December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Spiderspace
by ecarp＠tssun5.dsccc.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) > Sure enough, a search of "Cyberia-l" in Alta Vista showed all sorts of > hits, including what appeared to be several _private archives_ of parts of > the traffic. (By "private" I mean in the sense that they were someone's > personal archives, and not necessarily complete or even semi-officially > sanctioned.) There are any number of reasons this migh have shown up - if the private archives are accessible to the public, for example ... but ... > Declan McCullagh, on the Cyberia-l list, followed up to my post on this > topic by noting that things will really get interesting when the internal > file systems of many sites are made searchable, such as with the Andrew > File System (AFS) at CMU and elsewhere. Apparently most users make their > directories accessible to others. ... 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?

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Re: Need confirmation of Win95 password encryption back door
by gorkab＠sanchez.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A friend and I were working on an exploit of this. It is true. We were not working on a grepper, but we found the offset where the passwords reside and were going to dump them into a dialog box. If you are planning to exploit this, we will stop our previous efforts. ---------- From: Rich Graves[SMTP:llurch@networking.stanford.edu] Sent: Monday, January 15, 1996 5:20 PM To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Cc: frank(a)funcom.no; pgut01(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz Subject: Need confirmation of Win95 password encryption back door -----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----- ---------- Brian Gorka Key fingerprint = ED 7D 78 7E 95 E8 05 01 27 01 A1 74 FA 4B 86 53

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Re: Spiderspace
by Martin Diehl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 1/16/96 12:35 PM, tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) at Internet-USA 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. [snip] > Sure enough, a search of "Cyberia-l" in Alta Vista showed all sorts of > hits, including what appeared to be several _private archives_ of parts > of the traffic. (By "private" I mean in the sense that they were > someone's personal archives, and not necessarily complete or even > semi-officially sanctioned.) [snip] > I've started to look for things like PGP files laying around buried in > subdirectories. I can imagine attacks based on this. [snip] > Fourth...left to your imagination. > --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." I gather that it would be a Bad Thing (TM) to have someone get both the encrypted and clear text forms of your message (from either you or from the recipient) Maybe regularly changing your encryption keys is a Good Thing (TM) Martin G. Diehl

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Novell & Microsoft Settle Largest BBS Piracy Case Ever
by gbe＠primenet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw this in a news summary today and thought that it might be of interest to the list. Sorry, but this is all of the article that I have. >From PR Newswire: "Microsoft Corporation and Novell, Inc. Jointly announced today they have reached a settlement with Scott W. Morris, who was doing business as the Assassins Guild Bulletin Board Service, in what is belived to be the largest settlement ever..." -- Gary Edstrom <gbe(a)primenet.com> | Sequoia Software PO Box 9573 | Programming & Technical Services Glendale CA 91226-0573 | PGP Key ID: 0x1A0D44BD PGP Fingerprint: 72 AA 4F 73 05 53 89 C6 8A EE F4 EE D1 C0 13 8D

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FEY_kry
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Supporting Kocher's feynmanesque cracking of sec systems, the WSJ reports today on new ways science "seeks answers to high-tech puzzles by examining the reckless and random ways of nature." The cold, digital domain of silicon-based technology is drawing inspiration from an unlikely source: the living, breathing realm of nature. Scientists are turning to a wide variety of natural models -- from the way salmon migrate to how the human body fights viruses to evolution -- for new approaches to problem-solving. "Our view of computer science is rationalistic, mechanistic. But nature winds up doing things in a way we'de never think of," one scientist says. FEY_kry

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Remailers and Me
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This may sound like a clueless newbie question, but then it pretty much _is_, redeemed only by the fact that I know it. :-) Following a lead provided by another local newbie, I've been doing a bunch of amateur remailer testing, looping messages from here through a given remailer to a nym server, back through the remailer, to here, and toting up the travel times. The latency and reliability figures I'm getting bear little or no resemblance to the info included with Private Idaho, discussed here, and like that. Question: is this anything to be concerned about? I'm assuming that the folks doing ping testing are throwing far more clueful and automated procedures at the problem, just for starters. But then I get the impression that their methodology differs from what I'm doing here, too. (My aim was to simulate "normal" use, at least for me, and to go on to test times through combos of the most reliable sites later.) Bruce "One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy" Baugh bruceab(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEQAwUBMP2cxH3AXR8sjiylAQF0dgfRAZ1Mm6OxLhIQmcWA/gli96RVsZWnODLw HV5eUF8llVVL+XIzl7wuY9u9uiDdbi13mgWYx2PReYYoRZ6cGqCOMmqYyoCCS0Mr drUckoohuERMMi6Yh8V9rHVLSdK49BXril8E/lQo7TxxwRyVASINrh7B22B6Ka1o Ymd+kkjah2WkL0oE+qnNoMylhUc5WYbKaO5BskP91zmV6S4MTHinKDOs8EPGEM1H ZzNBLXJk0C/kYwxTIaqq7I70BzYkSEPqXaT/2LMjzCvuz20pMN5jGGof6EmAQi3B R2wbVKp9A8SmBtFHah+HkROFqulSzLKxglGkPKVGFIVK0Ao= =JsYr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Bruce Baugh bruceab(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~bruceab

