December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: DOS/Windows remailer chaining
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:27 PM 1/2/96 +0100, nobody(a)REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) wrote: >Cypherpunks write code. With that phrase and the wave of attempts to >censor the 'Net, I've embarked on a quest to make remailers easier to use. > >Has anyone written an easy to use Windows or DOS application that will let >someone chain a message through several remailers, perhaps with support >for the mailer at alpha.c2.org? Yup. Private Idaho, www.eskimo.com/~joelm/ does just that, along with calling PGP to do things you commonly want done. >Would the writer of such a program, if in the US fall under the provisions >in ITAR? Obviously, calls to the PGP program would have to be made. I >recall reading that such hooks do fall under the ITAR. If this is true, so >much for a more user friendly version of chain for the masses. Depends on whether it's a "component" of an encryption system or not. But if you're not doing PGP, no problem at all (except of course that _real_ remailers only talk encrypted....) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Re: 2047 bit keys in PGP
by Michael C. Peponis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Why is there a limit to the size of the key anyway? It's too bad PGP > doesn't support any size key (within reason). Within reason is the Key Phrase. Even with a Pentium 90, I notice a considerable lag in decrypting messages that have been encrypted with a key larger than 2047/8. Even if you have a fast machine, if the person recieving the message could wait a long time to decrypt you 4096 byte encrypted message. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQCVAwUBMOs4u0UffSIjnthhAQEfigP9GQvgcyuCUxkrPqX/3yDdtwxDGajKbbhY j90px4tr1Q1sNQue8ywBDdBIQakirTr95QDeGMrC1n0NjSh5+dotUUWiChWLCLS+ AMIsA3LCJr5BzeCOni8bYyz7+alt617cIIYZs0Unt26BKJVI20hU8OgD0oC9K/uR 7WN3YIKff0k= =TuOD -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Regards, Michael Peponis PGP Key Avalible form MIT Key Server Key fingerprint = DD 39 66 3D AE DE 71 C2 B6 DA B2 3F 47 2A EB AC

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Re: Guerilla ISPs
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 14:07 1/3/96, Peter Monta wrote: >I'm skeptical about cable modems---few cable providers have adequate >return paths, and everyone competes for the downlink bandwidth. >Broadcast is not the right architecture. Taking a closer look at it, you will find that the cable giants have prepared themselves rather well. In the US, there are about 3300 subs per headend. Each of which is served by about 7 trunks. Moreover, the cable operators have been busy laying fiber to all the headends. In fact, the vast majority of headends, certainly all the ones in the interesting markets have fiber on site today. The bandwidth crunch only happens if most cable subscribers want to use the ISP services. How many of the 3300 subs have PCs and are willing to pay $500-1000 per hookup? If you add switching to the picture, not that switching was necessarily needed, things look even better for cable based ISPs. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Duplicate messages
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has everyone else been getting two messages for the price of one? (Maybe Tim May is getting back at me for the semi-plagerized sig quote...) 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/ "Governments are potholes on the Information Superhighway." - Not TCMay

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Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers (fwd)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:08 AM 1/3/96 -700, you wrote: >All of this is assuming that the bandwidth is available on the airwaves to >handle ~200 ~T1s. (If we're talking $200.00/mo. for T1, sign me up tomorrow, >and my neighbor, and his, and hers, and... *poof* no more bandwidth in a >"decently" populated metro area or even a downtown. (Back of the envelope >calculations show that ~200 T1 ~= 1 TV station [although I might be off by an >order of magnitude.]) > >I apologize if this is off topic, but the crypto part still applies (moreso, >even!) to broadcast over the airwaves. (Besides, I'm sure that this list has >enough subscribers that are shelling out $200-$500/mo. for 56K/Frac T1/ISDN >that they'd be interested in a less expensive alternative.) >Steve(a)AZTech.Net To a certain extent, I think this is (or should be!) VERY MUCH "on topic." If our goal is to allow/assist privacy, we need to start actually anticipating technological developments so that we can do "minor course corrections" that will end up guaranteeing unbreakable security. One of these is by routing data through organizations (NOT THE PHONE CO!) that won't tend to kow-tow to the wishes of the government. We know that if this telephone-company bypass is done, it can either be done "right" (from a cypherpunks standpoint; so that it's including encryption, etc) or "wrong." If we don't plan ahead, it will almost certainly be done "wrong." Witness the fact that the vast majority of modems contain no encryption standard, for example. If USR or somebody else had mandated it in 1982 with 2400 bps modems, we might all be talking on encrypted lines already. And as you pointed out, this is especially important if RF is the medium-of-choice for connections. We should definitely make a serious amount of contact with people working on the PCS standards to ensure that GOOD encryption is included.

