December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The Joy of Java
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:51 AM 4/27/96, Dan Busarow wrote: >At Usenix 96 in San Diego it was pointed out that applets are an abberation. >This is a complete language designed to displace C++, Visual Basic and >other OO languages. Thinking of Java as simpy a Web enhancement tool >is short sighted. > >Personally it is more attractive than C++ for product development and >we are trying to get it on FreeBSD, SCO UnixWare and SCO OSR5. Using >Java for applets _only_ is like fucking your mother... Most of us are >not into it. Ignoring the gross violation of the CDA, I agree. I think of it (and so do a lot of others) as: - a cleaned-up C++, with features of Smalltalk, Objective-C, and Lisp - a tool with built-in hooks for Net-centric computing - some safety features that distinguish it from C++ and the like - a bytecode/virtual machine approach that means the same code can be run on any platform for which a VM exists (the key to applets, but also the key to portability...what the world might have looked like for the past 15 years has the UCSD p-system succeeded instead of MS-DOS) Is it safe to run untrusted applets on your machine? Probably not. Running strange programs probably is never safe. I don't view this as something any new language is likely to solve, unless it's a language with such limited expressability as to be "safe and boring." As Perry has noted, financial institutions can ill afford to have applets being dropped into their main computers unless they are safe and secure. Not too surprising. But, then, they also have other security issues they constantly have to deal with that others don't. I suspect the safety issues will continue to crop up, but will be dealt with in other ways. The signed classes approach, the approaches used in E, etc. Netscape's limits on what applets can do, for example, may be extended in other ways (a kind of firewall approach?). To borrow a viewpoint, I don't expect the Java-based gargoyles in "True Names" to be "trustworthy"...TANSTAAFL. --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."

7 6

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

17 Dec '03

First, there ain't no way that electromagnetic radiation is going to be detected coming from the surface of a ULSI chip. Radiated power levels are going to be in nanowatt or picowatt level from any one metal or poly line, and of course will be undetectable at any distance. Not to mention the size of the radiator implies inefficient launch of pulses (the lines are likely to be rarely longer than a millimeter). At 11:04 AM 4/27/96, David Lesher wrote: (quoting someone else) >> > More likely,I think, an organization like the NSA >> I thought that most (all?) chips already radiated on the >> electromagnetic spectrum? Isn't that what tempest is about? TEMPEST is not about emissions from the surface of a ULSI chip, for example, but about the emissions (and controlling them, shielding them, detecting them) from equipment in general. Most of the "van Eck" radiation (so-called because he wrote the first major public papers on this mode) comes from the deflection circuitry for CRTs, where the radiated power levels (and lengths of radiating elements) are considerably larger than what I mentioned above. It is the CRTs that mostly cause problems. The PCBs inside modern computers also emit wideband pulses, and this may be detectable and usable to an adversary. Good shielding practice helps (those little FCC stickers....). TEMPEST deals with suppressing the emission even more. >B) Sure the Fort has Fab facilities. But Acme Gas & Grocery fixes >cars, yet they do NOT have the diagnostic computer for my [in my >dreams..] new BMW. > >Preventium & leading edge chips requires MASSIVE amounts of >money for the infrastructure, and yesterday's versions do not cut >it. [Tim, got any real $$ here?] I suspect it's like monitors: 14" >SVGA's cost $200; 16" $650; 19" $1200 & 21", don't ask. Sure, >tomorrow the 16" is $500, but you need it TODAY. I hate to say it, but all this stuff has been covered extensively in the past, in the archives. Yes, the NSA has its own wafer fab. Or, more precisely, the most recent example I know of is that National Semiconductor accepted a contract to build a fab at Fort Meade. This is not surprising, as the NSA is responsible for supplying coding and ciphering materials to U.S. forces worldwide, and so must generate ROMs, PLAs, and other special chips to cipher machines around the world. Having the fab at the Fort helps security. (Sandia Labs also makes such gizmos for them, and has pretty good security, I suspect.) These wafer fabs are probably 1.25 micron fabs, far from the .35 micron fabs now being used to make the 166 MHz Pentiums you can buy at Price Club. --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."

1 0

Re: Click here to become an International Arms Trafficker
by Lou Zirko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

