December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

9-12-97 Cybertimes on crypto
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

September 12, 1997 Cybertimes "House Committee Casts Wide Net With Encryption Vote" by Jeri Clausing "Mockery and Fear Greet Encryption Plan" by Peter Wayner

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test
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- sameer Voice: 510-601-9777 Community ConneXion FAX: 510-601-9734 An Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.org (or login as "guest") sameer(a)c2.org

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In Defense of Libertarianism, from HotWired's Synapse
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- http://hotwired.com/synapse/feature/97/36/mccullagh4a_1.html HotWired - Synapse (http://hotwired.com/synapse/) 12 September 1997 In Defense of Libertarianism by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) and Solveig Singleton (sberns(a)cato.org) Libertarianism, as a rule, attracts the most strident criticism from those who understand it the least. Expending little or no effort on research, critics barely familiar with libertarian ideas concoct an unappetizing stew of ideas - anarchism, egoism, and plain selfishness and greed - and mistakenly dub it libertarianism. Small surprise, then, that this ideological bouillabaisse tastes revolting. Such critics aren't describing libertarianism, but their own fanciful creation. Libertarianism is not about anarchy, utopia, or selfishness. Instead, libertarians simply are skeptical of "nanny government," and recognize the many ways state power has been abused in the past. They believe that government programs like health assistance, Social Security, foreign aid, and corporate welfare do more harm than good. They argue that everyone must be equal before the law, and everyone has human rights to personal security, to property, and to free speech that the government must protect, not violate. Synapse columnist Brooke Shelby Biggs recently suggested that such skepticism about authority is a sign of immaturity, asking us to remember how we felt about authority when we were 12. "Despite the fact that you knew exactly where everything was in your, uh ... alternatively organized bedroom, Mom still insisted you clean it up," she writes. Eventually you grew out of it. Now you're an adult and can think for yourself. Or can you? Not according to nanny government. Together the left and the right conspire to dictate what you can eat, see, read, smoke, and talk about. Leftists contend that the state should regulate the economy (and technology), but not morality. Conservatives claim that the government should leave the economy alone, but should legislate what you're allowed to do online or in your bedroom. Only libertarians have a consistent philosophy: The state can't be trusted to screw around with the economy, to control your private life, or to police the Internet. Consider the recent bipartisan onslaughts against the Net. Democrats have been particularly unrelenting in their attacks. President Clinton endorsed the Communications Decency Act, signed it into law, then dragged the fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Ridiculously, he insists that Cold War-era restrictions on overseas shipments of encryption products are a good idea. Adding insult to injury, Clinton has backed copyright laws that would require Internet providers to police what their users talk about online. Then there are Clinton's demands for more and more wiretapping authority for the FBI - a plan that might have made even J. Edgar Hoover blush. (And this president once taught constitutional law?) Republicans have been just as censorship-happy. They, too, supported the CDA, which the Senate approved overwhelmingly. Even after the nation's highest court ruled such broad censorship unconstitutional, some GOP senators pledged to try again. Others are teaming up with the White House to make the Internet easily snoopable by spooks, expand government databases, issue national ID cards, and wrest away your privacy and freedom, one Social Security number at a time. [...]

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Re: The Next Hack
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Al writes: <snip> >Maybe a good tactic would be to crack a "secure" server, and send the results >ONLY to the server operators, along with a description of machine-time involved. > >Put out a public press release, describing the machine-time involved, how it was >possible due to weak crypto imposed by the government, and the possible >economic and commercial implications of said weak crypto. > I'm with Lucky, let's go after Netscape itself. They deserve it more than their customers do, and they would then have a strong motivation <evil grin> to fix it. The press release would then *only* involve Netscape, and maybe a few C-punks could buy a few Netscape puts ;) and donate the bucks made for something like Tim's stable remailer. JMR -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh iQCVAwUBMGNU321lp8bpvW01AQEtBQP7BdcB2W5bkCel56eUkZVSkPxJv4hPZren 3P/QtZAAVyF8Xt8692m4lPLVMqtgKqkrtzoqVg7zi/56tqwnLmUcv+TnqSxNdctb H7durUUVgK+yqsz2Jd8pc0dPBFzT5c1IeZFjVmhG4+ChjzeAnd8WRoqy8BYfHr+w 5s8Tk2XlJF0= =6CRC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Regards, Jim Ray "People are deceived in masses, but enlightened one at a time." -- Dick Boddie. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Key id. # E9BD6D35 James Milton Ray <liberty(a)gate.net> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Help Phil! email zldf(a)clark.net or see http://www.netresponse.com/zldf _______________________________________________________________________