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Guerilla ISPs
by Thomas Grant Edwards 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On LECs attacking ISPs, it is interesting to note that several medium-sized ISPs in Maryland which have over 100 phone lines are now getting them delivered by fiber direct to the ISP. This is nothing new - what is news is that some of these fiber setups use a form of SLC-96 systems which are incapable of carrying data traffic over 21 kbps with modern 28.8 kbps modems. Nobody new what the problem was for a long time, until finally Bell Atlantic admitted that there were some bandwidth limitations in some SLC-96 setups. They went on to note that the tarrif required them to carry only acceptable voice and 4800 bps communication, nothing more, and that these ISPs were basically stuck with substandard lines. The ISPs involved are now looking into alternative local dialtone, but it is few and far between. Bell Atlantic is looking to get into the Internet business...perhaps they will engineer their own dialups properly, while giving low-data-rate fiber connections to ISPs? And on the radio-last-mile service, I used to be enthusiastic about it, but I am no more. It is pretty impractical to discuss VHF or UHF frequencies for real net connectivity, there just isn't enough bandwidth to be practical. 900 MHz and higher appear to be the best solution, using CDMA spread-spectrum in a microcellular environment. Metricom (http://www.metricom.com) has CDMA microcellular modems which get 14.4 kbps equivalent throughput in the 900 MHz region, and they have a large microcellular network already set up in the Bay Area with Internet connectivity. Once 2 GHz technology becomes cheap enough (that's GaAs chips instead of Si), I can imagine wide-scale 56kbps service over microcellular networks. But how can these things compete with @Home, which is promising 10 Mbps in and 128 kbps out of homes with cable modems? -Thomas Edwards

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Re: Guerilla ISPs
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 14:07 1/3/96 -0800, Peter Monta wrote: >I'm skeptical about cable modems---few cable providers have adequate >return paths, and everyone competes for the downlink bandwidth. >Broadcast is not the right architecture. I would be skeptical too, but the cable modems I reviewed in a marketing research focus group were from HP. My view of HP's reputation is that when they claim their equipment does something, it does. Does anyone want to offer counter examples? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Duplicate messages
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:40 PM 1/3/96 -0600, you wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >> Has everyone else been getting two messages for the price of one? > >I've gotten several pieces of email from people who are getting two >copies of stuff I post, but I've looked at my mailer (sendmail 8.6.10) >and it's not sending out dups to toad.com, as far as I can tell. > >If people continue to get dups from just me, then I'll have to install a >sendmail front-end to log outgoing email or something... It is not just you. I am getting dups from about half the list. 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/ "Governments are potholes on the Information Superhighway." - Not TCMay

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Re: bumper stickers
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jan 03, 1996 22:25:26, 'liberty(a)gate.net (Jim Ray)' wrote: ><snip> > >> -- Any political analysis that fits on a bumper sticker is wrong. > > >My bumper sticker says, "Politicians and diapers need to be changed -- >often for the same reason." Politicians keep on proving this analysis >RIGHT, much as I *wish* it were wrong. >JMR >Regards, Jim Ray >http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray >"Hooters GUYS? Washington -- GET A GRIP!" > I am not sure if I understand the political argument that J. Ray believes is so "RIGHT" that he wishes to post it to the cypherpunks list. I infer that the answer he is implying is that they are both "full of shit." I have no problem with humorous bumper stickers. I frequently use parodies of bubble-brained "progressivism" as my .sig files (e.g. "Visualize whirled peas" or "Give pizza chants" but I do not confuse them with detailed social, political, mathematical, philosophical, or especially economic analysis. J.Ray may wish to comment on the anality of politicians; that is an opinion over which I have no desire to comment. But to seriously maintain that one needs to replace an elected official based on the presumed state of his bowels, to post this info publically, and to insist that the analysis is "RIGHT" is rather an example of what I meant. One might define cypherpunks in three areas: a) they write code, *code* and CODE; b) they are concerned about anonymity; c) they are concerned about privacy. The code they write is based on algorythms. They are short, terse, and elegant. The code that the algorythmicly-oriented cypherpunks have written is wonderful and a major contribution to human freedom. They write far better code than I have ever written or will ever be likely to write. And you can put elegant mathematical equations on bumper stickers. They can fit and they are true. The best example might be "E = MC^2". Unfortunately, the other two issues are not subject to the same type of solutions as is encryption code. The time one spends working on the elegant algorythms is time not spent on broader issues of political science, sociology, economics, history, etc. Unfortunately, many do not realize this and so treat complex social issues as if they can be decided with the same type of elegant algorthym as the code. They can not. The English language does not have the compact elegance of C++. Nor is the range of human problems and interrelationships anywhere near as narrow as that of the average instruction set of a CPU. So attempts at solving complex social problems in the same way are *always* wrong, as witness J.Ray's original post to the group. I do not mean to suggest that every algo-oriented individual must, of necessity, miss the larger social issues. Einstein, for example, came up with a mean critique of E. Mach, but only because Uncle AL put a lot of post-1905 time studying complex aspects of philosophy. His critique, by the by, did not fit on a bumber sticker. -- tallpaul -- Gun control means being able to hit your target!

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Re: New Mitnick Book
by Joel McNamara 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Well, here's another minor error. At the hearing, Shimomura >just used a new, shrink wrapped cell phone. I think it was an AT&T >model, but my memory is faint on these details. I'm pretty sure it >wasn't an off the shelf Oki 900. Half the point was to show just >how easy it was. He didn't even bother to hook the >cell phone up to a laptop or palmtop. Just a few button pushes and >instant scanner. I tried to get him to tell me the right buttons afterwards, >but he was too busy and didn't answer. Sigh. The AT&T 3730 model is identical to the Oki 900 and contains the same rich set of features. The key sequences to enter test mode and scan cell channels are the same. The commands are relatively well documented in most cell hacking archive sites. Joel

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