# 37 > At 02:46 PM 04/26/96 -0400, Vince Cate wrote: > > > > "Click here to become an International Arms Trafficker" > > > > 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 > > > Lou Zirko (615)851-1057 Zystems lzirko(a)isdn.net "We're all bozos on this bus" - Nick Danger, Third Eye -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.3i mQENAzFseHQAAAEH/2gtDJSlsDvTo7m+Caj5zKuLO4dVl6L9e4xxFOAqKMtkHDIh 2z6NqqGnAKDai3eDXInBuOTGoyb82pkV7wD7naQDx7bppfwmJNguOPvlrErOZHcA NbAkyXCoKHgDxeXLq0MMcyC8+kBxYNKhMPm17g7tny4DKD+fzat4k3UiSAves6Y7 jLgQwwQ7TLYIGg7iPAsbMTnOF5iP51Ib47Ozjb3suJvJjUOTSUdl4V3e9EHWiniH G6kI1cfOdUmLXIgNZ34utTwwb2H/LhEDYrydmXJG6FfUolAThCwCbTG++Hq7/Ywr BOawFj3BhySTvpp/bSCJt1Mz/eELEq9xwQCaVD0ABRG0G0xvdSBaaXJrbyA8bHpp cmtvQGlzZG4ubmV0PokBFQMFEDFsfBcSr3HBAJpUPQEBRHoH/R+rkuMa9Vw+Civd 5QQM0tBMEPDUa7G2qNLKO0FBmVHoqq+VGeD9X2X+EBld0AwuWvshQfsViG2uBNxk Cr44y+Q0tXByCZqR8snTZG12BtFaCZv51XVieo2ygWQdmNp5DyMEyIOXUByORT2m 2Jx2VngcFt5rpzZLRALqwBDkV00Xcm8MPQzqGq8ZQA3nmExQkdpnSJIJX0irWjDM OueDrn9mBz2NwIZmddShYGUdhRXgpLYPHLMpo2fxE0dXiWkaDlyx47k4MIWaDoF4 nnTXxmEcS98AkT2PfqU4dT3UfZpZnHqkWQ7d4JqvXs9RmmH9K/NyBB+LykOvA1/t W6deAaWJAJUDBRAxbHtD30Eh39zrXZUBAYPsA/0dIEjlSuc8wrX5KJzAhXqUKBbg e3toQJk8RZwm4f80SC2DopEXYdmwAVrhOou7vezeu29mYVunKaDKg5xjnUfVR1WS ZXy54ZfYEG4Zrdi4vJgydb96AwoF3VAYyAbV45XBTfy3ujZjZRxpZS96X7iKk+6l quslrTmMFLhju4vWKw== =wksf -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

1 0

Re: US law - World Law - Secret Banking
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"ml3e+(a)andrew.cmu.edu" "Michael Loomis" 26-APR-1996 07:40:10.88 > I have been reading this list to get an idea where Declan gets some >of his lunatic ideas and what Rich Graves says when he is not up to >Holocaust fetishism. Despite Timothy's claim to the contrary, it seems >that the basic point of this list is some libertarian notion that tax >evasion is a good thing. Well, actually it's on a lot of other things also, including ones that those against censorship (I assume you're on the fight-censorship list, and thus encountered both Declan and Rich?) should favor. Examples include anonymous remailers and web pages (the deceanse (sp) project). Moreover, anonymous digital cash has applications to fighting censorship. Applications include paying someone to remail information or to put it on the web. c2.org, for instance, accepts even the present semi-anonymous digital cash and offers anonymous web page hosting. >While I am not clear how serious of threat, if one at all, to a system of >fair taxiation, That depends on how one defines "fair." >since much of the talk could be simply bluff, I have been made glad for the >first time for the War on Drugs. This silly war--tragic in terms of its >economic cost and its assault on liberty--at least has forces some >government agencies to take you seriously enough to figure out how to derail >your plans of tax evasion. Most of the tracking and other mechanisms discussed are even more of a threat to liberty - most significantly privacy, although there are other ones involved as well - and, indeed, to economic efficiency. A lot of the proposed and/or instituted regulations can also be used to discourage various politically unpopular but economically efficient operations; an example is "capital flight." In other words, unless you really want to live under a set of laws as restrictive as those in Communist China, support the cypherpunks. -Allen

1 0

Re: Fwd: RSAREF dos not give you access to RSA
by Christopher Allen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:48 PM on 4/26/96 , David Mazieres <dm(a)amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu> wrote: >After many many messages, I got bounced around from RSA to Consensys >Corp. and back to RSA. Just an FYI, Consensus Development (not Consensys) can only offer a commercial licenses to RSAREF. Some such licenses we can grant waivers to user lower-level routines -- to date we've granted waivers for SSL and PGP compatible software. >Conclusion: You can't use the RSA algorithm in free software. The >RSAREF interface is too restrictive, and when RSA says in the license >that "RSA will grant all reasonable requests for permission to make >such modifications" to the interface, it is either an outright lie, or >something that only happens after so much delay that they might as >well not give you such permission. The problem is that only RSA Labs (not RSA Data Security) can offer this permission (as they have all the non-commercial rights) and they are not set up to handle such requests. I'll see what I can do as the commercial licensee to influence making this happen. RSAREF was released "to support standards" and SSH is a beginning of a standard, so I think it should be possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Christopher Allen Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<ChristopherA(a)consensus.com> 1563 Solano Avenue #355.. .. Berkeley, CA 94707-2116.. ..<http://www.consensus.com/> o510/559-1500 f510/559-1505..

