December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

PSS_sst
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New Scientist of 25 January reviews the Bernstein's case against crypto export, US global seduction of foreign goverrments to suppress domestic calls for privacy, and therewith deftly alerts British leaders and readers to undermining the "secretive bureaucratic" Uncle Sam scam, says the deft-underminer cpunkers quoted. ----- PSS_sst

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RE: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks maiing list
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ichudov(a)algebra.com wrote> >Sandy also states rather plainly that crypto-relevance is not the >criterion by which he moderates this list. I question this policy. > >I would like to hear your opinions as to whether such policies >satisfy the current readership. > > - Igor. I am not enthused about the perceived need for moderation. But neither was I enthused with the state of the list. However, I will reserve judgement as to the success or failure of the experiment for a while yet. The question for me is how much the moderation improves the S/N ratio v.s. how much it impedes dialogue. I expect Sandy to make mistakes, even by his own criterion. But anyone who will publicly admit to shaving his eyebrows is probably not swayed by popular opinion. James

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[DES] DES Key Recovery Project, Progress Report #7
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DES Key Recovery Project, Progress Report #7 Friday, Jan 23 1997 Peter Trei Next Tuesday morning, 9AM, RSA is scheduled to release the 'real' $10,000 DES challenge data. My software is in a state where it can be used for the challenge, though there is room for improvement. It currently tests about 185,000 keys/sec on my 90MHz machine. This translates to about 205,000 keys/sec on a 100 MHz machine. I still have to replace my DES round, which takes 25 clock cycles, with Svend Mikkelsen's, which takes only 18. Since the DES rounds are well over 80% of the work, this should boost the speed to over 250,000 keys/sec at 100 MHz. If I'm lucky, I'll perform this conversion over the weekend. I've sent out early betas to a few people for porting, but have had no feedback yet. I've approached several restricted FTP sites as possible distribution sites, and have had some positive responses, but nothing definitive yet. I'm being pretty strict in my interpretation of EAR for this purpose. In advance of the challenge, I'm willing to email copies as a ~100k uuencoded zip file to people, but to do so, you must comply with the following: 1. Send the request to ptrei(a)acm.org, NOT trei(a)process.com. I won't be able to read the latter for the next 10 days. 2. Include your 'true name' and residence address, as well as the email address to which it should be sent, . 3. A statement of your nationality. I'll mail it only to US Citizens, Canadian citizens, and US Green Card holders, residing in the US or Canada. 4. A statement to the effect that you understand that this is restricted code, and that cannot be exported or given to non-US/Canadian citizens I'm going to hold this information in strict confidence, and will surrender it only to a valid court order. It's similar to what you have to go through to download the domestic version of Netscape Navigator or PGP from MIT. You are free to distribute the software further. If you've complied with the requirements above, I believe that at that point I've done more than due diligence under ITAR/EAR. My software gets it's challenge data either from a text file cut-and-pasted from the RSA page, or from internally stored data. Tuesday night, I'll recompile the program with the real challenge data, and redistribute. My version runs on WinNT or Win95, on 486's and above. It's set up as a console app, which can run in background. I don't yet have a version for Win 3.1 or below 486, but may do in the future. The software is set up in such a way that it can be used either on a standalone system, or in a LAN environment with shared disks. The latter has a slightly more complex setup, but will allow many machines to share one executable and results file. I envisage people installing one copy on a shared disk in their workplace, and then adding the appropriate commands to the autoexec.bat file of every machine they can, so the program will start running whenever the machine is booted. (I HOPE you get permission!). The distribution includes both source and the Win32 executable. The source includes both fast Intel assembler, and much slower generic 'C'. There's nothing that's really Microsoft specific in the code - it should be easy to port to other systems with 32 bit or better processors. I'm attempting to do a 'PGP style' distribution with a signed, nested zip file. The signing key I'm using is available at http://www.ziplink.net/users/trei/crypto.html (I hope I've done this right). I'm only going to send out signed archives. If you get one where the signature fails, or one lacking a signature, I repudiate it - and you should be suspicous of it. I'll be trying to set up that URL as a page describing the project, with info on other efforts, and FAQs. Once the challenge starts, I hope you'll all evangelize it to your friends and acquaintences. I'd like to see 100,000 machines trying for the $10,000. All next week I'm in the San Francisco area (I'm flying out in a couple hours). I'll be attending the Verisign Partner's Day on Monday, and I'll be at the RSA Data Security Conference Tuesday through Friday. I'll be trying to read cypherpunks and coderpunks at least once a day, along with checking mail to ptrei(a)acm.org. I can't read cryptography(a)c2.net from an archive, so I will not see it unless it cc's ptrei(a)acm.org (Perry, could you temporarily subscribe ptrei(a)acm.org?) Happy hunting! Peter Trei ptrei(a)acm.org

