December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Privacy of Voice Mail?
by jmueller＠gac.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From 1/24/95 Edupage Forwarded message: > > HOW PRIVATE IS VOICE MAIL? > A lawsuit filed by a former McDonald's employee whose private voice mail > messages to his paramour were recorded and played for his wife may > determine the question of whether voice mail boxes are granted the same > confidentiality protections as live telephone calls or postal mail. The > ACLU argues that electronic eavesdropping should be avoided, but the U.S. > Chamber of Commerce takes the stance that businesses have the right to > ensure their electronic equipment is used for legitimate purposes. > (Times-Picayune 1/23/95 A3) > Comments? -- Joel Mueller - "Here lies one whose name is writ in water." -Keats Check my .plan for my PGP Public Key. PGP encrypted mail is very welcome! This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays. -Dent

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No more unix holy war !
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From James Donald Jan 26, 95 07:14:19 pm +0800 [...] > A: This is not the proper place for such arguments. Right, so why do you persist in sending them here ? > B: The statement is so flagrantly silly that the > proper response is ridicule, not an answer. Right, so why did you answer (and to the list, no less) ? [...] > [Childish insults, abuse, and flame bait deleted] If that were true, this thread would be long dead. [...] > Note that although this flame has nothing to do with cypherpunks Right, so why are you sending it to the cypherpunks list ? >From jamesd(a)com.informix.com Jan 26, 95 08:05:46 pm +0800 > To summarize this thread, and I hope end it. This was (briefly) promising. >From jamesd(a)com.informix.com Jan 26, 95 09:00:03 pm +0800 > I am writing this under sun's unix imitation of Microsoft's [...] If you hoped to end the thread, why continue it like this less than an hour later ? >From jamesd(a)com.informix.com Jan 26, 95 09:05:10 pm +0800 > And did I mention that "make" used to treat a tab as semanticly [...] > Oh yes, I did mention that. > Well I guess I will mention it again. Why ? What about ending the thread ? >From jamesd(a)com.informix.com Jan 26, 95 09:12:31 pm +0800 > And did I mention that in DOS you can type > rename *.txt *.asc [...] 3 more messages in 13 minutes, and you said you hoped this thread would end ? >From jamesd(a)com.informix.com Jan 26, 95 09:38:35 pm +0800 > And did I mention that in DOS you can type: > dir filename /s [...] > You are spared. I will not mention "curses". Why not spare us entirely by not sending all this mail which "has nothing to do with cypherpunks" as you said ? "Yes, James, you're absolutely right. I prostrate myself before your magnificence." Will you be quiet about this now ? What do we need to do to make you hush up ? -L. Futplex McCarthy

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Re: Reordering, not Latency (Was: Re: Remailer)
by Andrew Lowenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Adam Shostack says: > > It may be that the FBI has a couple of Suns handling the whole > > remailer network right now. Perry Metzger replies: > If they are doing that, they are violating the ECPA. They are > allowed to monitor only those things they have a warrant to monitor > (with, of course, all those lovely National Security exceptions). > This is not to say that it isn't being done, but it can't be used > in court. Is this even technically possible? That is, wholesale monitoring of disparate portions of the net from a single access point. Given the distributed and dynamic properties of the Net this would seem impossible. To monitor the entire remailer network an attacker would have to setup packet sniffers upstream from each and every portion of the Net that contained a remailer, wouldn't they? I suppose an extremely resourceful attacker could monitor traffic at crucial points (i.e. transcontinental feeds, points on the NFSnet, CIX, etc...), but there are so many private connections linking networks that it would be very difficult indeed to sniff out every bit of remailer traffic. Is having every bit of remailer traffic necessary for traffic analysis? Or would having a good percentage of it be sufficient? andrew

