December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

CyberManicheans (was Re: CyberAngels)
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"declan+(a)CMU.EDU" or someone using that identity has written: I fear the so-called "CyberAngels" more than I do the Feds. At least with their brand of jackboots, there can be accountability. The CyberAngels are more like CyberCads, CyberFrauds, or CyberCriminals. Cyber-vigilantes? Odd that their home page has a blue-ribbon. They don't seem to understand what the hell they are doing... it's not a requirement that ISPs require online presence to be verifiable anyway. Even if you're ISP operator knows who you are, it doesn't follow that it's definitely YOUR presence in a usenet post or on IRC. There's plenty of semi-anonymity on the net without using things like remailers or "decense" protocols or DC-Nets. Under their logic, we should all have little bar codes implanted in our skulls and checked at every street crossing and doorway. There's also a difference between rudeness and criminal activity. Anonymity isn't a cause of crime. It's icing on the cake, and criminals will find a variety of other ways around validated User-ID at the ISP level anyway.... which lulls one to a false sense of security, since once you're got a legitimate-appearing ID for your ISP, you can do quickie hit-and-run "cybercrimes" and fall off the face of the earth anyway. There's just so much an ISP or even a clerk at a department store can do to verify your identity. One store I know doesn't accept checks from Post Boxes, believing that they are all-too-often used for fraud... but a street address from a fly-by-night mail box rental is undetectable by them. The Cyber Angels are just as clueless as the authors of the CDA. Cheers, [***CENSORED***]

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Re: China -- the fragile glimmer of freedom
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [Warning! This post is not primarily about "writing code." Instead, it's about cypherpunks "spreading crypto."] Tim May [& usually I agree with him] wrote: >At 12:10 AM 2/16/96, Bryce wrote: >... <snip> >>Perhaps you think that the compliant Chinese person is >>satisfied with his or her role as lackey of his government? >>Or is it that we and the Asians inhabit such different >>worlds that we will have to make do without each other's >>help? > >Well, where are the posts from outraged Cypherpunks living in the People's >Republic of China? Obviously, there aren't any. (Being an outraged cypherpunk in the PRC would no-doubt be harmful to the outraged cypherpunk's health.) >Some countries are so far gone, so deep in the muck of statism, that >nothing their governments do is very surprising. Ranting about how bad >things are in some country is not very meaningful. Supplying them with >tools is more meaningful. However, given that I know of no list members >living in the PRC, nor even any in soon-to-be-assimilated Hong Kong, I'm >not sure what the point is. I think that the goal here is to try to generate just one small group of cypherpunks in Hong Kong, who plan to stay on after the occupation. They will necessarily be very brave people, but IMO brave people _are_ there. I won't say bravery of that sort is common, but there are many people in China, and we all remember the guy who stood there in front of the tank...IMO remailer technology transfers will be _at least_ as important to this [admittedly ambitious] goal as direct crypto transfers are, as traffic-analysis is _VERY useful_ to the surveilance state. When the "remailer-in-a-box" is finished by a friend of mine "Real Soon Now" (tm) I hope that the directions to it are translated and that it is widely distributed [legally, of course]. ;) >I don't know about others, but I think the focus should be on the folks who >are salvageable, not the billion or so Chinese or the hundreds of millions >of Islamic women awaiting their clitorectomies and bowing toward Mecca for >guidance. Tim, you're giving up too quickly on most of the rest of the planet. As long as repression ever works somewhere, statists will attempt to (selectively) use annoying examples of how "orderly" it makes life. It's a one-way ratchet: When a moron bombs a building here, the US politicians cancel a repeal of the "assault weapons" ban. When some moron plants a bomb in London (or Paris) their politicians' reaction is not exactly the reverse... >Fact is that 90%+ of all list members are in the United States, and 97%+ >are in the so-called "Western world." We have a chance to deploy strong >crypto, the residents of Nepal and Singapore do not. I think that these statistics are likely correct, but I think it's not important, and we can't just give up this easily...We already know that China will be swallowing Hong Kong, a haven of capitalism, and IMHO we should work to make this process as "interesting" as possible. Anonymity is likely to upset the Chinese authorities as much as it upset the CO$. I know nobody in Hong Kong who will be staying, but I'm sure that some people on this list do, and Hong Kong is likely to be a better place for us to "infiltrate" than Beijing. Time is short, but if the fax machine gave us Tienanmen(sp?) I am optimistic about e-mail. Singapore residents (at least, those with a hankering for chewing-gum) might feel they have a reason to help us, if we simply try to be polite when we ask for help in putting together a good-looking Trojan Horse. JMR [who is even now preparing for the flames.] <snip> - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Regards, Jim Ray <liberty(a)gate.net> Boycott espionage-enabled software! "If I had to summarize [Republican candidate Morry] Taylor's campaign message, I'd boil it down to two basic points: 1. The problem with this country is that the government is run by lawyers. 2. And these are *stupid* lawyers." -- Dave Barry 2/17/96 _______________________________________________________________________ PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Public Key id. # E9BD6D35 http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray IANAL _______________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh. iQCVAwUBMSZoUG1lp8bpvW01AQGsrAP/QdUrjiSoZ5avWu7MvdNDS5BMhv/WJecR MTbgwrAbrKa9TTw+kFifzdiMeJtldmwSyhAvskshfLHWtAl/RjWm7+Et6NcJeeZV nDoAljQNmU+xDM0jPGSu4PvkxNxndqbd3TiDOkfYtjLO16T+yA31j16RPiqjnG4C YWbM6iCvTJw= =Sq8a -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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CyberManicheans (was Re: CyberAngels)
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"declan+(a)CMU.EDU" or someone using that identity has written: I fear the so-called "CyberAngels" more than I do the Feds. At least with their brand of jackboots, there can be accountability. The CyberAngels are more like CyberCads, CyberFrauds, or CyberCriminals. Cyber-vigilantes? Odd that their home page has a blue-ribbon. They don't seem to understand what the hell they are doing... it's not a requirement that ISPs require online presence to be verifiable anyway. Even if you're ISP operator knows who you are, it doesn't follow that it's definitely YOUR presence in a usenet post or on IRC. There's plenty of semi-anonymity on the net without using things like remailers or "decense" protocols or DC-Nets. Under their logic, we should all have little bar codes implanted in our skulls and checked at every street crossing and doorway. There's also a difference between rudeness and criminal activity. Anonymity isn't a cause of crime. It's icing on the cake, and criminals will find a variety of other ways around validated User-ID at the ISP level anyway.... which lulls one to a false sense of security, since once you're got a legitimate-appearing ID for your ISP, you can do quickie hit-and-run "cybercrimes" and fall off the face of the earth anyway. There's just so much an ISP or even a clerk at a department store can do to verify your identity. One store I know doesn't accept checks from Post Boxes, believing that they are all-too-often used for fraud... but a street address from a fly-by-night mail box rental is undetectable by them. The Cyber Angels are just as clueless as the authors of the CDA. Cheers, [***CENSORED***]

