December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: NT's C2 rating
by David Loysen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:53 AM 3/21/96 -0800, you wrote: >> Basically, I'm now questioning the C2 rating of Windows NT. The >> entire security layer is modular to the Kernel. As a modular >> driver, it can be removed, rewritten, and replaced. > >Good questioning. > >> So, what makes it secure? What gives it the C2 Rating? How would >> one go about getting a C2 rating? > >The fine print says its insecure as soon as its connected to a network. Ain't nothing fine about that print. An operating system or piece of hardware may be C2 certifiable. But only a complete system in a specific configuration can be certified as C2 compliant. The way I read the orange book, no system with a network connection can ever be C2. For that matter a system can't get C2 unless it is in an area where you can control and monitor physical access to the system. So if you can't hack it over the wire, and you can't remove, rewrite and replace the kernel because you can't get near the keyboard what's the problem? dwl(a)hnc.com David Loysen 619-546-8877 x245

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New FBI Spy
by nobody＠tjava.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wall Street Journal, 21 March 1996 New FBI Access To Credit Files Raises Concern By Vanessa O'Connell Consumer-rights advocates are sounding alarms about a new law giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation easier access to credit-report information. The little-noticed law enacted in January as part of the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1996, allows FBI officials to obtain key information from a person's credit file without seeking a judge's permission. Investigators still need a court order or a federal grand jury subpoena to view someone's full credit report. But they can get basic information with only written authorization from the head of the FBI or his designee if there's reason to suspect a person is a spy or terrorist or has had contact with one. The basic information available under the new law includes a person's employment history, addresses, and a list of lenders and other financial institutions with which the person has or had relationships. To avoid tipping off suspects to an investigation, the new law also requires credit bureaus to keep secret any FBI request to review a credit report. Privacy and civil-rights experts say the law raises numerous privacy concerns and leaves individuals vulnerable. "The court-order warrant procedure is a major protection of individual rights and it ought not be suspended," said Alan F. Westin, professor of public law and government at Columbia University. Gregory Nojeim, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, complained that "all the FBI would have to do is make a secret letter request to a credit bureau based on secret FBI determinations." "It's appalling," said David Banisar, a policy analyst at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington nonprofit public-interest group promoting better privacy laws. In the past, the FBI sometimes pulled credit reports in criminal cases, but rarely looked at the credit files of individuals it was secretly investigating as suspected spies or terrorists. Before the new law, an FBI request for credit information had to be listed in an individual's file along with the names of lenders or potential employers that asked to review the report. Because FBI officials can now peek at credit reports in secret, they're more likely to use the files to nab suspected spies and terrorists, a Justice Department official said. At the same time, the official said, it is less likely that FBI agents will go to the trouble of obtaining a person's full credit record, including the status of any current accounts. -----

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Re: IPG and "Free Samples"
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:44 PM 3/20/96 -0800, Tim May wrote: >This may be more analogous to what IDG has done. That's I_P_G, of course; I_D_G are the publishers of the fine Internet Dummies' Guides, who have not yet released "Snake Oil For Dummies" or "Cryptography For Dummies". On the latter title, hmmmmm..... #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissible." - US government statement on China...

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan Bostick writes: > Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> wrote: > > > I may have to adjust my position on Leahy's bill. Any legislation that > > Dorothy Denning attacks so virulently must be worth passing. > > That could be exactly what They want you to think! Oh, God. This is really a bit too much, don't you think? I mean, its obvious that, whatever its flaws, passage of the Leahy bill would be very bad for the export control droids. Has it occurred to you that the whole thing might not be a conspiracy and that the flaws in the bill might just be that -- flaws? Perry

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpted from a message to fight-censorship. For the full thread, check out: http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?thread =The+Leahy+Crypto+Bill+is+Rancid+Sausage&after=1795&type=short (On one line, of course.) -Declan ---------- Forwarded message begins here ---------- From: Stanton McCandlish <mech(a)eff.org> Message-Id: <199603190315.TAA05777(a)eff.org> To: declan+(a)CMU.EDU (Declan B. McCullagh) Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 19:15:09 -0800 (PST) Cc: fight-censorship+(a)andrew.cmu.edu, junger(a)pdj2-ra.F-REMOTE.CWRU.Edu, tcmay(a)got.net [...] As our statement on the bill made clear, *EFF does not support the Leahy bill*, nor do we endorse it, like it, find it useful or any other synonym. We're happy to see the issues raise again, a la Cantwell, but we specifically recommended simple and complete deregulation. As our co-founder John Gilmore points out, the Leahy bill as written pre-supposes Congressional authority to legislate in this are, and Executive authority to regulate under that legislation. These are notions that we, and Phil Karn, are challenging in court with Constitutional tests we are throwing at the ITAR export regs. [...]

