December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Enough is Never Enough -- pro-CDA alliances, from TNNN
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale wrote: > > This Donna Rice-Hughes couldn't possibly be the Donna Rice who sat on > > Gary Hart's lap for the famous picture, could she? > But of course... she was emotionally traumatized by the who experience > (or some such line) and is now 'reformed'. The mind boggles. I've gotten several confirmations on this, and no negatives, so.... What I remember is that Hart and Schweiker were on one of the intel committees in the early 1970's, working more-or-less side by side with Frank Church et al, uncovering the real dirty laundry of the CIA and its infiltration of nearly every college and important business and media in the USA. Hart's minor spillage to the press must have pissed someone off, so they got the famous picture with Rice in all the papers, and Hart's presidential bid went right down the toilet. Now this same girl is on the righteous team, like Chuckie Colson? Yeah, I believe it. My you-know-what is starting to pucker up.

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INV_ade
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1-19-97. NYP: "At the New Frontier of Eavesdropping." Markoff. Many phone companies are now rushing to introduce new digital services that provide better sound quality. But when security standards were set for the new systems five years ago, technical experts from the Government discouraged the phone companies from building in coding systems that would be difficult to break. Moreover, the phone companies themselves decided that real privacy was not a major issue. "Time to market turned out to be more important than real security," said John Gilmore. Indeed, in recent weeks the supposedly secret formula for scrambling digital wireless phone calls was posted to an Internet mailing list. That virtually insures that hackers will soon create a way to modify scanners like the one the Martins used, making digital calls just as vulnerable as analog calls are today. "There's a period in which privacy prevails over surveillance, but it's never for very long." ----- INV_ade

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.1234567891011... is irrational?
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmmm, irrational means "not expressible as the ratio of two integers" and since the class of integers (I) includes the concept of infinity, .123456789101112131415 = 1234567891011121314... ------------------------ n where n -> infinity Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Tomorrow
by jkurfis＠interserv.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I_Love_SPAM, Hello, If you spend time on any of the online services or the internet then I have some exciting news. The Middle Income Financial Independence Club is now excepting new members. We are an online club of Middle Income people who have joined together to pursue our financial future from the information superhighway. If you would like membership information then please email me at jkurfis(a)interserv.com Start your online future today!

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And who will "moderate" the windbag Sandfort?
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the biggest offendors in getting into long flamewars has always been Sandfort himself. Why am I not surprised that most of his recent posts have had nothing to do with crypto but a lot to do with his own flames about others? And at such length, oh vey! He said: "First, I did not use it as a legal term of art, so a legal dictionary is not appropriate. Second, I see no sustantive difference between "forejudgment" and my shorthand version (pre-judge). Third, I wrote "literal." Examine the etimology of the word for it's literal meaning. It's pretty obvious AND specific [ME.; OFr, /prejudice/ (Fr. /prejudice/); L praejudicium/, from /prae/, before, and /judicium/, a judgment, from /judex/, /judicgis/, a judge.] In other words, to pre-judge. Get it?" Blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda yadda yo momma wears army boots yadda yadda blah blah This longwinded flame is from a longwinded windbag. He proposes to screen the posts of others for "suitability" but flames others ("dont be such an ass" in another of this afternoon's posts from him) and resorts to long and boring dissections like this one. "I have no intention nor duty to satisfy everyone. That is not possible. I will use a "reasonable person" test. (I am, by the way, using this in the legal term of art sense.)" Who will moderate this "windbag"? He thinks the list is his. It may run on Gilmour's machine, but the "Cypherpunks" are not owned by Gilmour and Sandfort. "P.S. I talked to Gilmore about the holdup in getting started. He has been too busy to get the tech side going, but when he does, (a) everyone will be notifed as to the start date, and the test will still run for an entire month. Until then, it is (sadly) business as usual." Why was this new dictatoriul policy (especially making the moderated list the default, instead of offering the moderated list as a new option) announced to begin on January 11th, then? Gilmour is probly having second thoughts (a good thing) and is just dragging his feet. Disgusted.

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Igor@home = Secret Squirrel
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all, I am motivated to post this, something I would normaly not do, because of the issue of trust of moderators that has arisen lately. Igor and myself were in a discussion about number theory last nite. We reached a point of impass. Igor made the suggestion that we bring the discussion to cpunks. I requested that we drop the issue and specificaly not bring it to cpunks. My reasoning had several facets. First, the position that I was in is probably wrong. My motivation was to examine the methodology of dis-proof (which I was disappointed with). Also, it is not a serious issue with me and whether my particular view is right or wrong is irrelevant. Cypherpunks is not the place for truly technical discussions (as is apparent with even a cursory glance). Traffic on this list practicaly drowns my ability to filter it and more drivel I (and probably you) don't need. And finaly, the discussion was fine for a Saturday afternoon discussion, I don't have the interest or time to carry it out over days or weeks, I have to work for a living. Igor agreed to drop the issue and not to bring it to the list. However, this morning I find Secret Squirrel posting some questions which are taken practicaly verbatin from my exchange w/ Igor. Seemed like a truly improbable event. Take it for what it's worth. "An appeal to authority is an appeal to a human being just like yourself who does not have your best interests at heart. What makes you believe they are able to resolve your problems better than yourself?" Jim Choate CyberTects ravage(a)ssz.com

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Re: [STEGO] Sphere packings
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim C. May will fuck anything that moves, but he'd rather be fucking his own mother's dead body. \|/ (*,*) Tim C. May _m_-_m_

