December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Cash Is Dying
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

6-14-96: NYT ad for The New York Times Magazine: Cash is dirty. Cash is heavy. Cash is quaint. Cash is expensive. CASH IS DYING. "You believe in banks don't you? That's good, because ultimately money is backed by nothing but your own confidence, habit and faith -- a form of faith as powerful and essential to modern life as any religious belief. The coming digital era will make this plain to everyone, as never before." (Continued on Sunday) From "Dead as a Dollar" by James Gleick ...the cover article in this week's issue. --------- Yes, the James Gleick whose co-founded Pipeline is near dead as a dollar. Hope his multi-million-dollar PSI-buyout lives.

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No Subject
by A5113643667＠attpls.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Cypherpunks and Tom, The ones I've heard about are SKIP, Photurus and ISAKMP(sp?). Peace --- NOTICE: This message originally included graphics and/or sounds which can only be received by AT&T PersonaLink(sm) subscribers. You received only the text portion(s) of the message. Please contact the sender for information that was deleted. To learn how to send and receive graphics, voice and text messages via AT&T PersonaLink Services, call 1-800-936-LINK. ---------------- Received: by attpls.net with Magicmail;12 Sep 95 10:34:32 UT Date: 12 Sep 95 13:05:43 UT Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com (owner-cypherpunks) From: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com (owner-cypherpunks) Subject: Re: draft key mgmt props To: peace(a)acm.org (Tom Jones) cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks) Message-Id: <199509121024.GAA15929(a)frankenstein.piermont.com> In-Reply-To: <Your message of "Tue, 12 Sep 1995 07:15:16 -0000." <3E79EDD0>> Reply-To: perry(a)piermont.com (perry) X-X-AUTHENTICATION-WARNING: frankenstein.piermont.com: Host localhost didn't use HELO protocol X-X-REPOSTING-POLICY: redistribute only with permission Tom Jones writes: > Does anyone here feel like explaining the situation between the three > key management proposals now at the internet draft stage? Which ones are you refering to? .pm ----------------

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Re: Alternic.net (was domain zapping)
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:54 AM 6/26/96 -0400, you wrote: > >William Knowles writes: >> With all the talk about InterNIC zapping domains, there should be >> some talk about other registries, Alternic.net : http://www.alternic.net >> is offering an alpha test for registering new TLD's and the prices >> are considerably less expensive than the Internic. > <snip crap> > >They can offer to sell you anything they like, of course, and you can >pay them, but you don't get anything at all for the money. Domains >registered with them don't appear in the real DNS. > >.pm Perry, What constitutes "real DNS"? DNS server administrators need only add one line to their named.boot file to resolve .nic hosts. secondary nic 204.94.42.1 db.nic It's that easy! The concept of centralized name resolutions is flawed and only exists out of habit. J.

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Degaussing a pile of 5.25" media
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have 3 bags full of 5.25" diskettes (in NYC). Can someone please let me use their degausser before I get rid of them? (Anyone who wants them after they're degaussed is welcome to them :-) --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Encrypted lists and ease of use
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Where was the information on PGPdomo? That would seem appropriate for the input end, at least. -Allen From: IN%"scs(a)lokkur.dexter.mi.us" 26-SEP-1996 17:26:10.69 Subj: Encrypted lists and ease of use I'm considering sending someone off to work on a project, but wanted to sanity-check the idea and see if someone already has something similar. Recently I've been involved in a number of small (30 people or less) mailing lists which occasionally use PGP for encrypted mail. The hassle comes when one is encrypting a message to the list. With people coming and going, remembering who is on what list is impossible. We're always having to go back and re-send to someone who was left off of the encryption list. What I propose to do is have a second list, list-encrypted@host, for every list@host. Any mail sent to the list simply goes out in plaintext. List-encrypted is encrypted for everyone on list, then sent to the list with appropriate additional headers. To secure the mail as it travels from the sender to list-encrypted, we want to establish a public key for list-encrypted. All mail to the list *must* travel with the public key or be rejected. When mail arrives at list-encrypted, a deamon will process it. The daemon knows the secret key for -encrypted, and has a list of who is on what list. The daemon strips the -encrypted address, encrypts the message for all on the list. If there are other people on the To: or Cc: fields, the deamon will encrypt for them as well. If any of this fails, the message is sent to as many as possible and notification failure goes back to the original sender indicating who the failures were. The daemon then forwards it to the list real list. It preserves the From: field, but changs `To: list-encrypted' into simply `To: list.' Comments? Generally useful? Beta volunteers? :-) -- "Yea, the heavens shall open and the NP-complete solution given forth. ATT executives shall give birth to two-headed operating systems, and copyrights shall be expunged. The voice of the GNU shall be heard, but the faithless will be without transceivers." -- me

