December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: DFA
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul Bell wrote: >does anyone know what has happened to DFA, and the people who >just a few months ago were publishing such encouraging results? There seems be sustained investigation of DFA, offensive and defensive, by Biham and Shamir, by Anderson and Kuhn, by the Bellcore team, by Quisquater and others. However, the smartcard manufacturers appear to have a role in dampening publicity about the ongoing research, or at least diminishing the claims of effectiveness of DFA. Carol Francher, of Motorola, for example, writes in February IEEE Spectrum: Technology is a wonderful thing but criminals, too, can use it as new equipment and techniques become available or less expensive the barriers to cracking a system may weaken. Recently Bellcore announced a paper, "Cryptanalysis in the presence of hardware faults" (available at www.bellcore.com) that proposed a theoretical method for breaking an asymmetric encryption code once a computer (or a smartcard microcontroller) had been forced into faulty behavior. The Smart Card Forum, a multi-industry membership organization headquartered in Tampa, Fla., has stated that it does not regard this approach as a real-world risk, since in smartcard applications more than one technique is used to protect the security of the entire system. But the Bellcore methodology for breaking algorithms -- as well as similar theoretical approaches, such as the one taken by two Israeli researchers, Eli Biham and Adi Shamir -- highlights the need to analyze and evolve the security of any system continually. -- "In your pocket: smartcards." <http://jya.com/tee08.htm> Several of the DFA-type researchers have commented on the smartcard industry's reluctance to publicize security weaknesses when the push is on to increase consumer trust and use; see, for example, Anderson and Kuhn at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tamper.html Quisquater and the SG group also note the reluctance of smartcard mass-marketers to own up to security shortcomings of which their own engineers know and fret. Meanwhile, the DFA proponents and opponents are eagerly absorbing the continuing DFA-relatged reports, quietly watching one another, and both sides eying the booming smartcard market for lucrative rewards, as Ms. Francher suggests: licit and il.

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Thanks to John Gilmore for running cypherpunks mailing list
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, cypherpunks(a)toad.com goes down in four days. I would like to thank John Gilmore for all his efforts that he spent to run the list. Administering a huge mailing list like cypherpunks is a tough job, requiring a lot of dedication, time and patience. John, along with other cypherpunks, created a unique online community that generated many valuable ideas. This community helped a great deal to increase crypto awareness of the masses. I personally joined cypherpunks for very arkane reasons, but later found out a lot of useful information. The moderation experiment failed by many reasons, but the last month should not distract us from what John did over last several years. Again, thanks to John for his work. - Igor.

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dave Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kent Crispin writes: > Dave is offering a single mailing list, which, while I am sure Dave is > a great person, still represents a single point of control and a > single point of failure. A distributed mailing list has a potential > for being much more robust, and for supporting a wide range of > viewpoints. I can also offer my participation in the distributed mailing list, if that is what it takes to get cypherpunks free of control interests again. ------ Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave(a)jetcafe.org Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet A poor man shames us all.

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Bad Headers Added to John Young postings via owner-cypherpunks@sirius.infonex.com
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! The following headers are from a posting by John Young that looks like it was sent to cypherpunks(a)toad.com, forwarded to cypherpunks(a)sirius.infonex.com and/or cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net, and has the Reply-To: header set to reply to cypherpunks(a)toad.com instead of to John Young.... It looks like the obvious implementation of cypherpunks-style mail header patching, but isn't quite right..... Leads to people sending their John Young mailbot requests to cypherpunks(a)toad.com instead, as some well-known cypherpunks have mistakenly done recently :-) ===================================================== Return-Path: <owner-cypherpunks(a)sirius.infonex.com> X-Sender: jya(a)pop.pipeline.com Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 09:04:14 -0500 To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> Subject: FBI_100 Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)sirius.infonex.com Reply-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com X-List: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net 2-15-97. NYP: "Phone Companies Balk At Latest Plan by FBI." Markoff. ============================================== # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by ISP_Ratings 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dave Hayes wrote: > >> censorship on cypherpunks. However, I think most peoples' opinions >> didn't really turn, or at least people didn't realize how serious >> things were and didn't really care, until Tim May [someone the many >> freedom-knights hate] started criticizing this censorship in extremely >> reasonable messages that were suppressed from both the -edited and >> -flames mailing list. > > Assuming that is true, that people do not care about censorship until > a person with an arbitrary reasonability says something, I would say > that such a group cares not about free speech...even if they think > they do. I agree--and again that is sad. Hopefully many have learned from the experience--that does on occassion really happen. Steve

