December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Take it to sci.math
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc Weber wrote: > And as everyone on this list acutely knows, neither math, science, nor > politics has anything to do with crypto. I agree. Let's stick to discussions of crack-crypto Ebonics, and child-crypto PigLatin. Toto

1 0

Re: Sandy and the Doc
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Frantz wrote: > Note that since I lost multiple messages due to one failure, tests of the > form, "Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three or more is > conspiracy" might say, "conspiracy" even for just one failure. The chances > of this test criteria error increase for frequent posters. It sounds like you're laying the groundwork for debunking CypherPunk conspiracy myths before they even appear. Not that I'm the paranoid type (but I 'would' be interested in knowing exacly where you 'claim' you were when J.F.K. was shot). Toto

1 0

Re: GSM technology
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green wrote: > > At 09:43 AM 1/20/97 -0500, Nurdane Oksas wrote: > > Does anyone use ADSL lines? or are they still very expensive? > > I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. SaskTel also offers this type of access, at around the same price. As long as they had a monopoly on the citizens of the province, they gouged people in the boondocks $ 6.00/hr for basic access to the InterNet. Now that they have competition, and need to have competitive rates to stay in business, they are acting like they are the consumer's best friend, instead of rip-off shitheads. Toto

1 0

RE: GSM technology
by Blake Coverett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky wrote: > I just had a very interesting talk with somebody from Northern Telecom (Canada's Phone Company). NorTel has apparently skipped ISDN and > is now deploying ADSL. Some areas already have access to ADSL at, can you believe this, $60/month. NorTel isn't exactly Canada's phone company. NorTel manufactures telecom equipment. It is however 51% owned by BCE, which owns or has controlling interest in Bell Canada and several of the regional carriers as well a huge mess of other telco stuff. ISDN is available fairly widely in my area of the country, but I'm not aware of an commercially available ADSL UUNET Canada has been conducting ADSL trials in a couple of cities, but that's all I've heard of thus far. regards, -Blake (who would love to be proved wrong as the price sounds great)

1 0

Re: UNS_top
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young wrote: > Governments in China, Burma and > Singapore have already tried to discipline this on-line activity with > minimal success. Do you have any pointers to information in regard to this, or are you just being a goddamn tease? Toto

3 2

Re: GSM technology
by Asgaard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Fri, 17 Jan 1997, Adam Back wrote: > into the data port. You can't fit the laptop and GSM phone > combination into your shirt pocket. What are you going to use for a With a reasonably sized shirt pocket you can fit a Nokia 9000 Communicator into it: a combination of GSM phone and 386 computer, with 6 MB storage (OS and default applications use 4 of those) and 2 MB RAM. It runs fax, SMS (Short Messages Services), a Terminal, SMTP, IMAP4, MIME1, WWW and telnet. The operative system is GEOS (tm) 3.0. I guess it's not very programmable though (and there is no PGPhone implementation for GEOS) and data speed is only 9600 bps. And there is probably no connection between the mic/speaker and the computer. But it's only 173 x 64 x 38 mm, and perhaps the next generation of such devices might be interesting for reengineering into secure end-to-end crypto phenes? Asgaard

1 0

Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Jane Jefferson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Also Sprach Adam Back: > > It is my belief > that his posts can only be understood in a "meta" sense -- he is > engaged in a highly complex cryptographic experiment. People who read > and respond to his individual posts are the unwitting subjects in his > experiments. His posts and the responses to them are actually the > data-set for a thorough cryptanalysis of mailing list threats. His > current topic under investigation is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks > on mailing lists. I agree that this is what is being done, but the experiment dorsn't have as much to do with cryptanalysis as much as it has to do with sociology. The limits here are not mathematical and static, they are social and based on the limits of tolerance of both the group and the individual. > I await with interest the last phases of Dimitri's experiment, when > the cypherpunks list becomes a moderated forum. That appears to be the main brunt of his efforts, to "push the envelope" of free speech in order to force it's definition. Perhaps to exhibit the necessity for a controlling authority, and thus justify the existence of the various agencies which are trying to control the flow of information in this country and elsewhere. > I hope Dimitri's selfless efforts in furthering understanding of DoS > attacks on mailing lists is properly acknowledged when he publishes > his findings on completion of his experiments. I also hope that > Dimitri will document his recommendations for mailing list > configuration and management in light of his experiments. I would not say that what he is doing is a bit selfless, the Clipper Chip crowd are probably lining his pockets in a big way. That's acknowledgement enough for me. :-/ "In peacetime, a warlike man sets upon himself." -- Nietzsche -- Marcus: "They'll try to kill you." | Xena: "Oh, I still have a few tricks | "Here we GO!!!" left up my sleeve...I don't | -- Jane's Addiction have any sleeves!" -- Xena bloopers |