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Internet Mailing lists book
by Arsen Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found a 1993 version of this book (is there a 94 or 95?) it unfortunatly lacks the cypherpunks list. >8-( =============================================================================== | + ^ + || ' . . . . . . . Ray (Arsen) Arachelian || | \|/ || . . . ' . ' . : . . rarachel(a)photon.poly.edu || |<--+-->||. . . |' '| .' . . ... ___ sunder(a)intercom.com || | /|\ || . . \___/ . . . : .... __[R] || | + v + || . oOOo /o.O\ oOOo :. : .. |A| "And bugs to kill before I sleep"|| =========/---vvvv-------VVVV------------|I|----------------------------------/ / . : . ' : ' |D| This signature pannel is / / The Next Bug to kill(tm) --- now open. / /___________________________________________________________________/ GCS d++(---)(-) H s+++/++ !g !p !au a- w-(+) (!v | v) C+++++ Coherent++++ L+ 3 C+ V+ P? E- N++ K- W W--- M++ V-- po- Y+++ t:[tos+, tng--, ds9+] 5 !j !R G? tv+ b+++ D+ B--- e+(- | *) u--- h+++ f+(++) r++ n+(---) x**(++)

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Remote command execution PGP script
by Steven Greenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

About a year and a half ago one of the Perl wizards on this list posted a script which would alllow you to mail a PGP-encrypted script to an account and (if the signature checked out) execute the script on the remote system. This would be extremely useful to me right now. Anybody have a copy of that script so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel? Thanks, Steve

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pgp content type RFC
by Andrew Lowenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Could someone please provide me with the number of the MIME PGP content-type RFC? thanks! andrew

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Re: CERT statement
by Marc Horowitz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> What we need to concentrate on is secure systems that are not vulnerable >> to IP spoofing, as opposed to firewalls. You're exactly right. However, getting people to deploy real security systems is nearly impossible. My company sells a kerberos system, and although everyone is saying they want security, nobody really understands what this means, and as soon as we tell them that it actually involves effort, they become far less interested. Even though I've seen companies get hosed because of lame security, the people who matter aren't willing to commit. I'm hoping that as firewalls begin to fall, that the CERT will stop recommending half-assed solutions. We'll have to wait and see. Marc

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"Subway" remailers
by xpat＠vm1.spcs.umn.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Need ideas/comments: I have been modeling remailer scenarios using IBM VM/ESA virtual machines. After fwaffing a bit, looking at the traffic analysis concern, and taking note of some of the probability work posted recently, I thought I might throw this idea out for a sanity check: "Subway" remailers. "Subway" remailers would exchange identical sized "containers", much like a subway at semi-regular pulses or intervals. It would require a ring of remailers large enough (yeah, I know) to make traffic analysis of entrance and exit points difficult and/or expensive. Each container would contain either fixed or variable slots for multiple messages. Containers could be full, partially full, or even empty. (there would probably have to be a max message size) Subway remailers would be able to carry a message to a designated "last" remailer or to deliver blindly to a "last" remailer of random choosing. Messages may or may not change containers at the various stations/remailers. It could be randomized. Possible header scripts: X-Subway-Script: Ride 2; Latent: 03:30; Ride 3; Deliver; or many other possibilities. The whole container would be encrypted to the next remailer, giving the next remailer the same access to exchange passengers or to make them wait in a latent state. The quirkier matters on this are how to handle PGP so that nothing is compromised and for how the remailers to identify each other as "friendly and operational" so the subway system does not have a traffic jam. Crypto comments please. ------------------------------------------------------------------ P M Dierking |