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Re: Libertarians and crypto and such
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Feb 16, 1996 23:06:27, 'Bruce Baugh <bruce(a)aracnet.com>' wrote: >At 12:43 AM 2/17/96 -0500, tallpaul wrote: > >>While the LP or its majority may not call for the things I've critiqued, >>certainly libertarians have. Nor, as far as I can recall, have LPers >>repeatedly posted to the cypherpunk list material that is on-the-surface at >>least significantly off-topic; libertarians have. And I responded. > >So you get the fun of attacking this straw man called "libertarians" without >any responsibility to identify any actual people it might include other than >a handful of folks that the vast majority of us think are kooks. And you've >also acquired the remarkable mental power, apparently, to discern who is or >is not an LP member based on their posts here. > Libertarians are not "straw men." They actually exist. I've seen them with my own eyes. If B. Baugh is upset that I have not mentioned any of the other libertarians (olf the cypherpunk list) that I have criticized, I would be happy to re-post to the list all of the related messages in other news groups on this topic listing their names. My "sent mail" archives contain a few thousand messages. (Aside to T.C. May: this is sarcasm and rhetorical hyperbole.) The vast majority of the libertarians on the cypherpunk list *might* think that the people I've criticized are "kooks" but I can find no evidence of this. I do note that some people who call themselves "libertarians" have so criticized the "kooks." The second point is, I think, either an error in logic. I have written nothing about my ability to tell what political party someone belongs or does not belong to. I infer that when someone tells me they are a member of the LP, CPUSA, SPUSA, etc. that they are, until evidence dictates another conclusion. If someone is a party member and decides not to make the material public, then they, not I, are responsible for any transient confusion that develops. But I do not demand or expect people to automatically list their party affiliation. I do note that the declared ability to "discern" unannounced party membership has historically been far more a rightwing then leftwing "ability" in the U.S.A. >Neat tricks. > >But until they're joined with a willingness to look at a wider range of >libertarian posts than the fragment that feeds your pet peeves, I reserve >the right to be impressed. Again, these seems to reflect your ability to reach conclusions about other people's behavior based on no evidence. I have read numerous posts by libertarians on the net; who has not! The issues I have responded to have usually centered on thigs like the mass killings of civilians, murder, and hatred of other people based on issues like race, ethnicity, nationality, and/or religion. You may consider these nothing more than my "pet peeves." This is your right. But in an era of increasing global hatred over such issues I do not think many would agree with your accessment of the relative weight of these issues. You need not be impressed; I was not posting to impress you. > >And yes, this is off-topic. So this is all I have to say about it. > I think then that you posted one message too many. --tallpaul

