December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Noise] Re: <rant> Re: Devil's Bargain
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I don't know if it was terrorist activity, I was just annoyed at >the extensive every 15 minutes even tho' there is nothing new to say I >gotta get my mug and my voice on the ether coverage. It's also yet another excuse for the government to say "Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid! We're Here To Help You" - Clinton's first speech after the event had him bringing up terrorism and making sure everyone knew that even though there was as yet no evidence that it wasn't an accident, he was tough on terrorism and he'd be making sure we have more controls on the population to protect us from terrorists. I'm surprised I haven't heard Kallstrom calling for radically increased wiretapping yet or Freeh calling for bans on encryption like he did after OKCity. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Confuse Authority!

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Re: Brute-forcing DES
by Steve Reid 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Specialized DES-cracker chips have of course been considered. Diffie and > Hellman's nearly 20-year-old paper on cracking DES considered this. > Wiener's calculation of a few years ago did more that this: he also > architected a basic system. And the "how many bits is enough?" (sorry I > don't have the official name on the tip of my tongue) panel considered such > designs last year. Yep, I'm familiar with the issue. Bottom line is, it'll take thousands of times the CPU power of the RC4-40 crack. Probably not 2^16 times more; I think RC4 has a longer initialization. > But actually building a DES cracker entails a level of commitment very > difficult to achieve in an informal, volunteer effort. Not exactly > something that 10 or 20 people can work on usefully. > The advantage of the cracks done last year, the French and Australian > cracks, and the MIT cracks, were that the "entry costs" for joining the > project were low. I'm not talking about one individual or organization building one big DES cracker. I'm thinking that DES chips _could_ be used to supliment the PCs in a distributed crack. People with PCs would feed keyspace through their PCs and people with DES chips could feed keyspace through their DES chips. DES chips just happen to have a _lot_ more cracking power than PCs, so they could make a big difference. Adding one DES chip would be like adding hundreds of PCs to the effort. PCs will probably still be the main factor simply because they're ubiquitous. Even with a bunch of DES chips and a massive legion of PCs, this is going to take a long time. Perhaps we should be looking at the thousands of computers and many months, more like the RSA-129 crack than the RC4-40 crack. >From "The Magic Words Are Squeamish Ossifrage": > We believe that we could acquire 100 thousand machines without > superhuman or unethical efforts. If Lenstra et al know what they're talking about, then WE CAN DO THIS!!! ===================================================================== | Steve Reid - SysAdmin & Pres, EDM Web (http://www.edmweb.com/) | | Email: steve(a)edmweb.com Home Page: http://www.edmweb.com/steve/ | | PGP (2048/9F317269) Fingerprint: 11C89D1CD67287E68C09EC52443F8830 | | -- Disclaimer: JMHO, YMMV, TANSTAAFL, IANAL. -- | ===================================================================:)

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Re: [Noise] Re: <rant> Re: Devil's Bargain
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:51 PM 7/24/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >I'm surprised I haven't heard Kallstrom >calling for radically increased wiretapping yet or Freeh calling for >bans on encryption like he did after OKCity. As if it would have done any good. One of the news reports pointed out that if it was a bomb, it had probibly been placed on the plane in Greece. (But then, since when did logic and rationality have *ANYTHING* to do with the Freeh and Kalstrom wiretap jihad. I am waiting for one of them to get arrested as a peeping tom. Something deepseeted about these people's fetish about watching others...) --- 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 "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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Re: DES-Busting Screen Savers?
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:01 AM 7/25/96 +0000, The Deviant wrote: >> To support scaling, make it easy for people to run subset servers; >> grab a chunk of keyspace from the main server and dole it out >> to people who ask you for it. If you want to get fancy, >> hack a DNS server to allow people to register their machines >> as NNN.descrack.org, 0<=NNN<1000, so that people can find >> subsets without having to ask the main server. >> > >Or hack it to use a 56 bit IP netmask-ish thing, and keep track of keys >that way (i'm not endorsing this idea, just pointing it out) I can see some problems doing this sort of allocation for those of us on dial up providers. When the IP address changes from log in to log in recording the IP address is not much help. You could always hand them a digital signature with the key space signed by the server... --- 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 "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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Re: Netscape (foreign downloads)
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:11 23/07/96 -0700, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > I certainly have sympathy for those who want to make a point >by uploading our US software to hacktic and other foreign servers, >but I think that my company will probably have to ask hacktic >and others to remove these copies. > And what are your plans for those outside the US who have downloaded from hacktic? While I'm sure your copyright allows you to do so, don't suppose you have any plans of going after them? Suppose I, as a foreigner, were to obtain a copy Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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Re: [Noise] Re: <rant> Re: Devil's Bargain
by Cerridwyn Llewyellyn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>protect us from terrorists. I'm surprised I haven't heard Kallstrom >calling for radically increased wiretapping yet or Freeh calling for >bans on encryption like he did after OKCity. He's saving that for later this morning... //cerridwyn//

