December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 18:59:34 +0100 (MET) > From: Asgaard <asgaard(a)Cor.sos.sll.se> > Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd) > > >The Web does not equal the Internet, straw man argument. > > A semantic comment: > > We here all know that this is right but it's obvious that > the language is sliding towards Internet = Web. Most people Typical modern American attitude, getting it right is too much work so let's lower the benchmark so anyone can be 'right'. You'll be supporting Ebonics next. Blah. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 02:58:41 -0800 > From: Toto <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> > Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd) > > > If the people in those counties want to give away their freedom that > > is their business (and right), not mine, yours, or this countries unless > > there is evidence they are trying to take their views and impose them here. > > Right. And if someone 'chooses' to give their money to a thief with > a gun, then it is not the business of other people, or the police. > I would hate to interfere with someones 'right' to get robbed, > raped, or murdered. This is a perfect example of why we disagree. You feel society has the same responsibilities as an individual, I don't. Countries and societies are a tightly linked concept because man is a social animal. Trying to equate this to an individual who chooses to ignore the moral, ethical, and legal standards of their society is a non-sequiter. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: [Noise] From The Onion
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> SATAN TO REVISE BAR CODE SYSTEM [snip] Not to be outdone, Satan's major competitor, Choronzon, Chief Demonic Officer and only resident of the accursed 10th Aether of the Enochian System, today announced his own plans for a system to label his mortal followers and regulate their business transactions. "Stamping numbers on the foreheads and hands of individuals is primitive technology," Choronzon explained, snapping his barbed tail, and emitting a sulphurous plume. "We are pleased to announce our plans to identify our followers using digital watermarking technology licensed from RSA Data Security, Inc." Implementation of the scheme, which will involve the encoding of a subtle full-body pattern into each individual by surface ablation with high powered eximer lasers, will be managed by Choronzon's Supreme Legate to the Material World, Jim Bidzos. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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GOO_gol
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Richard Crandall, NeXT scientist, writes eloquently on large numbers in February SciAm. He cites cryptographic strength as one result of research on the gargantuan googol and googolplex. He reviews current work on sieve techniques for factorization -- Quadratic, Number Field, Elliptic Curve Method and others -- as well as advanced algorithms. And exclaims: Blaine Garst, Doug Mitchell, Avadis Tevanian, Jr., and I implemented at NeXT what is one of the strongest -- if not the strongest -- encryption schemes available today, based on Mersenne primes. This patented scheme, termed Fast Elliptic Encryption (FEE), uses the algebra of elliptic curves, and it is very fast. ----- GOO_gol Thanks to PJP for pointing.

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 18:59:34 +0100 (MET) > From: Asgaard <asgaard(a)Cor.sos.sll.se> > Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd) > > >The Web does not equal the Internet, straw man argument. > > A semantic comment: > > We here all know that this is right but it's obvious that > the language is sliding towards Internet = Web. Most people Typical modern American attitude, getting it right is too much work so let's lower the benchmark so anyone can be 'right'. You'll be supporting Ebonics next. Blah. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 02:58:41 -0800 > From: Toto <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> > Subject: Re: Fighting the cybercensor. (fwd) > > > If the people in those counties want to give away their freedom that > > is their business (and right), not mine, yours, or this countries unless > > there is evidence they are trying to take their views and impose them here. > > Right. And if someone 'chooses' to give their money to a thief with > a gun, then it is not the business of other people, or the police. > I would hate to interfere with someones 'right' to get robbed, > raped, or murdered. This is a perfect example of why we disagree. You feel society has the same responsibilities as an individual, I don't. Countries and societies are a tightly linked concept because man is a social animal. Trying to equate this to an individual who chooses to ignore the moral, ethical, and legal standards of their society is a non-sequiter. Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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THE NEW YORKER on the V-Chip
by Alan Bostick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In the Jan. 20, 1997, issue of THE NEW YORKER, the "Comment", written by Malcolm Gladwell, makes a powerful arguement about the unintended consequences of the V-Chip, the programmable device to be included in next-generation television sets sold in the US that supposedly will allow parents to control their children's access to sex and violence on TV. Gladwell makes an analogy between V-Chipped TV content and air-conditioned cars in the New York City subway system in summertime: " . . . we need air-conditioners on subway cars because air-conditioners on subway cars have made stations so hot that subway cars need to be air-conditioned." Similarly, he argues, "the V-chip is likely to increase the amount of sex and violence on television, not decrease it" because when viewers can block offensive programming, there is far less pressure on broadcasters and cable operators to avoid offending. This is just the sort of thing that John Young is given to scanning and putting up on his Web site or sending out to people who send him email with FUN_nie subject lines. If I were him, I'd put it up. And, for the benefit of those people who don't think the V-Chip isn't in itself on-topic for cypherpunks, I might point out that Gladwell's argument applies equally well to mail filtering with procmail recipes -- or Sandy's and John's list moderation experiment. If the noise level on the unmoderated list jumps to even higher than we were seeing before the moderation began, that would provide observational support to Gladwell's argument. -- Alan Bostick | To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height mailto:abostick@netcom.com | of elegance. news:alt.grelb | Jean Genet http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~abostick

