December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

GAK
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. Mayonnaise is not only as queer as a three dollar bill, but he is also into having sex with children. ___ <*,*> Timothy C. Mayonnaise [`-'] ' - '

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Re: Databasix conspiracy theories
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Andy Dustman <andy(a)neptune.chem.uga.edu> wrote: > > If I remember correctly, the documentation for at least one of the nymservers > > suggested that posting through a remailer and pasting in the return address > > would be quicker and impose less burden on the server than having to process > > each outgoing message through the server. > > That's possible, and if true, it's probably in the documentation for > redneck. Personally, I would prefer to have the server handle those > messages, simply because there is a certain amount of "authentication", > i.e., you can be reasonably sure that that nym really sent the message and > wasn't forged. I think it's just as well that people NOT get the idea that the e-mail address in the headers (from *ANY* ISP) is somehow authenticated and reliable. The only advantage to sending the message through the 'nymserver would be if the server itself would PGP sign the message with its own key to prove that the message was sent through the server by a properly authenticated user. The remailers themselves have become the victims of forgeries. Back during the DataBasix "reign of [t]error" directed at Jeff Burchell, the "DataBasix cabal" (called that by a Netcom news admin, BTW) accused the Mailmasher 'nymserver of being used for "forgery" of Gary Burnore's name and address to various posts. And now, even after the cajones.com domain has apparently bitten the dust, I've seen complaints of spam being received by people that's been forged to look as if it had come from that domain. In the case of the Burnore forgeries, the Path: was only traceable back to the mail2news gateway, so the header items implicating Mailmasher could have easily been forged just as Mr. Burnore's address was. Nevertheless, these alleged "forgeries" comprised the rationale used by a DataBasix employee, Billy McClatchie, for demanding the Mailmasher be shut down. Any kid with a throwaway Netcruiser account and a copy of Netscape or some other mailer that allows you to set an arbitrary From: address on outgoing SMTP mail can easily "forge" a return address, and certainly do a more convincing job than you could ever hope to do by pasting headers through a remailer. I'll bet if that happened, people like Mr. Burnore would not be so quick to demand that Netcom be shut down if it can't put a stop to this. > > I'm not sure that even that is a wise precedent to set. In itself it seems > > innocuous enough, but it could always lead to a demand, "Well, you already > > mangle e-mail addresses contained in the bodies of posts, so why not also > > alter the contents of posts in the following way..." > > Well, I'm not real happy to have to do it. It was in response to a very > active spam-baiting campaign, apparently directed at the Databasix people, > and primarily consisted of lists of addresses with no (or very little) > other text. I doubt this methodology could realistically be applied to > anything else (or that I would consider doing it for anything else). Your solution was undoubtedly more clever than they had counted on. Unless I miss my guess, they were hoping that anything that contained one of their e-mail addresses would get blocked. They did manage to convince Jeff Burchell to do that, at least until he figured out what they were up to and he discontinued his content filtering. I once tried an experiment. I got one of those free e-mail accounts and stuck its e-mail address in the body of a Usenet post that was sent to the same set of NGs that were involved in this "spam baiting". I did this once daily for several weeks and only received one piece of spam. Knowing that, I could have confidently "spam baited" myself, if I wished, without any real consequences. Back when this was all happening, Gary was posting perhaps a dozen messages a day to usenet with his own (unmangled) address in the headers. I doubt that he'd have noticed any difference from having his address included in the BODIES of anonymous posts. Anyone who was going to harvest his address would have already done so from his own posts. > > BTW, is there any evidence to indicate that anyone is really harvesting e-mail > > addresses from the BODIES of Usenet posts? Gary Burnore posts his flames quite > > widely, so it's quite likely that any bulk e-mailing lists he's on is the > > result of his (non-mangled) e-mail address being in the From: line of his own > > posts. > > I really don't know. I do know when the spam-baiting campaign started, the > spam-baiters would also use the remailers to contact the people > spam-baited to let them know they had been spam-baited so they would > complain to us. That's even more evidence that the real target of the spam baiter(s) was the remailers themselves. Why else would you "attack" people, then anonymously warn them of what you'd done? Perhaps that's why the spam baiting reportedly was directed not only at the DataBasix gang, but also at their detractors, such as Ron Guilmette, Scott Dentice, etc. I did notice several non-anonymous Usenet "warnings" going out from Peter Hartley <hartley(a)hartley.on.ca>, the sysadmin of an infamous Canadian domain that provides autoresponders for spammers. He was even "helpful" enough to include several contact addresses for Jeff Burchell and his upstream providers. I'm not sure how/why he was involved, unless the spam baiters managed to push his buttons and sucker him into joining their clandestine anti-remailer campaign. > (There was another set of letters going around claiming to > be pro-remailer, but I was always skeptical that that was the true > intention.) Sounds like a classic, "F.U.D." disinformation campaign like another anti-privacy bunch, the Co$, would engage in. What better way to discredit remailers that to, for example, send out anonymous messages saying "Preserve your rights -- defend remailers!" and making it look like the message came from a member of the KKK, or NAMBLA, or some other unpopular group.

