December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: ideal secure personal computer system
by tom bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> = ph(a)netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) wrote: >> = tom bryce wrote: >> (2) Partition the hard drive into two partitions: >> install the system folder on one and a copy of CryptDisk >> make this the startup partition and make it READ ONLY with aliases to >> folders you want to be modiyfable (such as Eudora Folder in the sys >>folder) >> place these folders on the encrypted partition > >I don't think you will be able to do this. I have heard that too many >things modify files in the system folder for this to work. It wouldn't >surprise me if the OS modifies its own boot file from time to time. > >I'm not expert. If you get this working I would appreciate it if you >were to post it to the list or let me know directly. -and- >Watch out for the clipboard which appears to be stored as a file in >the system folder. Unfortunately, it has to be a real file - aliases >not allowed. This makes it harder to have a read only system folder >and, of course, every time you cut and paste something you leave a >ghost on the disk for an undefined length of time. It's hard to >work on the Mac without using the clipboard. The fact that you can start up and run your system from a CD rom proves that you can lock your startup disk. Grab a DISK TOOLS disk from your most recent system installer disks (mine is 7.5) and flip the write protect tab, then start up from it. Clipboard works, too. I haven't worked with such a system extensively enough to see if there are any glitches (such as copying large amounts of stuff to the clipboard, etc.) but it should get the job done for the truly paranoid. I have a few items in the system folder presently aliased out onto other disks - my Eudora Folder is on an encrypted partition, and there's no reason one couldn't do this with the whole preferences folder and other stuff. >> If locking the startup volume turns out to be too much of a pain, one could >> install trashguard from Highware software and set it to triple overwrite >> deleted files, and otherwise not lock the startup partition. > >I'm guessing you already know this, but once you've written something >to the disk you might as well assume it's there forever. Triple overwrite >of files will defeat Norton Utilities, but may not stop a determined >opponent. Right. I'm proposing this as a compromise if you wish to trade security for convenience. >Commercial data recovery services claim to be able to recover data >after nine formats of the disk. It is difficult to say for certain >what the technical limits of this technology are. For instance, maybe Colin Plumb gave me estimates of what you needed to wipe a disk clean once, which he researched for SFS. It depends on whether the erasure pattern is custom designed for the data to wipe. It was something vaguely like (don't quote me) 15 passes if custom designed, and 25 if not. This refers, as I recall, to data freshly written to the disk. Data that hangs out for a while 'leaks' deeper into the disk, with adjacent molecules becoming aligned further between tracks and deeper into the disk and is harder to erase. A dejanews search under colin's name should yield his extensive posts on this topic. Tom

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FUCK ME HARD
by Igor Chudov ＠ home 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FUCK NME HARD

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hahaha
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

test

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Re: Dr. Vulis
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:59 PM 11/5/96 +0100, Gary Howland wrote: >> > I recall we've been through this over a year ago, when I saw an announcement >> > of a cypherpunks physical meeting where someone was excluded for his political >> > views, and I said that I don't consider myself a cypherpunk. I'm glad that >> > John and Bill, the auhorities on cypherpunk membership, finally concur. > > >I think he is referring to the explicit and public non-invite of Jim >Bell to a cypherpunks meeting, due to some of Jim Bell's Assination >Politics posts. >Gary I'd like to correct this impression. Alan Olsen was, apparently, quite aware of my AP posts when I (and everyone else) was invited to the first Portland CP meeting. I had heard no objection to them from him. The meeting was advertised as being sufficiently confidential that he specifically requested that nobody take pictures or record the meeting, etc. Fair enough, I thought. I generally interpreted this to mean that the meeting was at least approximately "off the record." Arriving at the meeting, I detected no indication that Alan Olsen was at all disturbed at me, or anything I had said previously. At the meeting all went well, _or_so_I_thought_. It was all very routine. One thing I decided to mention, actually only hint at, was a technical capability that I was working one. However, I gave merely the broadest hints; What I did say would certainly have sounded technically at least implausible, if not quite impossible. (The situation was somewhat analogous to the old story about the blind men coming across an elephant; one touches only the tail and calls it a snake, the other touches a leg and calls it a tree, etc.) Intentionally, I didn't explain how I would accomplish the goal I described. Even so, there was still no indication from Alan Olsen that anything was amiss. And the meeting ended on that note. Much to my surprise, Alan Olsen blurted out over the CP list only a barely fair description of what I had said (which itself was only the hints I chose to describe) and called me various names, etc. I think he used the term "voodoo" to describe what I was planning to develop. When, eventually, I _do_ explain the whole thing, and I repeat exactly what I told the assembled group, it will become obvious why what I described _sounded_ so implausible, yet was quite doable given modern technology. I should point out that given how little I told, avoiding the REAL explanation, it could very well have been taken for voodoo. And it didn't surprise me that SOMEBODY would have come to that impression. The surprising and shocking thing about it was that he (Alan Olsen) violated the very confidentiality he had insisted on, without any sort of warning, and after-the-fact. Needless to say, I raked him over the coals publicly, on CP, for having done this, and he was severely chastized because of this. "Ripped him a new one" might describe it, although he certainly deserved the treatment. Obviously, a number of people on this list got the mistaken impression that this disagreement had something to do with my AP proposal. As far as I know, quite the contrary, it did not. But I saw two possibilities, after the fact: One, Alan Olsen hid his disapproval for AP, hoping to catch me in some sort of contradiction. Two, after he was embarrassed by my calling him on his bad behavior, he grabbed at the first thing he could think of to criticize me. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: WIPO Treaty: Worse than CDA- Deadline 22 Nov 96
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:22 AM 11/11/96 +0000, attila(a)primenet.com wrote: > WIPO Treaty: Worse than CDA > Deadline 22 Nov 96 for comment to Congress > WIPO was introduced this spring to Congress. It is not > understood by either the Clinton administration or the Congress and > few of the public are aware of the problem! [snip] > I am deleting the bulk of the report for brevity, including only > the definition of the "database" as it applies to WIPO. > >.WHAT IS A DATABASE? WHAT ISN'T A DATABASE? >.The treaty would protect "any database that represents a >.substantial investment in the collection, assembly, verification, >.organization or presentation of the contents of the database." >. >.This term should be understood "to include collections of >.literary, musical or audiovisual works or any other kind of >.works, or collections of other materials such as texts, sounds, >.images, numbers, facts, or data representing any other matter or >.substance" and "may contain collections of expressions of >.folklore." The "protection shall be granted to databases >.irrespective of the form or medium in which they are embodied. Somebody must have said, once, that the winner in an argument is the one who gets to define the terms. Notice how the term "protect" and "protection" are misused above. (not by Attila, of course; but by whomever he's quoting.) However, the term "protect" has long been misused by lawyers in just such a way. "Monopolize" would be a more appropriate word under the circumstances. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: a retort + a comment + a question = [RANT]
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:45 PM 11/10/1996, SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP(a)smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil wrote: > ...and you've got a foreign soldier waving a .45 around... Ummm.... just a .45? Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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No Subject
by Mark Neely 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>PLEASE TAKE ME OFF YOUR MAILING >LIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm sorry Jayme, but you didn't include the requisite number of !'s, so we cannot process your request. Mark Neely - accessnt(a)ozemail.com.au Lawyer, Internet Consultant, Professional Cynic & Author BizWeb: For Serious Intrepreneurs - www.maximedia.com.au/bizweb