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Patents suck
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jean-Francois Avon (JFA Technologies, QC, Canada) wrote: > Man's survival tool is his mind. > > Patents and copyright are establishing the ownership and protection > the result of the exercise of his survival tool. > > Therefore they are good. > > To try to eliminate them is equivalent to promote slavery. I take some disagreement with that. With patents, there is a problem of large companies owning them yet doing nothing with them except suing other companies or individuals. For example, look at arithmetic coding: there are many patents owned on it, yet a lot of software using this means of compression may be in violation of the patents... are the patent-owners publishing software or makingh efforts to license it widely? If anything, such patents are getting in the way of using many algorithms. Patents would be better if there was a good-faith attempt on the part of the holder to "use it or lose it". Somebody sitting on a patent and doing nothing with it deserves to lose it after a number of years.

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Indian datacom freed?
by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Indian Techonomist: bulletin Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. All rights reserved Indian datacom freed? by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh February 16: Today, in a "brainstorming" session to discuss the new datacom policy proposed by The Indian Techonomist, the Department of Telecommunications indicated its enthusiasm for a free datacom environment in India. As no official decision has yet been taken, I cannot make the details public for the moment. There is one exception: the Telecom Secretary (and Chairman, Telecom Commission) R K Takkar has made it quite clear that content providers in cyberspace will receive all the free-speech protections available to other media. Mr Takkar said that existing laws for obscenity and national security were enough for the Internet, and in any case were not the concern of the DoT. Mr Takkar said that there was no need to licence on-line content providers, and indicated that Internet service providers would not be responsible for illegal content, apparently implying common carrier status for ISPs. The other parts of the proposal, relating to low entry barriers for ISPs and free competition met with a largely positive response. The full text of the proposal is now available at http://dxm.org/techonomist/news/newdcom.html Apart from Mr Takkar and myself, present at the meeting were Telecom Commission Members P Saran and P Khan, as well as some other senior DoT staff. I would like to thank Vinton Cerf and Lawrence Landweber for the support given by the Internet Society to the proposal. The Indian Techonomist: bulletin. http://dxm.org/techonomist/ Copyright (C) 1996 Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (rishab(a)techonomist.dxm.org) Tel +91 11 6853410; Fax 6856992; H-34-C Saket New Delhi 110017 INDIA May be distributed electronically provided that this notice is attached

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Cybercrooks
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Dream of the Internet Becomes Worst Nightmare Manhasset, N.Y., Feb. 16 -- Technology managers, who dreamed of the Internet as a new business tool and championed their cause to senior management, are waking up to nightmares of security gone awry, reports CMP's InformationWeek in its February 19 issue. "The incidence of cybercrook attacks to mine or sabotage a company's information resources is rising rapidly," states Bob Violino, editor-at-large of InformationWeek. "What is especially alarming is that despite the fact that companies like Rockwell International and Merrill Lynch and various government agencies employ the latest firewall and encryption technology available, they are experiencing security breaches on a regular basis." Business users have been particularly skittish about the Internet since last September, when two computer science students at the University of California at Berkeley cracked the public-key encryption code used by Netscape Communications Corp.'s popular browser software. "There are more experts than ever in the intruder community who know the infrastructure of the Internet," explains Cathy Fithen, CERT's team leader of strategic incident response. "In the past we saw people breaking into systems using passwords. Now they look for flaws to exploit involving networking protocols and source codes for operating systems." The fear of invasion is well founded, according to federal law enforcement agencies, which have stepped up their investigations of online intrusions. "We're aware that this is a serious problem for any industry using the Internet," says Jim Freeman, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Francisco office. "Salvation from the government, or from vendors with new security products, seems unlikely," says Violino. "History shows that as soon as new security tools are developed, hackers learn to crack them. And while not every company possesses trade secrets, security is still a must for everyone in business. For now, at least, absolute security is one thing the Net can't offer." But, companies are so focused on Internet intrusions from outsiders that they often fail to consider the possibility of an inside hacker. According to John Reinke, chief information security architect at Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. in New York, "There is no modern large organization that I now of that does internal firewalls." At Bell Laboratories, where an internal network links some 300,000 host computers around the world, security is a constant concern. "We're bigger than the entire Internet was in the late 1980s," says Bill Cheswick, technical staff manager at the labs' computer science research department in Murray Hill, N.J. "Our firewall keeps the bad guys out but you can't say there aren't bad guys inside the company." --

