December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: cipherpunk mail at Netcom.com
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:06 PM 2/4/96 -0800, Norman Hardy wrote: >The list of addressees is made from the "From" fields that include >"netcom.com" in CP mail that appeared on the CP list Tuesday and Wednesday >last week. I have received no CP mail since then. Have you? Now that dam seems to have broken (I have received over 250 messages in the last four hours), perhaps I can ask, "What Happened?". I, along with Norm and Lucky received no Cypherpunks traffic for about a week from Februrary 1 to February 7. During this period, we could not get response from majordomo(a)toad.com. I asked a friend in the east to ping toad.com and request "help" from majordomo(a)toad.com. He did and reported no problems with either test. I have sent a request to Netcom support for help with this problem, but their automatic responder says the have a 2 week backlog of email! :-(. Perhaps I will get some information from them in a few weeks. I have two questions: (1) Did people who are not at netcom.com or ix.netcom.com experience this outage? (2) Did people who ARE at netcom.com or ix.netcom.com receive the normal level of traffic during this period? Please respond by private email and I will summarize for the list. I my more paranoid moments, I wonder if this a practice denial of service attack. In any case, perhaps this post will explain some of the strange posts we have been sending to cypherpunks this last week. My appologies for the noise. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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pgp HELP!!!!!
by bmanning＠whale.st.usm.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear users, I am an extremely new user to your list, and my interest for privacy and encryption is extremely new, so please excuse me for this amatuer question. Could someone please tell me where I could get a copy of PGP software (ftp site) and the proper way to set it up for windows 3.1 or windows 95. Thanks, Ben

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[CODE] Signing Web Pages
by Ed Carp, KHIJOL SysAdmin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's a quick script I hacked together in the last few minutes to sign web pages. Very simple-minded, it nonetheless does the job. If you want to see how it looks in action, visit http://dal1820.computek.net #! /bin/sh # # signit - use PGP to sign a web page # Written 02/08/96 by Ed Carp (ecarp(a)netcom.com) # # This could conceptually be used to sign (and optionally verify) # shell scripts, etc. The possibilities are endless... # # # Set up some variables... # # Change this if you're so inclined... PGPHELP="http:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/Computers\/Security_and_Encryption" # Look for a line that starts like this... LOOKFOR="This web page has been signed with" ADDLINE="$LOOKFOR <A HREF=$PGPHELP>PGP<\/A>. To see the digital signature, click <A HREF=$1.asc.html>here<\/A>." # # First, we need to make sure that the page hasn't already been signed... # F=`grep "^$LOOKFOR" $1|wc -l` F="`echo $F`" # If it hasn't already been signed, add signature line if [ "$F" = "0" ]; then echo Adding PGP signature HTML to document echo "s/<\/BODY>/$ADDLINE<\/BODY>/g" > $1.temp.$$ echo "s/<\/body>/$ADDLINE<\/body>/g" >> $1.temp.$$ sed -f $1.temp.$$ < $1 > $1.$$ rm -f $1.temp.$$ mv $1.$$ $1 fi pgp -asb $1 # Add rudimentary HTML echo "<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>PGP Digital Signature of $1</TITLE></HEAD>" > $1.$$ echo "<BODY><I>PGP Digital Signature generated `date`</I><HR><PRE>" >> $1.$$ cat $1.asc >> $1.$$ echo "</PRE></BODY></HTML>" >> $1.$$ mv $1.$$ $1.asc.html rm $1.asc echo Done. -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp(a)linux.org, ecarp(a)netcom.com 214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager 800/558-3408 SkyPager Finger ecarp(a)netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744(a)anon.penet.fi "Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families, through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a waiting soul. Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'" -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes The mark of a good conspiracy theory is its untestability. -- Andrew Spring ---------------------------------------------------------------------- According to the Communications Decency Act, these are the words you may no longer use in your Internet correspondence: Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-sucker, mother-fucker and tits. The use of shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-sucker, mother-fucker and tits, may now earn you a substantial fine as well as possible jail time, should President Clinton sign this Bill into law. Please refrain from using shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cock-sucker, mother-fucker and tits, to protect your children as well as others, from their evil influence, thus keeping America "ideologically pure".