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Re: GAK
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:25 PM 9/3/95 -0400, Brian Davis wrote: >I, of course, know of the "dislike" of GAK here. I am curious to know, >however, if the "dislike" is because government would have access under >any circumstances or if the primary worry is that government will cheat >and get access when most would agree that they shouldn't (either by the >judge "cheating" or a TLA stealing it). Individuals will have their individual objections. My objections are that I don't like governments spending tax money that they don't absolutely have to. Their own survival is *not* a necessity. I think controlling people's speech is a waste of money. Very few Common Law crimes (ie real crimes) are dependent on wiretap evidence for solution. Only phoney bureaucratic crimes (the retail pharmaceutical trade, insider trading, gambling, conspiring to overthrow the government, etc) need wiretaps. My second objection is the control of people's speech. If I communicate with someone, I want to communicate with *them*. I don't want to communicate with the Feds. The Supremes have held that the right to speak includes the right not to be forced to speak. By implication, I would argue that I have the right to choose my own channels of communication including my intended audience (and this has been upheld by the Supremes in other contexts). If the Feds want to know what I've written or said (non-publicly) let them subpoena me and I will be happy to tell them to go to hell. If we can deploy technologies to protect our freedom to communicate the way *we* choose to, then we have the right to do so. Beyond rights, we have the power to do so --- which is worth even more. >In other words ... if it took agreement by a review board composed of >non-LEA members of this list, would the escrow be acceptable?? I don't think many of us would feel better if a private party had to approve the invasion of our privacy. DCF "You can ignore all of the rest of bullshit. All that you need to know about an enemy is how many guns and men does he have and can they stand fire."

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Eternity's 15 Minutes of Fame
by Mike Duvos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is a short piece by "Wired News" on the Eternity servers. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5778.html I should add that all Eternity servers... http://www.zipcon.com/~enoch/eternity http://www.replay.com/~aba/eternity and http://eternity.insync.net/eternity now have pretty icons and a more attractive format. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ enoch(a)zipcon.com $ via Finger $ {Free Cypherpunk Political Prisoner Jim Bell}