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Sandy dumps Igor but allows KOTM
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy Sandfort, our Leader, Moderator, Guidance Counselor, Censor, and Speaker-to-Gilmour said: "By the way, contrary to what Dimitri has alleged, I have posted every message from him in which he was able to restrain himself with regard to gratuitous insults and/or spam. In other words, the set of Dimitri posts that have appeared on the moderated list is not the null set." However, KOTM wrote: "Anything? My good friend TRRCJ3 reports from San Francisco that the city is much nicer now that so many homosexuals are 6 feet under. "Thank God for AIDS." (end quote from KOTM) Nice to know Sandy is doing such an efficient job of moderating out the "flames," such as by kicking Igor's crypto-relevant article on denial of service attacks to the flame bucket while bending over backwards to appear to be "fair" to KOTM. Face it, it's a bad idea. The Cypherpunks community is not the private sandbox of Gilmour and Sandfort, and we don't need Sandy's "guidance" to keep us from being straying sheep. The list may currently be hosted on Gilmour's computer, but having Sandy decide what's right for us to read is inconsistent with Cypherpunks ideals. GenX --

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Re: THE NEW YORKER on the V-Chip
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:57 PM 1/23/97 -0800, Alan Bostick wrote: >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. You forgot about one thing, TV is one way. The V-chip will have dueling results. On the one hand, advertisers will only pay for shows that will have a large viewership. If that means that a rather objectionable show, which would traditionally draw a large population of pre-teens, can't be seen by its largest body of fans, it will probably be cut. On the other hand, TV execs won't have to worry about objections any longer and thus can broadcast what they want, assuming that they can find a decently large group of closet viewers. (Not a misstype, I meant people who are in the closet about their preferences, such as the minister with the playboy channel.) And TV is mostly one way. This net is two way, many of the shock posts were put here to draw fire. If the audience of these shock posts can not be reach to be outraged, the vile spewer will first raise the stakes, spewing even more garbage and then, finally, giving up. Just like the old argument, don't encourage them, just ignore them. Plus, a number of reply posts to the garbage will never be written because thier authors will have never seen the trash that they would have replied to.

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PSS_sst
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New Scientist of 25 January reviews the Bernstein's case against crypto export, US global seduction of foreign goverrments to suppress domestic calls for privacy, and therewith deftly alerts British leaders and readers to undermining the "secretive bureaucratic" Uncle Sam scam, says the deft-underminer cpunkers quoted. ----- PSS_sst

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2 Questions
by Steven M Orrin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey guys, 2 quick questions: Are there any known hacks or weaknesses in S/Key? Has Anyone heard of a new product called SecureWin from Cipher Logics Corp. It looks like vaporware but is a little more sophisticated than the usual product spams (like IPG, POTP, Encrypt-it, WinKrypt etc.) [I checked there web page some interesting fuctions, , No software available yet and Phone numbers are either busy or not in service, go figure] thanks Steveo

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Vulis posting on the moderated list
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Umm... is something going wrong with the moderation routines? Sandy also had a posting that he specifically _said_ was going to the flames & unedited lists _only_ that got to me. -Allen From: IN%"dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com" "Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" 24-JAN-1997 12:43:05.89 To: IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" CC: Subj: Homosexuals Received: from toad.com by mbcl.rutgers.edu (PMDF #12194) id <01IELB4M5E1C94FEIV(a)mbcl.rutgers.edu>; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 12:42 EDT Received: (from majordom@localhost) by toad.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id GAA25350; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 06:14:13 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 24 Jan 97 07:17:13 EST From: "Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" <dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com> Subject: Homosexuals Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Message-id: <199701241414.GAA25350(a)toad.com> X-Envelope-to: EALLENSMITH Precedence: bulk fuck you <satan_is_a_hacker(a)juno.com> writes in the censored list: > If anyone has any text files on the following topics please send them. ... > Anything underground Anything? My good friend TRRCJ3 reports from San Francisco that the city is much nicer now that so many homosexuals are 6 feet under. Thank God for AIDS. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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RE: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks maiing list
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ichudov(a)algebra.com wrote> >Sandy also states rather plainly that crypto-relevance is not the >criterion by which he moderates this list. I question this policy. > >I would like to hear your opinions as to whether such policies >satisfy the current readership. > > - Igor. I am not enthused about the perceived need for moderation. But neither was I enthused with the state of the list. However, I will reserve judgement as to the success or failure of the experiment for a while yet. The question for me is how much the moderation improves the S/N ratio v.s. how much it impedes dialogue. I expect Sandy to make mistakes, even by his own criterion. But anyone who will publicly admit to shaving his eyebrows is probably not swayed by popular opinion. James

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Re: THE NEW YORKER on the V-Chip
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:57 PM 1/23/97 -0800, Alan Bostick wrote: >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. You forgot about one thing, TV is one way. The V-chip will have dueling results. On the one hand, advertisers will only pay for shows that will have a large viewership. If that means that a rather objectionable show, which would traditionally draw a large population of pre-teens, can't be seen by its largest body of fans, it will probably be cut. On the other hand, TV execs won't have to worry about objections any longer and thus can broadcast what they want, assuming that they can find a decently large group of closet viewers. (Not a misstype, I meant people who are in the closet about their preferences, such as the minister with the playboy channel.) And TV is mostly one way. This net is two way, many of the shock posts were put here to draw fire. If the audience of these shock posts can not be reach to be outraged, the vile spewer will first raise the stakes, spewing even more garbage and then, finally, giving up. Just like the old argument, don't encourage them, just ignore them. Plus, a number of reply posts to the garbage will never be written because thier authors will have never seen the trash that they would have replied to.

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