December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Know Your Net.Enemies Project
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Apr 10, 1996 23:47:54, '"Declan B. McCullagh" <declan+(a)CMU.EDU>' wrote: >Would anyone be interested in collaborating on a "Know Your Net Enemies" >project? Feel free to use my writings on the CyberAngels. --tallpaul

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Mystery of the unsuvscrives: SOLVED?
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On replying to one of the many recent unsubscrivers I got this in return: A creative spam attack? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 11:34:53 +0100 From: Batman <batman(a)infomaniak.ch> To: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> Subject: Re: your mail On Thu, 11 Apr 1996, Black Unicorn wrote: > On Thu, 11 Apr 1996, Batman wrote: > > > Please PUT me OUT of YOUR cypherpunks AND other MAIL-LISTS > > > > Thankx > > Please LEARN to UNSUBSCRIBE from MAILING lists and OTHER THINGS. > > --- > My preferred and soon to be permanent e-mail address:unicorn@schloss.li > "In fact, had Bancroft not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est > Franklin might have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti > 00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information > > I don't think you're the mail-list admin, so, don't send me your advices. I've been flooded and put in that shit mail-list without my permission. GET OUT

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Re: GPS-based authentication
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:33 AM 4/11/96 -6, Peter Trei wrote: >Ms Denning, Mr. MacDoran > >I've read with interest your proposed GPS-based authentication >mechanism (it was posted to the cypherpunks mailing list). Can you >confirm that you wrote this? Some people on the list think it may be >a forgery. > >The participants of the list have noted some apparent vulnerabilities >in the system, and I am curious as to how you address them. If you >respond to me and give permission, I'll forward your response to the >list. > >The problems are two-fold: > >1. The system is easily spoofed. >2. It leaks sensitive location data. It should occur to all of us that what you (and we) call "problems" are, to government sympathizers, actually FEATURES. Identifying people's locations is probably going to be considered enormously important to the government (if it lasts that long). And since the government runs all the GPS transmitters, and can presumably modulate the S/A function any way it wishes, it has a leg up on all of us who have to depend on the integrity of the system. There is also the possibility of them jamming the system locally to either deny the user the ability to make the identification system work and thus deny access, or detect the location of the user by subtly modulating the local signal in such a way as to leak through the otherwise-secure system. (If we trust it that far, which I don't.)

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Australia cracking down on the internet?!?!
by an366601＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

X-Anonymously-To: an366601 Reply-To: an578849(a)anon.penet.fi Thank you CRAM for your informative and interesting peices aznd snippets from the American Press. Out here in the land of Oz, the state governements are whipping up a frenzy of legislation, including laws prohibiting the uploading or downloading of any material that may be offensive to minors. Penalty: $25000 and/or 1 year in jail. The push is on to make ISPs the defacto publishers and censors of all material that passes through them. And as always its the child pronography thing that predominates the discussion. It is unfortunate that at the same time the internet is booming, there is a huge peadophile hunt going on here in Sydney (turns out the peodophiles have powerfull allies amongst the policians and judges, no surprises there). People open their newspapers and see "Peadophiles use internet" and their minds shut like steel doors. Keep up the good work. --****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--***ATTENTION*** Your e-mail reply to this message WILL be *automatically* ANONYMIZED. Please, report inappropriate use to abuse(a)anon.penet.fi For information (incl. non-anon reply) write to help(a)anon.penet.fi If you have any problems, address them to admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: questions about bits and bytes [NOISE]
by Mark J. Reed 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

JonWienke(a)aol.com writes: \ In a message dated 96-04-11 20:26:44 EDT, jeffb(a)sware.com writes: \ Citing sources from 1978 in the computing field is a little like using \ dictionaries from the 1800's to dictate modern English usage. My desktop \ machine has as much computing power as some colleges had during that era. \ We've come a long way, baby! Yes, in the past, the term "byte" applied to \ entities other than 8 bits, but "8 bits" IS the commonly accepted, standard \ meaning of "byte" now, in the present. The fact that the meaning and usage \ of words can change over time is not relevant to current meaning and usage. \ Anyone who wishes to dispute this should study the etymology of the word \ "gay." \ \ Jonathan Wienke \ No, no. What started this whole discussion was someone claiming that bytes have ALWAYS been 8 bits. That was the argument. NO-ONE is claiming that byte doesn't mean 8 bits NOW. I think we have now established that, yes, 'byte' is synonymous with 'octet' in the modern computer era, and no, this was not always the case. Now can we move on to other matters? -- Mark J. Reed Email: mark_reed(a)sware.com - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 6407 Hewlett-Packard Co. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 220 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647 E-Mail Privacy by SecureMail. Visit URL:http://www.secureware.com/ for details. -- Mark J. Reed Email: mark_reed(a)sware.com - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 6407 Hewlett-Packard Co. / 2957 Clairmont Rd Suite 220 / Atlanta GA 30329-1647 E-Mail Privacy by SecureMail. Visit URL:http://www.secureware.com/ for details.

