December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Suitcase for sale
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Weight of suitcase: 80 lbs. Scheduled to check in; check the weight. For details contact: toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca

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BULK EMAIL 101 - How To Make A Fortune In Bulk Email!
by apollo＠nevwest.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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somebody had to do it...
by David E. Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 It'd be such a shame to just let Toto's latest rantings go homeless, so of course I've given them a home. Postings for the "InfoWar" chronicle will be put up at http://bureau42.base.org/public/infowar3/ . I haven't done a nice index yet, and I'm not likely to do so for a while. New chapters will be posted in a more-or-less "as I get around to it" fashion. If two people submit a chapter with the same number more or less simultaneously, I'll probably put up the one that's more entertaining. (I'll probably put the others up too, though. :) dave - -- David E. Smith, P O Box 324, Cape Girardeau MO 63702 Keywords: CPSR EFF ACLU DS6724 Delphi SF bureau42 Wicca HWG Dilbert crypto Millennium Linux YDKJ PGP single! ;) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNBWHuq6m0j5YvamrEQL/EACeKNJq1XIzXPIJZOSjqaio0K9zdKoAoN3q KQZADy9007CR6dLOd9Fc9wzZ =zYRF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: FROM A FRIEND . . .
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Updating Customers: >Netscape will provide the fix for Export (40 bit) versions of Netscape >Navigator later this week for downloading by customers on the Internet. >Similarly, the >Commerce Server patch for Export versions (40 bit) will be made available >from our home page. Because downloading of 128 bit versions of the software >is still not permitted by U.S. law, U.S. customers of Netscape Navigator, >Netscape Navigator Personal Edition and Netscape Commerce Server using 128 >bit versions can request the replacement from Netscape for delivery through >the regular mail. Funny, MIT and MPJ and others manage to enable the downloading of export-controlled software. Also, wasn't there some sort of promise by Netscape after we broke the 40-bit version to make the 128-bit version available to US users under the Beta/freeware system? What happened to that plan? DCF "This encryption thing is a lot harder than it looks."

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RE: Patents and trade secrets
by David Van Wie 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Many technologies have both patented parts and trade secret parts. Often, > > companies will maintain information that is in patent applications as trade > > secret until they are granted. I guess I should say _if_ they are granted! > > But don't they have to put something on the patent application? Can they > claim trade secret status for something that was on a patent application, > but rejected? That seems like they're getting it both ways. They should > probably have to choose whther or not they want to show anyone their > "secret". If not, it stays a trade secret. If so, it's not a secret anymore, > and they hope it's "nonobvious, etc." enough to be granted a patent. Sure, they have to put their "best mode" of performing their invention into the patent application. While the patent is pending (at least in the US), the patent application is confidential, so if the patent is denied, or if the patent is not as broad as the inventor would have liked, they can withdraw the application without the information contained in it ever becoming public. In Europe, publication occurs automatically after 18 months, so the inventor has less time there to make a go/no go decision, but they can still do it. In some respects, the existing system gives you most of what you want -- if you can't get patent protection for an idea, you can fall back on trade secret protection (which you didn't have to give up just to try to get a patent). It seems pretty harsh to me that just making a stab at getting a patent would mean that all of your hard work could just slip away into the public domain if it wasn't quite up to snuff. Sure would make me swallow hard.... dvw

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Re: (none)
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:05 AM 9/21/95 GMT, Phil Karlton wrote: >James A. Donald <jamesd(a)echeque.com> writes: > Whenever you need a random number, take a one way checksum, > for example MD5, of the most recently altered part of that > buffer. Use that as your random number. > > How is this any better than feeding the data into the MD5 > hash as I go? This is not a rhetorical question. Assuming that MD5 loses no entropy, it is identical, or very similar in strength, since in the algorithm that I described the most recently altered part of the buffer depends sensitively on all previous noise accumulated into the buffer, so if the total cumulated entropy is larger than your block size, you are OK. However the algorithm I described simply used less computation, but the overhead of continually doing MD5 is probably modest. No matter what you do, if you cumulate a hundred bits of entropy, and if you use a one way hash to generate random numbers so that your session keys do not leak information about your entropy, you are going to be safe against a random number generator attack. I suggested accumulating a very large amount of entropy, but obviously this is just gilding the lily. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Netscape is doing well -- give 'em a break.
by nelson＠santafe.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Netscape is to be commended for even *putting* crypto into their product! I'm impressed with the way Netscape has responded to recent events. It's refreshing to see a company say "yes, we made a mistake in our security software" rather than pretend there's no problem. Word Perfect encryption, anyone? >Cygnus' Kerberos faced the same random-seed problems and punted in >similar ways. Last time I looked, the MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 scheme used in X11R4 had the same problem: the random seed was based on the current time to the microsecond, modulo the granularity of the system clock. I think I figured that on my hardware, if I could figure out which minute the X server started (easy with finger), I'd only have to try a few thousand keys or so. Caveat: I never actually proved the idea.

