December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: code vs cypher
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

** Reply to note from hochiminh(a)alpha.c2.org 04/26/96 8:31pm -0700 = Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> writes: = = pm> tm> Timothy C. May writes: = pm> tm> Well, I was not invited to join the elite and secret = pm> tm> coderpunks list, = well, apparently that was not a problem. = pm> It is neither elite nor secret. It is fairly high signal to = pm> noise. = pm> I think only about one in every fifty or so cypherpunks = pm> messages has any content at all worth mentioning. = = Agreed! I wasn't "invited". I simply requested access and = was quickly welcomed to the list. = yes, and that was the intent. I do not think the intent of those of us who formed Coderpunks "conspired to form an elitest group." The basic problem was simple --even code topics were politicized in cypherpunks which resulted in scores and days of "re: " messages until someone finally prefaced it with [NOISE], or changed the subject. = pm> tm> but I still have some thoughts on coding and, = pm> tm> especially, on the opportunities offered by Java. = pm> tm> Sorry if this interferes with discussions of Rabbi = pm> tm> Heir and Morris Dees. = = pm> You have no right to grumble about the situation here. = pm> It is exactly what you wanted. Here you were, a person = pm> of some personal gravitas and moral authority, and you = pm> put your stamp on the "post whatever you like; don't let = pm> the grumbling censors stop you". Well, as you sow, so = pm> shall you reap. Its your fault, more than anyone else's. = = TC May was not the first person to substantialy digress from = chartered topics but he certainly "ran with the ball" when he = got his chance to expose his ignorance and intolerance of = other races and religions (the cypher-relevance or "charter = topicality of which always escaped me). I was discouraged = by the encouragement given to the murder advocating moron, = Jim Bell to post his insance littany. = as to jim bell, does this imply you believe in censorship? I think you are mistaken with your implication that tcmay is a racist. Bigotry, etc. is usually created in the mind of a reader who jumps to conclusions. I am somewhat older than tim, and I find the politically correct revisionism even more humourous (and very intellectually cheap): vertically challenged, horizontally challenged, mobility challenged, mentally challenged, or whatever the current fads are. and, to top it off, I am disgusted with the high and mighty moralism of the revisionists. I fully agree with EEO, but I thoroughly disagree with quotas and preferences. I have more than an even tendency to call a spade a spade, and I may live where guns tend to outnumber our many children, but the only way a stranger can be bounced from my table is to interfer with grace --and there are some, as they are attending for the extra plate which is always set, who would protest that my prayer offends them. does anybody still have manners? tim finds humour in many things --and, he has the courage to challenge the politically correct revisonism which is being shoved down our throats by a bigger and bigger, but certainly not better, creeping vine of vipers we call our government, which is nothing more than a ship of fools. = pm> If Cypherpunks has become a cesspit, well, its YOUR cesspit, = pm> Tim. Its the list you always strove to create, but it appears = pm> that you now don't like the smell of your own wallow. Well, = pm> sorry. Deal with it. = = Well put, Perry! well, the premise may be correct on what cypherpunks drifts into with the endless political back and forth --the open forum; however, the creation of the cesspit is not one party's fault --we _all_ have contributed to the problem --which is compounded by direct, on-line connections. so, how about a little moderation in all things? -- Overseeing first-rate programmers is a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats. cc: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>

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Windows remailer source code
by Bob Bridgewater 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Please could you tell me if you know of any remailer source code that will run under Windows NT3.51 to enable me to set-up a remailer myself. Somebody told me that one has been announced recently and you may know where to find this. Any suggestions would be welcome. Bob Bridgewater bob(a)bridgew.demon.co.uk