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A funny story
by Greg Kucharo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was driving on the Foothill Expressway in Palo Alto today when I came to a stop at a light. I glanced over at the car next to me and noticed that someone had left thier keys in the door lock. So being the good cypherpunk that I am I jumped out and grabbed the keys from the lock, then knocked on the window. The passenger rolled down the window and accepted the keys back. Much to my surprise the passenger was none other than Whitfield Diffie. Very goofily I exclaimed, "aren't you Whifield Diffie!?". "Yes, who are you", was the reply. "I'm a cypherpunk", I retorted. I'm not sure his exact reply by I think it was along the "excellent" lines. I got handshakes from he and his driver. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- "When they came for the Fourth Amendment I didn't say anything because I had nothing to hide. When they came for the Second Amendment I didn't say anything because I wasn't a gun owner. When they came for the Fifth and Sixth Amendments I didn't say anything because I had committed no crimes. When they came for the First Amendment I couldn't say anything." -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCPAzEIa2wAAAEEALouE7MNxsG+QTOJSrMTygYWKblpI9MgOKaFA+5AICNelAw6 6Gj3B0EQr7bwLILk8EJULG+kYh/ND9Kn1EXBK+elXbwpFCLqoyEZrbHJnurhH/t6 VFEwhbN1V0e/bFOCTq8nykoJjZ/uq0mz8HouIbEt6BYWoKVSUIU/T+iDV3TVABEB AAG0DWdoa0Bzb3BoaS5jb20= =gwax -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Happy shiny censors holding hands
by Nobody 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

McPaper USA Editorial, March 21st, 10A: Racism on the Net Even in the wildest reaches of the Internet, where anything goes and most things have gone at least twice, the flow of free information is sometimes at risk. Take this ugly battle: on one side, a band of racists wants a formal place on the Net to discuss "white power" music. On the other, a cadre of Internet users believes white power deserves no such setting. At risk is the wondrous anarchy of the Internets newsgroups. These exist by the thousands in an Internet subject called Usenet, where they are divided in two. In the "alternative" category, newsgroups careen about essentially without limits. In the other, qualified newsgroups are organized into eight subject "hierarchies": politics, science, etc. Membership in these is preferred because, for the most part, these hierarchies are carried by the Internet's networks without question. In this case, a fan proposed that the "recereation" hierarchy, which includes music sections, add a white-power newsgroup. This would put the music -- and its central tenets -- smack in the middle of the Net. Then the fight commenced. Although the Usenet contains no real structure, it is self-regulating. Newsgroups proposed for a hierarchy are subject to a discussion period and then balloting by interested Netizens. In this case, opponents argued that white-power advocates should hold their discussions in one of the "alternative" newsgroups; that the hierarchies constituted a special garden in the Net's "village green"; and that white-power music deserved no bench there. To be sure, racism deserves neither respect nor credibility. But in this case, exclusion may have unintended results. If offensive ideas by themselves are a basis for exclusion, then who else should be locked out? Some would make the same argument against the hip-hop and music-poetry newsgroups, where harsh and violent rap lyrics may be discussed. Without their own newsgroup, the white-power devotees will only contaminate other newsgroups with their static. Give them a lair to call their own, and at least you know where not to tread. There are advantages to Usenet's ad hoc self-governance. It helps protect the system from outsiders seeking to control its carbonated anarchy. But if the system then turns against speech, the result is the same: Free exchange of ideas is constricted. Even in the ether -- especially in the ether -- that's something to beware. We Gungir Din

