December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

SCO Unix Crontab Problems-Need Help
by ncra＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have a bourne shell that I need to execute in SCO unix 4.0 from a crontab. The script is a communications upload using ecu. The script runs just fine in terminal mode, but when it is executed in cron, it is not able to gain access of the modem for some reason. Q: Is there something special that needs to be added to the crontab line in order to allow for tty access. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

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Digicash tagged with payee?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have heard it claimed that when you make a payment with Digicash ecash, the identity of the payee is encoded or embedded into the cash somehow. This is an anti-theft measure (among other things, perhaps). The bank checks that the embedded identity in deposited cash matches the account name which is doing the deposit. My question is, how could this be done? How can the payor, at payment time, without communicating with the bank, embed a payee name irreversibly into the cash so that a thief cannot strip it out and replace it with his own name? Is it perhaps a matter of encrypting the cash with the public key of the payee? If so, how does the payor get that? Is it provided by the payee during the TCP connection? Is it authenticated with a certificate, perhaps signed by some Digicash root key? Off-list there has been some discussion about the role of certificates in ecash, and in cash systems in general. It would be interesting to know if this anti-theft provision of Digicash is actually provided by means of a certificate.

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Re: /dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
by Mark Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> In article <199510311715.TAA05821(a)grumble.grondar.za>, > Mark Murray <mark(a)grondar.za> wrote: > > forever { > > cat /dev/random > /dev/null > > } > > > > Severely limiting most decent folk's chance at getting PGP to work. > > Ideally, if two processes are trying to read /dev/random at the same time, > both would get data at half-speed. Doesn't it work that way already? Ideally, yes. However most processes won't swamp (and deplete) /dev/random like this will. Most (well-behaved) processes will (should) just take what they need. The above loop tries quite hard to take all that is there, so any process asking for randomness will be sharing with the above loop on an almost byte-by-byte basis, like you suggest. The above won't leave a "pool of randomness" to act as a buffer for user requests, so will cause a nasty slowdown. M -- Mark Murray 46 Harvey Rd, Claremont, Cape Town 7700, South Africa +27 21 61-3768 GMT+0200 Finger mark(a)grumble.grondar.za for PGP key

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"Dr." Fred
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The most charitable explanation for "Dr." Fred is that he's degenerated into the professional equivalent of those pathetic aging former chess masters who try to eek out a subsistence living by charging five bucks a game. People often play with them out of sympathy, or for the novelty of having lost to a past great. It's part of the chess culture, and it's basically harmless and sort of quaint. The difference, of course, is that its almost impossible to have sympathy for Dr. Fred. His hussle is for a hell of a lot more than subsistence. He was also never actually a master of his field, a fact that becomes increasingly obvious as our exposure to him goes on. Now he's reduced himself to trying to collect someone else's winnings.

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Re: Brit conference asks for more cyberspace violations
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Crimebusters must devise more ingenious ways of combating fraud and >will need new international policing powers to stem a rising tide of >high-tech economic crime, experts say. Delegates at an economic crime >conference in Cambridge, England, this week complained they lacked >the tools and power to take the fight to the organized criminals >whose only barrier was the speed of their modems. Perhaps encryption could be used as a means of fraud prevention.

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OH?_bob
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

11-1-95. NYPaper, Page One lead: "C.I.A. Tells Panel It Failed To Sift Spy Data. Disinformation May Have Led to Spending for Illusionary Perils." The C.I.A. admitted today that it knowingly gave the White House and the Pentagon inside information on the Soviet Union without warning that it came from foreign agents it knew or strongly suspected were controlled by Moscow. The information may have affected decisions to spend billions of dollars on military hardware. Even when the agency knew or suspected that its sources were double agents it never warned that its inside information was tainted. The agency thought it more important to protect its suspect Soviet sources than to tell the nation's leaders the truth. That disclosure threatens the C.I.A.'s foundation; its central mission is to speak the truth to those in power. "Something has gone terribly wrong," Senator Bob Kerrey said. OH?_bob (8 kb)

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No Subject
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 31 Oct 1995, Anonymous wrote: > Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1995, p. B3. > Brad Meinert, senior analyst at research firm Input, says the > tremendous growth of the World Wide Web, a graphics Internet > interface, "is putting increased capacity demands for greater > bandwidth on the Internet infrastructure." I see our media friends are just as clueful as ever .... graphics Internet interface ?? Thats almost as bad as saying "Come visit our Internet Site" when they mean Web site !!

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[Fwd: Please Archive] Please Archive
by Six 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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US government department for crime enforcement!
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It's come to my attention that the US government has a group called the 'Department of the Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network' in Vienna, Virginia. I know that burocrats like to keep themselves busy, but even I didn't think they would go so far as to enforce crimes to keep the law enforcement people busy. What a curious way to spend the taxpayers money. Garfield P.S. :-) for the humor impaired.

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Re: Please send cash
by todd＠lgt.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yo Fred, nobody said you wer not right on the money, just that these issues clearly have fixes and are part and parcel to a pre-adolesencent product, not a mature one. Yes, you get two points for posting the bug report, but lose one for soap-boxing about the woes of the product in general... Keep up the good work, just drop the proslitizing and we all wouldn't mind hearing your rap. BTW - If your or your friends are up for a game of speed-chess... I'm willing, I used to be *rated* until I dropped off the circuit a few years ago... Winged Benoni, Classical Ruy, or maybe an Accellerated Dragon (for those who play the black)... I won't even charge you the nominal 5$ fee... >I just picked this up from the Risks forum: > >> Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 16:14:59 -0500 >> From: Drew Dean <ddean(a)CS.Princeton.EDU> >> Subject: HotJava 1.0 alpha 3 security issues >> >> We have found several security problems in the 1.0 alpha 3 release of >> HotJava from Sun Microsystems. The two most important problems are that >> HotJava does not enforce the stated limits on where an applet can connect to >> (an applet can talk to any place with which you have IP-level connectivity), >> and HotJava is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, where someone can >> watch your web-surfing, both seeing your requests, and the content that you >> receive. > >Two of the Java attacks I outlined in this forum and got abuse for. > >> While HotJava prevents applets from actively opening connections that >> violate the user-selected security policy, it allows an applet to accept >> connections from anywhere. At this point, an applet only has to use any one >> of a number of channels to communicate where it is, and have the remote end >> do the active open. >> >> HotJava also allows an applet to set the proxy servers that the browser >> uses. This opens up a huge hole for anyone concerned about the privacy of >> their web surfing. > >Attacks 31-49 work here. > >> Please note that these bugs are specific to the 1.0 alpha 3 release, and are >> _not_ bugs in the Java language itself, nor do they apply to Netscape 2.0 >> beta 1J, which doesn't permit network connections. We have notified Sun of >> these problems, and are presently writing a paper on these and other issues. >> We will make more information available on our Web page after we hear back >> from Sun. > >Drat - Sun doesn't offer awards. > >> >> http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ddean/java/ >> >> Drew Dean Dan Wallach >> ddean(a)cs.princeton.edu dwallach(a)cs.princeton.edu > >Inquiring minds want to know. > >-- >-> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net >Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236 Regards, T. S. Glassey Chief Technologist Looking Glass Technologies todd(a)lgt.com (415) 324-4318 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQB1AwUBMFu5E6gNRnWhagU5AQHI+gL+Mwpcd3lAWd8FF06qcG6rnLhIYveHW71a XC7xh1T0uu8qnYX31yMp17OG28jWpKUbWec1IM9/eXOi+gInA7rKICWczV8zo9Z0 0puxjRRN7yO4KfRb3cPpk+r0p6pDg01Y =bTYb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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