December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by Wyntermute＠postoffice.worldnet.att.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

test message

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No Subject
by gary＠systemics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Tue Sep 24 00:06:48 1996 Return-Path: cypherpunks-errors(a)toad.com Received: from toad.com (toad.com [140.174.2.1]) by oak.westol.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with ESMTP id AAA15647 for <shadseek(a)westol.com>; Tue, 24 Sep 1996 00:06:48 -0400 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA23286 for cypherpunks-outgoing; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 11:26:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smokey.systemics.com (smokey.systemics.com [193.67.124.65]) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA23280 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 11:26:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from internal-mail.systemics.com (kp1HuXoYZnhRYRtN5QVHP59VjfL1vS2Z(a)internal-mail.systemics.com [193.67.124.74]) by smokey.systemics.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id UAA10263 for <cypherpunks(a)toad.com>; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 20:26:00 +0200 Received: (from gary@localhost) by internal-mail.systemics.com id UAA16049 for cypherpunks(a)toad.com; Mon, 23 Sep 1996 20:26:40 +0200 Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 20:26:40 +0200 From: Gary Howland <gary(a)systemics.com> Message-Id: <199609231826.UAA16049(a)internal-mail.systemics.com> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Reply-To: gary(a)systemics.com Subject: Security flaw in Microsft Explorer Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: 843538362.000 Status: U Program compromises IE security By Nick Wingfield September 23, 1996, 10:45 a.m. PT A start-up Internet company has posted a program on the Net that could allow Web sites to bypass the security controls in Internet Explorer, CNET has learned. The company, InfoSpace, created a program aimed at Net search engines such as Lycos and Excite that want to become the default search engine in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0. But the program, which is actually featured on the Lycos Web site, manages to circumvent Explorer's security warning window--an action that could let InfoSpace sneak programs onto a user's personal computer without warning. Although the InfoSpace program apparently was not created with malicious intent, it underscores the fragility of Internet Explorer's security defenses, as well as broader security issues related to downloading software over the Internet. The InfoSpace program sidesteps a security feature in Internet Explorer, called Authenticode, which is designed to allow users to verify the origins of a piece of software code, such as an ActiveX control, a script, or a plug-in. The Authenticode system requires a user to entrust the developer of a program, whether it's InfoSpace, Lotus Development, or IBM, not to install viruses or other destructive programs on the user's system. Although Authenticode does not prevent software developers from creating such programs, they can be held legally accountable for bad code. That's because the programs contain "digital signatures," a sort of ID card that allows perpetrators to be tracked down by law enforcement agencies. Microsoft works with VeriSign to provide digital signatures for programs. Last month, VeriSign took matters into its own hands by asking a developer, Fred McLain, to remove an ActiveX control called Exploder from his Web site. The Exploder control was designed to crash a user's computer after downloading. "Code signing is not a guarantee of code quality," Charles Fitzgerald, a product manager at Microsoft said. "It's an accountability trail." As with all digitally signed programs, users are offered the option to accept or to reject the InfoSpace program before installing it on their systems. Users are also offered the option to bypass the Authenticode warning window for all InfoSpace programs in the future. But the company's program registers InfoSpace as a "trusted publisher" in Explorer, effectively opening the browser to intrusions. The operation is akin to inviting a guest over to your house for dinner and having them copy the key to your front door without permission. InfoSpace executives denied that there was any malice intended in its program, adding that it has provided Lycos with an updated version of the code. Lycos plans to post the new program later this evening, according to InfoSpace. "It was a bug that got incorporated into the production code," InfoSpace CEO Naveen Jain said. Lycos CEO Bob Davis said he was not aware of the bug in the InfoSpace program and could not comment on it. The program is identified as Lycos Quick Search on the search engine's site. However, Microsoft officials expressed concern, saying it is hard to defend against once a user has consented to download code from the Net. "Clearly their software is doing something a tad aggressive," said Rob Price, a group program manager for Internet security at Microsoft."[With Authenticode], users are making a one-time trust decision, this is a persistent trust decision." Microsoft argued that Explorer provides better security than Netscape Communications' Navigator, which does not currently allow digital signatures on plug-ins. In Explorer, users are warned before downloading code even if the program does not contain a digital signature, though the source of the program is not identified. In contrast to plug-in software and ActiveX controls, Java applets are prevented from damaging a user's computer through built-in restrictions in the Java Virtual Machine. "Java is the model for dynamic executable content on the Net," said Eric Greenberg, group security manager at Netscape.