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Re: Win NT security
by Andrew K Bressen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Kevin Phaup, program manager lead of Microsoft's Business Systems >>Division, put the best spin he could on this first major Windows NT >>shortcoming. ``Pull the data into a database and then massage it,'' he said. >>``We have a new product - System Management Server from the Back Office >>Suite - that could help.'' >> I agree, but why would I want to buy a brand-new operating system that >>needs help out of the box? Because there aren't any that do not. OS/2 1.x and 2.x had no performance monitoring tools, Windows 3.1 and 3.11 didn't initially come with TCP/IP, Mac owners for the longest time had to buy suitcase and still buy ramdoubler, VMS doesn't support RAID out of the box... systems and utility software has been with us for a long time, and will be for a while yet. At one facility where I work (an NYC brokerage) we run at least 200 users each on ultrix, VMS, NT 3.5, WFW 3.11, Windows 3.1, and VM/CMS, and have about ten OS/2 1.3 servers as well. NT users require less help with networking than dos users, more than unix users. Backup is easier with NT than dos, but harder than VMS. RAID is easier than with VMS or unix, but multiple redundantly clustered systems aren't available for NT. Systems management is slightly harder than VMS or unix, but much easier than WFW. NT crashes more than VM/CMS, but less than ultrix 4.2 did and much less than dos windows does. >> What's more, the third-party database solution for security administration >>is a hopeless short-term patch. To be truly effective, it needs a much >>tighter integration with Windows NT's APIs to permit not only systemic >>analysis, but also systemic security changes based on selected criteria. huh? you just specced out what it needs to work; I don't see why this would be a problem for symantec or some similar firm to deliver. The API is published and fairly stable, NT users just have to wait for someone to actually do it. >> If administrators want to change the access rights of every user so they >>can log on at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., they cannot do it with Windows NT >>3.5. They might be able to do it with a third-party product or with Windows >>NT 4.0. they can't do it with unix either without coding some, and with dos windows you can just forget about it. >> ``If someone builds an administration product like that, they'll make a >>lot of money,'' Phaup says. yep. so what makes you say that it is "hopeless"? >> A WEEKEND'S WORK Windows NT has other security problems, as well. For >>example, it does not have data cryptography, which is essential to make sure >>a network is reasonably secure from eavesdropping and integrity breaches. um, what OS does, out of the box? especially in a 1.5 release... heck, I'm not aware of any networkable OS that has end-to-end link and application level encryption, file acl's, and a key management scheme that can be both centrally and distributedly administered. Kerberos and AFS both make a start in these directions, but are not there yet. >>Microsoft, which knows encryption technology, easily could have included the >>appropriate algorithms in software to make Windows NT more secure. please to define easily? the NT 3.5 release slipped enough as it was. >> Microsoft's Phaup agrees it would have been simple to add encryption to >>Windows NT. ``The hooks are all there,'' he said. so are the hooks for UFS support, and for WINS-DNS integration. the os has more hooks than a football field covered in velcro. so what? >> But Windows NT does not need cryptography for C2 certification. And >>perhaps even more telling, Microsoft cannot export cryptography outside the >>U.S. due to export control laws that prohibit it from doing so without >>licensing. Of course, the company could have made two versions of Windows >>NT: one with crytography for domestic use and one without cryptography for >>export. >> >> According to Phaup, Microsoft was reluctant to do so for two reasons. >>``Security is way down on the list of corporate concerns and desires and >>wants in an OS. It's in the top 20, but not the top 3,'' he says. ``And the >>testing cycle would have been a double killer.'' summary: consumers aren't demanding security and it would cost time and money to put it in, so we didn't make it a priority, but we did leave hooks for it. so why are you villifying them? overall, this sounds pretty reasonable. >> Windows NT's last major shortcoming lays in the omission of a feature that >>most security experts consider virtually indispensable: boot control. um, which security experts would these be? I sure don't consider the absence of boot control on my 400 VMS and unix workstations to be much of a concern... >> In the DOS/Windows world, third-party PC security is reasonably attempted >>by forcing users to boot from the C drive and making them log on with IDs >>and passwords. And NT does this. >>... However, if a bootable DOS diskette is inserted in the A >>drive, the PC will boot without a logon, and the A:> will appear. >> >> But if the user attempts to log over to the