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Re: Wow.
by i.am.not.a.number＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i have no doubt that a certain amount of the noise on this list is the work of agents provocateurs ... and we should just live with it because its entire intent is a certain kind of denial-of-service attack. just ket used to taking extra time and using the delete function a lot. there's still a lot on the list you don't get elsewhere. ah..... if i only had my natural lang. agent running! At 12:58 AM 1/19/97 -0500, Amanda Walker wrote: >Well, in the week or two since resubscribing to Cypherpunks, I've seen a >trickle of postings about cryptography, security, and privacy, and a flood >of insults, harangues, fighting words, and so on. Some of this reads more >like a script from a Jerry Falwell TV spot than anything I recognize as >"Cypherpunk" traffic. > >I don't care who's offended whom. I'm not interested in participating in a >forum where the supposed topic is submerged underneath a lot of adolescent >alpha primate chest-beating. > >I'm off to look for a mailing list where people are ACTUALLY DISCUSSING >CRYPTOGRAPHY AND IMPLEMENTING CRYPTOSYSTEMS. This list may still be >called "cypherpunks", but it doesn't have much cypherpunk left in it, as >far as I can tell. > >Disgusted, > >Amanda Walker >Senior Software Engineer >InterCon Systems Corporation > >

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Re: One time pads and randomness?
by i.am.not.a.number＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

as i have writ before, the sources i have read say that digits of the transcendentals are THOUGHT to be uniformly and 'randomly' distributed --- in quotes because there are many criteria for randomness and i don't mean to imply a specific one. however, this supposision is no stronger than a conjecture. has not been proven, AFAIK. At 02:06 PM 1/18/97 -0600, Igor Chudov @ home wrote: >By the way, did anyone try to run "all randomness tests" on a sequence >of digits of, say, decimal representation of "e"? > >igor > >Blake Coverett wrote: >> >> > I want to use a one time pad pased crypto system. I understand that the >> > randomness of the pad genorator is key to security(other than lossing the >> > keys). What I want to know is if I use a psuedo-RNG that maybe repeats its >> > self every 1000 characters and use it to only encrypt messagase that are >> > 100's of charaters long, will this be a major security risk? >> >> I'm afraid you've fallen into one of the standard traps. A PRNG can *not* >> make a OTP no matter how you use it. >> >> The total amount of entropy in a PRNG is the amount of entropy in the seed >> you use to key it. All the other bits are directly derived from that seed. >> >> A true OTP is completely secure from an information-theory point of view >> because every byte has a full eight bits of entropy. A PRNG can never >> have this. >> >> Having said all this, it is possible to make a good cipher from a PRNG. >> RC4, for example, is exactly that and the variable sized key is the >> seed for the PRNG. It is however very difficult to come up with a >> good algorithm for that cryptographically sound PRNG and you would >> be much further ahead to use an existing one rather that trying to >> roll your own. >> >> > Say I create a 1 million character one time pad that passes all of the >> > randomness tests. It is "truely random". I place it on two computers. Now >> > when these two computers want to send email computer "A" grabs a chunk of the >> > one time pad starting at a random point and encrypts it. It labels the email >> > with the random starting point and sends it to "B". There "B" moves to the >> > random point and begins decryption. During to process both computers mark >> > that section of the OTP used so that they don't retransmit with it. I realize >> > this has a limited amount of messages before it is used up. But would this be >> > secure? Any suggestions, complaints, big gapping holes I missed? >> >> I don't see anything wrong as such, but there is nothing to be gained either. >> If your random data is real OTP material there is no need to skip to a random >> byte within it, just start at the beginning and use it in sequence. If your random >> data is the output of a PRNG like the above then random starting point doesn't >> buy you much additional security because the entire set of keying material can >> be recreated from the seed. It may increase the work-factor of searching for >> the key, but it also imposes the practical problem of keeping all that keying >> material secure. >> >> More importantly don't confuse statistically random with cryptographically >> random. Just because a bunch of bits passes all the randomness test >> you can think of doesn't mean it contains 100% entropy. Consider the >> digits of an irrational number like sqrt(2) or pi, the digits appear statistically >> random but they can be recreated from just a tiny bit of knowledge. >> >> A good litmus test is to ask yourself if there is any way you can >> reproduce those bits. If there is, they aren't a one time pad. >> (Of course even if you can't it doesn't mean they are good. :-) >> >> regards, >> -Blake >> > > > > - Igor. > >

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Re: I beg you, PLEASE prove that 0.123456789101112131415 is IRRATIONAL
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:20 PM 1/19/1997, Sir Robin of Locksley wrote: >>Is it possible to prove that number >>0.1234567891011121314151617181920... iz irrational? > >Most definately. All you need to do is prove that the set of this >number is uncountable, ergo is irrational. If you have friend who >have done math in real analysis they can explain more. The set of this number contains one member - the number. Therefore, this is a countable set. A rational number is a number which can be described as a fraction in which the numerator and the denominator are integers. Jim Choate implied that "infinity" is an integer. This is not correct. The set of integers is said to be infinite. Infiniteness is a property of the set, not a member of the set. All rational numbers are expressible in a decimal form of finite length or in a decimal form which ends in a repeatable string of digits. (Consider the process by which each successive digit is found. It is a fraction of the denominator and some remainder with a zero added. The remainder is less than the denominator multiplied by the base, 10 in this case. When a remainder repeats, the state of the algorithm repeats, and its output will therefore be repeated. Since the remainder is bounded, the algorithm must repeat a state. Note that this holds regardless of the base used.) If our number, 0.1234..., does not repeat then it is not rational. Let's show that it does not repeat. If it repeats, there is a sequence of digits which repeats indefinitely. Such a sequence must be longer than the longest integer. (Because if it was part of an integer, the other parts of the integer would not always be the same and it couldn't repeat.) But, there is no longest integer. Therefore there is no repeating sequence. Therefore our number, 0.1234..., is not a rational number. Math Man

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