December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: libelous action
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 26 Aug 96 at 20:28, Ross Wright wrote: > If I was John E. Holt, I would take a different public relations > tack. I would seek positive input, not a negative reaction to > criticism. Or I would ignore the critique altogether. > Ross Wright Yes Ross, but while writing this, your premise is that Holt has a product that is at least partially decent and that it could maybe be improved. You assume he might be making an honest error. Maybe it is not the case. ;) jfa DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants: physicists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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Re: Spamming
by John Deters 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:27 PM 8/26/96 -0800, Adamsc wrote: >On Mon, 26 Aug 1996 13:26:04 -0500, John Deters wrote: > >>>What do cypherpunks think about the following practice or law (I realize >>>that it may be impossible to implement): each email message should carry >>>a little digicash check for, say, 20 cents. Mail reading programs should >>>reject (send back unread) all messages not carrying these digital >>>checks, unless the senders are in the "friends list". The MUAs should >>>ask users whether they want to "cash" the digital check or not. >> >>I do not believe it is possible to have a secure executable that exists on >>an uncontrolled user's machine. "Tamperproof" encryption chips still >>require communications in and out from the user's program. A determined >>attacker could continue to use the pieces of their code that talk to the >>encryption chip. > >>Never underestimate the allure of "free money" when you're planning to >give >>it away. > >Methinks you don't understand e-cash. It's not executable, and uses public key >crypto to prevent "minting". It uses records to prevent replays. In other >words, it'd be like Ed McMahon including a quarter in the envelope. You'd only >be able to use it once.... Maybe I misspoke; I wasn't referring to minting e-cash. I was referring to the fact that if you can get spammers to enclose a 20e coin for every junk e-mail advertisement you agree to read, then you can write a mail reader that will read their spam and collect all their 20e coins. To me, that's better than "minting" e-cash. Totally legal, and the net effect transfers funds from the spammers to me. The rest of my letter was in regards to writing that mail reader. And no, even if they were to succeed at getting stupid users to install their own special mail reader just for the privilege of reading their advertisements, without secure hardware in the users' machines, their mail server would not be secure against a spoofing attack. John -- J. Deters "Captain's log, stardate 25970-point-5. I am nailed to the hull." +-------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: jad(a)dsddhc.com (work) jad(a)pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | PGP Key ID: 768 / 15FFA875 | +-------------------------------------------------------+

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please help
by Manuel Benedicto Procas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please...you know a macintosh program in order to war dialing TCP IP numbers and Unix or VMS localice Login/password cobinations. MANUEL