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Re: [WhoWhere?]
by Gunjan Sinha 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am sorry if you misunderstood my previous email. We are ex-Stanford grad, not current students! The WhoWhere? database is collected through a combination of technolofy, partnerships, and self-registrations by end-users. Our content is from publicly available sources. We run crawlers for Newsgroups and WWW to collect our content. Several Thousand individuals come to WhoWhere? to add theor listing every day. Hope I have been able to clarify your confusion. Gunjan WhoWhere? Inc. > From llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu Sun Apr 28 04:54:21 1996 > Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 04:43:36 -0700 (PDT) > From: Rich Graves <llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu> > To: Gunjan Sinha <gunjan(a)parsecweb.com> > cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: [WhoWhere?] > > You wrote: > > > We would like to bring to your attention the WhoWhere? search engine at > > URL: http://www.whowhere.com If you feel it is appropriate for the > > Stanford community, we would appreciate a link from your "campus > > directory"... > > > > WhoWhere? is an effort by a team from Stanford GSB and engineering school > > and we would appreciate your support of our efforts. > > > > Please feel free to give us any feedback to enhance our service > > to build the largest white pages community. > > Please unplug your server from the Internet immediately, and do not plug > it back in until all database entries based on other than publicly > available information have been scrubbed. Please refer any Stanford > affiliates involved with your project to the thread concerning your > activities in the su.computers newsgroup. > > Thank you. Have a nice day. > > -rich > >

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Re: [WhoWhere?]
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You wrote: > We would like to bring to your attention the WhoWhere? search engine at > URL: http://www.whowhere.com If you feel it is appropriate for the > Stanford community, we would appreciate a link from your "campus > directory"... > > WhoWhere? is an effort by a team from Stanford GSB and engineering school > and we would appreciate your support of our efforts. > > Please feel free to give us any feedback to enhance our service > to build the largest white pages community. Please unplug your server from the Internet immediately, and do not plug it back in until all database entries based on other than publicly available information have been scrubbed. Please refer any Stanford affiliates involved with your project to the thread concerning your activities in the su.computers newsgroup. Thank you. Have a nice day. -rich

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Re: [NOISE] Re: Guardian angels, the decency brigade, and
by Declan B. McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message begins here ---------- From: sethf(a)MIT.EDU Date: Fri, 26 Apr 1996 23:37:48 -0400 Message-Id: <9604270337.AA22787(a)frumious-bandersnatch.MIT.EDU> To: angels(a)wavenet.com Subject: Re: Guardian angels, the decency brigade, and cyberseraphim Cc: fight-censorship+(a)andrew.cmu.edu, mnemonic(a)well.com, cp(a)panix.com I have been researching the issue of ratings for some time, and thinking of getting a SafeSurf rating for a few pages as an experiment, so this "patrolling" is pretty interesting: "Gabriel" writes: > The answer is yes. So how can Safesurf be sure that sites registered with > them are indeed genuinely kidsafe? Simple - someone has to go and check > out all the sites who register with Safesurf. Now, would you be kind enough to tell me what happens next? Suppose you check out a site and find it is in your opinion not "kidsafe". What do you do in that case? This is not clear from your message. If the essence of the the SafeSurf system is "voluntary" ratings, are you not substituting your own standard? After all, in reference to Declan McCullagh's point about the fight-censorship archives, you say: "Why ask? Clearly a site with a message like this would not be suitable for children to read. That would be an adult site rating." Clearly then, you have some standard you are applying, which seems in this case be roughly "any archive which contains any message with any sexual content, no matter what the context or proportion, does not qualify as "kidsafe" in the CyberAngels view." So, in reality do we not have two standards here, the site's "voluntary" one, and the one the CyberAngels apply to the site? Only if the two coincide will all be well. Thus, is it not reasonable to ask that the CyberAngels at least make clear their criteria? I collect items such as this (ratings systems), I would be very interested in what the CyberAngels have come up with. ================ Seth Finkelstein sethf(a)mit.edu P.S. I don't know if you're a recent recruit or not, but Curtis Sliwa has a checkered history at best. Given the fabrications in the Angel's past, what can we expect in their future? References: AUTHOR: Goodstein, Laurie TITLE: Guardian Angels' Chief Clouds His Reputation SOURCE: Washington Post SEC,PG:COL: A, 3:1 DATE: Nov 29, 1992 ABSTRACT: Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels, has admitted that some of his 1980s exploits were fabricated to get publicity. AUTHOR: Gonzalez, David TITLE: Police Union to Sue Sliwa over Hoaxes SOURCE: New York Times SEC,PG:COL: B, 6:6 DATE: Nov 26, 1992 ABSTRACT: Ron Reale, the president of the New York City transit police union, said Nov 25, 1992 that his group would file a lawsuit against Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, on the grounds that he had injured the union's reputation by faking crime-fighting exploits in order to garner publicity for the Guardian Angels. AUTHOR: Gonzalez, David TITLE: Sliwa Admits Faking Crimes for Publicity SOURCE: New York Times SEC,PG:COL: B, 1:4 DATE: Nov 25, 1992 ABSTRACT: The Guardian Angels' founder and leader, Curtis Sliwa, admitted in a New York Post article on Nov 24, 1992 that he faked six of the group's early crime-fighting exploits to gain publicity. Some former and present associates contend that even more of the group's activities were publicity stunts. TITLE: Curtis Sliwa's Confession SOURCE: New York Times SEC,PG:COL: A, 32:1 DATE: Nov 27, 1992 ABSTRACT: An editorial wonders why so many New Yorkers got taken in by Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels' leader who recently confessed that he and his Angels fabricated several exploits in order to gain public support.