C drive, the system will come >>back with a message such as: Invalid drive specification. Security experts >>recognize this as an inexpensive technique that will keep out casual >>intruders and nontechnical types. Well, booting off of a DOS diskette in drive A sure won't let you at my NTFS C: drive... though I'm not sure how technical an intruder would have to be to find the users password written down somewhere on their desk, or to try their initials or first name... >> One way to mandate boot control is with a hardware or firmware addition to >>the PC in the form of an add-on card. Or a key lock on the power supply or a passsword lock in the CMOS of the machine, both of which are available from several major hardware vendors, and neither of which cares if the machine is dos, nt, unix, or pick. >> In Windows NT, boot control does not even exist as an option. Huh? The key lock on my DEC PC works just fine, and the CMOS lock on the compaqs here doesn't care what the OS is... >>... Again, this >>suggests that Microsoft's security effort was driven by C2 certification, >>not by security itself. OK, the federal government spends millions of dollars coming up with a security spec for computers that they buy. Microsoft wants to sell the fed NT, so they make sure NT can pass the spec. I fail to see the shortcoming on their part. Out of the box NT is more secure than DOS, Windows, Windows for Workgroups, and most flavors of unix more than two years old. A well administered group of NT machines can be more secure than a poorly administered group of VMS, Novell, or unix systems. It is not the most secure OS ever devised. It sure isn't B2. This doesn't strike me as unreasonable, though we could wish for better. >> Windows NT must evolve quickly to garner a spot in the secure operating >>system arsenal or somehow steal market share from the likes of Novell. It How is Novell more secure or securable than NT? Comparing an OS to a networking system, strikes me as unproductive; people run Novell on servers, not desktops. NT can run a 32 bit API on several 64 bit flavors of hardware, it is multitasking and multithreaded... comparing it to Novell is apples and oranges. If you're comparing Novell+DOS (or DOS/Windows) to NT, then right out of the box, your above statements seem reversed: if the data is on the desktop, and the PC doesn't have extra security hardware, then I can floppy boot the pc and get the data, but I'll need a username and password to get into the NT system. If the data is on the server, then under either system I'll need a username and password. Neither one will stop me from taking the hard drive and sticking into a machine I have control of and getting the data. - --a. k. bressen - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLygs0yoZzwIn1bdtAQG/YQF9EpEzsvQvEDdBnoROxlgAUK0YMrFTR35b FvT1uqcLEqfCo65qJ2qpSmX0SC+Hin5u =eTTq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Reordering, not Latency (Was: Re: Remailer)
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Andrew Lowenstern asks: > Is this even technically possible? That is, wholesale monitoring of > disparate portions of the net from a single access point. Given the > distributed and dynamic properties of the Net this would seem impossible. To > monitor the entire remailer network an attacker would have to setup packet > sniffers upstream from each and every portion of the Net that contained a > remailer, wouldn't they? Given the current state of computer security, this should not be too difficult for an organization such as NSA. For each remailer, just hack into a computer on its local ethernet and put it into promiscious mode. Each time an e-mail passes by, have it send the header to some monitoring center using an UDP packet. > I suppose an extremely resourceful attacker could monitor traffic at crucial > points (i.e. transcontinental feeds, points on the NFSnet, CIX, etc...), but > there are so many private connections linking networks that it would be very > difficult indeed to sniff out every bit of remailer traffic. Is having every > bit of remailer traffic necessary for traffic analysis? Or would having a > good percentage of it be sufficient? Complete monitoring should not be neccessary, having a larger percentage of the traffic just makes the job easier. Wei Dai -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLygz8jl0sXKgdnV5AQFv3wP/USeKOwPBn12m1hC9RPOgwi1Zt4wB+T5J RWM3fYAvpK4gGUB2xOGrSLDh68DNDgSghjwqacBTkEsn+5ENBXd9rrQOjmaMeipI rJuxYSJTiNKhlGro3yY2UW3FScKYks3mi6eJ9G+g5rOOIHqCKtAhkSQJkHeCJOM3 3m2ObHv1gMs= =xmaK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- E-mail: Wei Dai <weidai(a)eskimo.com> URL: "http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai" =================== Exponential Increase of Complexity =================== --> Big Bang --> atoms --> complex macromolecules --> biological evolution --> central nervous systems --> social learning --> symbolic communication --> computers --> internetworking --> close-coupled automation --> high-bandwidth brain-to-net connections --> artificial intelligence --> distributed consciousness --> group minds --> ? ? ?

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