December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re:Internet Stocks
by Ashfaq Rasheed 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can this be made a regular feature on the list? It will be helpful to discuss on the Internet companies are doing in the stock market. Also it would be interesting to see if any startups have a strong product to survive in the market Thanks! Ashfaq

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BAR_tur
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

12-08-95. W$J: "Microsoft to Adopt Rival Tecnologies." Gates yawned, "its awakening a sleeping giant." "In a fight between a bear and an alligator, what determines the victor is the terrain," Andreesen shat. "What Microsoft just did is move onto our terrain." Ellison puked, "the Internet makes strange bedfellows." Schmidt shreiked, "Java moola." BAR_tur

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No Subject
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> WE WANT SOME PUSSY PICTURES Can't help you there but, I do have some pictures of your mother having sex with a dog because she didn't want you to be an only child.

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Re:Internet Stocks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:45 PM 12/8/95, Ashfaq Rasheed wrote: >Can this be made a regular feature on the list? It will be helpful to >discuss on the Internet companies are doing in the stock market. > >Also it would be interesting to see if any startups have a strong product to >survive in the market It won't be a regular feature by me, that's for sure! What others write is of course up to them. As I said in my message, I'd gotten some queries in e-mail, enough to indicate justification for one public message summarizing a bunch of points. Especially seeing as how these stocks have been very much in the news this week, and have been discussed on the list. But this is not "StockPunks," so I don't plan to comment unless something important comes up. Investors (and speculators) are well-served by various news sources, including the "Wall Street Journal," which also carries at least one great article per day, and sometimes even two. A bonus URL for you folks: http://www.ai.mit.edu/stocks.html --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: More FUD from First Virtual
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:51 AM 12/8/95 -0500, you wrote: >Excerpts from mail.limbo: 7-Dec-95 More FUD from First Virtual Douglas >Barnes@communiti (1157*) > >I *am* skeptical about the extent to which anonymous cash *can* succeed, What can stop it? What should stop it? >but in point of fact I'd like to help. I think society will be better >off if one of the payment options is truly anonymous. I think that >level of privacy will inevitably carry a high surcharge, however, for >reasons that I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring. Well, maybe I haven't been following those reasons, but I see little or no reason privacy should "inevitably carry a high surcharge." If the relevant encryptions had to be carried out with a pencil and a piece of paper, that claim would make sense, but remember, we've got MICROPROCESSORS on our side! I agree, I suppose, that there are definitely entities (read: governments) which would WANT to prevent the use of anonymous cash, but I view them more of an obstacle to be removed than a permanent bar.

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GAK and Self-Incrimination?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan Frissell wrote: >At 09:17 AM 12/8/95 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: > >> "Your honor, we argue that in escrowing his keys with the US >>government, the defendant should have known his communications could >>be listened to, and thus has no expectation of privacy." > >If Clipper were mandated you might be able to resist a prosecution for >"failure to file" keys or for double encrypting your transmissions if you >could prove that you were transmitting illegal messages or evidence of a >crime. Just as those who possess illegal weapons are not required to >register them (self incrimination). You have to be sure your traffic is >illegal though otherwise no protection. Though I'm usually not too interested in smart-ass, overly cute, interpretations of legal loopholes--having been burned by the tax protestor arguments that the tax system is invalid because of definitions of money or that Ohio never entered the Union legally, or somesuch--this whole escrow thing has got me thinking. Given that GAK means one never knows if the government is listening, could a person claim protection against self-incrimination as a reason to not use GAK, and get away with it? (This is different from the phone system, which may also be tapped. The analogy would be the same if the government forced one to pick a telephone it could tap over one it could not, which so far has not been the case, but which soon may be if switching systems which are not compliant with Digital Telephony Act provisions are shut down.) Consider this hypo: I send an encrypted message to a partner in crime containing plans for future crimes and descriptions of past crimes. I don't GAK the message. The government prosecutes me under the Anti-Terrorism and Child Protection Act of 1997. My defense? That GAKKing the message would be tantamount to incriminating myself, which the Fifth Amendment protects me against. (The government might claim that this "tantamount" conclusion is specious, that only with a valid court order could they open my traffic. I would claim that this is suspect, citing the secret court (FISA) provisions, the possible back doors in GAK (64 bits known to be breakable, according to Clint Brooks of the government), and the general confusion about whether opening one message exposes past traffic to reading. I think my lawyers could make a convincing case that GAK will mean my words may be read by the government, via multiple options.) Comments? --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: Still more on the Digicash protocol
by Mark Twain Ecash Support 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:17 PM 12/7/95 -0500, you wrote: >Assume the attacker is not doing any traffic analysis. The problem is >that even then, the shop's identity (and product info, and payment amount, >and bank ID, etc.) are still sent *in the clear* in the Digicash payment >protocol. Thus all those items can be correlated to the payee's identity: >a complete loss of privacy for the shop. > >There's no need to send that payment info in the clear -- why not encrypt? DigiCash agrees that it is desirable to encrypt the payment request. The problem is how? You can't use the payor's public key, since the payor is anonymous to the payee. There are other, high overhead, protocols that might be used, but after taking MIM into account, securing the payment request from within Ecash while retaining acceptable latency is much harder to acomplish than one might think. The best solution at this time seems to be to use the already existing https connection to transmit the payment request. The next version of Ecash will offer this feature as an option to the user. --Mark Twain Bank Ecash Support Ecash. The secure Internet payment system that protects your privacy. <http://www.marktwain.com/ecash.html>

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Anyone know of a white paper on security?
by John Fricker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The question I'm seeking to answer is : What criteria should be used to determine whether a scripting language such as Java, LiveScript, etc. is secure? There are obvious issues such as access to the file system but has anyone thought this all the way through and codified a white paper? john.

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The Elevator Problem
by Jerry Whiting 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A group of us have been wrestling with a problem and I'd like to ask for some outside help. We've come to call it the Elevator Problem. Alice and Bob want to establish a secret in from of Eve. In other words, they want to agree on a secret key in an elevator full of Eve's. We don't want the protocol to step on any existing patents (DH, HM, etc.). If the protocol takes numerous steps, that's OK because ultimately we'd like Alice's machine to contact Bob's, who could respond, and back and forth as often as needed. We have also talked about a less than perfect solution IF we can establish mathmatically what the confidence level and risk factor are. Alice and Bob might agree that the value of the secret is such that they can live with a 1 in n probability that Eve too has the secret. Shamir's 3 step seems close but I'm afraid we've been doing the blackboard talks so long that we're missing the solution. IF THERE EVEN IS ONE. thanks in advance, Jerry Whiting jwhiting(a)azalea.com

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Re: DigiCash releases protocol specs!
by Andrew Loewenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> By popular request, DigiCash is releasing the protocol specs. Three cheers to DigiCash, Mark Twain, and Lucky! andrew

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