December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Alta Vista, Great Stuff!
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 PM 1/16/96, Beethoven wrote: >Imagine your nym is related to something common-place at >the time of posting. Even though you may be well known >under that nym, simple searches for that name will turn up >loads of crapola, or at least some light entertainment >for someone searching for oyur past posts. My name is rare and matched mostly by lists of the highest points of elevation in each state (Mt. Frissell in Connecticut) and museum shows of the work of a distant cousin Toni Frissell who was a fashion photographer in NYC. Most of the rest is mine. If you have a common name/nym it would be harder to track (except by searching for email address rather than name). DCF "Now everyone knows that Mohammed and Lee are the most common names in the world. Maybe I should change my name to Mohammed Lee."

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TOR_del
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1-16-96. NYPaper: "Louis W. Tordella, 84, Who Helped Break Cerman Military Code in World War II." A mathematician who helped break Enigma, and later spent 16 years as the deputy director of the National Security Agency. An intelligence visionary who had helped create and shape NSA even before he became its deputy director in 1958, Dr. Tordella was regarded both as a pioneer in the development of ever more powerful and sophisticated computers to break enemy codes and as a master administrator who established a combined code-breaking operation and then ran it. Since decryption devices did not exist, he and his colleagues simply designed and built them, not only breaking the enemy codes but helping to lay the theoretical and practical groundwork for what has become a vast computer industry. TOR_del [For more on Tordella, see Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace."]

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pgp broken?
by greg pitz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In speaking with an associate, he mentioned in passing that PGP had been broken a few weeks ago in San Diego by the DoD using a Cray. All questioning about said subject was ended immediately as he felt that he might have said too much how it was. Was PGP "broken"? His background: Prez of a firm with offices in D.C. & Silicon Valley. He is a former Thunderbird pilot, and so has some connections in the military. He has designed many hardware encrypting configurations using the VLSI007 chip as well as other chips that I am not familiar with. One of his present projects is designing a hardware encryption layout for Apple. Could this be part of the reason the charges were dropped against Phil as well? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< greg pitz pitz(a)onetouch.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

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Re: Spiderspace
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>... I was under the impression that the only documents that most web crawlers >will search are documents that are link-accessible. Are you saying that this >isn't true? Are you saying that Alta-Vista will search EVERYTHING that's >publicly accessible, whether by anonymous FTP or web? Don't archie servers already pick up the anonymous ftp fairly well? Also, aside from no-robots conventions, you can build a cgi program for access to files that might be more effective at blocking searches while still preserving access. Also, it wouldn't be hard for a web-crawler to follow ftp links, as long as the root of an anon-ftp site is pointed to by a URL somewhere. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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

17 Dec '03

At 7:22 PM 1/16/96, Mike McNally wrote: >Ed Carp writes: > > ... I was under the impression that the only documents that most web >crawlers > > will search are documents that are link-accessible. Are you saying >that this > > isn't true? Are you saying that Alta-Vista will search EVERYTHING that's > > publicly accessible, whether by anonymous FTP or web? > >Ah, but if it hits a site that's set up with a top-level directory >which *does* contain an "index" page but whose server *doesn't* >recognize the index page name, then when you hit the site you >(probably) get one of those server-generated indices. Those things >generally have *everything* in the directory visible (except those >files blocked by the server configuration, usually stuff like emacs >temp files), and so there you go... What I've found are a lot of files which are sitting in directories. I'm not sure I have the terminology down perfectly, but the Alta Vista search reveals a link, I click on it, and I'm in the fairly common "Web access to a file system" situation, where I can click on files, directories, move up and down the directory structure, etc. The files are not "Web documents" in the sense of having been prepared for the Web (with fancy fonts, pictures, etc.), but they are certainly fully accessible via the Web. --Tim We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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[NOISE] Re: Eggs at Customs
by Brad Shantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > Me: "Yes, I have green eggs, and ham, too. The eggs in Paris are especially > fresh this time of year." I would like to announce that from all of the mail I've received about the egg question, Tim receives the special award for the best answer. I would like to say though that at the time I was in Ottawa, it was right during the Quebec Referendum vote. Making a joke about the French (i.e. Parisian eggs) could have stuck me in a little room with a customs officer for much, much longer. Who knows, maybe I was a French Canadian spy!!! hmmmm.... Brad

