December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Certificate proposal
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 21:40:04 -0700 >From: Hal <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> >I don't really care whether the name is called an attribute, a >distinguished name, or an ooblek. I just don't see how you're going to >get along without it. The fact is, we live in a world populated by >people and companies and we use names to identify them. I will grant >that there are problems with uniqueness but I don't think the solution >can be to just give up on the whole idea of names since they are so >messy. We're not talking about giving up on names. You have lots of names for things -- some of them are even nicknames, known only to you. For any certification scheme, you also need a unique name. If you happen to use the public key as that unique name, you have the proposal we're talking about. It has an advantage -- that you don't have to certifiy the binding between the unique name and the key. That's built in. -Carl +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)tis.com http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |Trusted Information Systems, Inc. http://www.tis.com/ | |3060 Washington Road PGP 2.6.2: 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2| |Glenwood MD 21738 Tel:(301)854-6889 FAX:(301)854-5363 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMHlSzVQXJENzYr45AQFYvgP+O12CvK058nWvhvq48QIqIBo8N5jU6uqN 8kFagz2iKPLcv+cLJ7AiFiOAU3mY5CiWkU0pK6z9YlNgB7d5SNqyzpAL8jIe6zgI xD5hAesL6Pz85f8OLAn9teoydW9k3QzBekOeT0xCKkIj8+8KUDM7nrUMl2t08bTr OG53eFdFD6o= =d7lq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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HTTP anon proxy pointers
by Kevin L Prigge 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I seem to recall that someone was working on an anonymous http proxy a couple months ago. Pointers would be appreciated. Thanks. -- Kevin Prigge | Holes in whats left of my reason, CIS Consultant | holes in the knees of my blues, Computer & Information Services | odds against me been increasin' email: klp(a)cis.umn.edu | but I'll pull through...

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Re: Crypto's Role in Evil?
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <9510090412.AA02181(a)pulm1.accessone.com>, blancw(a)accessone.com wrote: > Another thought is that as people become more separated into individual > self-reliance, they must develop other ideas, organizations, or means by which > they may defend themselves from abuse. That is, if they cannot rely on > governments (as they come to realize that governments don't make much > difference in terms of salvation), then individuals must become more > imaginative over how they can defend themselves against those who are not so > conscientious in upholding a sense of personal honor & moral rectitude. Correct, Blanc. That's why I am saving my pennies to buy an AR-15. I know the government of the near future will not be in a position to stand in the way of my involuntary participation in organ transplant experiments. It will be up to the individual and voluntary neighborhood associations, etc. to provide our personal security. - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMHlVXCoZzwIn1bdtAQFkawF8DBRY8Nxeqkld5Ltw1J6VTqm+5JtN2sNZ PPCOCt7Gl1NKQmkJPlWBC5TY4cgtMrc0 =0pt6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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PC wipe utilities
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> asks: >I thought I'd ask here, since its related to a lot of the stuff >people have written for the PC platform in these parts. I need to >securely wipe a bunch of data from an MS-DOS hard drive, so that >it can't be recovered. Are there any readily available utilities >for this? Will any of them selectively erase only data that isn't >allocated to existing files? >Perry Alan Penny's excellent freeware utility wipe.zip has been uuencoded and sent to you. I believe it fulfills your requirements. As recently as the last issue of WIRED an article by a data recovery company claimed they could recover data that had been overwritten nine times...... make it a bakers dozen to be safe. Brian D Williams

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Patents etc
by John Pettitt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmmmm the argument about hardware companies paying 10% to intel 5% to the capacitor folks does not stand up. The reason is that hardware people do *exactly* that and in return they receive the physical token (chip, capacitor etc) that represents the intellectual property they just bought. Patents in the hardware world can slow evolution just as much as in software. A good example is the "cats eye" papent in the UK. Cats eyes are the reflective studs in the road, until the original UK patent ran out *nobody* did any work in the UK to improve on the orginal design because the royalty burden made it uneconomic. Whats make software different is the ability to freely copy it without special hardware. This lack of a physical token is what causes all the problems. IMHO What's needed is a) a good way of measuring usage and b) a realistic attitude on the part of patent holders as to the value of their patents. A good example of how not to do it is the current mess that governs the music indistry (which very similar problems with copying and incorporation of material [sampling] all be it in a context of copyright rather than patents). Ted Nelson did a lot of work on this for xanadu and his ideas on transcopyright are worth exploring further. John Pettitt jpp(a)software.net VP Engineering, CyberSource Corp. +1 415 473 3065 (V) (fax 3066)