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Boeing Antenna Demos T1 Reception Rates
by reagle＠rpcp.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 1996 AUG 27 (NB) -- By Bill Pietrucha. All eyes were on the truck as it meandered its way down the twisting mountain road in northern Bosnia. Except the eyes didn't belong to lookouts in an observation post along the road. They were in a modified US Air Force (USAF) C-135 flying at 35,000 feet along the East Coast of the United States, some 6,000 miles away. The USAF C-135, known by the name Speckled Trout, was participating in the 1996 Joint Warrior Interoperability Demonstration (JWID `96). JWID `96 is the eighth in a series of technology demonstrations designed to identify command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence (C4I) problems between the armed services, demonstrate improved operational capabilities for deployed forces, and promote interoperability among existing and emerging C4I systems needed to support a joint task force. As part of the exercise, the Air Force installed the first full-scale prototype Ku-band phased array receive antenna system on the Speckled Trout, a modified avionics testbed aircraft maintained by the 412th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The antenna, developed by Boeing Co., is capable of receiving broad- band, high data rate satellite communications, with civilian as well as military applications, Boeing spokesperson Charles Ramey told Newsbytes. According to Ramey, the antenna will "revolutionize mobile satellite communications by increasing the data flow by thousands of times over current capabilities." Depending on the satellite and receiver, he said, rates of up to 30 megabits-per-second (Mbps) may be realized through a single transponder. "To date, satellite communication to mobile platforms has been limited to relatively narrow bandwidths, and wide band communication has been subject to the limits of antenna technology," Ramey told Newsbytes. The Boeing design can be adapted to simultaneously receive signals from multiple satellites in different orbits with a single antenna. The electronically steered antenna also allows for rapid switching between different satellites. During the JWID exercises, which will continue through August 30, the Boeing antenna system is being used to receive satellite transmitted video and data to support the Global Broadcast Service (GBS) mission. GBS, Ramey said, is designed to provide the military with a worldwide, seamless, high-throughput broadcast information service to support current and future defense objectives. As one Air Force Colonel at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, told Newsbytes, "GBS is the CNN of the warfighter." EchoStar, a key member of the antenna demonstration team, transmitted video in Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) format for reception by the Boeing antenna system on the Speckled Trout. In addition to the video, an uplink data stream at T1, or 1.5Mbps, or higher is generated at the GBS uplink terminal testbed at the Operational Support Office facility located at the Naval research Facility near Washington DC. This signal, according to Ramey, is relayed through the GBS Americom K2 FSS satellite which downlinks to a receiver at an EchoStar facility. The data is then incorporated into the network broadcast system and retransmitted via the EchoStar 1 satellite to a GBS receiver. The data is then stored for retrieval by other systems, Ramey said, including the Global Command and Control System (GCCS), sponsored by the Air Force Communications Agency, and the Combat Information System, sponsored by the Air Intelligence Agency. "Other systems on board the Speckled Trout can retrieve data through the Boeing phased array antenna system, which is routed to terminals inside the aircraft for display and demonstration," Ramey said. The Speckled Trout also can track and receive video and data from EchoStar Dish Network TV, Hughes DirectTV, and USSB transmissions for display on a conventional monitor, Ramey said. Looking to commercial applications, Ramey said the phased array communication antenna system "offers the ability to provide passengers with more entertainment and information options. With the Boeing antenna system on board, passengers can have access to the entire spectrum of commercial television programming available from a BSS satellite." Ramey said the antenna system is capable of instantaneously bringing in approximately 100 channels from a given BSS satellite. (199670826/Press Contact: Charles Ramey, Boeing Defense & Space group, 206-657-1380)

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"The Observer" calls the internet a child pornography ring
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Banner Front page headline in the British Observer, Sunday 25th "The Peddlers of child abuse" see http://scallywag.com/ The internet is presented as a conspiracy by child molesters. There is a picture of Johan Helsingius, the man who free of charge provides an anonymous remailer service: The picture is captioned "The internet middle man who handles 90% of all child pornography" He is represented as personally profiting from the distribution of child pornography, though in fact no posts to binary newsgroups can go through his system, and no large binaries can go through his system, and he provides the anonymising service free of charge. There is a picture of Clive Feather, the man who runs the largest internet service provider in Britain, captioned "The school governor who sells access to photos of child rape"]] The observer article savagely demonizes all who use the internet, presenting it as primarily existing for the purpose of distributing child pornography, and demonizes and libels by name those who have sought to defend the liberty of netizens. I urge you all to check out this article, and send snail mail letters to the observer condemning (since they are obviously too low tech to read email) and email letters of support to those netizens who have been savagely libeled for their defence of liberty. --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald jamesd(a)echeque.com

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A _REALLY_ Interesting Bet
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Betting on football is one thing, but some of us would be very interested in the odds on US presidential election outcomes as November approaches. This kind of betting is illegal here, and I haven't looked lately for a "Ladbroke's" type site, but it is interesting because the betting odds from across the Atlantic more closely match eventual election results than the annoying calls from Gallup & Roper during suppertime. I have posted here, anonymously, on this topic before, but some of you are aware of who I am. I'll thank you to keep that a secret. ;}