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Differnent Sizes of Public PGP Keys
by Mark Allyn 860-9454 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello: I have been noticing that the sizes of the Public PGP Key Block on some of your messages are different sizes. When I set up my PGP key pair, I selected the largest key size which was 1024. It then gave me a public key block that look like this: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzD5t24AAAEEALSR4OvQ9lfGpTjqDsuYgtCtI9eYC82E29VO6tL6cBDNCWc/ KgJiPUvqV3ZSDLEbGy4t3FTDIguKITUxCJwtaMhZyOUFvjP51noFw1lhP3y1GW8J 9sHW+M8eo/F6S5OSUuw6P7yYU2+4cO3lBASFA2aL0JoUIwS2bT+5LqLYocENAAUR tBxNYXJrIEFsbHluIDxhbGx5bkBhbGx5bi5jb20+ =Q3/s -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- This is only 4 lines and a few characters long. I have noticed that some others have public keys that are larger than this. I have noticed one public key that is about 10 lines long. What is happening here? Are there keys that are bigger than 1024? I am using the latest PGP that is available from MIT. Please help! Thank you! Mark Allyn allyn(a)allyn.com http://mark.allyn.com http://clearplastic.com

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Re: Berkeley ftp site moved again?
by Ian Goldberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- s1018954(a)aix2.uottawa.ca wrote: > > I've been unable to get through to ftp.csua.berkeley.edu > and www.csua.berkeley.edu for the past two days. > > Does anyone know if the site (and the cpunk archives with it) > has moved or if it's just down? (I'd mail root, but what's the > point if the machine's down?) > > Sorry if I've missed this being mentioned before. It's just down. - Ian - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMSZ7+SoZzwIn1bdtAQE74QF+LpQ4ArMpxZXxCF0HjKDkoa2oW8vMGUgP igMRtrhpScWkQOuAcXWun4/T+2hIHxCk =dKmJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Online Zakat Payment: Religious tithe.
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 05:56 PM 2/16/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > > >>My, my. For a group of people so uspet at taxes you certainly have faith in >>the ability of private individuals to generate the capital for things like >>the Manhattan Project and high-cost nuke delivery systems! > > Unfortunately, neither of these would take that much. A university with >competent physics, engineering, and chemistry departments could do the first; >smuggling could do the second. > -Allen Actually, I have enough background in all these areas, to the point where I think if I were given a plutonium "pit," I could probably implement the bomb in about 6 months of part-time tinkering. The main engineering problem would be finding/producing two different homogeneous explosives with reliably defined/measured detonation velocities, and calculating the shape of the "lenses" required to cover the pit, and then machining or casting the parts. (I'd probably also want to simulate the mechanical "impedance match" of the chemical explosive to the (dense) plutonium; and as I understand it they use the mechanical equivalent of a transformer to do the matching. Sorry, but I think in terms of electronics, not mechanics. Sue me.) BTW, I think I've already solved the problem of producing a few dozen absolutely simultaneous trigger explosions (+/- 100 nanoseconds) around the periphery at the lens foci, without using multiple electronic detonators. (in fact, a single blasting cap would do nicely.) "But the margins of this book are too small to contain it" Heh heh! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com Klaatu Burada Nikto Something is going to happen. Something....Wonderful! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMSYVWfqHVDBboB2dAQH8KAP+PBsKYf6J94hU1FLMn/vny1IU827srMPz Hvr7CRuHwPmGKc6VkKwIRBHRZ9adRd9c75HNhi4T+JA/qO1sZX8Qxk+xQUy6Z0pS fx2HoPBQvEXjqkKpCfWWBKg/sXzu1J0XCmyqM3HXt8Cw0upYsHemQD/x+llDfYRM GDV+B/Wt8pw= =vyDu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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