk mix hash latent cut ek ksub reord"; $remailer{"rmadillo"} = "<remailer(a)armadillo.com> mix cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. Use "premail -getkeys pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu" to get PGP keys for the remailers. Fingering this address works too. 21 Apr 1995: The new version of premail (0.33) is out, with direct posting, perl5 and better MH support, and numerous bug fixes. Last ping: Mon 17 Jul 95 6:00:03 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- hacktic remailer(a)utopia.hacktic.nl *+*+****+*** 14:18 99.99% rmadillo remailer(a)armadillo.com +++++++++++* 49:27 99.99% spook remailer(a)spook.alias.net ********--** 1:32:17 99.99% flame remailer(a)flame.alias.net ++++++++-+++ 57:13 99.99% syrinx syrinx(a)c2.org -------+--- 1:44:52 99.99% replay remailer(a)replay.com *+*+**+*+*** 13:59 99.95% vox remail(a)vox.xs4all.nl -..--.-.---- 12:41:56 99.99% bsu-cs nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu .**+*#*###*- 54:07 99.90% crown mixmaster(a)kether.alias.net --------+- 1:12:09 99.89% portal hfinney(a)shell.portal.com *****#*##### 2:18 99.82% alumni hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu *****#*#*#*# 3:02 99.82% vishnu mixmaster(a)vishnu.alias.net -**+** ++*** 20:02 98.62% gondolin mixmaster(a)gondolin.org -**-**++*--- 1:17:43 98.56% c2 remail(a)c2.org -*++++++-++ 42:52 98.03% extropia remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com -..--.-_ -- 14:50:37 97.80% ideath remailer(a)ideath.goldenbear.com _ --...... 17:04:28 96.35% ford remailer(a)bi-node.zerberus.de #-#+# 1:52:55 96.09% hroller hroller(a)c2.org ++***# +*-++ 12:53 94.98% penet anon(a)anon.penet.fi --+++-- --++ 2:59:39 92.16% rebma remailer(a)rebma.mn.org -_++_.-+--+ 15:25:46 91.39% rahul homer(a)rahul.net *++*+++*##+- 10:33 99.94% tower remailer(a)tower.techwood.org 6:44 1.46% For more info: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

1 0

Proposed SS#/Federal Job Licensing DOS Attack
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On another subject entirely... I have naturally been concerned about the Feds' proposal to set up a national job licensing system. In order to protect us from hordes of illegals, they have suggested that employers be required to check SS#-True Name matches before employment could begin. This amounts to requiring federal permission for the 55 million annual job changes. Initially, it is supposed to be restricted to checking SS# validity, name match, and non multiple use. Later (as with driver's licenses) they will add restrictions having to do with tax compliance, child support compliance, library fine compliance, etc. After all, we wouldn't want tax evading, deadbeat dad, library scofflaws working in Amerika, would we? This suggests am interesting Denial of Service (DOS) attack. If you published your own or others' SS#-True Name pairs on a public forum (currently completely legal BTW), multiple use could be encouraged, the TrueNames would become unemployable, and interesting litigation would result. If done enough, systemic breakdown would occur. I am anxious to see the regs (they are just at the talking stage) to see how they handle "exceptions" like thus. DCF "Who in spite of the fact that he has changed jobs since November 1986, has yet to fill out an I-9 form. He *loves* contract employment."

1 0

Re: Free The World Web Server project.. :)
by dursi＠lola.phy.QueensU.CA 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Expecially if the form letter generated would be randomly selected > >from parallel word streams. For example: > [...] > > You get the idea. > Rather than spend five minutes writing something on your own you'd end > up something that looks totally fake. I believe that what is going on > would be discerned by a staffer in moments. Well, it would be just as easy (although, admittedly, somewhat less convenient to the users) to have the web page such that the users could type in the letter, with some ``suggested text'' (perhaps randomly generated as above), perhaps even as the default; then it's just a matter of editing a few sentances, and maybe adding a paragraph or two... then click, and it's off. It wouldn't be as convenient as just-click-and-a-letter-will-be-sent, but it's still more convenient than having to write the letter yourself, which means that it'll generate more traffic... - Jonathan - --- Jonathan Dursi | "Never attribute to malice dursi(a)astro.queensu.ca | what can adequately be explained | by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQBVAgUBMAp5/BJH45PFiKyNAQGYJQH/Uo3k45i73U8qQA1/y5LeXPso07LAPCwo 5i0xkFudoK2/Q5H7Gm7xmygNXIkckhuK/X/kJvdCf2khRluP8y/c7w== =jwye -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

"Zodiac"
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Neal Stephenson's novel "Zodiac" (an Eco-thriller) has been re- released in a new paperback edition. I loved it! ObCrypto: you'll have to read the book to find out... Ok....actually none, but Neal's fans here on the list will enjoy the book! Flame away.... Brian D Williams Cypherpatriot " I'm not a spin Doctor, but I play one on the Internet."

1 0

Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 (fwd)
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:18 AM 7/15/95 PDT, Jim Gillogly wrote: > >> silly(a)ugcs.caltech.edu ((me)) writes: >> Help! What does GAK stand for? I've seen it a billion times, > >Government Access to Keys; also seen as GACK (Crypto Keys). This is more >descriptive and accurate than calling it Key Escrow, since escrow is for >the benefit of the parties involved in a transaction. Or we might use Sandy Sandfort's suggestion "key forfeiture" derived from asset forfeiture. DCF "Isn't it peculiar how nature doth contrive that every boy and every girl who's born into this world alive is either a little libertarian or else a little goddamn fascist bastard." -- Just getting it out of my system before Exon.

1 0

Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
by tcmay＠sensemedia.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:35 AM 7/17/95, Martin Hamilton wrote: >MONTY HARDER writes: > >| Anyone who has read MAD Magazine could put such together. As an added >| bonus, use variable margin settings, and none of the letters would be >| exactly the same. Appropriate Imail => FAX software on a puter in DC >| (local call that way) with the phone number of the sender filled in on >| the top line for ID (izzat legal?) so it doesn't look like a form letter >| at all. > >Plus - choose the fonts & point sizes at random too ? :-) Yes, make your letters to Congressmen look like ransom notes...it really gets their attention! Seriously, I have no doubt that the next generation of "direct mail" will be geared toward automatic generation of personalized letters, using various natural language parser generators (a la the "rant generator" many of us have used), variable fonts and margins, and so on. This will further "flood the channel" and will ultimately make letter writing mostly meaningless. IN my case, I skip most letters to the editor--at least for local newspapers and weeklies--as they look to be automatically written ("I am outraged at your article about converting Lighthouse Point into a nuclear-powered whale-packing plant..."). Cypherpunks could probably have an effect on hastening this "denial of service" attack on the efficacy of letter-writing by releasing an easy-to-use package that does all this letter writing at the click of a button....just type in some key words, for the topics, and it does the rest. An interesting project, actually. --Tim May .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)sensemedia.net | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

2 1