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CDA; Don't get mad, get even!
by cjs＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think that we should make an example of those responsible for the CDA. Ignorance is really not an excuse here, because whoever voted for for the bill should have known the CDA was attached to it, and should have had some idea of what it did. Lets get a list of whos supporting this thing and bad press them back before the dawn of time. We need to make these people hosehold names so that people know not to vote for them again. We need to make sure people understand that e-mail = postal mail, that these folks just voted to let the government censor their mail, and that they knew what they were doing. We should also make lists of great works of art and literatre which are technicly illegal to transmit, we should dig up some dirt on these people to show that they are definitly not 'holier then thou', and if the CDA actually goes into effect, a few horror stories of good christian couples (young) having their lives ruined and their names draged through the mud for talking dirty on the phone or sending a suggestive e-mail to each other would be good propaganda too. And on other fronts, we should make things as difficult as possible for our government to passively monitor us. Even the simpliest encryption, nothing more exotic then Xor'ing information by a bitmask (32 bits or so), will be more then enough to render those tera-cycle packet-sniffers pretty-much useless. I would love to see sendmail itself modified to use SSL when available. Christopher

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Re: personal web proxy?
by jpb＠miamisci.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Does anyone know whether there's a freely available web proxy available >anywhere? Even a "personal" one somewhere on my ISP's UNIX box would be a >simple way to beat superficial logging/resolution of my static IP. >Something like the Nutscapify or Canadianizer proxies, minus all the >blinking and "hoser, eh?" stuff. The CERN webserver can be configured to run in proxy mode. It can also cache requests so that if multiple people are using it (better from the hide me point of view), response time is actually better for pages that more of them are reading. There are several others, but I've only personally run CERN. Joseph Block <jpb(a)miamisci.org> "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans ..." -- Bill Clinton (USA TODAY, 11 March 1993, page 2A) PGP 2048bit-Fingerprint: F8 A2 A5 15 56 42 9B 16 3F BD 57 0F 8A ED E3 21 No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

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CNN on Crypto
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CNN had a piece on crypto last evening. Jim Bidzos spoke about selling RSA products to China, and lamented export restrictions. PRZ commented on crypto-enabled privacy. A voice-over warned of crypto use by criminals and terrorists and its threat to law enforcement and intelligence. While not there now, presumably the story will be on the CNN Web site later: http://cnn.com

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Re: Need a "warning" graphic of some kind for CDA
by lunaslide＠loop.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>About all the proposed symbols and logos and ribbons.... > >I realize I often come across as a naysayer against collective efforts to >design logos, arm patches, flags, and other such tribal insignias...(:-}). > >Logos and symbols have their place. The "Big Brother Inside" logo is a good >joke. > >But mainly I think that we underestimate the value of _words_. Instead of >some cutesy logo, such as a red rose being run over by the "Valdez," a logo >which many people would not understand and would not be interested in >looking up an explanation for, why not simply include a couple of English >sentances _describing_ why the page has been censored, why adult material >has been removed, etc.? (This is the norm today, and I'm glad of it. I >don't relish looking at a Web page filled with inscrutably clever icons and >logos.) > >Graphical icons are great, and worked well until writing was invented. I agree that words have thier place, however, combined with easily recognizable, uniformly similar graphical symbols, they become even more powerful. That's one of the greatest strengths of the web, is it not? lunaslide On the meridian of time there is no injustice, only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. Henry Miller -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQBvAzD3EHEAAAEDAMVwZzXozPjX18mCenA5fJsdWZXcrhJCxPR+SoVCmR7d4ZVU mwITzPTHo/GyLvJrWyk5YdhheczyY2VSawaMrCN/nWA7K9lwAylbKyPxqBhRYJ3C 2wi2uD5LY2wypNOQyQARAQABtB5KZWZmIENvbm4gPGx1bmFzbGlkZUBsb29wLmNv bT6JAHUDBRAw+1bqS2NsMqTTkMkBAQkTAwCersFbCyk8O0MbGlNcZDAe24CLEWQ0 0C5EHni33W76UsG1bybcLsuMH6HVwLF7IqZivnzc7wkujYPQvCqn8HEYYTld8V9V Cou4dOvA8kV7rHvAn/LuLx7DRruLFrRoPSk= =OIT9 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Hypermail & Cypherpunks
by simsong＠vineyard.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Have any of your cypherpunks set up a hypermail archive for cypherpunks? If not, I would be willing to set one up on some machine. ============= "Superior technology is no match for superior marketing." ============= Simson on Tour: Feb 2 - Feb 5 - Cambridge: Conference on Freely Redistributable Software Feb 7 - Feb 13 - Baltimore: American Association for the Advancement of Science. Feb. 28 - March 1 - Seybold, Boston. March 23 - NYC. MacFair. March 27 - March 30: Cambridge. Computers, Freedom and Privacy.

