December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:04 AM 12/31/1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > There is a simple solution to keeping anonymous posters anonymous > under this or any similar scheme. Volunteers could act as > "gateways" for anonymous posts. Self-selected list members could > announce that they would forward anonymous posts using one of > their own tokens for the purpose. (In the alternative, the > gateway volunteers could be given extra tokens solely for that > purpose.) Would this expose the posters to liability? Unlike an anonymous remailer, they are deciding what to post. In the case of software, criminal liability result. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Booms, busts and cranks
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

by Terence Corcoran "ONCE again the holidays and other sources of good cheer, including a growing economy and rising stock markets, have been wrecked by the annual Maclean's/CBC News poll. In this annual national survey, the majority of Canadians express generally sensible views on most issues--less government isn't so bad, a bigger role for the private sector is good, debt reduction hasn't gone far enough, private health care is acceptable, as are multiracial immigration ... ... "An accompanying Maclean's story on the looming expansion of the private sector is mostly an anti-business report that chastises companies for layoffs and mean-spirited bottom-line thinking. The problem, it claims, is the failure to hold companies responsible for anything other than maximizing shareholder value, a popular theme among statists who have run out of state. http://web.theglobeandmail.com/web/cgi-bin/ DisplayPage?SITE=web&KEY=961231.ROBColumn.RCORC

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Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Hal Finney wrote: > An alternative is to give each subscriber only a small, fixed number of > blinded tokens which he will use for the lifetime of his subscription > to the list. When someone posts anonymously, they use up one of their > tokens. Then, if the message was not abusive, a new blinded token is > created, encrypted with the public key of the good-guy anonymous poster, > and broadcast to subscribers. This way good anonymous posters will get > to keep posting, while abusive ones will shortly run out of anonymous > posting tokens. Oops, ran out of tokens.... UNSUBSCRIBE cypherpunks SUBSCRIBE cypherpunks Lance OK now I'm ready to post more crap!

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Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:25 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >The easiest and fastest solution is to set up toad.com to charge a >dollar per message. (Proceeds to be spent by John Gilmore as he >sees fit.) > >We can then leverage off the existing e-cash infrastructure which >already provides blinding software for free on all major platforms. I am not sure that this proposal would work. Some of the spammers on this list are rather dedicated. They might gladly pay a dollar per message. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

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[IMPORTANT] ElGamal
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim Mayonnaise's abysmal grammar, atrocious spelling and feeble responses clearly identify him as a product of the American education system. \0/ \0/\ \ / / \0/ \0/ \0/\ \ / /\0/ \0/ Tim Mayonnaise | / /) | (\ | | / /) | (\ \ | / \__/\__/0\__/0\__/0\__/ \__/ \__/\__/0\__/0\__/0\__/\__/ \

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Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "Mark M." <markm(a)voicenet.com> > On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > > Send a number of unique tokens to each subscriber each day. > [...] > > If tokens are used improperly (to post off-topic materials) the > > offending subscriber is denied any further tokens. > > > > The problem of this scheme is (besides its cost) that anonymous users > > will not be truly anonymous. > > I think this problem can be solved by blind signing the tokens. A user > generates a random number, multiplies it by the blinding factor, then sending > it to a token server which would append a timestamp and sign the blinded > token. All signature requests should be signed with a PGP key. The server > response would be encrypted with the user's public key. A person's PGP key > would be sent along with the subscription request and then saved by the list > software. This is an interesting idea, however it will be possible for someone with a respectable public persona to continue getting tokens indefinately for posting abusive anonymous messages. There is no way to link the anonymous tokens with the ones which were issued to good subscribers. An alternative is to give each subscriber only a small, fixed number of blinded tokens which he will use for the lifetime of his subscription to the list. When someone posts anonymously, they use up one of their tokens. Then, if the message was not abusive, a new blinded token is created, encrypted with the public key of the good-guy anonymous poster, and broadcast to subscribers. This way good anonymous posters will get to keep posting, while abusive ones will shortly run out of anonymous posting tokens. The big problem with schemes like this is the difficulty of defining "good" posts in an acceptable way. Some list members are hard-line freedom-of-speechers and don't want to see any limitations on list postings. Others would probably classify 80% of the messages on the list at times as grounds for termination of posting privileges. Everyone will have their own thresholds. There is also the administrative problem of who will judge the posts. This could take a large commitment of time. I'm sure many of us have gotten behind in our list reading from time to time and it can be intimidating to return from a trip to find hundreds of messages waiting. Imagine how it would be if you were supposed to be reading them and looking for bad messages. We might also want to consider the paradoxical possibility that if we remove the junk, the list will die! At least now we are constantly reminded that the cypherpunks list exists. Other lists like the cryptography and coderpunks can sometimes go for quite a while without any posts at all. On CP you have the sense of a dynamic community where you can hope for a response to your posts, more so than on a list which is silent for days at a time. Hal