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FC97: Post-strike airfares
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One more datablip about FC97 and I'll shut up a bit. Having just promised gratuitously cheap airfares to Anguilla/St. Maarten, I went and called the local branch of American Express Travel and got some actual prices. Their number is 617-868-2600, but AEXP-T has branches everywhere, and, I think, an 800 number, so you might want to get ahold of them that way... Anyway, here's what I got, as of about 20 minutes ago: For departures 2/22/97 with return 3/1/97, Boston Anguilla $ 864 Boston St. Maarten 851 (+ Taxi and short ferry ride to Anguilla) San Francisco Anguilla 828 San Francisco St. Maarten 748 Heathrow Anguilla 1,315 (looks like the strike didn't affect you folks, sorry) All in all, that's as good as the prices we were getting for 14 day advance purchase earlier this month. Not bad, but not completely spectacular. Note that it's cheaper to get to Anguilla or St. Maarten from San Francisco than it is from Boston, so y'all don't have an excuse. Well, possibly seat fatigue, but Sunday on the beach will fix that. I'll check tomorrow to see if the airline yield management software war gives us something better after the weekend's over. Only if fares are significantly lower will I post something here about it, in the interest of nomex conservation. :-). If you *do* decide to fly while the seats are hot, don't forget to register for FC97 first, so we can plan for meals and stuff: <http://www.offshore.com.ai/fc97/> Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/ FC97: Anguilla, anyone? http://www.ai/fc97/

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dave Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Against Moderation writes: > I believe homophobia is a great way to bring out the censors in > people. However, inducing censorship is only part of fighting it. You assume that it is an enemy to be fought. While censorship is clearly undesireable, making it an enemy only strengthens it. > You also need respectable people to some in, argue cogently against > the dangers of censorship, perhaps even get some extremely reasonable > articles suppressed, and then spread the word about it. I find the > freedom-knights tactics' extremely lacking in this second, "clean up > and analyze the mess" phase. Part, if not all, of that lack is due to our knowledge of the subjective standard of "respectability" that human beings have. That's the same differentiation used in many censorship attempts, and if we made or supported such differentiations this would undermine any anti-censorship actions we could take. The meta-points are: - What is reasonable to you may or may not be reasonable to me. That is why we refrain from censoring others, since we have no absolute standard of reasonability. - You appear to be concerned with convincing others. We are not concerned with that, since we know that the default for most others is to be invincibly unconvincable. We are simply here to be living models for an arbitrary code of behavior...that behavior being outlined in the Freedom Knights FAQ. - Please remember that you have to judge who is and is not a Freedom Knight by their -actions- and not their claims. > censorship on cypherpunks. However, I think most peoples' opinions > didn't really turn, or at least people didn't realize how serious > things were and didn't really care, until Tim May [someone the many > freedom-knights hate] started criticizing this censorship in extremely > reasonable messages that were suppressed from both the -edited and > -flames mailing list. Assuming that is true, that people do not care about censorship until a person with an arbitrary reasonability says something, I would say that such a group cares not about free speech...even if they think they do. ------ Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave(a)jetcafe.org Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet Two men were fighting outside Nasrudin's window at dead of night. Nasrudin got up, wrapped his only blanket around himself, and ran outside. As he tried to reason with the drunks, one snatched his blanket and both ran away. "What were they arguing about?" asked his wife when he went in. "It must have been the blanket. When they got that, the fight broke up."

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Re: Questions about Naughty Robot (fwd)
by Jeremiah A Blatz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Genocide <gen2600(a)aracnet.com> writes: > I got this message (on a system that I am webmaster on) regarding > something that sounded so stupid it made me chuckle...Naughty Robot...I > have enclosed the message below. If any of you have any idea what this > user is talking about, any info would be appreciated. <snip> > >> I had a customer in Tennesee who got an E-Mail saying that Naughty Robot > >> has infected your host computer and consider all your credit cards > >> stolen. > >> > >> I think it's a hoax, but the Admins at VR-NET Cafe say that they have > >> been hit with it and say that it's a script that does hack into the > >> IPS's server and sits back and watches the users browse the web and take > >> the info they see on there screen and dump to some remote server?? > >> > >> I was wondering if you have heard about it...and if so can you direct to > >> the right locations on the web to get the "Official" Scoop on it? It could theoretically be a JavaScript that makes a teeny tiny window and reports back stuff that it really shouldn't be able to see, I think Netscape fixed that bug, though. FWIW, Jer "standing on top of the world/ never knew how you never could/ never knew why you never could live/ innocent life that everyone did" -Wormhole -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMwd5rskz/YzIV3P5AQF+7wMAwPZp89E0JQkI9OOGbqMULKTfEfyE6Edf 2K+U0l3I86aM6AkS6SeFbj2Nc6AwD3yXbFHR+d3Opn3yJcwGaLrCDtqM3qfeg8vR V3D3KWXVNai4ptHwB5ldM2GT+IQP0VJg =veqx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Proposed info file
by ISP_Ratings 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > Hi, > > The text below is what I wrote for cypherpunks(a)algebra.com to be > sent to new subscribers. Feel free to criticize. > > - Igor. > > @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ > > About cypherpunks mailing lists > ------------------------------- It all sounds very interesting especially given what's been going on. About how many posts a day can a subscriber reasonbly expect in their mailbox if one were to subscribe? Steve

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Re: Proposed info file
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ISP_Ratings wrote: > Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > About cypherpunks mailing lists > > ------------------------------- > > > It all sounds very interesting especially given what's been going > on. About how many posts a day can a subscriber reasonbly expect > in their mailbox if one were to subscribe? > About a hundred, maybe. It is QUITE A LOT. If you are not interested in applications of cryptography, the list may not be as interesting. All the bickering that you heard is mostly rotating around crypto use. - Igor.

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