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Re: PC wipe utilities
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:52 PM 10/9/95, Brian D Williams wrote: >Alan Penny's excellent freeware utility wipe.zip has been >uuencoded and sent to you. I believe it fulfills your requirements. > > As recently as the last issue of WIRED an article by a data >recovery company claimed they could recover data that had been >overwritten nine times...... make it a bakers dozen to be safe. Better yet, wipe the disk/diskette on _more than one_ machine. It should be easy to just run the wipe on, say, 3 machines, 3 to 5 times each. A lot of the ability to recover putatively erased media lies in the fact that a given set of read-write heads has characteristics (especially with regard to positioning) that make repeated erase passes less than fully effective. The remnants of the recorded signal can be extracted with careful analysis of the analog signal (especially from special read heads). Using N erase machines increases the "jitter" to some extent. My hunch is that it would make the recovery process exponentially (in N) more difficult. But I have no lab experience in this, so this is just an idea. But crunching the media is a faster (and maybe cheaper) approach. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: PC disk wipe software
by J.E. Davidow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 9 Oct 95 at 13:59, dmandl(a)panix.com wrote regarding Re: PC disk wipe software: > On Mon, 9 Oct 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > > I thought I'd ask here, since its related to a lot of the stuff > > people have written for the PC platform in these parts. I need to > > securely wipe a bunch of data from an MS-DOS hard drive, so that > > it can't be recovered. Are there any readily available utilities > > for this? Will any of them selectively erase only data that isn't > > allocated to existing files? > > > > Perry There are several file, directory and/or disk erasing utilities on the web and commercial area today. Shred is located on WEB in some of the Simtel Libraries. It will not only delete the file from the directory, but it writes zeros over the data itself, including all of the fragments left at the end of the file's cluster. It also will write over the free space left on the disk as well. It performs this operation only once per execution. Another "wipe" software is "Real Deal.zip". It's virtue is that is writes a series of patterns to the disk depending upon the level of security you request. It can remain memory resident, intercepting all DOS delete requests and write over at least 5 times with different patterns the data your deleting. Watch how much longer a delete takes if your at the" Real Dewd" level. There are a couple of utilities from Norton, etc. that will perform a higher level of wiping. Including the entire disk, directories, etc. The will write several more times that either RealDeal.zip (Real Delete) or Shred. The last time I saw, the government 'standard' for "wiping" its own sensitive data was at least fifteen times with different patterns. How secure your erased disk will stand up to a concerted effort by law enforcement, NSA or someone truly looking for what's on your disk remains questionable at best. But to the average person both Shred or RealDeal is good enough to keep your wife's attorney, your roommate, co-worker or your girl friend out of your personal communique's. Remember too, that word processors and other software write all over you disk and that its' probable that fragments of data that you wish to delete are attached to or in other files. J.E. Davidow jed(a)interaccess.com Signed JEDKEY.asc -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzAvWekAAAEEAOASA2sxixXBIzn40bN/ybwZ6lOBAmLo06DqG8eh2VpnE0kp i0cSiOQARzOpx3REbJWCp4+XE3Dudg534V47JWoiH0VFgJTCG6yZ7kXJjxXwXeYf KD0zRlkoU1wYcjfDC2vEoBWh36I/7HX+GiSEnFQ5rJgm9X7spOMRupiV7141AAUR tCJKLkUuIERhdmlkb3cgPGplZEBpbnRlcmFjY2Vzcy5jb20+iQCVAwUQMGO82F2s KelIgrYVAQFT7AP/TjfpK4Zljs2RFUYGZuKPEJgMp+PC1jmtuAalaoufhv5Bdosk lixdahjJ1y5a2Nv/mId4xhT6/WJDN62solxdYBCyzZWAxg4X88igP23xeGreUhg+ A7u1Gx1Ebr5QPqiTV7B8AgJT9Y2xVZw76zQnFxZAGiZqk9IuRgVuldj3gv2JAJUD BRAwYgxV4xG6mJXvXjUBAWuqA/9h6AORiSqkNwrSTmm5z1CoNrS1q6L3LMSmnmgZ Xh3AbuqbbJum06gVRXo4QITR71iBx7HjKg3kMeK6+8+vIabXzL0T7TtdiLkhcCo5 FULB+0W5aUBiXVC0amMP+tJE4I8Splr5MfuDlGddMPqrbB3TplweTJ1muE3k+KWK RNspGw== =1Iv2 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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European Crypto
by T. Bruce Tober 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone with names and contact information for any of the Council of Europe representatives who deliberated and/or voted on the recent recommendations on crypto, e-mail me that information. Likewise any information on any further actions by the EU in this regard. Working on an article for a computer magazine. tbt -- |Bruce Tober - octobersdad(a)crecon.demon.co.uk - B'ham, Eng| | Publisher/Editor of The Write Byte monthly newsletter | | WebSite address to come shortly | | TWB - The computer newsletter specifically for Writers |

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GISA budget: millions for cryptanalytic machine
by Ulf.Moeller＠hamburg.netsurf.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

According to `die tageszeitung' of 7 Oct 1995, last year the German Information Security Agency was granted several million marks for buying a computer to decrypt telecommunications traffic for the secret service BND.

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Re: netscape mail starts java attachments upon get new mail...
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>As far as I know Java apps can only make network connections to the >IP address they were loaded from. What part of the state of my machine can they access and send out to the "home port"? Can they read /etc/passwd, make NIS requests, etc? /r$

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