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Cash-Grabber-Reversal !!!
by bizman＠mwt.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Some time ago....you shared an email message with me. I'm not going to tell you to quit doing what your doing but... I will share something that may help and compliment your current offer. Yours FREE! I will send you a copy of my "Reversal Letter" that has made over $1.098.00 last month. Use this powerful letter to anyone who sends you a offer via direct mail. The "Reversal Letter" is sent snail mail only, If you would like to get a copy of this "money-grabbing...cash producing letter" email me your snail mail address. If you are working a Primary MLM or business opportunity...feel free to let us know, The Reversal Letter is sent to people who send you their offers. Powerful! Thank You!

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Re: Old Russian Orthography
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji <yamato(a)YT.CACHE.WASEDA.AC.JP> writes: > Hello friends, a Happy New Year to you all. Thank you! And a Happy New Year to you too. <very interesting stuff - near year's present? - skipped> > Incidentally, I wonder how one can transliterate oldish Russian alphabets? > I am sure fita should be "th", but as to dotted i and jat', I haven't got > the faintest idea. I remember seeing an old Library of Congress transliteration table where jat' was transliterated as e with some accent, and dotted i was an i with some accent. I took a quick look on my shelf and can't find it now. (LOC is not a good scheme, since one can't always recover the original from it. :-) The U.S.G. Printing Office manual seems to suggest that one translates into the new orthography before transliterating (fita to f, dotted i and izhitsa to i, yat' to e or yo). This may lead to an occasional problem: suppose you have an index alphabetized according to the old rules: ib.. ik... (regular i) ia... ie... (dotted i before another vowel) If you fold dotted i into i, you'll be looking for 'ia' before 'ib'. Ditto for yat', which came much later than e in the collating sequence.

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Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:47 AM 12/31/1996, Lucky Green wrote: >At 10:25 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >> The easiest and fastest solution is to set up toad.com to charge a >> dollar per message. (Proceeds to be spent by John Gilmore as he >> sees fit.) >> We can then leverage off the existing e-cash infrastructure which >> already provides blinding software for free on all major platforms. > I am not sure that this proposal would work. Some of the spammers on this > list are rather dedicated. They might gladly pay a dollar per message. Let's try it and see how it goes. If it doesn't work, we can try a more complicated scheme. (I volunteer to modify Majordomo to make this happen. We could have this feature in the near future.) I think we should understand that two features are being discussed. One is protecting the list from spam attacks. By this I mean attacks where somebody sends very large numbers of messages to the list and brings the mail server to its knees. Charging a dollar a message solves this problem - just buy more hardware with the proceeds. If The Enemy wishes to finance the cypherpunks list - more power to him. The other feature is filtering. I do not need anybody to filter my mail. I am quite capable of doing it myself, thank you. If somebody wants to set up a tokened filter scheme, that is great, but let's see it implemented as an added header to the cypherpunks messages. Then people can filter on it if they want, but it should be their choice. Anybody who cannot set up such a filter, or find somebody who can set up such a filter for them, or cannot find somebody who will forward only filtered messages to them, is too helpless to be a cypherpunk. I have seen a lot of complaints about "too much noise". That is not a problem. The problem is too little signal. I can extract the signal - unless it isn't there. I propose that we spend the money on food for the monthly meeting. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Zippy, anonymously
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.metahtml.com/apps/zippy/welcome.mhtml Let Zippy provide you with web service. Chaining through the anonymizer works, too. :) Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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