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Re: Spiderspace
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:38 AM 1/16/96 -0800, Timothy C. May 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. > >For the sake of this post, the files and whatnot these spiders and >super-spiders can hit constitute a universe I'll call "spiderspace," as it >semi-euphoniously matches cyberspace and cypherspace. [stuff deleted] >Implications for Cypherpunks? > >First, an alert for you to be very careful about what you make accessible >to the outside world. It's no longer just a matter of people taking the >time to rummage through your subdirectories, it's now trivial to find >things with the new Web search engines. > >Second, what is out there in spiderspace is incredibly useful for building >dossiers, for compiling correlations, and for doing competitive analyses. > >Third, more and more kinds of files are going into spiderspace. This may >include files compiled by others, such as files containing Web accesses! >(All it takes is for someone to keep a record of site accesses, >subscriptions, etc., and then put record in a searchable place: it then >becomes trivial to search on a name and find out interesting things.) >--Tim May Consider this: In about 10-20 years, the people who have been using Internet about now will come into the age from which (statistically) American presidents are usually chosen. Look at what just one letter Clinton sent (draft-dodge, etc) did. Now imagine literally YEARS of messages online, archived on terabytes of optical tape, searchable...

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Re: A Modest Proposal: Fattening up the Proles
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:24 AM 1/17/96 -0500, Timothy C. May wrote: >(Ironically, I brought up the new book, "The Winner Take All Society," at >the last Cypherpunks meeting. No time to discuss it here, but it confirms >my strong belief that we are heading for a economy in which a shrinking >fraction of workers have really valuable things to contribute, and a >growing fraction of the population does not. The book suggests that small differences in perceived quality (or even 'luck') result in a big difference in marketplace results (whether for product or labor). The title is a bit misleading. It should be "The Winner-Take-Lots Society" since it does not say that non-winners are left with nothing (that thesis is promoted in other recent works of fiction.) These GenX whining tomes and commie sociology texts are just the latest examples of the old automation-will-cause-mass-unemployment so-we-need-Socialism-to-feed the-unemployed arguments. So far, a higher percentage of Americans are in paid employment than ever before in history. Likewise once you factor out changes in the workforce mix, similarly situated workers continue to rake in more "total compensation" than ever before. Remember comparative advantage. Just because Tim can apply his knowledge of physics to the chip fab process better than anyone and make big bucks, doesn't mean that everyone else is not needed. Even Tim can't be everywhere at once. There is plenty for us lesser lights to do. Tim himself certainly purchases the goods and labor of many other people. It may be true that a disproportionate share of the gains accrue to "the elite" but if everyone else is vastly richer than their forebearers, what difference does it make? That is the likely effect of the nanotechnolgy revolution of which the computer revolution is just the first part. "The End of Work" is a real world example of the "Imminent Death of Usenet" threads that wander their way throughout the Net. DCF "If everyone is so poor these days, why have air travel, dining out, and retail floor space all tripled since the Carter administration?"

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Re: on being elitist...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:48 AM 1/17/96 -0600, Ed Carp, KHIJOL SysAdmin wrote: >I would say that an "elitist" is one who believes that the masses (or the >great unwashed, depending on your point of view) are somehow "not >deserving" of surviving or "not worth it" The contemporary PC definition of elitist is "One who believes that people are capable of excellence." And an anti-elitist is "One who believes that people are utterly incapable of excellence." Hence Public Education. I'm sure that some on this list think that people will prosper at different rates but I don't think too many expect a great die off of the masses because of their inability to compete. The cypherpunks relevance is that some members of this list want to use cypherpunk tools to protect their differential income from *greedy* governments who want to get their bloody hands on it. DCF "And Hillary said, 'Bill Gates is greedy because he has amassed a fortune of US$15,000,000,000 but the US Government is a helpful Village because it takes US$1,400,000,000,000 from us each year and does good things with it.'"

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[NOISE]cypherpunks meeting
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is one of the strangest pieces of mail I have recieved in a while. I know it is not nice to publish private mail, but this has got to be the most clueless response i have gotten yet on the portland Cypherpunks meeting. Either this guy has lost total connection to his clue-server or he left his terminal logged in... Either way it is pretty funny. (At least he did not make any references to the "tentacles" of Tim May... ]:> ) >Date: Tue, 16 Jan 1996 07:39:55 -0500 (EST) >From: paul <phoffman(a)oven.ccds.charlotte.nc.us> >X-Sender: phoffman@oven >To: alano(a)teleport.com >Subject: cypherpunks meeting > >I THINK THAT ALL CYPHER PUNKS ARE S BUNCH OF FAGGOTS HAVING MEETINGS TO >SEE WHO THEY "WANT" ALL OF YOU CAN SEND YOUR GAY MESSAGES WITH KEYS >SOMEWHER ELSE YOU DAMN FAGGOTS! > >paul > >*************************************************** >*copyright 1995 phoffman(a)oven.ccds.charlotte.nc.us* >* 1996 foffman(a)aol.com * >*************************************************** > > Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "Is the operating system half NT or half full?"

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