December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Bernstein case decisision (fwd)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks much , Michael. Shows what a scary cpunk-packed courtroom can do to tip the scales of blind justice.

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That All.net loon...
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Think of this as an interesting experiment in reputation building, where the bad guys won, and got a lot of business from the ignorant. Remember Fred Cohen, the lunatic who had his telnet port booby-trapped to fire off complaints to root and postmaster? http://www.atria.com/People/dawson/tbtf/archive/04-14-96.html http://www.dhp.com/amusement.html http://all.net/journal/netsec/top.html http://all.net/journal/netsec/9603.html http://all.net/journal/netsec/9604.html I feel so sorry for Keith. He was trolled in a big way. I also found this AMAZING BREAKTHROUGH in preventing IP spoofing very amusing: http://all.net/journal/netsec/9606.html -rich

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The Electronic Freedom March needs YOUR Help !!!
by Keith A. Glass 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Friends of Free Speech on the Net: On June 30th, 1996, a large anti-CDA rally, the Electronic Freedom March, is planned for the Ellipse, in front of the White House. But without your help, it won't happen. We need volunteers to help us plan the EFM and the logistics required for it, people to help us raise funds to pay the expenses (the Park Service has required us to provide 80 porta-potties, at a cost of nearly $4500.00 alone, and that's not our only requirement. . .), and people to help us run the March on June 30th. Not to mention publicity, etc. We need your help. **I** need your help. I've posted this to the DC area groups, as well as to a few groups that I feel might be useful in gathering more volunteers and interested people. But I need your committment to help NOW, or we won't be able to run the EFM, or as it's been called, the "Million Geek March". Come on, out there: help us out !!! -- * Keith A. Glass, Annandale, Virginia, USA, Filker/punster at large * * Washington Coordinator, Electronic Freedom March * * 30 June 1996, Washington DC URL: http://www.efm.org * * Note: the following line is an intentional act of Civil Disobedience: * * FUCK THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT--DEFEND THE FIRST AMENDMENT ! *

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Knowledge of TCP/IP
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:56 PM 4/16/96 -0400, Noel Yap wrote: >Knowledge about TCP/IP is alot easier to control than knowledge about the Berlin Wall (ie, how many Chinese will even know of the existence of TCP/IP -- in the US, where this is freely available, how many citizens know of it's existence)? > Applications software distributed commercially or on a "free" basis allows people who know nothing about TCP/IP or C++ or Visual Basic to use all of these things to get work done. They need not understand completely what they are doing. DCF

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Re: why compression doesn't perfectly even out entropy
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

rick hoselton writes: > At 05:34 PM 4/16/96 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > >> ...it is possible ... for Hamlet to appear out of a random number generato r, > > >> But even if it came from a completely random source, it would > >> still make a bad one-time pad. > > >No it wouldn't. > > Are you sure you want to claim that the text of Hamlet would make > a good key for a one-time pad? If the text of Hamlet were produced by a truly random number generator, then it would make a fine one time pad. A cryptanalyst seeing patterns in it would have no way of knowing that the patterns were caused by the input being "Hamlet" -- he would have no way to demonstrate that just because the first five hundred words of the key appear to have been "Hamlet" that the rest would be -- and indeed, there would be far more cases where the rest wouldn't be. If, on the other hand, what you are doing is using books as keys for ciphers, then "Hamlet" is a very poor one. > >There is a tiny but nonzero probability that xoring > >your one time pad with your text will result in a cyphertext equal to, > >say, the Bible. Big deal. > > Most unusual, and you're right, its inconsequential. But if you use the > text of Hamlet or the text of the Bible for your KEY to a one-time-pad, > you're very likely to get broken. IF you are using a one time pad system that truly has a random source of keying material, AND the 1 in 2^1460536 event of the key being Hamlet occurred, THEN no, you aren't likely to get broken. Note that the probability of having this happen is astronomically low, but then again, the probability of ANY given one time pad being generated is astronomically low. If you are just picking books off the shelf and playing one time pad with them, yes, you are correct, you will likely be broken. > >If the key is really random, the > >cryptanalyst has no way to tell what the underlying text was. > > But that silly cryptanalyst might not know that you got Hamlet from > your random number generator. He might think you copied it out of a > book! Then, Hamlet stops being a random number. The context changes. I don't think you are considering this clearly. It is far, far more probable for the cryptanalyst, thinking the key was "Hamlet", to get out a plausible but totally bogus text, than it is for the key to actually be "Hamlet". Of course, it is also far, far more probable for you to be stupid than for a random number generator to put out "Hamlet", but if you go around getting rid of RNGs that produce "Hamlet" or anything close, you have in theory given information to the attacker that gives them a slightly better chance of attacking you since your pads are no longer purely random. The reason all this isn't stupid to discuss and actually has some importance is just this fact. If you build a system that discards things that "don't look like they have enough entropy" (which certain people around here have proposed), you are giving the cryptanalyst a very strong piece of information about the key, so your key is no longer totally unpredictable. An irony, but something important to keep in mind. Every once in a while (once in every four billion bits, or so) your random number generator will put out 32 1's in a row if it is functioning properly. Any given small segment of the output of a good RNG might not look "random", but "random" isn't a property of a given number -- it is the property of the infinite sequence itself. Perry

