December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

CS First Boston lawsuit
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a lawsuit files in federal court in New York City, CS First Bostom has charged an unknown party with libel, slander and violation of the Federal Telecommunications Act, as well as with impoerly obtaining confidential financial information and sending it out in e-mail messages. The lawsuit seeks damages of at least $1M against "FBCbuster" and "FBCbuster2", the aliases of an America Online AOL) subscriber or subscribers. AOL was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit, which concerns two separate e-mail messages sent to First Boston employees. The suit sais the firsy e-mail message, which was sent on March 3, included a "macabre poem" about the destruction of the firm. In a second message, sent a week later, the lswsuit states that the writer included confidential salary information about current and former officers of the firm. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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THE POUCH
by C Matthew Curtin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Allow me to quote from your web page: http://www.flagler.com/security.html Quote #1: "The POUCH is a secure e-mail terminal program for IBM compatible computers. It uses a secret key phrase, advanced cryptographic techniques and several unpublished algorithms to protect data in the body of e-mail messages. The key phrase, which can be up to 48 bytes long, is easily remembered and communicated. The POUCH is highly resistant to all known forms of cryptographic attack." Quote #2: "We warrant that the product when delivered to you has no short cuts, covert channels or secret solutions of any kind. No other warranty, either expressed or implied is given." These two statements are contradictory; an unpublished algorithm is itself a secret solution, and a covert channel. Why is it that software manufacturers keep popping up and spewing nonsense? Obscurity is not security. Making the algorithm proprietary does extremely little in making it resistant to attack. All of your statements regarding the security of "The Pouch" are worthless, for you have no data with which to substantiate your claims. If it is any good, there's no way for us to know. But your marketing of the product has every indication that it's nothing more than smoke and mirrors. To coin a phrase, "pseudocrypto." Please refrain from your bogus marketing techniques. This kind of stuff, by claiming to be "real cryptography" makes real cryptographers look bad. - -- C Matthew Curtin MEGASOFT, LLC Director, Security Architecture I speak only for myself. Don't whine to anyone but me about anything I say. Hacker Security Firewall Crypto PGP Privacy Unix Perl Java Internet Intranet cmcurtin(a)research.megasoft.com http://research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Have you encrypted your data today? iQCVAwUBMhdZaBhyYuO2QvP9AQHaxQP+OvqYc9U/3BTPwnEhL/9ADkzL+ulhILpj 1zbyhktoCB4yMB13WQgm05DM6lolUufo63nkhsX4giMhrQ2XCBeM5/8pxJOD2ThY 3+foxma7e3tUv8r6PjNlnhn2TzVPPgbN+6NdpUCbNtOpG8GsD4EdQ35S+H0Y+aJm 75FfHfaDrNQ= =6Zxy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Hackers invade DOJ web site
by Mike McNally 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CNN online (http://www.cnn.com) is reporting a "breakin" by "hackers" to the DOJ web site. They don't elaborate exactly how thy did it. ______c_________________________________________________________________ Mike M Nally * Tiv^H^H^H IBM * Austin TX * For the time being, m5(a)tivoli.com * m101(a)io.com * <URL:http://www.io.com/~m101> * three heads and eight arms.

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Re: Final release of Navigator (with strong crypto) now available
by Alex de Joode 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff Weinstein (jsw(a)netscape.com) wrote: : The final release of Navigator 3.0, complete with non-exportable : strong crypto, is now available for download by US citizens. Note : that this is the released version of 3.0, so it will not expire. : You can get it from: Would it be possible to both supply an Linux ELF and a.out binary ? : http://wwwus.netscape.com/eng/US-Current/ : --Jeff -- Alex de Joode | Replay IP Service & Web DZign -- The Netherlands usura(a)replay.com | http://www.replay.com mailto:info@replay.com