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Keyserver at jpunix.com on WWW
by John A. Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hello Everyone, I just got through implementing and testing Brian LaMacchia's code for WWW access to the PGP keyserver at jpunix.com. This means that the Web page for jpunix.com can now perform interactive, realtime searches and adds against the keyserver database. If you would like to try it, the URL is: http://www.jpunix.com/pks-toplev.html John Perry - KG5RG - perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com - PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome! WWW - http://www.jpunix.com PGP 2.62 key for perry(a)jpunix.com is on the keyservers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by mkpgp2.0, a Pine/PGP interface. iQCVAwUBMYN2llOTpEThrthvAQEyqwP5AT14+2NbvdXdEnr8nxaSUVcLUmA2M0+z PDdOXidleU4P5BesHe0cIO0FdrpLC7EHi7mhg3XgwEeooCv2wGsOf59oGGikaqSl 4WLEvoQQOftVQNeE5vv7mbiYo4M5CZBm/QSu1QK3SD37ohT/pRy+RFu0ldRuxrAl aPSro/koBN8= =pFGr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: www.WhosWhere.com selling access to my employer's passwd file
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:12 AM 4/27/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >If you are involved with the affairs of a large organization, I urge you >to check www.whoswhere.com to see if they have a bunch of user email >addresses that they shouldn't. They also have some information that is seriously outdated. They have two e-mail addresses for me that are about 2-3 years out of date. (I wonder how some of this information was collected. One was from my Fidonet point address of years back. Not something accesable from finger.) >Of course there is little that one can do about this kind of invasion of >privacy. But they don't have to be so fucking blatant and stupid about it. >They have the email addresses of DAEMONS from our password files in their >database. I wonder if those addresses are from a "finger @sitename.org" hack. It becomes worrysome when the methods of hackers intersect with those of database compilers. >There is no need for mailbombing, or anything like that. Our lawyers are >simply going to nuke them from orbit. Please check them out before they go >offline, so that you will have a shot at whatever is left. Keep us informed as to the fireworks. it will be fun to watch. --- | Remember: Life is not always champagne. Sometimes it is REAL pain. | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: trusting the processor chip
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My 9th grade classmate Rick Smith wrote: >Having penned the response to Jeffrey Flinn on the unlikelihood of >processor back doors, I'll comment on jim bell's response: >> More likely,I think, an organization like the NSA >>might build a pin-compatible version of an existing, commonly-used product >>like a keyboard encoder chip that is designed to transmit (by RFI signals) >>the contents of what is typed at the keyboard. It's simple, it's hard to >>detect, and it gets what they want. > >Simple, no. Hard to detect, somewhat. Gets what they want, unclear. I haven't been commenting on this part of the thread, but since I am asked to (below), I'll say that I agree with Rick on these points. Though there have been fictional accounts--e.g. the French novel "Softwar"--about replacement of chips with TLA versions, this tack is very hard to pull off. (The Infoworld "April Fool's Day" 1991 report that the NSA had arranged for printers entering Iraq to be modified so as to send intelligence info was gullibly picked up by several outfits that should've known better and reported as fact.) >My experience with processor design and development is rather ancient >and my knowledge of IC work is third hand, so I'll gladly defer to >someone with closer knowledge of the process (Tim?). However, I've >never heard anything to imply that a processor architecture can be >cleverly and reliably dinked with in this manner without lots of >expensive engineering. Where does the chip real estate come from? Is >there room in the microcode for this? Will it destabilize other >behaviors? Will the victim detect it through RFI testing? For high-volume parts, such as the chips in the usual PCs we all use, such a replacement would almost certainly need the cooperation of the chip makers. Not impossible to obtain, but not easy. A new "stepping" of