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generating hash.curve in eliptic.src
by Mike Rosing 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Among other comments, it was pointed out that I had not included "hash.curve". To generate this file I did the following main() { POINT point; CURVE curve; init_opt_math(); init_rand(); rand_curv_pnt(point,curve); save_curve("hash.curve",curve,point); close_rand(); } This was done during development and I forgot about it. A simpler patch is to fix an error finding the file with a call to rand_curv_pnt to generate it. Kind of interesting that way for hashing your secret key. If everyone uses a different curve to generate their secret key, access to the machine is necessary to even begin to think about cracking any pass phrase. Don't know if actually adds any security, but it is an interesting concept. As for why I didn't put up a tar file, no particular reason. It's source for a particular machine (MachTen on a Mac) and I figured every C compiler is different so some hacking will be required by anyone interested. Once more bugs are fixed such as the one above, I'll put it up in a more easily compilable form. And thanks for the comments so far. I'll do my best to keep up with them. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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Mixmaster posting poll
by loki＠obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I am about to release Mixmaster 2.0.2 This version will not contain the Socket code, but will have a bunch of bug fixes. One of the things I am modifying is the posting to news feature. Mixmaster supports posting through either a local inews program, or through a mail-to-news gateway. There seem to be two flavors of the latter: group.name(a)gateway.com and mail2news(a)gateway.com Newsgroups: group.name I really only want to support one of these standards. Which is more standard? Is there a trend towards one becoming the dominant standard? The next version should be out within 48 hours. -Lance -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMFZ+PvPzr81BVjMVAQEa2Qf/d9a3UTzan5gLB/GN/n+DaMSvDLRVJ96V JpH4F+5SO+UQgdxoSAup9+/l+Q11A4O1ZjxpELVEh6e/7U8HjzrGQHCXGIMfzxkt DufouYDViio8cQ7w1Y4OLqlqaD10OUJ5Chrzm013mc7PzFBgF5eb6rf8S4TdGEYg Ly92xWgYHHk8EwhviYxqdBAGnSSTykEkY9E5WHLca+Lt+5ejox1uMEirq6I4rRVZ UBhfiVQhRsD2eKRUx/a3D3eVnuj0jS8+4i3ibcpUDxm+8WY76zGzmz67y66MzaDo 0E0fFK1VeCwrBoNqFJSLYY5e17c7T6hI3mWJYaZFOLL7H3rGsYUcHw== =BdWR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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NYT on GAK
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, September 11, 1995, p. D7. Technology / Peter H. Lewis On The Net. Privacy for computers? Clinton sets the stage for a debate on data encryption. In terms of its ability to raise the nation's blood pressure, the debate over data encryption has not yet reached the same levels as gun control. But last week the Clinton Administration appeared to set the stage for an equally divisive debate over the degree to which businesses and individuals have the right to keep secrets when using telephones, computers and other forms of electronic communications. In two days of public hearings last week in Gaithersburg, Md., home of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Administration introduced its long-awaited proposals to relax restrictions on the export of cryptographic software. The Administration drew a line in the virtual sands of cyberspace, signaling that it is willing to permit Americans to put stronger cryptographic locks on their electronic data only if a spare key to those locks is made available on demand to law-enforcement agencies. There looms the conflict. Although the debate is about export controls the "export" issue is irrelevant in today's era of global electronic networks. Placing a common privacy program on an Internet computer in Austin, Tex., is effectively no different from sending a shrink-wrapped copy of the program to Moscow. The real issue is how much privacy the Government is willing to allow its own citizens, and the latest word from the Clinton Administration is that the right to electronic privacy, like the right to bear arms, is not absolute. Cryptography is the science of secret writing. In this digital era, it applies not just to notes, but also to telephone calls, money transfers, bank and credit card records, electronic mail, faxes and other computer files. The Clinton Administration's goal is to allow Americans to use the strongest possible cryptographic technology, while at the same time preserving the ability of law-enforcement agencies to perform court-authorized wiretaps as part of the effort to catch drug dealers, terrorists, child pornographers and other miscreants. In other words, it favors strong cryptography, but not too strong. The strength of cryptographic software is measured by the length of the software key necessary to encode and decode a message. The longer the key, the harder it is for an unauthorized user to decipher the message. In recent years, the Government has generally permitted Americans to export cryptographic software with key lengths up to 40 bits. Experts say that 40-bit keys are secure from casual snooping, but will fall quickly to a determined codebreaker. Last week, after more than a year of intense analysis, the Government introduced what it said was the best possible compromise. Under the new policy, companies can export encryption algorithms using 64-bit keys, which are much more secure, but only if spare keys are given to "escrow agents" who would make them available to lawenforcement agents under standard legal procedures, similar to legal wiretaps authorized by a judge. Otherwise, the 40-bit limit continues to apply. Such a "key escrow" scheme is anathema to many privacy advocates who fear Government abuses. The Government first proposed a key escrow system with its so-called Clipper Chip, a technology that failed to win acceptance even as a voluntary standard. The new scheme is somewhat more palatable than Clipper. Key escrow is still unpopular with American computer and software companies, which say it prevents them from competing against foreign companies that have no similar constraints, and with many multinational corporations, which say it prevents them from working with foreign companies that do not especially care for the idea of Uncle Sam holding the keys to their data banks. "If this was intended to be any sort of compromise, I don't think it achieved its end," said Whitfield Diffie, a Sun Microsystems enginePs who attended the meetings. "I didn't see anybody who was enthusiastic." Raymond G. Kammer, deputy director of N.l.S.T., suggested that the hearings last week were intended to elicit public comment, and that the Administration's final position on cryptographic policy were still under analysis. But the emergence of key escrow issues at the N.l.S.T. proceedings suggests that key escrow is emerging as a nonnegotiable demand by some factions of the Clinton Administration, especially the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, led by Louis Freeh. "If this fails," said a figure familiar with the Administration's thinking on the proposed change in cryptographic policy, "it's going to lead to a very divisive debate. And the irony, for libertarians who oppose key escrow, is that if it fails, I am convinced that Louis Freeh cannot be true to his job without proposing domestic controls on data encryption." "He's not going to give up without a fight, and neither is the Justice Department," said the figure, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. Others say they do not think the Clinton Administration has yet arrived at a concrete position, even after more than a year of study and debate. "I don't think it's a final offer," said John Gilmore, an engineer at Cygnus Support, a computer company in Mountain View, Calif. "It looks to me like a weak strawman, a first offer, a proposal to dance." The question is whether American citizens and businesses have the patience to wait for the music to start. And the issue may be moot, anyway because the Internet is no more controlled by the United States than is the United Nations. "The Internet Architecture Board has specifically decided to ignore export controls in designing the security infrastructure for the next generation of Internet protocols," Mr. Gilmore said. "The Internet of 1998 will provide automatic, secure, and fully private communication, without key escrow, internationally." In other words, the Internet community is already planning to jump over the new line in the sand drawn last week by the Administration. Cryptogrophy that is stronger than the Government's proposed system will be built into the Internet by a dozen countries, and American companies and individuals would be foolish not to use it. At that point, millions of Americans will come into direct conflict with Government policy, and the popular gun-control bumper sticker may be replaced by one that says "If cryptography is outlawed, only outlaws will have cryptography." [End]

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