6 8

Re: Dr. Vulis' social engineering experiment
by Jane Jefferson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Also Sprach Adam Back: > > It is my belief > that his posts can only be understood in a "meta" sense -- he is > engaged in a highly complex cryptographic experiment. People who read > and respond to his individual posts are the unwitting subjects in his > experiments. His posts and the responses to them are actually the > data-set for a thorough cryptanalysis of mailing list threats. His > current topic under investigation is Denial of Service (DoS) attacks > on mailing lists. I agree that this is what is being done, but the experiment dorsn't have as much to do with cryptanalysis as much as it has to do with sociology. The limits here are not mathematical and static, they are social and based on the limits of tolerance of both the group and the individual. > I await with interest the last phases of Dimitri's experiment, when > the cypherpunks list becomes a moderated forum. That appears to be the main brunt of his efforts, to "push the envelope" of free speech in order to force it's definition. Perhaps to exhibit the necessity for a controlling authority, and thus justify the existence of the various agencies which are trying to control the flow of information in this country and elsewhere. > I hope Dimitri's selfless efforts in furthering understanding of DoS > attacks on mailing lists is properly acknowledged when he publishes > his findings on completion of his experiments. I also hope that > Dimitri will document his recommendations for mailing list > configuration and management in light of his experiments. I would not say that what he is doing is a bit selfless, the Clipper Chip crowd are probably lining his pockets in a big way. That's acknowledgement enough for me. :-/ "In peacetime, a warlike man sets upon himself." -- Nietzsche -- Marcus: "They'll try to kill you." | Xena: "Oh, I still have a few tricks | "Here we GO!!!" left up my sleeve...I don't | -- Jane's Addiction have any sleeves!" -- Xena bloopers |

3 2

Re: GSM crypto upgrade? (was Re: Newt's phone calls)
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:41 PM 1/16/97 GMT, Adam Back wrote: > >Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> writes: >> As long as the man in the middle can't imitate a familiar voice, >> this procedure is reasonably secure. > >This is the approach taken by PGPfone also. If the value of the >conversations was high (>$100,000?) passable voice imitation wouldn't >be that hard I suspect. I have long considered how easy it would be to use a sound card to modify the human voice to match within certain tolerances the voice of another. There are currently on the market, phones specifically designed to modify the voice of the user so that kids can answer as adults, women can answer as thier own protective boyfriends, bosses can answer anonymous calls as the secretary, etc... There are currently on the market keyboards that allow you to sample some real world sound and use it as a voice in your music, (the model I saw, a toy produced by Radio Shack, simply sped up or slowed down the sound to achieve this.) I have thought, if a machine were to take the incoming voice, analize (apologies for spelling) it to get a spectrum signature, a pattern that can be added or subtracted from another, and could then add the difference between that and the victims signature to the users voice, then real-time, on-the-fly con jobs would be easy. The only thing that the user would be responsible for would be the accent, and the day-to-day vocabulary of the victim. I told a friend about this and he confirmed that such was available if you knew where to look.

1 0

Re: Newt's phone calls
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:07 PM 1/20/97 -0500, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker wrote: >Depending on the country and bank you can probably perform almost >any transfer you like by fax. I moved my pension from one bank >to another simply by sending a fax. I have done similar transactions >with Swiss, German and UK banks. > >For some reason the fax is considered to be a practically >infallible authentication device. Quite why is beyond me since >it should be obvious to anyone that all one needs to fake a >fax is a photocopier, document signed by account holder, paste >and scissors. You get everything needed on a signed cheque. > A check is no good, most checks are now printed on paper with special lines that are supposed to become obvious after copying. A signed letter or even a mailing envelope would probably be better. Also, scotch tape makes those pexky shadows disapear like magic. My dad uses it to make multiple versions of make-up math tests that trivially look like the origional in order to goad persons who were sick on test day so that they could get the answers from someone else into printing down those answers and getting less than random probability. (multiple choice)

1 0