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No Subject
by Wyntermute＠postoffice.worldnet.att.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

test

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Re: crypto anarchy vs AP
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 AM 9/23/96 -0700, Clint Barnett wrote: >ever read "1984"? the appearance of a free lifestyle is most definitely >not a free lifestyle. I am hardly a friend of the state, and far from >being an advocate of the church, but multinational corporations running >the world for their own fun and profit makes my sphincter clench. The lifestyle in "1984" didn't appear free. Someone who thinks that an institution like the government that gains all its revenue by force and is armed with nukes is less dangerous than institutions that are shrinking in size and gain most of their revenue by voluntary exchange is nuts. DCF

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The daily word of advice regarding Tim Mayo
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What a joy to make a public mockery of Tim Mayo!

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Re: crypto anarchy vs AP
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 AM 9/23/96 -0700, Clint Barnett wrote: >>to create the appearance of as free a life style as they can for >>individuals > >ever read "1984"? the appearance of a free lifestyle is most definitely >not a free lifestyle. I am hardly a friend of the state, and far from >being an advocate of the church, but multinational corporations running >the world for their own fun and profit makes my sphincter clench. I think you're under a mis-impression here. At least in the libertarian circles where I do most of my political discussion, it is generally suspected that corporations grow large and powerful primarily BECAUSE OF assistance by and due to the policies of government. (heavy regulation favors large companies by keeping down small competitors, etc) Of course, that cause/effect relationship is intentionally hidden, and most of the public sees the show put on which appears to have the opposite effect: Anti-trust lawsuits, etc. Over time, the public is gulled into the false belief that if you get rid of the government, you get rid of the "only think that stands between us and the multi-national corporations." They believe this because the only government actions they see and recognize are anti-corporation. If they were aware of the truth, they'd realize that these large corporations are actually afraid of a free market, and that the companies consider big government to be their friends.. Just look at an excellent example: Intel versus IBM. Intel used to be this tiny upstart chip company from the Bay area and IBM was smokestack America. Now, Intel is the biggest (by dollar volume, anyway) chip company in the world and IBM is, well, considerably cut back from its heyday. At least in hindsight, IBM would have been "smart" to squash Intel, or buy it up, or have the government over-regulate it. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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We removed radikal 154 from xs4all :(
by tank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, We have temporary removed radikal 154 from xs4all. We did this because the german ICTF and BAW continued to stop IP-traffic to and from xs4all. They not only blocked the web-server (with more than 3100 homepages from users and compagnies) but 2 Class C-networks. The pressure was to high for both xs4all and it costumers (more than 12500 users). They were not able to mail, ftp, www in large parts of germany. The 47 mirrors of the radikal site made it possible for us to remove issue 154 from xs4all. All 47 mirrors are still accessable by german netizens. There is no filtering of traffic to these servers. The ICTF and BAW now have to deceide if they will block all ip-traffic to and from all 47 servers, or they have to stop their censoring actions. In both cases we will put the issue radikal 154 back online. We are still calling for more mirrors. The more mirrors, the more pressure on the ICTF and BAW to stop their censorship. You can get a copy of the who archive from ftp://utopia.hacktic.nl/pub/replay/pub/incoming or from one of the mirror-sites. regards, henk (SPG)