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DIO_fan
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Sciences, March/April, 1996: "Beyond the Last Theorem." On Diophantine equations, by mathematician Dorian Goldfeld. To mathematicians, the statement and proof of the STW conjecture were as revolutionary as the first mingling of waters in the Panama Canal. Until that point, the mathematics of elliptic functions and the mathematics of rigid motions had developed in isolation from each other and in strikingly different ways. The study of elliptic curves was a branch of number theory, small, specialized and provincial -- not unlike the study of Diophantine equations. In contrast, the study of rigid motions was a bustling, sophisticated suburb of topology, geometry and analysis, with many applications to engineering and physics. Mathematicians had been working on rigid motions intensely for a hundred years and had accumulated a vast armamentarium of powerful mathematical machinery. By suggesting that the two fields could be linked, Shimura, Taniyama and Weil delivered that heavy machinery to the construction site of elliptic curves; by proving that the link held, Wiles and Taylor started the engines. The result has been a frenzy of productive mathematical work that has benefited each field and is likely to lead to solutions of outstanding problems in other fields as well. ... If the ABC conjecture yields, mathematicians will find themselves staring into a cornucopia of solutions to long-standing problems. Some of those problems are of more than theoretical interest. Nowadays many methods of ensuring the security of electronic mail and other computerized transactions depend heavily on number theory, as programmers develop ciphers based on time-consuming problems in arithmetic. For example, a highly popular technique depends on the difficulty of determining all the large prime factors of a very large number. In principle, it should also be straightforward to create a cipher based on the difficulty of solving problems in Diophantine analysis. The major hurdle is the solvability barrier: the number of variables above which a Diophantine equation becomes impervious to attack. Any cipher based on an equation with that many variables should be absolutely secure. But where is the threshold? All anyone knows is that it probably lies between three and nine variables. At current or foreseeable processing speeds, a nine-variable cipher is impracticably slow, even for the fastest computers. A four-variable Diophantine cipher, however, would be both practical and extremely useful. DIO_fan (35 kb)

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Re: Leahy bill nightmare scenario?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:42 PM 3/21/96, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote: > I would like to remind people that the US judicial system, while not as >always mistaken as some believe, is not particularly noted for not making >serious errors in this area. For instance, regarding the forfeiture scheme, >quite a few competent lawyers have examined civil forfeiture - used for _any_ >crime - and found it to be a violation of the Bill of Rights. And yet civil forfeiture continues, in a big way, There are entire police departments who count on civil forfeiture to supply them with cars, boats, planes, helicopters, and who count on sales of seized assets to fund their departments. (From the yachts seized in Dade County to the killing of a retired doctor who had land in Malibu desired by the cops, the civil forfeiture situation is grim.) > Moreover, it is the contention of many lawyers - such as with the >ACLU - that the whole ITAR scheme should have been thrown out long ago as >unconstitutional. That it has not been so may be taken as an indication of how By the way, it was also the opinion of lawyers within the NSA that a real test of the ITARs in court should be avoided because they would likely be ruled unconstitutional. (Source: private conversation with Carl Nicolai, inventor of the PhaserPhone, suppressed by a Patent Secrecy Order, who was allowed, with his lawyer, to look through certain legal papers at NSA headquarters. He encounterd memoranda to the effect that an ITAR challenge would likely see the ITARs thrown out. I communicated this information to Phil Karn and the EFF a couple of years ago.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! 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: Cypherpunk Enquirer Request
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:13 PM 3/21/96, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: >Would some kind soul please forward to me a copy of the latest Cypherpunk >Enquirer? My filter mistakenly tossed the last copy and the archive at >hks.net is still down. I just did this. Hilarious stuff. Interesting that no one complains about this use of anonymity! (By the way, with 1000+ subscribers, a "would some kind soul" request is possibly a dangerous thing to request. Game theory has some advice about rolling dice, etc., but I doubt this works well.) >(who should probably rewire his filter to toss messages into a temporary >'holding tank') Indeed, with Eudora (for the Mac and Windows), I filter offending messages into a file I call "Kill," though it is persistent and can be perused at any time. With the traffic having gotten lighter these last couple of weeks, I confess to looking at it more often. Some messages I "delete," which Eudora moves to a Trash file...and STILL doesn't delete the messages until the Trash is explicitly emptied! Lots of layers of protection. (Though I confess there have been times when I got an insulting or infuriating item in the mail and decided to remove all temptation to reply by immediately trashing it and then giving the command "Empty Trash." At this point, only a determined effort with Norton Utilities or the like could have any hope of recovering the deleted stuff. A a post offends thee, pluck it out.) --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! 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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