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Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-openpgp-formats-00.txt
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <phoffman(a)imc.org> At 09:45 AM 11/18/97 -0500, Internet-Drafts(a)ietf.org wrote: >A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories. >This draft is a work item of the An Open Specification for Pretty Good Privacy Working Group of the IETF. > > Title : OP Formats - OpenPGP Message Format > Author(s) : R. Thayer, J. Callas, L. Donnerhacke, H. Finney > Filename : draft-ietf-openpgp-formats-00.txt > Pages : 40 > Date : 17-Nov-97 > This is also available as <http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-openpgp-formats>. As the draft gets revised in the future, this URL will always point to the latest version. --Paul Hoffman, Director --Internet Mail Consortium Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com Regular Key PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Synergy between IE4 bug and Intel flaw
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

RISKS DIGEST 19.46 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.46.html has several articles on the Pentium F00FC7C8 bug. Apparently there are workarounds for it, but there's also the article below. (Also, Microsoft has supposedly issued a fix for the IE4 bug, but fat chance on everybody deploying it quickly enough.) ----------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 08:27:05 -0700 (MST) From: Jonathan Levine <jonathan(a)canuck.com> Subject: Synergy between IE4 bug and Intel flaw By now I'm sure you've heard about this delightful synergy: > ------- Forwarded Message > Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 06:53:45 -0500 > From: "Per Hammer" <phammer(a)raleigh.ibm.com> > Subject: New IE4 security hole exploited ... > > http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/8429.html > > The deal is, if your use a 'RES://' URL that us longer than 256 characters, > byte 257 onwards will be executed as machine code. Now ... think ... > F0 0F C7 C8 > > Which is only slightly less malicious than deleting any files ... > > Per Hammer phammer(a)raleigh.ibm.com