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Re: Netscape sub rosa?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:30 AM 9/21/95, Matthias Jordan wrote: >Hello, Tim! > >> Gee, where's that "Cypherpunks logo" when you really need it? >> >> A rose covering the Netscape "N" logo? A crypto eagle swooping down and >> pecking at weak keys? > >How about an anarchism-A (an A in i circle) whith the circle not >being totally closed thus describing a C? That was actually done by someone in Monte Carlo when I was giving a talk on crypto anarchy. Somebody drew in this anarchy-in-a-C on an announcement of my talk. I still have this. ObCypherpunks Relevance: This is "coding in C," isn't it? --Tim May BTW, to set the record straight, my "Gee, where's that "Cypherpunks logo" when your really need it?" was tongue-in-cheek (a kind of irony, for you foreigners). Notice: Don't expect me to reply to trivial questions and complaints. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: Soldiers
by Conor Lillis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I LIKE it ! >---------- >From: nobody@REPLAY.COM[SMTP:nobody@REPLAY.COM] >Sent: 12 September 1997 06:49 >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Soldiers > >Is there a small country that a thousand of us could go to and get >citizenship and then have the country declare war on the U.S. after >we are all back in the country? >If a thousand of us could kill as many people as we could until we got >caught, then we could kill a lot of people who are bad for the country >and then once we're all caught the small country could surrender and >we would all have to be released as prisoners of war, right? >We could all be privates. They can't blame privates because they have >to follow orders. >The guys in the small country could make old guys who were dying soon >the leaders, and then when it was time to quit, they could overthrow >them and get US government aid. They could set the old guys trial dates >for two years down the road and then send them home to die. >I saw a guy get killed once and they told the guy who killed him that >he shouldn'a done it and they sent him home and said we'll call you >and then they took the dead guys sister to jail because she wouldn't >stop saying fuck. >When they were taking her away I told her she should kill the cops and >then go home and wait for them to call. >How about if we made a law that you had to kill the president and your >congressmen and senators and if you didn't you had to pay a $500.00 fine >every year? Do you think they would make sure we all made some money? >How about a law here you could kill any politician that forgot to call >you sir or ma'am? Or who forgot your birthday? >We could save a lot of money just by putting all the politicians who are >running for office on a stage and then killing them at random until we >had the right number left. Then they would have to think about if they >really wanted it. >How about if we let people be elected on a first-come first-serve basis >but then we could vote to kill them any time we wanted. Think they >would do things to make us not want to kill them instead of the other >way around like it is now? >How about if we killed all of them and just pretended there was someone >running the country. Is that a good idea? > >

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RE: RNG Resource FAQ (was Re: "random" number seeds vs. Netscape)
by David Van Wie 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry Metzger writes: # You might want to read RFC 1750, Phil Karlton writes: > Did that. It talks about a lot of the pitfalls. Unfortunately it does not > address (nor can it realistically be expected to address) details of what > to look for on a particular version of an OS running on some particular > platform. Can someone point me to a compilation of such information ? If not, I'm definitely interested in starting a Web page to chronicle recommendations about good, bad, and questionable random and pseudo-random sources for specific architectures and operating systems. (It could also include information on special-purpose plug-in hardware RNGs.) -Futplex <futplex(a)pseudonym.com> Having overcome my initial skepticism on the entire topic of entropy, based on the useful pointers to the literature I have received, I agree wholeheartedly with the need for _positive_ design criteria against which designs may be evaluated. For initial consideration, I recommend the following: The entropy E is defined by the sum across n states of -P_i log_2(P_i), where i ranges from 1 to n, and P_i is the probability of state i. In order for this expression to have meaning, the all four criteria of the following must be met: 1) The states exist and can be identified. 2) The number of states n is known. 3) The index value i uniquely identifies a state. 4) The function P_i is known and well-behaved. The designer should disprove the negative of each of these to arrive at a _concise_ statement of their "proof" of measured entropy equating to predicted entropy. For example, the designer should "disprove" the statements: "The states do not exist. Even if the states exist, they cannot be identified." by clearly stating the factors that lead to the existence of the states, and precisely why they can be identified. This provides a list of requirements (in effect) for a deployment to meet the expected entropy. I think that application of these criteria can rigorously explain the difficulties in using mouse movements, for example, as a source of entropy. In addition, the problems with clocks in PC emulations on Macs also speak to these criteria. Certainly the entropy available from pid is also explained here in a rigorous way. I would appreciate feedback on this as a foundation for a set of _positive_ design criteria for sources of entropy. If I have missed information in the literature that provides design guidance (not anecdotal pitfalls, which are very valuable but lack rigor in the cases I have seen), I would very much appreciate that as well. A special thanks to Tim May for his references. dvw

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Re: netscape bug
by tomw＠orac.engr.sgi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I said: In article <DFALB4.A5u(a)sgi.sgi.com>, "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> writes: >> I can tell you in general terms -- I don't write MIPS assembler >> myself. However, I will point out to you that you use an ancient >> Sendmail, and that it uses syslog(3) on user produced data, and that >> syslog uses a static buffer. Trick sendmail into logging something >> very big, and you can do what you like. The 8lgm people wrote a demo >> for Sparc as a proof of concept. > Hmm, after having looked at the syslogd code, it looks like this > particular bug has been fixed for at least several years. However, > there sure are a hell of a lot of fixed size buffers being alocated off > the stack and some of them are being used in unsafe ways. Whoops. Having done a little more checking, it appears that this bug does indeed occur in all current version of Irix. There's a patch for it (patch 825) that will be out imminently. -- Sure we spend a lot of money, but that doesn't mean | Tom Weinstein we *do* anything. -- Washington DC motto | tomw(a)engr.sgi.com

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SAFE
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bible Revelations 13:17: "And no man shall be able to buy or sell without the mark of the beast..." God

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Re: Pitfall in producing random numbers
by crocker＠cybercash.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:20 AM 9/22/95, Norman Hardy wrote: >The virtual PC clock proceeded forward by very predictable >manner. Perhaps the details were different but the nature of the pitfall is >clear. I did not notice that pitfall mentioned in RFC 1750. (Its the only >hazard that I know of that they missed.) Neat! I often talk about what happens if inter-keystroke timingis used but the program is driven by a script. In essence, running a program under simulation amounts to running the clock under a script. Next version. Thanks, Steve -------------------- Steve Crocker Main: +1 703 620 4200 CyberCash, Inc., Suite 430 Desk: +1 703 716 5214 2100 Reston Parkway Fax: +1 703 620 4215 Reston, VA 22091 crocker(a)cybercash.com

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