December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: FCC-type Regulation of Cyberspace
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:26 PM 3/14/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >Mr. Frantz, unless you can prove your claims here, forthwith, I must inform >you that they are in violation of the Truth in Speech Act of 1996. Please >retract them, now. Political speech, not commercial speech. The act doesn't apply or is unconstitutional. >Do you see the problem? Of course. Why do you think I said (in the 4th paragraph which you didn't quote) (ZING :-) ): >In thinking back over the discussion, I would like to eliminate the >restrictions without making markets less free by adding yet more barriers >to market entry. We certainly need more robust reputation agencies than we >have now. I just don't know how to encourage their formation. BTW - I consider non-free markets, produced primarily by oligarchic combines of large organizations to be a major impediment to removing government influence from the economic system. Easing market entry is one way to reduce the power of these oligarchic combines. I don't want to just trade elected government oppression for unelected corporate oppression. To put it bluntly, to suppress the 19th century coal mining strikes, the companies hired the Pinkertons. I don't see a whole lot of difference between this kind of private enterprise transaction, and Ruby Ridge. Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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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Re: PGP reveals the key ID of the recipient of encrypted msg
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is a way to beat this--generate new public keys on a frequent basis, and send them to whoever wants to send you absolutely anonymous mail in encrypted form. Have your anonymous partner do likewise. Since the key ID is fairly random, if it changes constantly, it will be irrelevant if it shows up in a message only once. Keep a separate (and temporary) key ring for these temporary public keys, so you can delete the key ring files when they start getting too large. Jonathan Wienke

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Re: Beat Remote Monitor Snooping?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:46 PM 3/13/96 -0500, Alan Horowitz wrote: >Visual contrast is not the same thing as frequency diffrence. It is quite >easy to measure extremely small changes of phase. As in, your >plain-vanilla FM receiver. However, that's not how SVGA CRT's do it. NTSC (TV video) modulation is done by phase modulation of the 3.579545 MHz subcarrier. SVGA has three different baseband analog signals feeding three electron beams. Even so, they still should be able to pick up SVGA with a little tinkering. > What's his name put this stuff together in the >mid 1930's. Ed Armstrong

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Re: Leahy bill, legalize crypto
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:14 PM 3/13/96 -0800, Tim wrote: >One reason Washington pushed for the Wiretap Act (aka Digital Telephony) >was because digital switches have made conventional methods of wiretapping >and pen registers harder and harder to do. (I'm not a phone phreaker >expert, as some of you no doubt are, so I don't know the details of how >wiretaps were done prior to the advent of digital switches...I picture >wires connected to the back of PBX systems, and I presume the ESS systems >and their ilk changed this dramatically.) There are different places you can do your wiretap, depending on convenience, weather, observability, whether you've got a warrant, etc. ESSs don't really change the pair of wire coming from your house out to the telephone pole, over to your local wire center, and into the distribution system that eventually connects them to the switch. You've still got a pair of copper wires. On the other hand, underground wiring is harder to get at, and pair gain systems such as Subscriber Loop Carrier bring some of the multiplexing out to your block instead of all the way back to the phone office, and ESSs do make those more cost-effective. Connections from PBXs are also harder to tap than individual phone lines, since your phone call may be on any of the (probably virtual) circuits going from the PBX to the phone office. >The main way they blew it is that the Wiretap Act ostensibly does not cover >end-to-end encryption, especially as computers are used in place of >telephones. I don't think they blew it there, although the EFF's work against S.266 a few years back really hurt them. There are two ways to get oppressive laws enacted - wholesale, or bit by bit. A wholesale ban would have affected a lot of people, and had substantial constitutional difficulties. On the other hand, a mere regulation telling the already regulated telephone companies that they have to do a bit more free work in return for their monopoly status isn't a big constitutional stretch, and mainly annoys phone companies rather than end consumers. Also, it's far easier to enforce regulations on phone companies - there are bureaucrats in place to do it, you can kick them around in all sorts of ways if they don't cooperate, and it gets you most of your wiretapping and enforcement done wholesale rather than retail. (It's still major slime, of course :-) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 pager 408-787-1281 # "At year's end, however, new government limits on Internet access threatened # to halt the growth of Internet use. [...] Government control of news media # generally continues to depend on self-censorship to regulate political and # social content, but the authorities also consistently penalize those who # exceed the permissable." - US government statement on China...

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Re: Remailer passphrases
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:13 AM 3/14/96 -0600, Alex Strasheim wrote: >(I have no idea how hard it would be to steal information from a running >machine's ram -- or if it's even possible). It is probably possible. Put a clip across the CPU chip, and take over from it by raising it's chip disable will work with some microprocessors. However, the proper application of various kinds of rubber hose to the operator should make that kind of attack unnecessary. "Perfect" Forward Security or some approximation helps protect the operator against such an attack by reducing the amount of compromised material, and therefore the incentive. Regards - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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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Re:LACC: PC Phones Home?
by mccoy＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dennis Hilliard writes: > >"Software to the rescue: >If somoeone steals your PC, you may be able to get it back because of >software that acts as a kind of tracking device. Home Office Computing >magazine reports that the software CompuTrace TRS will automatically dial >the office of its creator, Absolute Software, if a thief hooks up a stolen >PC's modem to a phone line. The software reveals the location of the PC and >Absolute Software will call the police" - Providence Journal-Bulletin - >March 12, 1996. > >Any Comments? A few questions: 1- How does the PC know where it is? 2- How does the PC know it has been stolen? Since this is a software product I am assuming that the answer to #1 is the use of CallerID on the line when the software calls, which is defeated by the use of line blocking by the thief. The obvious answer to #2 seems to me to have the system call the CompuTrace office at odd intervals to see if it has been reported stolen yet... Obvious solution for potential thieves: wipe the disks and reinstall an OS once you steal a PC. This should be done anyway to remove any bits of data which might identify the original owner. Conclusion: Yet another useless piece of software riding the computer security bandwagon. jim