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Re: Protocols at the Point of a Gun
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For information on the "Internet Philosophy" there is a IETF draft that might be of interest at: ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-iab-principles-02.txt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Private Idaho 2.6b3 release
by Joel McNamara 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Private Idaho 2.6b3 (a freeware Windows front-end to PGP, anonymous remailers, and nym servers) is now available at: http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm New features include: licensed IPPort - no more "nag" screen on start-up support for multiple nym servers and nyms support for multiple PGP keys for signing support for printing messages support for transfer to multiple applications Questions, comments to joelm(a)eskimo.com

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Re: No matter where you go, there they are. (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > GPS works by measuring the differing distances to a number of satellites. Actualy, it measures doppler shift as well. > It might be possible to seperately record the signals from several > different satellites, delay them each just the right amount of time, and > then recombine them to simulate being at another nearby location (within > several hundred miles). However, this might not be possible. Examine the > following quote from Denning's paper: Seems to me that standard satellite tracking software would work just fine for this once the correct orbital parameters were included. To get the necessary orbital parameters look on sci.space.news and they are announced regularly. > :The location signature is virtually impossible to forge at the > :required accuracy. If you can measure the accuracy you can spoof it. It is only a question of cost at that point. > :orbit perturbations, which are unknowable in real-time, and intentional > :signal instabilities (dithering) imposed by the U.S. Department of Defense > :selective availability (SA) security policy. Which are going to be turned off. I have to draw exception to the 'dithering' in regard to the lsb's of the data. They are actualy encrypted. It is not random which is what 'signal instability' implies. Were it random then a 'flying capacitor' type filter or a digital filter could get the bits out. I have two years of experience using such 'flying capacitor' type filters in LORAN-C equipment I calibrated and repaired for Austron. The signal on LORAN is a damped sinusoid, very precisely damped. The timing sequence of sites are drawn on maps as well as published in book and electronic form. You set the filter for the same repeat rate as the signal you wish to detect. As the signal is fed over and over into the bank of capacitors the random noise cancels out and you are left with a remarkably clean signal. You then feed this to a 2055 microstepper (nS/S) and compare it to a time reference standard (1210 Time reference standard, my specialty). When the signals cancel you can get a very accurate reading and change that to lat/long quite easily. I would regularly sync the 1210's to USNO and the NIST to measure the oven heated crystal oscillators drift in frequency over time. By applying a voltage to the circuit you can compensate for this drift using a 2055 microstepper (a time delay unit). At that time we were making both the 2000 and 5000 series receivers. The 68000 based machine was due out when I left for a job at UT Austin. The neatest part of the job was flying cesium beams around the world and measuring their drift to accurately measure the rotation rate of the Earth. You can defeat even the encryption if you take a long enough time to interpolate. The reason it isn't done is that by the time you get the fix the target you were going to shoot your missile at is gone. If it is so large (a city) or slow (grunts) that it won't move significantly in that time you don't need that accuracy in the first place. I base this on a years worth of technical support I did for CompuAdd for Desert Shield/Storm. I handled several problems related to MLRS and Naval systems related to target selection and tracking & GPS in regards our computers. > It's possible that the orbit perturbations may be enough to screw up an > attempt to forge a signal Which would be enough to scramble the signal as well. As a matter of fact this might create another means of attack. Namely that the orbit varies is a given. That the orbit can be predicted to quite good accuracy in less than real-time is a given. By comparing these to the actual orbit it might be possible to creat a situation where a fake signal was more accurate than the real signal making the receiver filter the real signal as noise. The one drawback here is that it would require considerable power to effectively impliment the masking. ; the variations in signal timings won't provide > enough information to an attacker to be able to accurately replicate what > the signal would look like at another location. The doppler shift directly corresponds to altitude. If you have the normal orbital parameters it is a relatively simple matter to use a computer to predict where it will be in the near future (5 minutes). NASA and United States Space Command (USSC) regularly track over 8,000 items in orbit. Some as small as bolts. Tracking accuracy is a well understood problem. > It remains to be seen > whether it is reliably possible for the secure host, at its location, to > distinguish between an accurate signature and an inaccurate but plausible > forged signature. Anybody got a GPS receiver in Austin? I believe I can arrange the necessary equipment and support to attempt it. I know several EE's as well as somebody with commercial radio service equipment I am shure some of the other local cpunks might want to help as well. I propose that what be attempted is making a GPS receiver believe it is 100 miles from where it actually is. I will forward a copy of this to the Experimental Science Instrumentation mailing list (tesla(a)ssz.com) to see if anyone on there might be interested. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com Tivoli - IBM jchoate(a)tivoli.com