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Re: Bernstein hearing: The Press Release
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:23 PM 9/23/96, Declan McCullagh wrote: >On Sun, 22 Sep 1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > >> If California were to, say, ban speech critical of women's or homosexual's >> rights, would not the First Amendment trump this attempt? > >Not necessarily. > >The Supreme Court has upheld Title VII's ban on workplace "harassment." >The Court said it occured when "discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and >insult" in a workplace create an uncomfortable "working environment." > >Then there's public accomodation law, under which the (I recall) Greek >owner of a privately-operated diner was held liable for using the word >"nigger" where a black woman could overhear. Whoops! I didn't mean to intersect with "workplace" issues--I mean simple, pure, nonworkplace-related speech. To make this clearer and to separate Title VII stuff out: If California were to, say, ban speech which included the word "orange," or to ban speech which mentioned "Allah," wouldn't the First trump this attempt? As to Title VII and all that garbage, I think the First Amendment means what it says, and that there's something desperately wrong when many blacks call each other "niggers," as in "Yo, Nigga!," but nonblacks can be hit with lawsuits for letting this word slip out. By the way, I just read chunks of Ronald Dworkin's new book on the Constitution, and he makes some interesting comments on the feminist view that words hurtful to women ought to be censored...he's against such interpretations, and argues that if speech hurtful to women, or images hurtful to women, etc., are banned, then why not ban speech critical of Creationists, and speech insulting to Flat Earthers? --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Go away CIA
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:32 PM 9/22/96 -0500, Shane Brath <sbrath(a)froglit.scitele.com> wrote: >On Sat, 21 Sep 1996, Wearen Life wrote: >> I wont be suprised if they where ALSO watching who was visting your page. >But how would they go about globaly watching who goes to your URL, unless >they hack into your server and look at the log, or have a network sniffer >at a access point feeding you? 1) Spooks can do anything :-) 2) Network Solutions Inc., who runs the NIC, is run by spooks. While they don't run all the root-level domain name servers, they influence most of the US ones. It wouldn't be surprising if they can track DNS requests to the root servers, which would let them find which ISPs are looking for the addresses of which second-level domains. This isn't very informative when somebody at aol.com wants an address of compuserve.com (which will get cached at aol.com's DNS server anyway), but tells them a lot more when small-isp.com asks for skeeve.net's address, especially when they know which Usual Suspects are at small-isp.com . 3) Added-paranoia mode, for people who believed 2) :-) Suppose you've got a vanity domain name, like skeeve.net, and they really want to track you. So they hack the data in the .net nameserver to respond to requests for skeeve.net with 198.81.129.94, which tells you that www.skeeve.net is 191.127.0.42, which runs an http server that fetches the information from 203.28.52.181 that you're asking for and an SMTP relay hack that forwards the mail while keeping copies for itself. (Even if you're running SSL encrypted, it can probably still play active eavesdropper, knowing who's talking to 203.28.52.181, though it can't read the encrypted packets. If SSL is currently including IP addresses in the encrypted information to reduce spoofing, it can still at least hose the conversation.) Your ISP will cache this, so the next time somebody wants to talk to skeeve.net, it'll take care of that for them. This really doesn't work well for targets on aol.com, compuserve.com, prodigy.com, ix.netcom.com, worldnet.att.net, and uunet.net that are a bit big to filter all the traffic for, of course, but it catches most of the interesting people. 4) If they _do_ participate in the Network Access Points (e.g. fnords.net, on one of the Metropolitan Area Exchange FDDI rings, is really a CIA plant) they could probably sniff packets for people they don't have peering arrangements with. If you don't see the fnords, they won't eat your packets. If you do see the fnords, they will eat your packets, so you won't see them. This doesn't work as well for switch-based NAPs such as Big Hairy Routers or ATM switches, but ATM Virtual Circuits have fnords all over them anyway; that's why there are _5_ bytes in the header. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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Barlow/Taylor censorship debate
by rod＠wired.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Come join in John Perry Barlow's Brain Tennis debate (www.wired.com/braintennis/) versus CDA supporter and president of the National Law Center for Children and Families, Bruce Taylor, over government censorship and free speech. Taylor has also been a Justice lawyer and prosecutor for the city of Cleveland, where he prosecuted, among others, Larry Flint. Their debate will last from today through next Wednesday, October 2. To post, go to: http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/interact/replies_all?msg.25733 See you there! Roderick Simpson Associate Producer Wired Online

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