1 0

Re: trusting the processor chip
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:25 AM 4/27/96 -0500, Snow wrote: >On Thu, 25 Apr 1996, jim bell wrote: >> >> This analysis seems to assume that the entire production run of a standard >> product is subverted. 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. > > I thought that most (all?) chips already radiated on the >electromagnetic spectrum? Isn't that what tempest is about? There's a difference between trying to find a needle in a haystack, and finding a day-glo, red-hot needle that plays music at 110 decibels in that same haystack. Digital logic chips do radiate EMI, but some radiate very little (because their are few logic transitions or they occur relatively infrequently) or are buried within other circuitry and they don't have a particularly good antenna. The Trojan horse chip I'm hypothesizing would be specifically designed to radiate a fairly loud, continuous signal, on wires that are long enough to make a good antenna. Ideally, the chip would have a crystal to produce a very constant frequency, so that other noise not on that frequency could be ignored. The best place to put such a chip would be a location outside the computer's case, or at least it would have access to the outside. I think that a keyboard controller would be optimum, because I suspect that there are a relatively small number of different designs. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

3 2

You're Invited
by JavaOne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1 0

You are now an International Arms Trafficker (#1) ???
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yikes, Tell me that conspiracy to break ITAR isn't grounds for becoming arms trafficker #1 I don't even have the latest version of the shortened Perl-RSA code back from the screenprinters. Coming Soon! New fashionable Perl-RSA shirts! You are now an International Arms Trafficker Thanks for the munitions package. You are trafficker number: 1 Offshore Information Services Ltd. -William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.org --

1 0

Re: The Joy of Java
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry writes: > Scott Brickner writes: > > True. It's still lacking a couple of (non-language) features. The > > most important (and most cpunks relevant) is a mechanism to pay people > > to run programs for you. This sort of thing is dangerous without a > > safe environment. This is not as far away as you might think. Trust me... :) > You can do that safely without making it dangerous for your machine. I > know how I would build a restricted execution environment for such > markets. However, Java is 1) too slow, since if you are selling > rendering cycles or such you don't want to be running an interpreter, > 2) insufficently safe, and 3) paradoxically, insufficiently powerful > for the sort of code you would want to run in such an environment. Wow, three incorrect assumption in a single sentence, another hat-trick for Perry. Speed of execution is not a major problem given JIT compiler and interpreter improvements; this has been broadcast far and wide on the net so your presumed ignorance of this is a bit hard to believe. Additionally, if you are buying cycles off the net you can set things up to run in parallel and accomplish more than you ever could without the ability. To farm out code. This is absolutely trivial when it comes to tasks which are inherently easy to break into chunks which can be run in this fashion (like rendering and ray-tracing, etc.) As far as safety goes there are a lot of people working on this problem and for tasks of this type it is not as difficult as you assume. As far as it being insufficiently powerful for running distributed computation and cycle serving I know know for a fact that this is not the case. Rather than trying (and often failing) to prove that unsolvable problems exist in Java why don't you present the net with an alternative that does not suffer from these limitations. jim

2 1

"A Closer Look"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

April 22, 1996 Electronic Buyers News, Page 2. A Closer Look column, by Jack Robertson "bigbrother.com" Orwell would have loved it. National tyrants are helpless to control the free flow of information within their borders. And if they do succeed in closing down ramps to the global data superhighway, their economies crumble. Not that some folks aren't trying to rein in the Internet. Strong-arm governments--including China, Vietnam, Singapore, and some African military dictatorships--want to control domestic access to the Net. Even democracies such as Germany want to censor the Web, and the European Union is debating regulation of it. The United States itself could end up trying to control the Net in well-intentioned but dubious efforts to censor content deemed obscene. The censor's club could be provided unwittingly by the movie industry and by consumer-electronics manufacturers. Their rigid copyright protection plan for DVD would require that every computer I/O interface be designed to block out the copying of any copyrighted motion picture. Once in place, others could sieze the I/O block to bar access to any content thought to be objectionable. Uncle Sam could also end up giving ammunition to Internet censors in a yet-to-be-released proposal to the G-7 economic powers pertaining to copyright protection on the Internet. The Clinton administration will submit the plan to the next G-7 conference in Lyon, France, in late June. The administration's earlier copyright plan for the U.S. National Information Infrastructure has stirred plenty of controversy in th is country over its potential shackling of the free flow of information. So far, the unruly and ubiquitous Internet has defied almost all restraints. Governments, businesses, politically correct factions can't get their arms around this amorphous giant. Stalin could jam out the BBC and the Voice of America. Iran can bar newspapers and periodicals. Singapore can threaten judicial to try to keep the press in line. But how do you cordon off the Web? Some regimes envision their own national gateways to control Net traffic acrosss their borders. Fat chance. Even if police states could build an Internet firewall, it would take the resources of a National Security Agency to monitor the traffic and ferret out noxious communications. In a first thrust to control electronic data, China is regulating all foreign news services through its Xinhua News Agency. That way, Big Brother can lower the boom wherever a central node can be hit. But the anarchical Internet has no central control points--In fact, very little control at all. A grassroots paradigm, the Net is a totally free democratic voice. Like it or not, we need to keep it that way. [end of article.]

1 0