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Re: FCC_ups
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:36 AM 8/18/96 +0000, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote: >> >First flat rates would have to go out. >> >If Alice uses her phone for 5 hrs in month and pay _x_ dollars and Bob uses >> >his for 100 hrs and pays _x_ dollars, then Alice is subsidising Bob, which >> >is not really ethical. Everyone should pay for the amount of bandwith >> >one is using. >> >> I'm afraid you're promoting what I consider a rather old (and, now, odd) way >> to look at it. Unlike old mechanical telephone switches, the new hardware >> does not "wear out" and thus a person who uses it more doesn't cost the >> phoneco any more bucks. If that's the case, I don't see the logic in >> charging a person more for greater use. >> >Machinery 'wear and tear' is a small part of Infrastructure maintainance costs. There are tons of other things. Hidden costs, management, laying new pipes,etc. Well, let's consider such costs. Most of which (maintenance, management, rolling stock) are unrelated to amount of telephone usage. So there is no reason that these costs should be unequally attributed to a person who makes local calls 1 hour per day, as opposed to another who only calls 15 minutes per day, for example. As for the "laying new pipes" issue: Years ago in the the US, when inter-central-office trunk connections were all implemented using large bundles of copper pairs, it would have been _correct_ to say that higher telephone usage resulted in larger costs, since more trunk lines were necessary. Today, on the other hand, inter-office trunks (at least the new ones, and I presume that even many of the old ones have been switched over) are implemented in fiber optics. Extra capacity is either automatically available (since the capacity of a given fiber is unlikely to be fully used) or can be fairly simply added by converting old fiber from about 450 megabits per second to 2.4 gigabits, or even faster rates which have become more recently available. >But you miss my point, if a phoneco is not getting a penny for its long distanceservices (which subsidise the flat rate local calls) then the choice would >be to close down. Which would be a severe attack to the local internet usage. That's an entirely unsupported claim. Nobody claims that telephone usage (term used generically) is on the way out. "Closing down" is only going to happen if local phonecos cease to be able to provide a service that people are willing to pay for. And as for the amount of the subsidy, let's look at it. I've read around here recently that the amount of the charge is 3 cents per minute. If we assume an average LD rate of 15 cents per minute, that's 20% of the bill. If an average LD bill is $15 per month, that's only $3 per line, per month. It seems to me that those local phonecos could simply raise their local charges by this and totally compensate for the loss of that subsidy. However, an even more likely outcome is that they will make structural changes which they've been able to avoid after decades as a regulated, monopolized business: Reduce personnel levels, especially in areas other than those in which they are actually providing telephone service. Reduce salaries from "comfy" to "competitive." Before it was broken up in 1983, AT+T was a regulated monopoly and was, more or less, guaranteed a profit. Extra costs, such as higher staffing levels and higher salaries, simply increased the rates, they didn't reduce the profits. This system is still in force with the local phoneco side of the business. Anther thing which could be done, from the government's side (as part of an industry restructuring) is to allow phonecos to greatly accelerate their tax write-off of existing depreciating equipment, perhaps down to as low as 5 years or so. The theory is, these phonecos are going to start competing with companies who are only buying their equipment today, and it would be unfair to saddle the older companies with old, inefficient equipment without allowing them to completely write it off quickly. (This, of course, doesn't mean that they need to actually take it out of service...) Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Hackers invade DOJ web site
by Frank Stuart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>CNN online (http://www.cnn.com) is reporting a "breakin" by "hackers" >to the DOJ web site. They don't elaborate exactly how thy did it. I certainly don't support the person or people responsible for this and it may very well end up having an overall negative impact. Since it has happened, however, I think those in a position to do so should start with the spin control. Some suggestions: The fact that even the U.S. Justice Department is unable to adequately protect it's own site from intruders underscores the need for widely- available strong encryption. While this is certainly a major embarrassment for the Justice Department, at least the mandatory "key escrow" program the Clinton administration is insisting upon has not yet been implemented; no private citizens' data appears to have been compromised this time. It's doubtful that a new law or government bureaucracy would have prevented this from happening but it's entirely possible that tools such as strong encryption could have. It's ironic that the U.S. Government is focusing on the former while fighting use of the latter. This event could potentially draw a lot of interest from the general public. Since we're dealing with public perceptions largely created through the main- stream media, it's important to remember that "sound bites" are more important than carefully reasoned arguments. | (Douglas) Hofstadter's Law: | It always takes longer than you expect, even Frank Stuart | when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

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No Subject
by Mike Howell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anybody know what I can get for generating the credit card numbers?

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No Subject
by Mike Howell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anybody know where I can get good scanning program. Thanks a lot, 451 degree :-)