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Re:LACC: PC Phones Home?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:41 PM 3/13/96 -0800, Jim McCoy wrote: >Dennis Hilliard writes: >> >>"Software to the rescue: >>If somoeone steals your PC, you may be able to get it back because of >>software that acts as a kind of tracking device. Home Office Computing >>magazine reports that the software CompuTrace TRS will automatically dial >>the office of its creator, Absolute Software, if a thief hooks up a stolen >>PC's modem to a phone line. The software reveals the location of the PC and >>Absolute Software will call the police" - Providence Journal-Bulletin - >>March 12, 1996. >1- How does the PC know where it is? >2- How does the PC know it has been stolen? > >Since this is a software product I am assuming that the answer to #1 >is the use of CallerID on the line when the software calls, which is >defeated by the use of line blocking by the thief. I think that 1-800 services provide caller ID information to the company or organization that pays for the service. Whether or not this is blocked by standard caller-ID I don't know. Nevertheless, like you, I am not impressed with the likelihood of success of this system. > The obvious answer >to #2 seems to me to have the system call the CompuTrace office at >odd intervals to see if it has been reported stolen yet... One thing that might be useful would be a OTP (one-time programmable) EPROM chip installed on all major system components (monitor, HD, motherboard, CDROM drive, maybe even DRAM SIMMs). It would be a serial device for low cost, such as a 3-pin TO-92 chip, which would have a capacity of about 4k bits, enough to store a hash of the owner-history (at about 100 bits per owner) for any owner that decided to leave a record. Like an EPROM, bits could only be written once; the chip itself would prevent write-overs previous to the last-written bit. Subsequent owners could read the history and publish the hash codes; anyone looking for such a stolen product could have their losses checked automatically, and perhaps semi-anonymously or anonymously, by a service set up to do this. Innocent owners could be adequately compensated for finding a piece of stolen hardware, to the extent that nobody is deterred about reporting a find. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why escrow? (was Re: How would Leahy bill affect crypto
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 14 Mar 96 at 12:00, jim bell wrote: > At 07:57 AM 3/14/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote: > >On 13 Mar 96 at 15:27, jim bell wrote: > >[..] > >> If I were trying to detect government investigation in such a situation, I > >> would buy a crypto phone, open an "escrow account" on a totally voluntary > >> basis, give them a phony key, and then (as part of the > >(presumably?) [..] > > > >Would it be legal to deceive an escrow agent? > > It _should_ be legal. At least, assuming the arrangement is truly voluntary > and the escrow agent gets his part of the bargain (his usual fee) he has no > interest in knowing whether or not the data he's holding for you is "real" > or "imaginary." I mean illegal in the sense that your true purpose is to decieve law enforcement. (Yes, it'll also fake out anyone who bribes the escrow agent for your keys, though....) Of course that depends how you give your key to an escrow agent. If it's already escrowed when you buy a phone, for instance... [..] > It is sections of the bill like that which will guarantee that nobody > provides an unencrypted key for escrow: Nobody will want to risk having the > escrow agent "forced" to release the key, even (and especially!) under a > court order. Fortunately, modern technology will provide the solution to > government-simpleton thinking. It's part of warrants. Nobody likes having the cops search their apartments either. (I'd say a warrant is better than none, but judges are generally all too willing to grant a warrant, and the bill allows for "good faith" when no warrant is used anyway...) Rob. --- Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) to <WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com> for a copy of my PGP key.

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[HUMOR] SCHWA - New Web Search Engine!! (fwd)
by Bruce Zambini 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I thought this was rather amusing... it's labeled as humor, so maybe people won't flame me for posting it... :) Jon Lasser ---------- Jon Lasser (410)494-3072 - Obscenity is a crutch for jlasser(a)rwd.goucher.edu inarticulate motherfuckers. http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/ Finger for PGP key (1024/EC001E4D) - Fuck the CDA. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 09:47:27 -0800 From: FringeWare Daily <email(a)fringeware.com> Subject: SCHWA - New Web Search Engine!! Sent from: Troy.Sheets(a)Eng.Sun.COM (Troy Sheets) The Schwa Corperation, Global Media and Infomation Services is proud to present "Intrude", the search engine for the next century. Intrude is working 24 hours a day, sucking infomation and carefully indexing data from all four corners of the global infosphere. Sure, other search engines scan Usenet and mailing list archeives... but Intrude goes even further. Using the powerful parallel-processing supercomputer, "Pal 4000" (courtesy of Schwa Microsystems Computer Corperation), Intrude reads credit ratings, cable TV viewing habits, mail-order products received, videos rented, parking tickets received, and of course, every single peice of email transmitted over the Internet. Tired of those pesky PGP messages? They are no match for Pal's Reverse Escrow Orthoganal decryption software. But don't feel bad about knowing that everything you ever said online is now available to any crazy with a 14.4, all search querries on Intrude are logged also... so you can always Intrude the person Intruding on you. Try Intrude today, and see what juice facts it pulls up. You might learn things about yourself you never knew! "The Schwa Corperation, making information work harder... and harder infomation to work... or working infomation hard" -Troy Sheets, VP of Marketing, GMIS. http://www-scf.usc.edu/~tsheets

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Re: CD-reading for random keys
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a message dated 96-03-14 08:34:57 EST, you write: >I would >suggest recording thermal noise (Eg the hiss from an untuned FM radio), >perhaps XORing with a pseudo-random sequence to remove residual bias. XORing 2 or independent thermal noise sources together would be even better. Jonathan Wienke

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