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e$: Snakes of Medusa on Wall Street? (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 12:07:49 -0500 > From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> > Subject: e$: Snakes of Medusa on Wall Street? > In the study of American theological history, the period when Mormonism was > invented is called the Great Awakening. Um, I believe that went from the late 1500's to the early 1700's at best. Ol' Joe Smith lived in the early and late 1800's nearly a hundred years after the traditional Great Awakening. Is your claim that there was a second Great Awakending or are you saying the traditional (if you will) dating is incorrect? > that Vlad Dracul, the Impaler, was Transylvanian Actualy, to be accurate his name was Vlad Teppish. He was eventualy killed by his lord for carrying on excesses such as killing a woman because she let her husband walk around with a tattered coat. Dracul and Dracula are derived from dragon and imply a connection with the devil (which also derives its own existance from this lexical tree). > Of opinion, influence, and reputation, opinion is the most atomic. An opinion > can be safely defined as a judgement, right or wrong, based on some accepted, > or maybe just perceived, set of facts. Doesn't the use of 'perceived' imply some a priori assumptions about the base structure of reality and in fact imply a more atomistic issue, that of conceptual viability? How does an opinion become atomistic if in order to express it we must invoke other equaly critical (or atomistic) expressions? Further, without testing a 'perceived' fact is nothing but an opinion. > word about whether Socrates said the words himself. Opinion can be completely > dissociated from identity. An anonymous post on a mailing list can have an > opinion, and people can agree or disagree with that opinion as they see fit. That doesn't change the fact that the opinion, anonymous or not, originated from a single source. While I can accept that testable facts can be isolated from source biases it escapes me how an opinion can be so isolated. At its lowest level it is nothing more than a description of an individuals beliefs about reality and their place in it and clearly has impact on the sorts of ideas that are expressible in them. Perhaps opinion & fact are unwittingly being confused. Opinions tell the observer about the holder of the opinion, not the subject the opinion is direct toward. > can't *prove* our opinions are right. The definition of modern human thinking, > is, however, that at the core of it all, someone, somewhere, is using science > - -- which is all about verifiable and replicable physical results -- to > validate, and occasionally create, the set of opinions most of us would now > call knowlege. So, science or no, our thinking is still functionally, > heuristics, but it works. Oh, well. Life is hard. :-). Science is about how to ask questions, it is NOT concerned with the results directly. Science is a non-intuitive mechanism whereby we can regulate how we think about the world around us. What to do with the results is engineering. Science itself is heuristic. > I think the nice thing about science in the geodesic age, by the way, is that > the technology of microcomputers and networks makes it easier for more people > to be closer to scientific truth. There is no 'scientific truth', THE main axiom of science is that everything is open to review and change in responce to the observation and description of the item under studies interactions with the environment around it. > So, what's influence? On a personal basis, influence occurs when someone else > agrees with your opinions. Only if they changed their opinions *because* of the expression of your opinions. Otherwise we are left with independant discovery. Influence is the ability of one theory to cause the holder of another theory to add data or tests that could potentialy alter the outcome of that original theory. The results may or may not support either of the original theories or could even cause a 3rd theory to be born. > The more people agree with your opinions, the more > influence you have. The more people agree with your opinions AND are willing to act on them is a measure of influence. Also, the fact that others may in fact be motivated to act because they *disagree* with you also is clearly a possibility you don't address. Never confuse popularity with influence. > Back to our stack of planes, by no means does the "line" of someone's identity > have to be a straight one This runs counter to your assumption regarding the number of line-plane intersections. If the line is not geometricaly 'straight' it can in fact have zero, one, or more intersections. This causes a problem with this part of the conclusion, you are using the axiom as proof of the assertion (the axiom). ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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export restictions and investments
by Jyri Kaljundi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How do the US export restrictions affect investments into non-US crypto companies? Is it legal for US private persons or companies to invest money into companies developing strong crypto applications for example in Europe? Since Sun bought the Russian Elvis+ company it seems to be Ok, just wanted to check if there are any other opinions. Does anyone know of any other non-US companies that have received US investments, or venture capital or whatever? Jyri Kaljundi jk(a)stallion.ee AS Stallion Ltd http://www.stallion.ee/