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Re: Digital Watermarks (long, getting off-topic)
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:26 AM 7/24/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >Isn't it odd that when music is sold, CD's are MORE expensive than cassette >tapes, even though you _know_ that the manufacturing cost of CD's is less? CDs sell for more because buyers decided that they wanted a wider range of titles with shallower sales (hence higher unit costs) rather than a narrower range of titles with lower sales prices. The number of CD titles available is far greater (in general distribution) than the number of vinyl titles that were available during vinyl's peak year. This greater availability of short run pressings raises average unit sales costs justifying the higher prices. Had the market decided (when physical production costs fell) that it was satisfied with a Top-40 CD stock, average CD prices would have fallen to vinyl levels. >Another oddity: The price for a blank, standard-quality videocassette is >about the same as that of a blank, standard-quality audio cassette tape, >despite the fact that the volume of tape included in the former is probably >about a factor of 10 higher. Materials cost is a minor part of total cost. In both cases, the cost of production is a small part of the cost of goods sold. Almost all of that cost is the cost of marketing (as with all mass-market products in a modern capitalist economy. DCF "The only adequate description of the Universe is the Universe itself. The only fair price of an item is the market price. Neither the Universe nor the Market can be adequately duplicated in the head of a Congresscritter."

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Re: A Global Village; an open letter to Bill & Hill and also Mr. & Mrs. Dole, from Asim at Molecule One. Cypherpunks, please excuse this note.
by pjb＠ny.ubs.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