the chip would probably be needed, though I suppose a chip with downloadable microcode could be used. Much more like, in my opinion, would be subversion of the software, a la Thompson's point about subverting compilers. And the work already done on "subliminal channels" that leak information (deliberately in this case) is apropos. I know that such channels were a major concern during the discussions of nuclear arms treaties. Speculatively, if such a hardware replacement is likely, this is where I would look first; but of course the parties to nuclear arms agreements know this as well. Anyway, there are all sorts of "maybes" and "possibles" here. Certainly there is no _technical_ reason why a "Pentium--NSA-enabled" variant of the Pentium could not be made...all things are possible. But how likely? And where in the spectrum of real concerns does it lie? And would Intel dare to cooperate with such a plan? And so on. This'll have to be my last word on this topic. --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Book: The President's Eyes Only
by hoz＠univel.telescan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just finished reading "For the President's Eyes Only", a book by Christopher Andrew. It describes the uses that US presidents have made of intelligence and intelligence organizations, from George Washington to George Bush. What caught my eye first was a quotation by David Kahn that says: "This is the most important book ever written about American intelligence." The cypherpunks relevance (Besides the David Kahn quote) is the frequent mention of NSA decrypts and SIGINT. The frequency that nations and individuals have used (and apparently continue to use) breakable encryption is incredible. The intelligence that has been derived by breaking them is worth a great deal, in dollars and maybe lives. This book has made me understand a bit, why a government might try to limit strong cryptography. I suppose I tended to look upon ITAR restrictions on cryptography as a sign of a power-hungry, self-agrandizing, government that has lost track of the fact that its legitimacy depends on protecting the blessings of liberty for its citizens. That's partly true, but there's more to it than that. After reading "For the President's Eyes Only", I can understand that many in government believe that they are protecting the public by outlawing cryptography. After careful reconsideration, I still believe in strong free crypto, but it made me think very hard. I think that some on this list and in sci.crypt should be ashamed of their ad hominem attacks in an area where reasonable people disagree. The crypto-game is being played "for keeps". Someday, all crypto may be too strong to break, but for right now, many "bad guys" (and whatever your philosophy, I bet you can find some) use weak crypto, and this allows the US Govt. to know more about what goes on in the world. As long as Uncle Sam keeps his finger on a nuclear trigger, I can see a strong case that knowing what he's doing and not getting too surprised are (mostly) good things. There will be a price to pay when everyone uses strong crypto. There will be great benefits derived, as well. It will be very expensive, but worth it. If we want to make it happen sooner, we should understand (and respect) our opponents in this debate. Rick F. Hoselton (who doesn't claim to present opinions for others)

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Re: Click here to become an International Arms Trafficker
by David K. Merriman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:46 PM 04/26/96 -0400, Vince Cate wrote: > > "Click here to become an International Arms Trafficker" > >Offshore Information Services Ltd. has set up a web page to make it really >easy for people to become International Arms Traffickers. All they have to >do is fill in their name and email address and then click. Check out: > > http://online.offshore.com.ai/arms-trafficker/ > >If you think this is half as funny as I do, please make a link from >one of your pages to this one. > Well, I'm ITAR violator # 6 :-) Dave Merriman ------------------------------------------------------------- "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P. J. O'Rourke (b. 1947), U.S. journalist. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> http://www.shellback.com/personal/merriman/index.htm

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