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Re: Weird "Suppression" messages
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:36 PM 8/23/96 -0700, Z.B. wrote: >On Fri, 23 Aug 1996, Alan Olsen wrote: > >> At 10:54 PM 8/20/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote: >> > ----- Message body suppressed ----- >> > >> >--SAA08114.840765294/tera.mcom.com-- >> >> This is bizzare. I have gotten three messages with this message. >> >> Is someone at Netscape canceling messages? (mcom.com is the old domain name >> of Netscape.) >> >> Anyone have any ideas on this? > >I don't have a clue what it is, but it's sure pissing me off. I've >gotten about 15 or so of these messages in the past two hours. If it's >an honest error, then someone better fix it real fast; if some loser is >jerking us around, ...... Some list redirector of somesort has gone wonky at Netscape. (Take a look at the headers if you do not believe me. They are originating off of some internal lists at mcom.com, the original Netscape domain.) Cypherpunks is not the only list effected by this. I am getting these weird messages on wwwsecurity as well. Since it is Friday, I expect that this will be with us until someone gets in the office on Monday. --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD. - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com "| |"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: "----- Message body suppressed -----"
by Lou Zirko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: alano(a)teleport.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Fri Aug 23 22:43:00 1996 I just got 17 more in the last 30 minutes. They appear to match messages delivered already as per sender, subject and time. The only common issue I see it toad. I have copied a set below. - ------------ FULL Message Return-Path: cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Received: from toad.com (toad.com [140.174.2.1]) by infinity.c2.org (8.7.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id GAA15937 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 06:57:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from big.aa.net (root(a)big.aa.net [204.157.220.2]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id GAA15932 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 06:57:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fozzy.aa.net (moon-c24.aa.net [204.157.220.124]) by big.aa.net (8.7/8.7.5) with SMTP id GAA06741 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 06:57:16 -0700 X-UIDL: 840751255.041 X-Intended-For: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> From: blane(a)aa.net (Brian C. Lane) To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: SpamBot Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 13:56:22 GMT Organization: Nexus Computing Reply-To: blane(a)aa.net Message-ID: <321c65db.721494(a)mail.aa.net> X-Mailer: Forte Agent .99e/16.227 Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk Well, with all the other noise in the list lately, I'll add a little of my own. I woke up today to find my mailbox filled with 20 messages from a 'careernetonline.com' offering to spread my resume across the net for $60. It was one of those terrorist spams where they apologize for wasting your time and tell you that you can stop getting spammed by replying to the message. Well, I really hate giving in to terrorists, no matter what form they take. And I'm sick and tired of spam. So, I'm starting a project called SpamBot. You feed it a message and a list of addresses and the bot send the message to those addresses until they reply with an appropriate message indicating that they are at least looking into the problem. Some people may say that this is sinking to their level. So it is, but I think its time that system administrators realized that there are people who don't appreciate being the target for shotgun marketing schemes (none of which have been of any use to me). Watch my webpage for more info on this helpful little bot. Brian - ------- <blane(a)aa.net> -------------------- <http://www.aa.net/~blane> - ------- "Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice" - B. Goldwater ============== 11 99 3D DB 63 4D 0B 22 15 DC 5A 12 71 DE EE 36 ============ - --------- SUPPRESED Message Return-Path: cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Received: from toad.com (toad.com [140.174.2.1]) by infinity.c2.org (8.7.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA20706 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 19:20:59 -0700 (PDT) Received: from littlewing.mcom.com (h-205-217-255-33.netscape.com [205.217.255.33]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA20700 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 19:20:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from root@localhost) by littlewing.mcom.com (8.7.3/8.7.3) id TAA08776; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 19:23:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from maleman.mcom.com (maleman.mcom.com [198.93.92.3]) by tera.mcom.com (8.6.12/8.6.9) with ESMTP id GAA13912 for <mcom.list.cypherpunks(a)tera.mcom.com>; Fri, 23 Aug 1996 06:51:48 -0700 Received: from ns.netscape.com (ns.netscape.com.mcom.com [198.95.251.10]) by maleman.mcom.com (8.6.9/8.6.9) with ESMTP id HAA11324; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 07:24:22 -0700 Received: from toad.com (toad.com [140.174.2.1]) by ns.netscape.com (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA08688; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 07:23:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id GAA15937 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 06:57:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from big.aa.net (root(a)big.aa.net [204.157.220.2]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id GAA15932 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 06:57:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fozzy.aa.net (moon-c24.aa.net [204.157.220.124]) by big.aa.net (8.7/8.7.5) with SMTP id GAA06741 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 06:57:16 -0700 X-UIDL: 840854011.002 X-Intended-For: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> From: blane(a)aa.net (Brian C. Lane) To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: SpamBot Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 13:56:22 GMT Organization: Nexus Computing Reply-To: blane(a)aa.net Message-ID: <321c65db.721494(a)mail.aa.net> X-Mailer: Forte Agent .99e/16.227 Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk ----- Message body suppressed ----- - --GAA13919.840808533/tera.mcom.com-- > At 06:25 PM 8/23/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > >At 1:10 AM 8/21/96, Skip wrote: > >> ----- Message body suppressed ----- > >> > > > > > >Sounds good to me. Keep it up. > > It looks like an internal mailing list version of Cypherpunks at > Netscape is > feeding back into the regular list with weird results. > > --- > | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD. - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com > "| > |"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 > | > > > Lou Zirko (502)383-2175 Zystems lzirko(a)c2.org "We're all bozos on this bus" - Nick Danger, Third Eye -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 iQEVAwUBMh56UctPRTNbb5z9AQFi4Qf9HKkx+OBM4CdgkIsZvWRsiJ8PDR/TCzai 5vjLUFuDG2462VRHV5onGQ4KZo7XwnyGsjdAgUrx3XzXcXAbKyA3luDOkM5C/8Vk YRBO3pLnCCBUB+54QVt65QgjMZ6JtuCuUZO3ntwwUL9Wde/Y1v0nmHXmuZZE++v3 tyrWrfDRh1aEuwGNjNcEEFQ9ZUEsM/y5RCvVlD/4VyvWSUvDejGItMnIbMWICs2j jt48NNiMK3uU4A5bLDbonzgn4f6n21wF62AJwkAf3UB0DMwJ9DLz2isfOUe50B3h FPw1FZqPvdOz5BV61bKcx2ABU5GZDEe+ZBZ5zdFZ7Xl7JaQbg46CYg== =uBW8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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