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Chelsea Clinton's PGP
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Stanford Newspaper Promises to Help Chelsea Clinton Keep Low Profile AP 08-SEP-97 STANFORD, Calif. (AP) Don't look for news about Chelsea Clinton in Stanford University's school paper: The editor is promising to treat the first freshman like any other student. Chelsea, accompanied by her parents, is expected on campus Sept. 19, when 1,600 first-year students move into their dormitories and begin several days of orientation. Like the mainstream media, the Stanford Daily plans to cover the Clintons' arrival and their participation that day at a welcoming ceremony for freshmen and their parents. But after that, said Carolyn Sleeth, the Daily's editor in chief, Chelsea "will be treated by us as a student, a regular student." That means her classroom and social life will largely go unreported. "Of course, if she involves herself in a newsworthy event, we'll cover it for example, if she founds a Stanford Democratic Club," Sleeth said. On the other hand, the student editor said if Chelsea were to get a speeding ticket or violate some minor campus rule, it would be ignored. "We wouldn't do a story if another student got a speeding ticket," Sleeth said. Sleeth also said a gag order of sorts will be imposed on Daily employees, barring them from talking or as she put it, "punditing" with the "outsider press" about Chelsea. Anyone who does so will be fired, she said.

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Re: Entropy vs Random Bits
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 PM 9/20/95 P, David Van Wie wrote: > This is odd. The term entropy describes an aspect of thermodynamic > equlibrium in physical systems. Although sometimes used as a synonym for >"random," that definition is vernacular, not technical. In fact, there is > no meaningful relationship between "entropy" and random data of the type > described in the postings related to seed values. In the presense of a > perfectly suitable and precise mathematical term (i.e. random), Your use of the word random is incorrect: The throw of a dice is random, but only contains 2.6 bits of entropy. The windows VDT counter is very far from being random, but contains roughly sixteen bits of entropy. > why invent new terms? Why use them to mean at least two different things? This is old term of the art, a term of information theory: We use the same word because entropy in information theory has the same measure as entropy in thermodynamics. In both cases the entropy, measured in bits, of an ensemble of possible states is sum of - P(i) * lg[P(i)] over all the possible states. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Patents and trade secrets
by David Van Wie 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> After a patent is granted, it is usually a good idea to also maintain some >>trade secrets in your products -- since trade secrets never "expire," unlike >>patents. If the patent isn't granted, you still have the option of treating >>the contents as an intellectual property under trade secret protection. > >Rubish, disclosure is required for a grant of a patent. Unless someone >skilled in the art can duplicate the invention from the patent claim >you don't get a patent issued. Sure disclosure is required. There is no requirement; however, that an invention be your _whole_ product. For example, most automobiles have thousands of patents involved in their creation. It is entirely possible, even commonplace, as I said in my mail, that one or more portions of a product represent practice of patented inventions, and one or more _other_ portions represent trade secrets. >Trade secret protection is very tricky in any case. Its practically >useless if you want to protect a product rather than a procedure. That depends. Obviously, trade secret protection can be very effective for processes involved in manufacturing physical goods. In software, it depends on whether what you are treating as a secret becomes widely known (after which, self-evidently, it is no longer a secret!) For example, if one where to keep the mathematics behind MD5 a trade secret, it is plausible that it would never be "figured out" just from examining object code that implements the algorithm. It doesn't matter if it theoretically could be done, just that it hasn't actually happened. dvw

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