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Re: The POUCH
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:44 PM 8/26/96 EDT, JOHN E. HOLT wrote: >The Pouch uses a 64 x 64 block product cipher, a 1024 bit random initialization >vector and the CBC technique. Most experts agree that such an implementation >is highly resistant to all forms of cryptographic attack. That depends highly on the cypher. Also depends on if your "initialization vector" is truly random. (Or even close, as some other companies have found in the past...) It is resistant to all attacks that you know of. Depending on the nature of the algorythm, this could be true in some sense, false in some sense and meaningless in some sense. Without published code, it is meaningless in all senses. >Hellman and Dilfie rely on knowing the algorithm for their known plain text >attacks >An unpublished algorithm forces them into reverse engineering the computer >programs to learn the algorithm. The POUCH has many roadblocks built in >to prevent this. As someone who has spent time reverse engeneering code, I find this one pretty funny. The only thing I have found that will obscure code in any real fashion is writing it badly. "Roadblocks" to reverse engeneering also tend to be a speed hit. Either way, it will not stop someone with the proper skills and tools. >I refer to Cummings, Cryptography and Data Security pages 150 and 98 in this >regard. Do we have to read them in reverse order or is that part of the roadblock you are using to make things more difficult...? I will be interested to see just what kind of liability problems you run into when this thing gets compromised. Of course, with a name like "The Pouch", you will probibly just claim it was a "kangaroo court". --- | "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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"The Observer" calls the internet a child pornography ring
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Banner Front page headline in the British Observer, Sunday 25th "The Peddlers of child abuse" see http://scallywag.com/ The internet is presented as a conspiracy by child molesters. There is a picture of Johan Helsingius, the man who free of charge provides an anonymous remailer service: The picture is captioned "The internet middle man who handles 90% of all child pornography" He is represented as personally profiting from the distribution of child pornography, though in fact no posts to binary newsgroups can go through his system, and no large binaries can go through his system, and he provides the anonymising service free of charge. There is a picture of Clive Feather, the man who runs the largest internet service provider in Britain, captioned "The school governor who sells access to photos of child rape"]] The observer article savagely demonizes all who use the internet, presenting it as primarily existing for the purpose of distributing child pornography, and demonizes and libels by name those who have sought to defend the liberty of netizens. I urge you all to check out this article, and send snail mail letters to the observer condemning (since they are obviously too low tech to read email) and email letters of support to those netizens who have been savagely libeled for their defence of liberty. --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Real-time key server
by Osborne, Rick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Okay, I was told to not post to the list until I'd: 1. Lurked for a month, 2. Figured out who Detweiler was, 3. Found out about BlackNet and DC Nets, 4. Learned of at least three of David Chaum's innovations. And at that point "[I] may be ready to post [my] first comments." Well, dammit, I can't wait that long. I need help now. I've only been on for 2 weeks, I have no clue who Detweiler is (other than the welcome message I haven't heard two words about him/her/it), and I know enough to sound stupid about the other stuff. But if you still think I'm worthy of listeneing to, then read on. I work for Northrop Grumman Corp (SBMS division) when I have been tasked to create a program for reciept of online forms. The entire division is wanting to go paperless, and I am the sole person doing it. (Yes, I'm going for pity here.) I am writing my own CGI remailer for insecure forms, but some of them have to be secure. I think the best way to go about this is a public-key system with both keys stored locally and the public keys stored on a networked database (for routing purposes; ie, it has to go through managers and admin and will be verified and digitally signed with each hop). Now, of course, acces to the public keys will be through a key server. This is where I come into my problem. In my research into keyservers, I find that none of them are realtime. Sure, there are CGI interfaces to them, but that's not what I mean. I was hoping for something along the line of a Finger or SMTP protocol, such that a client connects to a host (say, keyserv.northgrum.com) on a certain port (say, 5397) and goes through a realtime version of what is accomplished via email. Something like: [connect] client>GET osborri server>200 OK server>-----Begin . . . and so forth. Now. Yes, I am intelligent enough to implement something like this. (Actually, that's debatable, but it's also besides the point.) What I want to know is this: Is there a realtime implementation out there already? Why? Because: 1. I do not want to reinvent the wheel. 2. I would like to conform to existing standards. Now, if the answer is a 'no', then who wants to draft a quickie RFC? -oz

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Re: Sen. Leahy's "impeccable cyberspace credentials"
by raffetto＠podesta.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Josh Crockett is exactly right here... > It would seem >that we need to hunt down our issues and support them, seeing as that >politicians are notoriously unreliable on supporting every single issue >we would like them to support. And that's why Declan's message about Leahy is foolish. When you find a champion on the Hill for one issue, you rally around him/her. And when they won't support you on another issue, you find another champion. If your policy is to disown Hill allies (in this case, Leahy) who break ranks with you from time to time, you'll quickly run out of allies. And when you have no allies on the Hill, you're really screwed. John Raffetto

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