December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"Codebreakers" on PBS
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For the Bay Area, on KQED at 8 p.m. Tuesday. The NOVA show "The World War II codebreaking efforts known as Enigma and Purple"

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Re: Sat phone permit "wire"taps
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:52 AM 7/31/95 -0700, rick hoselton wrote: > >>Different cases - the Walkers gave away information on how the Yankees were >>stealing Russian secrets, which the Russians patched up by encrypting. > >Really? Do you have a reference for this? I am interested. No refs, this is just memory of the news. There was an undersea cable north of Siberia somewhere that carried a lot of unencrypted military traffic, which US Submarines were eavesdropping on. I think Walker was the one who leaked it, and they started encrypting. Refs on the Walkers should be easy to find in the library; there were a couple of books. > >>The most current information on the Rosenbergs, gotten from decrypted Soviet >>communications and declassified US and ex-Soviet files, indicates that Ethel >>Rosenberg >>was probably innocent of spying, and Julius was spying but didn't give away >>any useful atomic secrets, and that the FBI probably knew at the time they >>had Ethel killed that she was innocent. > >WOW! Had them killed? They WERE tried and convicted, you know. Yes, with government-provided evidence, and with the government withholding inconvenient evidence. There was a story on KPFA radio in the last week or so covering an article on the Rosenbergs in some lefty magazine, probably The Nation, by a couple who have been strong supporters of them for years, and are now saying that "sorry, friends, it looks like Julius _was_ spying, though not atomically". #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- # Export PGP three lines a time --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/ M0V]N9W)E<W,@<VAA;&P@;6%K92!N;R!L87<@+BXN(&%B<FED9VEN9R!T:&4@ M9G)E961O;2!O9B!S<&5E8V@L(&]R(&]F('1H92!P<F5S<SL-"F]R('1H92!R M:6=H="!O9B!T:&4@<&5O<&QE('!E86-E86)L>2!T;R!A<W-E;6)L92P@( T*