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Re: LACC: CDA Court Challenge: Update #6
by Julian Assange 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> This would ONLY impact packets that carry pornographic material, and all > other packets would remain unchanged. Naturally, you would not be able > to have Classified Pornographic material under this scheme, but I think > that's probably an acceptable tradeoff. Oh, I don't know. The remote satalite imaging lab in reston has been known for sometime now to have enough resolution to look down a good clean cleavege, and certainly their perspective is vertical enough. > Furthermore, any parent that wanted to allow a child to attach to the > Internet and wanted pornographic protection would be responsible for > setting their own filter up to limit these packets. Thus the provider > of pornographic material and the parent of the child using the net are > the only two groups affected by this change. The rest of the net can > continue unhindered. ISPs don't have to identify users. After all, it > is the parent and the bookstore owner who are responsible for keeping > children out of the dirty book section, not the bus driver who brings > the child to the neighborhood or the company that paves the street. I've thought about this as well. You could also use the IP TOS minimise-cost bit, which is defunct, doesn't require IP options, is included in every packet and in most modern unix's and rfc1122 complient TCP/IP protocol interface stacks can be set at user level with a simple setsockopt() call. That said, it has a granularity of one. To my mind, it is value judgement, and a difficult one at that to decide when information is appropriate or otherwise for a given age group. A given community may feel the age of maturity is something other than 18, and physiologically the age of maturity is different for differing racial groups. It is a strange world where it is permissible to get married at 16 -- and all that implies, but not permissible to think freely until 18, or 21 in certain states. More appropriate would be content flags. Using the security option there is a resonable number that could be assigned. OPT_R_UPPER_NUDITY, OPT_R_LOWER_NUDITY, OPT_R_FULL_NUDITY, OPT_R_FEMALE, OPT_R_MALE, OPT_R_BIZARRE, OPT_R_HOMOSEXUAL, OPT_R_BESTIALITY, OPT_R_DISECTION, OPT_R_INTERCOURSE, OPT_R_VIOLENCE and OPT_R_ADVERTISING come to mind. Unlike TOS however, many IP stacks have no real support for the security option. The value of re-using it then for this purpose it dubious. There is no reason another IP option couldn't be added. Perhaps the spare TOS bit could be used as a catch-all until a content option is implimented. Most french wouldn't be concerned about OPT_R_FULL_NUDITY provided OPT_R_HOMOSEXUAL wasn't set. -- "I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?" - Leo Bulero/PKD +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+ |Julian Assange RSO | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union | |proff(a)suburbia.net | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID = | |proff(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 | +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+

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Entropy Estimator
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just added a feature to my entropy graphing program that estimates the number of bits of entropy in the file, in addition to making the graph. I tested it on some ZIP files, comparing the sum of the results obtained from each file individually to the results from the ZIP file containing all of them. So far, the results have been consistent within 20%. EXE's show 3-4 entropy bits/byte, ZIP files show 6-7, and DLL's and text files show 1-2. Source code (Visual Basic) available to anyone who wants it, but I think I will hold off on the EXE and VBX's until I find someone who will put it on their FTP/WEB site. Suggestions via email regarding this would be appreciated. Jonathan Wienke

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