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Re: fingerd
by Steven L Baur 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

snow writes: >> > Couple of things you can do: >> > 2. Install a more secure "fingerd" such that it only >> > allows "finger `userid(a)node.domain`" instead of >> > "finger `(a)node.domain`". > cfingerd can be gotten from: cfingerd is not a safe program. It must run as root, and has some big problems. Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 18:34:43 +0200 (MET DST) From: Janos Farkas <chexum(a)shadow.banki.hu> To: Administrador da Rede <admrede(a)opensite.com.br> cc: linux-security(a)tarsier.cv.nrao.edu Subject: Re: Finger Doubt Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.960918181033.2523A-100000(a)shadow.banki.hu> Howdy people! On Tue, 17 Sep 1996, Administrador da Rede wrote: > I use the newest version of cfinger, setted to not allow general finger, just > specific ones. Does anyone knows how this person did that ? I hope I can > find out, otherwise, bye bye finger service. Badly. I have sent the author a letter, but never got any reply back (it's 3 months later now!), so I just take the opportunity to warn the public against its use. Excerpts from the source (1.2.3, older versions have been a bit more directly broken, now it has root privs only at the moments it shouldn't have.) "This daemon must be run as root!" [And unfortunately, does..] ... unlink ("/tmp/fslist"); ... sprintf(st, "%s | tail +2 >> /tmp/fslist", prog_config.finger_program); ... system(st); A similarly terrible one some lines later: system("cat /tmp/fslist | sort > /tmp/fslist.sort"); As it stands, it can allow any local user to destroy any file on the system, including partition tables on disks. Please someone correct me if I am wrong, I tried this with cfingerd-1.2.2 and it allowed me to do bad things. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of any reply from the author, so I think I am now justified to tell that if anyone installed cfingerd (about 1.1 or later) on his system, disable it IMMEDIATELY, until at least the author clarifies this bug in a new version. The current version is BAD. However if you just need a finger daemon, you may take a look at xfingerd, at ftp://ftp.banki.hu:/pub/xfingerd/xfingerd-0.1.tar.gz which is the one I wrote when I got desperate about cfingerd. (If you take a look at its date stamp, you can see that cfingerd is long broken..) I too can't garantee that it's good for you, but it at least doesn't require to be run as root, which is why I started being against cfingerd. I hope this note finds everyone concerned. Janos -- steve(a)miranova.com baur Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be billed at $250/message. Real men aren't afraid to use chains on icy roads.

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RE: Just another government fuckover: New crypto regulations
by Brett Carswell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>-----Original Message----- >From: Toto [SMTP:toto@sk.sympatico.ca] >Sent: Friday, January 24, 1997 12:29 AM >To: Attila T. Hun >Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Re: Just another government fuckover: New crypto regulations > >Attila T. Hun wrote: > >> free speech, which is what we are talking about. supposedly >> absolute freedom of speech in America was in the Articles of >> Confederation and was a major point of the Declaration of >> Independence. free speach was an "intention" of the Magna Carta. > >> ::> books are an intellectual 'solution' to the problem. the real >> ::>problem is the hardware. in order to negate governments and their >> ::>virtually stated intentions of blocking our inalienable freedoms, >> ::>particularly freedom of speach, we must be able to distribute >> ::>universal crypto worldwide, and be able to improve it as the shadow >> ::>governments of the various spook shows improve their ability to >> ::>break our code. > >Dear Mr. Hun, > I see that your post was expunged from the cypherpunks-politically- >correct-outgoing list. > I am assuming that it was as a result of linking crypto to free >speech. >Perhaps you need to fall more into line with the New List Order. > >Toto > >More likely 'grep dimitri '

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If you were unable to download UDCM V2.0 before....
by DataETRsch＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

{If you were unable to download UDCM V2.0 before, we're extremely sorry.} {UDCM's web site may have been under construction during the time you visited.} {UDCM's web site has finished undergoing its changes and will operate correctly.} {UDCM V2.0 has been extensively modified from its previous variation.} {Digital signaturing and public key cryptosystem capabilities have been added.} {UDCM's DS and PKCS techniques do NOT make use of conventional PN factoring.} {UDCM's source code is currently unavailable. PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST IT.} {UDCM's on-line help documentation has also been extensively modified.} {This advertisement has also been modified.} Hello, Greetings! I am Jeremy K. Yu-Ramos, president of DataET Research, Data Engineering Technologies. I am sending you this message to let you know that DataET Research has recently initiated the distribution of UDCM, Universal Data Cryptography Module. UDCM implements a revolutionarily new, extremely advanced and sophisticated, digital data encryption algorithm named IMDMP, Integrated Mathematical Data Manipulation and Positioning. UDCM (the IMDMP algorithm)... o Is a royalty-free Windows DLL module featuring advanced cryptography. o Contains more than 150 procedures and functions. o Is a very cost-effective size of only 60 kilobytes. o Implements the IMDMP encryption algorithm. o Allows encryption keys as large as 2048 bits. o Includes 18 sub-algorithms. o Processes all forms of binary and ASCII files. o Allows multiple encryption layer levels. o Has absolutely no back-doors or magical keys. o Includes time and date locking features. o Includes file specific unique encryption features. o Includes file authentication guard features. o Includes digital signaturing capabilities. o Implements the public key cryptosystem method of security. o Includes data importance and sensitivity stamping features. UDCM, being a Windows DLL module, can be accessed through programs developed with popular application and database programming languages and environments such as: C, C++, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Delphi, OOP Pascal, Turbo Pascal, dBase, Paradox, Access, Sybase, Oracle, etc. DataET Research has released a shareware version of UDCM named UDCM V2.0. To download UDCM V2.0 for free, please go to: http://members.aol.com/dataetrsch/udcm.html. I hope you will consider applying UDCM in the software you develop. Thank-you very much for your time. Sincerely, Jeremy K.Yu-Ramos President DataET Research Data Engineering Technologies

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