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Cerf: Building a Barrier-Free Net
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, July 27, 1997, Money & Business, p. 12. Viewpoint Building an Internet Free of Barriers Vinton G. Cerf Vinton G. Cerf is senior vice president for Internet architecture and engineering at MCI Communications. He is a co-inventor of the computer networking protocol TCP/IP, which has become the language for Internet communications. When the subject is global networks like the Internet, the magic word is "seamlessness." Seamless global communications represents the technological promised land of major network providers like mine. For the consumer, seamlessness means unimpeded, smooth, clear communications among all points within a network and among all networks. To the extent that it has developed, seamlessness has been the sine qua non, the essential element, behind the fast-growing Internet. It is the essence of the links of the World Wide Web. The Internet, after all, is not a network, or even a medium, in the traditional sense, but a network of nearly 200,000 networks and a medium of media, encompassing all the long-established ones while creating entirely new types. The more seamless we make the Internet and, for that matter, the global information infrastructure, the quicker we will harness the immense potential. Although high hurdles of technology and infrastructure stare us in the face, obstacles of the political and public policy variety are equally daunting. Many policy makers fail to grasp that the very seamlessness already found on the Internet, coupled with its basic digital nature, makes it almost impossible to monitor or regulate its flow of information in a hierarchical way. Notwithstanding the efforts of certain countries, Big Brother would have real problems doing his dirty work on the Internet. Still, well-meaning policy makers try to extend longstanding social goals to the Internet through heavy-handed, market-distorting mandates when industry-led strategies could be more effective. Of greatest concern to the Internet industry today are the many legal quagmires and incoherent policy patchworks that hinder Internet commerce. Achieving full seamlessness of Internet networks will be impossible if the networks' builders must maneuver through inconsistent laws and policies. Not only are the policies of many nations in conflict, but so are policies within nations -- and to such an extreme that some seem mutually exclusive. A good example is encryption policy. Encryption technology scrambles digital communications to make them indecipherable to anyone except the intended receiver. The users range from businesses that transmit confidential data to individuals who send personal E-mail messages. Widespread availability of encryption is a prerequisite for enhancing security and privacy on the Internet, for engendering a mature electronic marketplace and even for helping the work of law enforcement. Yet governments resist removing old restrictions on the export and use of encryption technology -- rules that date from the cold war -- even as they proclaim pro-market intentions and stress greater Internet privacy and security as priorities. Fortunately, growing numbers of key policy makers in the advanced democracies are showing a clearer, more technologically sophisticated understanding of the Internet. They grasp that while government financed the start of the Internet, the absence of government has largely allowed it to take off like a rocket. Within this group are members of Congress like Senators Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, and Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Representative Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, who are pushing to liberalize encryption export controls. Another is Ira C. Magaziner, the White House adviser who oversaw the development of a major Administration policy paper, released earlier this month, on electronic commerce. The paper, which advocated a largely hands-off approach by Government to Internet regulation, is a breakthrough in electronic commerce policy. Its perspective is properly global; its delineated goals, highly commendable. Particularly laudable is its proposal to designate the Internet as a tariff-free zone. The Internet is now perhaps the most global and democratic form of communications. No other medium can so easily render outdated our traditional distinctions among localities, regions and nations. While the Internet increasingly knows no boundaries, it still knows barriers all too well -- obstacles that are too often born of technological ignorance leading to incoherent public policy. The world cannot afford policies that impede the development of the Internet, diminish its utility and limit its social reach. And much more could be at stake than seamless digital networks. We may find that the more we succeed in removing barriers to Internet communications, the more we may help reduce those other, far more important obstructions to human communications -- the ones that divide nations and estrange demographic groups. That, ultimately, could be the most far-reaching, enduring benefit of an unfettered global Internet. ----- Readers may submit opinion articles to Viewpoint and articles on personal experiences to From the Desk Of, Money and Business, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York 10036, or send E-mail in care of viewpts(a)nytimes.com or fromdesk(a)nytimes.com. All submissions become the property of The Times. They may be edited and may be republished in any medium. If manuscripts are accepted for publication, authors will be notified within too weeks. [End]

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Re: "S1" encryption system (was: this looked like it might be interesting)
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Futplex sez: : BTW, the code has been posted to Usenet by a Frank Falstaff -- look for : message ID <40b8tk$cj4(a)news.xs4all.nl> in sci.crypt (Wed, Aug. 9, 1995). : His article refers to a message ID (namely <40b50l$oa8(a)utopia.hacktic.nl>) : that differs from the message ID of the copy sent to c'punks. So it looks : like there was at least one additional recipient. That's a minimum of 5 : originals so far.... The remailers at utopia.hacktic.nl use news.xs4all.nl as their newsserver, all messages get an "news.xs4all.nl-ID", all mail ID's will have "utopia.hacktic.nl" in it. -- Alex de Joode Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, Inc.

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commercial advance vcrs
by Alex Strasheim 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This isn't directly relevant to crypto, but it is a scheme to allow people to filter out unwanted media content. Has anyone heard of it, and does anyone know how it works? This is from TV Guide: CHEERS to commercial-free TV, or more exactly, Commercial Advance VCRs. Check it out: this month, RCA will unveil a VCR that skips past virtually all commercials during playback of a recorded show. Imagine: three minutes of commercials will whiz by in 10 seconds. The downside? This summer, commercials may be the most interesting things on network tv. -- Alex Strasheim, alex(a)proust.suba.com