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Re: What's the "Human Interaction Institute" at CMU For ???
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > The title could refer to net censorship, or to bio-medical > implantation of control computers inside human brains. > Stephen S. > salgaller(a)ccgate.hac.com > or try: > salgaller(a)aol.com > > PS: If anyone can tell me the name of the 1965 movie > starring Michael Renee that dealt with the above two issues, > please tell me. > > If you were not aware, the movie dealt with a plan, > initially, to link all humanity directly to each other. One > could "download" data directly into your brain ! You could > also have "mental telepathy" and communicate with others. > Michael Renee's character escapes to the past to try to end > research done by a scientist, that lead up to the inevitable > > a totalitarian world government takes control of everyone; > > even your thoughts are no longer private. > > You get the idea. This was also done as part of the movie > "Terminator 2"; I wonder if the writer of the 1965 movie got > any screen credit or royalties for T2 ??? > > I'm worrying too much, right ? It can't happen here ??? > Tim Mc Veigh said he had a bio chip implant. Nah... I strongly suspect that you are refering to "Cyborg 2087" aka "The Man from Tomorrow" a 1966 film starring Micheal Rennie (note spelling). It took about 2 minutes to track this down on the net. Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Clinton blathering about Internet terror
by Mike McNally 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

See http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/960417/news/stories/internet_1.html. ______c_____________________________________________________________________ Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX * pain is inevitable m5(a)tivoli.com * m101(a)io.com * <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101> * suffering is optional

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Re[2]: on corporations and subpoenas
by Adam Pingitore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Um, well, then I'm going to have to spam your ass.

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Fascist takes another bite
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reuters, 4/17/96: Clinton worried Internet may help arm terrorists TOKYO, April 17 (Reuter) - U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday he was worried the Internet was aiding international terrorism by making it too easy for sinister forces to learn how to make bombs or produce nerve gas. "Are people learning, for example, from the Internet how to make the same sort of trouble in the United States that was made in Japan with sarin gas?" Clinton said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto in Tokyo. "Isn't it a concern that anybody, anywhere in the world, can pull down off the Internet the information about how to build a bomb like the bomb that blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City?" he added. Clinton said Japan and the United States, both victims of home-grown terrorism last year, should learn from each other about how to deal with the issue. In the United States anti-government groups are linked "like no rebel force has ever been" by the Internet and fax, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group which campaigns for civil rights, said in a report released last week. Anti-government right-wing activism has been linked to the Oklahoma blast in which a truck bomb destroyed a federal building and killed 168 people on April 19, 1995. Information on how to construct a similar bomb is available to anyone around the world with Internet access. Meanwhile in Japan, the doomsday cult Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) was able to download from the Internet a formula for synthesising green-mamba snake venom, according to a recent magazine report. The sect is also believed to have been looking to procure samples of the lethal ebola virus. Cult leader Shoko Asahara goes on trial on April 24 charged with the murder of 25 people, including 11 who died in a sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995. About 5,000 other commuters where taken ill in the incident. Clinton also told the news conference that in the next 20 years "every great nation will have to face" the question of terrorist access to the Internet. Clinton called acts of terrorism, whether home-grown or international, "a genuine threat not only to the lives of the innocent civilians who may be killed in them, but to the whole idea of an open, civilised society in a global economy." Clinton's comments on the Internet were in response to a question about his thoughts on terrorism. He said nations must ask "how can we work together to learn with each other about how to prevent these things before they occur, when they're purely domestically driven, as well as sharing information and technology and law enforcement about the international terrorist networks that are out there?" REUTER

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Spaces in passwords
by Ben Rothke 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Do spaces (ASCII 20) in passwords make them less secure? I was speaking with a security admin who feels that spaces decrease the effectiveness of passwords. I thought that they would actually do the opposite & increase password efficacy, as most password dictionary attacks do not attempt to attack embedded spaces. An attack trying to penetrate embedded spaces would seem to make the dictionary orders or magnitude larger. Any comments? Ben ------------------------------------------------------------ The views expressed are exclusively my own & not that of my employer -----------------------------------------------------------

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