really relevent to this list, way to go asim. what if we all choose to clutter this list with our own little hot buttons? -paul > From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Wed Jul 24 18:20:55 1996 > X-Sender: molecul1(a)molecule1.com > X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.3b4 > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type> : > text/plain> ; > charset="us-ascii"> > Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 00:48:32 -0700 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > From: molecul1(a)molecule1.com (Molecule One Scientific Research Institute) > Subject: A Global Village; an open letter to Bill & Hill and also Mr. & Mrs. Dole, from Asim at Molecule One. Cypherpunks, please excuse this note. > Cc: molecul1(a)molecule1.com > Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Content-Length: 4562 > > Honourable wishes, > > I write about Mrs. Clinton's concept of Global Village and wholeheartedly, > pledge my support to such an important concept. > > The world is everchanging and Mrs. Clinton is correct in that the > industrialized > countries have lost, most, of their extended families. This makes children > vulnerable to danger. If in need of help, such children are commonly abused > due to their vulnerability. > > I want to take this moment to express some understandings. Firstly, it > was never in my plan to locate where I have been over the last while. > Probably, if it hadn't been for many malicious encounters, I probably > would of gone to a remote island, as I hold so dear to my heart. A > close friend was severly violated and I had to witness a war being > fought against civillians. When an insurance policy becomes more > valuable than the human life, something must be wrong with social > ethics. > > To live through many of the experiences I had to, while living here, > made me realize high technology is dangerous in many peoples > lives. To manipulate peoples decisions using brute force seemed > terribly wrong to me. Many of the people controlling the situations > are also stressed out. Abuse results from stress. > > Concerning the old man. I knew of this man since childhood. I > always considered him one of the greatest neuroscientists > on the planet earth. Even his friends hold him with a greatest > respect. What he accomplished, very few could match his > accomplishments. > > I send much thanks to Point Communications for allowing me > a long interview about my social concerns. I wanted to personally > thank all the K12 students that partook in my interview. I was > never able to attend the requests of some of those students, > that asked me to review some of their essays, as my time > was occupied with endless other obstacles. I want those > students to understand that I just couldn't. > > I want to thank all those cool students that let me participate > at their, private, dance parties. They know I attended endless > dance parties, researching technological requirements, > so they are happy and socially satisfied. I also got to > know what kind of social threats they are faced with, both, > underground and official. Stress does tend to corrupt some > people. > > I want you to understand that I came up with Molecule One > as a means to address the needs of a culture. Even though > many plots were directed at me for proposing this project, > I always knew I spoke the truth and my intentions were > pure. Neurosciences has always been a lifelong inspiration > to me. Standards, to improve the quality of life in society, > seemed a noble goal. > > I want the students to know that Molecule One was > created for their benefit first. They are the future. When > a child remains innocent, that innocence should be > protected. Far too often, children loose their innocence > to hardend people, who's primary motive is malicious > intent. Naivete and innocence is purity and lack of > ethical standard is rampent. > > I knew that acceptance of truth is difficult for > some people, especially those ignorant and those > conditioned to believe otherwise. I always chose > positive as an outcome for motive. > > I want to thank all of you, Republican, Democrat, > and families, friends and which other political > inspiration. I respect all life and those standards that > can increase the health standard of all people. There > are many important factors that must be considered > to insure a safe and healthy society, of the > future. To work together, to attain this standard, > is important for all people, irregardless of color. > Care and courtesy, toward our fellow people, > is another social characteristic that is becoming > lost, with the loss of the extended family. > > I also want to thank all those cool computer folk > that let me play upon the info highway, as it was > being developed. I want to thank all those > cyberfolk that recognised the import of all > topics covered. Understand well, visions of > tropical islands have floated through my mind, > probably, everyday I've been here. It was > my concern for the youth and for the elderly > that made me stay and attempt to create > a project that could bring happiness and > harmony, to the society, for a long time to > come. It is a challenge. > > Thanks for the cyber inspiration, acknowledgement > and being allowed the opportunity to create a > work of art that can benefit so many. > > To the 1'st family & 2 Mr.& Mrs. Dole, all friends and families. > > Peace and best wishes, > Sincerely, > > Asim > molecul1(a)molecule1.com > >

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Re: Netscape 3.0B US version MD5
by nobody＠c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff Weinstein <jsw(a)netscape.com> wrote: > The final version of 3.0 will be available for download well > before Sept 17. That version will not have a timebomb. Even > the timebombed versions will let you connect to our site to > download new versions. Is there a possibility that the US version of Netscape 2.02 for Windows 3.1 will be made available via this mechanism? I run OS/2 in a WinOS/2 session under OS/2 Warp, and the 16 bit version of 2.02 is the latest one that us OS/2 Warp users of Netscape have been able to get working. None of the 3.0 betas will work, for some reason. (If you have a "wish list" there, a native OS/2 version of Netscape would be nice, too! <g>)

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RPK Public Key Cryptography
by Stephen Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New algorithm from outside US, new crypto challenge? My apologies to the list if this subject is old hat but someone just pointed me to the RPK Public Key Cryptography site and I was wondering what people thought of this particular technology. The RPK Public Key Cryptography site at http://crypto.swdev.co.nz/ says: Have a look at this new approach to information privacy, designed and developed in New Zealand. The RPK public key cryptosystem provides industrial-strength public key cryptography that's available worldwide. You'll find full technical information, free evaluation software and development tools, and details of our SafeCracker Challenge program where you can earn a $$$ REWARD $$$ while trying to put us out of business! The inventor and developer of the RPK system is aparently Dr. William M.Raike who holds a US patent as co-inventor of scrambler which NSA banned in the US. The Nicolai/Raike case attracted some media attention and, after the NSA rescinded the order, it was one of the first instances in which an NSA director commented publicly on patent secrecy issues. That invention had its roots in spread spectrum technology. Note sure if that has any bearing on the public key offering. Note that I have no connection with this person, software or site, just natural curiousity about what cypherpunks think about it. Stephen Cobb, CISSP

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