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Re: Dir.Byway Virus (NewsClip)
by ab411＠detroit.freenet.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

turner(a)telecheck.com writes: >Seems like a good-press piece for a small anti-viral software >company. Just one small pick to nit: Actually, Dr. Sol's AVTK is consistently one of the very top DOS virus scanners, in terms of percent of known viruses it catches. >anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com said: >> Bitton said the company's "Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit" will >> remove the virus from infected computers. New versions of the Toolkit >> for DOS, Windows, OS/2, and NetWare are slated to ship in late >> summer. S&S also plans Fall 1995 introductions of Toolkits for >> Macintosh, SCO Unix, Windows 95, and Windows NT server and >> workstations. > >Windows NT has an abstracted and object oriented design. User mode >programs no longer have access to the hardware (ie., you no longer >have access to the boot sector, and cannot hook an interrupt). In >short, viruses are much less likely to function under NT, yet these >blood-sucking people can't wait to introduce software for it... I can't speak for S&S, but I'd bet that what they are introducing is a scanner for archives of MS-DOS programs hosted on NT systems. Although it may be that NT-specific viruses have started appearing. (The restrictions on file access don't slow the spread of file infectors all that much -- it's enough for them to infect those things they have write permission for. I think the good Dr. Cohen has done some research on this?) In any case, this is more appropriate for comp.virus than cpunks. -- David R. Conrad, ab411(a)detroit.freenet.org, http://web.grfn.org/~conrad/ Finger conrad(a)grfn.org for PGP 2.6 public key; it's also on my home page Key fingerprint = 33 12 BC 77 48 81 99 A5 D8 9C 43 16 3C 37 0B 50 No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.

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noise pollution, conspiracy theory, Perry's pet peeve
by Bryce Wilcox 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > You have become an impediment -- a lump of rock in the highway. You aren't > part of the solution -- you are part of the problem. I have to concur on this point. Posting conspiracy tracts to cypherpunks, or posting algorithm ideas to the conspiracy list, only serves to dilute the primary function of the list in question. J. Orlin Grabbe's actions in this respect are harmful (though of course I don't think they are malicious.) Bryce signatures follow: + /. island Life in a chaos sea / bryce.wilcox(a)colorado.edu ---* -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta iQCVAwUBMCosBvWZSllhfG25AQFWlQQAocyn68Ehj6S2gGvPnhnMglrWdKFsw3s8 +eJWlMMVsXfV7NVAezoxVaia5Uw0kXCc0liQRmXz/T5jJQHI/ko2PxQQ7PI2TeRa RiEM327boHr87WrtJO+3jInqjGDgjKkiBXW07QNZjvZudlEdm05XLGtJeVSRmIFJ xKvbLVj5v5M= =B1KZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Why DES in IPSEC ESP?
by Marc Horowitz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> | Why was (single) DES chosen as the algorithm for the ESP part of IPSEC? Because people were going completely nuts about mandating something not easily specifiable at all. DES was an easier case to make than 3DES. >> So, in order to ship sooner rather than later, DES was chosen. >> 3DES will probably be available soon afterwards. Shipping is irrelevant. Perry is busily coding 3DES support into NetBSD. Once it's in the bsd network stack, it will spread everywhere. Presumably, someone will implement it outside the US as well. As Perry put it succinctly at a recent IETF meeting, people will not necessarily use what is mandated. They will use what is available. If 3DES is in the freely available reference implementation (which it will be), and it performs adequately, that is what will get used. Marc

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where to get RFCs and internet drafts
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A couple of people have asked, so I'm posting... RFCs and internet drafts are both available for anonymous FTP from ds.internic.net. Phil Karn's photuris stuff is still in the early draft phase. Help speed up development by playing with it! .pm

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questions/info on premail
by mhobbs＠rad.rpslmc.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To all. Is there anyone out there that has incorporated premail into another script? Like a mail script or cgi script. I'm trying to expand the idea of integrating anon-mailers into web pages for more ease of use. If anyone has directly linked premail to a page, please let me know. I am having some problems calling it from a script and I thought someone might have solved this problem already. I wrote to Raph about this, but as you might know, his page states that he got married on Aug 5, so I don't expect the speediest of replies :) Michael Hobbs dochobbs(a)wwa.com mhobbs(a)rad.rpslmc.edu p.s. As to the cpremailer page that I posted here last week; -I have removed the hardwired remailer and now allow simple of choosing of remailers. I also think I have the news instructions up to date. http://miso.wwa.com/~dochobbs/cpremailer.html

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