December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: EFF/Bernstein Press Release
by Mark Neely 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, that puts legislation making virus authoring a crime into a new (and difficult) position. Mark ___ Mark Neely - accessnt(a)ozemail.com.au Lawyer, Internet Consultant, Professional Cynic Author: Australian Beginner's Guide to the Internet Work-in-Progress: Australian Business Guide to the Internet WWW: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~accessnt

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Re: [Explanation] Re: "STOP SENDING ME THIS SHIT"
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:37 PM 4/17/96 -0700, Patrick May wrote: > I run a small mailing list that has been subject to problems >similar to the recent spate of "unscrives". Apparently there is a >list of mailing lists circulating the warez boards along with scripts >for spoofing subscription requests. Over the past few months my list >has periodically received batches of bogus subscriptions for accounts >ranging from Fidonet sysops to Al Gore to random AOL users. Email >from other mailing list admins indicates that these same accounts, >perhaps two hundred in all, were subscribed to several hundred lists. Teleport has been having the same problems. They have a modification to majordomo that sends a confirm message to the intended victim^H^H^H^H^H^Hrecipient asking if he/she/it really wanted to subscribe and request that they send back a passphrase to confirm the subscription. This has two benificial effects... It keeps the unwilling from being subscribed to lists that they do not want. It also keeps the incredibly clueless from subscribing in the first place since they can never figure how to get the confirm message back to majordomo without botching it. I will find from the "powers that be" at teleport if the patch is publically released for use. --- 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/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon

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[Explanation] Re: "STOP SENDING ME THIS SHIT"
by Patrick May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Perry E. Metzger writes: > "Adam Pingitore" writes: > > I've got news for you all. This 'jerk' was spammed by some > > ass out there. I've canceled by subscription so would you > > all quit whining already. Sorry if I sent you people > > inappropriate mail, but I just wasn't very happy getting > > 2000 e-mails a day. [ Mr. Metzger's amusing flame elided. ] I run a small mailing list that has been subject to problems similar to the recent spate of "unscrives". Apparently there is a list of mailing lists circulating the warez boards along with scripts for spoofing subscription requests. Over the past few months my list has periodically received batches of bogus subscriptions for accounts ranging from Fidonet sysops to Al Gore to random AOL users. Email from other mailing list admins indicates that these same accounts, perhaps two hundred in all, were subscribed to several hundred lists. Crypto relevance: This attack will be eliminated when more mail agents support public key crypto and the mailing list software can be modified to check signatures on subscription requests. pjm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface iQEVAwUBMXXU22AA81GB0e9dAQEjowf9EpmBXt3smBCduo3QF6/FLRRsC7NX65Ew 7jDI48XO9BWCOTXwwsFgibGgvefjtRKosB77SgeOy0q8QbukWjO8SXzqmQBSH3hK MBbP6Z1HVlP29KkyVpuWf9RAdsFMYGRuUjrFBNsc+ohpztW75MXvBkqHX7jGEk9K fpmTfQv8TRyygjNR8bqiAXGWMP3OWq/gIO27ydCDG8+7czzqcCX6/JiGsYdH8ns5 sBAPe5oJsm15at4i8khNtpNbf/+JTm6cS+TTAhQLaBTxmdxUDAa/zQlxeevSsrfl sBo9fRF+IgU4v9Zw7BSDcc4E3FKCjpZ39PXLfW+QPH7WBPu9hRjQVw== =4GcH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Welcome to Express!
by Express 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Guest: Merci! and thank you for registering. At Express Online, your user name is "cypherpu" and your password is "cypherpunks". To enter the world of Express, use this user name/password combination. Please save this record for future reference, so you can always download the latest news from Express on fashion, shopping, travel, music and more.

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[Noise] Unsubrscive $$$
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wanna make lotsa money? Just charge $20 for instructions whenever the clueless want off the list. When they email you with their pathetic "unsubscrive" pleas, get their MasterCard / Visa / AmEx / Discover number and expiration date. Call it a "spamming fee" to compensate you for the time it takes to download and respond to their iggorant [sick] requests. See you on the Riviera!

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Re: Spaces in passwords
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Ben Rothke writes: >> Do spaces (ASCII 20) in passwords make them less secure? > >Of course not. In a normal Unix password, adding spaces to the >password search space increases the search space, so it necessarily >makes the search harder. Depends on the space of ideas that are leading to your passwords. If the reason you're adding spaces is to separate an n-character word from the dictionary from a 7-n character word from the dictionary, this reduces the search space for a cracker considerably. At least pick random punctuation instead. On the other hand, if your password is a bunch of randomly chosen characters, having another character in the space doesn't hurt. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215

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Re: why compression doesn't perfectly even out entropy
by Jay Holovacs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perhaps keyspace analysis and randomness analysis should be done from a Bayesian technique, with the the potential perspective of the cracker, or your estimate of the potental prospective of the cracker as a priori conditions. Hamlet could well qualify as a random string, however if your cracker was using 'Great Books of Western Civ' as a dictionary source, it would not be so good. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Jay Holovacs <holovacs(a)ios.com> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PGP Key fingerprint = AC 29 C8 7A E4 2D 07 27 AE CA 99 4A F6 59 87 90 On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, Simon Spero wrote: > On Wed, 17 Apr 1996, Mark Rogaski wrote: > > > Is it possible to find a percentage of the key space to eliminate that > > will optimize security assuming that the attacker will try the easy > > stuff first (and is it possible to quantify "easy stuff")? > > Hmmm- I think this could be interesting to study; if we treat the space > of possible passwords as a non-uniform probability distribution > (Zipfian?), and then transform it in such a way to be uniform (by > having the probability of certain passwords being disqualified be > based on their relative probability it should be possible to get a > situation where all passwords are possible, and all have equal probability.

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NYT on Bernstein Suit
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0418suit.html

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Re: EFF/Bernstein Press Release
by SBinkley＠atitech.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>On the other hand, a virus is malicious speech, no? Sorta like libel or >fraud. You said bad and untrue things to the victim's computer and the >dimwitted OS believed it. > >Also this is impersonation. You spoke words that led the OS to think that >you were a legit user and, having its gained trust on false grounds, it lets >you do malicious things. Does this mean that an OS is legally considered an entity??? /sb

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Unsubsrive
by John Robert LoVerso 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Unsubsrive me!

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