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Re: Crypto anarchist getting through customs
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:27 AM 1/16/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >My bullshit detector is starting to pin the needle. > >US Customs doesn't care about your political status or leanings. >They want to collect the proper excise and catch contraband. > >There are INS people at passport control. I am skeptical that they >would detain a US passport holder for 36 hours. I would like to see some >evidence that this actually happened. > >US citizens can't be excluded from the country, nor have their >citizenship taken away from them. Since you're addressing this to me, what exactly did I say--be specific--that you think I was bullshitting about? They can, and do, detain entering citizens, as the Zimmermann case showed. And our own Fred Cohen confirms that he was detained upon re-entering the U.S. from Canada. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: The Last Mitnick Post/Thread
by Mark 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Markoff, and Tsutomo acted reprehensibly by quoting sniffer sessions with Kevin >and jsz in which my site was mentioned. Not only were the facts wrong At the time everyone knew Kevin was getting very warm, the simple social contacts people had with him were becoming insidious due to the increased attention being put on him. He was becoming rather infatuated with some people too which some of his antics show. It was in this climate that a process of alientation began where lies were fed him and procrastination was offered as a reason for avoiding his spheres and requests. Noone wants to hold the hot potato. I'm actually observing similar activities today as someone who has a court date approaching is becoming alienated by his own actions and the attitudes of others. Preparing to go to jail was my first thought. Some people never learn. >who/what netsys.com/Len Rose is, they only bothered to mention the past and not What do you expect? They are out for emotive impact, bugger the facts. You being an internet service provider doesnt sell, but a couple of events in the past can be made to give everything a dark and dangerous flavour. Pique interest and generate another percent of sales. >perhaps someone could clear jsz's name which seems to be pretty muddied by the >somewhat irresponsible literary excesses which seem to fill the Tsutomo/Markoff Him and all the others I've heard bandied about. It's a case of tall poppy syndrome where anyone who has a brain is pushed into a higher status than they want or deserve. I've seen a number of people recently who have been spoken of in vaulted tones or thought of as bleeding edge merely because they have had exposure to a lot of systems and their skill set is more than passable. I think jsz's name was mentioned because it was the only intelligent converstion Shimomura actually got. Mitnik was always warezing and trading around and doing the 3133+ $p34K crap so prevalent today. I found him boorish and didn't pay much attention to him. It was only when this Shimomura crap started anyone cared who he spoke to. I regard the whole sordid deal as a hollywood driven sales and marketing machine, most likely coached to the two players by their media backers. When they stop trying to make things into something they aren't is when I'll bother to pay any attention to their ravings. nuff said. Mark

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Need confirmation of Win95 password encryption back door
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A Major Media Outlet requires confirmation that Windows 95, to facilitate its automatic reconnect feature for sleeping laptops and temporary network outages, caches all network passwords (NetWare, NT, UNIX running Samba, SLIP/PPP dialup) in unprotected memory in clear text, whether you've disabled persistent "password caching" to disk and applied the December 14th 128-bit RC4 .PWL patch, or not. There seems to be no way to turn this off. The idea, of course, is that a simple trojan horse could do whatever it wanted with this information. We know that this vulnerability exists in Windows for Workgroups, and Peter wrote a little demo (on hackmsoft page below, without source), but the APIs appear to have changed in Win95. So, anyone have Win95 and some time to kill, or can anyone recommend a good DOS/Windows RAM grepper? - -rich(a)c2.org http://www.c2.org/hacknmsoft/ $ Mon Jan 15 22:17:10 PST 1996 $ $ From llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu to cypherpunks(a)toad.com $ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMPtDLo3DXUbM57SdAQEN7QP+J6Gmk6m8dv3X96SKZciI/L7DM04bDSoi HZa+dIoajAiRrfG9oSNcIYbVDDs67qwCSKGFg9hc5K3x99nhbq3Aw2mio62YQj+2 K62pBT9hQLe4dv8AMhLtIqyG4ZztYy+dDjGzsaUIkBUZKo5//Eh8c81xXLQrqXtk RFV+xkXBgww= =12rk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Spiderspace
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:38 AM 1/16/96 -0800, you wrote: > >I've been thinking a lot about the problems and opportunities that are >coming up as more and more "spiders" (Web searchers, crawlers) are indexing >directories and files on systems they can find. <a snip of agreement> I haven't checked my logs for Alta Vista but many of the spiders do follow the robot exclusion standard. A simple text file that should be retrieved first by any spider that explains where one may not go. The standard is fully explained at: http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots.html But this does nothing for those items sitting in more traditional public space. Obscurity is no longer security.

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