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Article on CAs in WebWeek
by olbon＠dynetics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An article on the front page of WebWeek this week discusses digital signatures and CAs. The best point made was that a small company could undercut (pricewise) the post office as a CA. Overall it seemed a pretty fair article. It mentioned UC Berkeley researchers "spoofing" a Netscape server's identity and sending false data to the client. This was news to me, I am curious as to how this was done. The paper article also listed as a "resource on the net" the URL for Tim May's cyphernomicon. Here's the link. Enjoy. Article: Big Step Forward For Authentication URL: http://pubs.iworld.com/ww-online/96Feb/news/authentication.html Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: finger olbon(a)mgr.dynetics.com Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 "To escape the evil curse, you must quote a bible verse; thou shalt not ... Doooh" - Homer (Simpson, not the other one) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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RSA-China Crypto
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wall Street Journal, February 8, 1996, p. A10. China, U.S. Firm Challenge U.S. On Encryption-Software Exports By Don Clark RSA Data Security Inc., the dominant supplier of data-privacy software, announced an unusual partnership with the Chinese government that exploits loopholes in U.S. export restrictions on codemaking technology. As part of the deal, RSA, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., plans to fund an effort by Chinese government scientists to develop new encryption software. The Chinese-developed software, based on RSA's general mathematical formula, may be more powerful than versions now permitted for export under U.S. Iaws, said James Bidzos, RSA's president. Two Chinese agencies also will use and distribute RSA data encryption products that may be legally exported from the U.S. The Chinese encryption-development arrangement, which isn't based on those products, appears to be legal as long as RSA doesn't supply the scientists with any other controlled technology, lawyers familiar with export laws said. RSA's move comes at a sensitive time in U.S.-China relations, and opens a new front in the company's long-running campaign against encryption export regulations. The closely held company, and other U.S. software concerns, have attacked the Clinton administration and the National Security Agency for trying to limit the strength of exported U.S. technology, while stronger products increasingly can be purchased from competing foreign companies. "The government has opened export doors a crack, and we sort of drove a Mack truck through them," Mr. Bidzos said of the Chinese deal. "The genie is truly out of the bottle." Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer and former general counsel of the NSA, said the government "obviously would not be thrilled" by RSA's China venture. China hasn't in the past been party to international agreements governing encryption exports, he noted, and RSA's move could force other countries to consider China as an important player. "It's going to create an interesting strain in the international discussion," he said. Japan, an even more potent force in technology, appears to be leaning toward loosening export controls on encryption, Mr. Baker and other industry executives say. RSA plans to announce the formation of a new company in Japan today, but the venture will be subject to U.S. export controls, Mr. Bidzos said. Encryption uses special mathematical formulas, called algorithms, to scramble voice conversations or data to make them unintelligible to eavesdroppers. RSA's founders developed a popular variant of the technology that helps determine the authenticity of senders and recipients of messages. Both privacy and authentication are widely regarded as crucial to advances in electronic commerce. RSA struck its deal with departments of China's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and the Academy of Sciences. They will use two RSA software products -- one for authentication and one for protecting the contents of PC hard drives -- internally and help distribute them. The Academy scientists who will develop new encryption software also will be paid to try to break RSA's products to test their strength, Mr. Bidzos said. A spokesman at the Commerce Department's bureau of export administration said he was unaware of RSA's China venture, but said the agency would be monitoring developments. Mr. Baker, the former NSA attorney, questioned whether customers in other countries would warm to the idea of Chinese-developed encryption software. Products approved by the U.S. government for export have the stigma that NSA can decode, and Chinese products might be subject to even more suspicion, Mr. Baker said. Still, the RSA deal is likely to be seen as further evidence of slipping U.S. control over encryption. "It is another example of what happens when you try to impose unilateral controls on what is in reality uncontrollable technology," said Bruce Heiman, an outside attorney for the Business Software Alliance. [End]

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