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Re: a retort + a comment + a question = [RANT]
by Murray Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 10 Nov 96 21:45:56 EST, SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP(a)smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil wrote: >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >dave kinchlea wrote: >>As said in "Hair" (the movie), "Don't do it for me man, 'cause >>if the shoe was on the other foot, I wouldn't do it for you!" > >>It's a lie anyway, you do it for yourself. > >That's an _easy_ judgment to make (and i definitely have to stop >adding anecdotes from my life in these things!), but you missed the >point - the freedoms the Cpunks diligently try to preserve (or seem to >want to create...) are protected _by_ the military. who was it that >said: "law, without force, is impotent" -? The military's sole purpose is to destroy things and kill people. Freedom is protected by the poeple for the people some of which are in the military. The force is not nessasary to enforce laws in most circumstances. How many gun battles erupt at speed traps? Granted, there are instances where some force is required in arresting violent individuals, but it is still illeagal for the police to use ecessive force. > >keep in mind that even "bad" laws have to be enforced. you can scream >all you want about "good, strong" cryptostuffs, but if the phone lines >are slashed, the satellite links are down, the elcerticity is off and >you've got a foreign soldier waving a .45 around - just how are you >going to boot up that pretty little computer and make it encode >information for you, much less get it anywhere? anarchy implies >ruthlessness - you going to practice cryptostuffs from a prison cell? You are wrong about bad laws being enforced. Many laws are not enforeced by the police. Have you never been "let off" or "givin a warning" by the police? How many times have you seen people j walk in front of the police who did nothing? Computers are not nessasary to encode data, they just make it a lot eaiser and faster. Where did I put that secret decoder ring???? mhayes(a)infomatch.com It's better for us if you don't understand It's better for me if you don't understand -Tragically Hip

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GAK?
by Mark M. Lacey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Could someone please fill me in on what GAK stands for since it seems to be central to some of the on going conversations. Thanks, Mark M. Lacey <mml(a)halcyon.com> "Speaking for nobody but myself." [Finger mml(a)halcyon.com for my PGP public key.] [If you don't have 'finger', e-mail me for it.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMobmyB/Hx+OuZC/tAQGRTAf/R2t+/JC1k3lhQcqIcRWO2HyxHgf6+ko2 2ngQBXyMrInQtaXorcZ2LFrfie4GD68S0nLWKlwqaN09+/O72Bze1pyGd3dHBI4b vazgQZq1zxWuHcCYg1r5QDwt0NJOZg4tRHROHmUiuLLeNfFwusWPnW+RMI2nTo39 g/sXWhRUF83vhyztC5+zOKmxjEQOBf3Wxq0FLBAoSUjzuJKnRNV87Fnf2vzezqc4 cK+A8DcRN0c0kX/LuNO9pnXo+3J8gMMDsoZAOS5KAgWQjJT3fdroTLX4xmRcBVJ3 NanTSXWsFIMlnXAjBS7V+5S/3gAml+y5tqLiNJAhoVVD/nvyvQDmAg== =QyM4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Sifting data; looking for "strong crypto"
by Murray Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As far as bit patterns go, is executable code random? mhayes(a)infomatch.com It's better for us if you don't understand It's better for me if you don't understand -Tragically Hip

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