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College Wrestler Promotes Gay Art!
by Joe Lang 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! As a college wrestler, I have spent much of time between matches creating awesome pencil art. I am pleased to invite you to visit my new website at: http://www.gay-art.com The site also includes some of my favorite toys and some great novelties. I hope you enjoy your visit to www.gay-art.com. click here! ----------------------------------------------------------------- Gay-art.com respects your online time and Internet privacy! This is a one time only invitation, your address will be deleted from our files. Thank you! -----------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: mailing list archive
by Ryan Lackey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Doh -- I thought my dataset included everything, but it instead just covers every article I can think of between: > Date: Tue, 27 Apr 93 22:53:39 BST > From: whitaker(a)eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell E. Whitaker) > Reply-To: whitaker(a)eternity.demon.co.uk > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Cc: whitaker(a)eternity.demon.co.uk and the present. I'm also feeling tempted to incorporate the archives of some of the offshoot mailing lists, like coderpunks, etc. Does anyone know of a good source for the messages before that one? How many were there, approximately? If there are a bunch of them and you can merge them with mine, I'll be happy to send you a cd of the result. If enough people want to buy CDs of the data, I'll set up an order page, establish pricing, etc. Right now, for me to make a CD requires buying media and doing it at the media lab, unless I buy a drive, so the cost is somewhat dependent upon how many people are interested. If someone wants to use corporate or government money to overpay for a cd so I can buy a cd-r writer and make it cheaper for everyone else, I'll think fondly of whatever organization you represent :) Utterly ignoring the copyright issues in the interest of getting wide dispersal, especially since it's unlikely anyone cares since no one will get rich selling cypherpunks cd-roms, Ryan (the last time I wished for something in parenthetical postscript it worked. Wish granting service, will you please make the people of the world clueful enough to replace governmental/military force with cryptography? Or convince one of my professors that they should sign a blank thesis?) -- Ryan Lackey rdl(a)mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/

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No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May will fuck anything that moves, but he'd rather be fucking his own mother's dead body. /\ __/__\__ | 00 | Tim May |: \ :| | \_/| \__/

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Seeing Both Sides
by Secret Squirrel 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Bob Hettinga wrote: >But then, logic, much less independent thinking, was never >Foucault's strong point. I took this statement at face value, but out of curiousity I decided to find out who this guy Foucault was. The things I read about him lead me to believe otherwise. Some quotes from Michel Foucault: "The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the 'social worker'-judge." "Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline." How quick we are to condemn those who step out of the "norm", no? As soon as someone says something even slightly controversial, our inner censors rush in to separate ourselves from that person, to chastise him, to condemn him, regardless of the relationship we have developed with him in the past. There is this unfortunate property in man that leads him to disassociate himself from the ideas he holds true if it is convenient, and especially if it will allow him to avoid the ridicule, hatred and disdain of others. In the never ending "pursuit of happiness" we seek to make our lives so comfortable that we will give up that which we hold dearest. "The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and...to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play)." In other words, to make people think. This is the goal of the intellectual. To subtly influence the mass of humanity by appealing to their minds, their reason, instead of their base instincts and emotions. Tolerance and acceptance are results brought about in us by communion with the mind, that which is greatest in us. Hatred, persecution, violence are what we fall back upon when we cease to live to our fullest potential. We degenerate into the animals we once were. Once again, Bob wrote: >The world's foremost pseudomystical relativist cited to support an >absolutist position. The logic escapes me. But then, logic, much less >independent thinking, was never Foucault's strong point. Perhaps one way of looking at it is that if you can't see the black and the white, you're missing the whole picture. After all, who would think that one would need to use an anonymous remailer and a pseudonym to express oneself in a free and open society such as ours? Nerthus -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNGu85OFWwZe05jcJAQGvYwgAlI0R3rJW67A9fFIs9ai5FY/jEAwV2oQ1 112bd/UmgfJ11DYPWUpG6GKt2XcBUd6UfYPnidY27hT+GGBTTKjAeF88z0XMu6Ep jWUPllwb0Dw5or1o9IBg8ZAOPaAu/SMy9yVgcfaEbAqmfNken+dBhbfoAORjaLd8 BJSYCGs1Bw3Aw1gE7e3aJdjlYs/gKKNkoTQCkgkt6VBBCEQ7dXG1qbq2BTYS3py9 meK2utOM+YLG/+bJSoGRLT5oFiIpnYrkIwAziAtO7WAfydq+vwf8EsTdnX5mwUxg THngvvyaAbZtVm/yObAPgifbfpfDbnfYOL/rrJQzGMXVJCUBNKTQKg== =zZLC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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