December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

No Subject
by Mix 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy May is just another garden variety Intel pansy that has been misusing its `manhole' so badly that the overstretched sphincter cannot hold back the shit that all Intellers are full of and it spills out onto this mailing list. ,/ \, ((__,-,,,-,__)), Timothy May `--)~ ~(--` .-'( )`-, `~~`d\ /b`~~` | | (6___6) `---`

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Privacy Strategems
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times has a long report today on the massive data banks about US citizens operated by commercial services for sale to marketers (and used by databankers for special ops against those who sue them). Emphasis is given to the number of states that sell low-cost inmate services for data entry and preparation of hot-selling Geographical Information Surveys which map and stat in minute detail the life-style preferences of purchasers. And how sharp and horny inmates snatch select data for criminal attacks on unwary citizens (and their children) who cooperatively provided personal information to government agencies and market researchers. Texas is featured as a leader in the privatization of government data and using inmate labor to underbid offshore sweatshop competitors -- all engendered by citizen demands to reduce tax burdens. Another report covers the Microsoft/Netscape effort to ward off government regulation by agreeing on a privacy protection program. It's not clear how government and inmates will join the two public-spirited corps in peddling the illusion of privacy.

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Spam Libs (Frauenfelder on HotWired)
by Bill Frantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded-by: Chip Morningstar <chip(a)communities.com> Forwarded-by: Peter Langston <psl(a)langston.com> Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic(a)bostic.com> Forwarded-by: Jeff Moore <jbm(a)instinet.com> This comes from HotWired's `packet' site, at: http://www.packet.com/packet/frauenfelder/nc_today.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Spam Libs Bulk email spawns ingenious offensives from the masses Do you remember Droodles? They're those simple line drawings that look like nonsense until you read the captions. Droodles were invented in the '60s by a humorist named Roger Price, an author probably best known for his stinging critique of American society, The Great Roob Revolution. I was lucky enough to get to know Roger before he died in 1990. He had lots of great comics, books, and original art (from people like MAD Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman) lying around his Studio City, California, home. Beside Droodles, Roger also invented Mad Libs. You might remember these, too. Mad Libs were little books with stories in them. But the stories had several missing words, with instructions to insert verbs, nouns, and adjectives in the blank spaces. The game was played at parties, where one person asked the others to supply the missing words. Then the story was read out loud and everybody laughed heartily at the result. (There are dozens of Mad Lib knockoffs on the Web.) Because spammers work their cons anonymously, hiding behind forged email addresses and working out of PO boxes, our imaginations can run wild about what they look like. My fantasy spammer is a rat-skinny, potbellied, 40-year-old with a greasy salt-and-pepper ponytail and beard. And he's rat-smart: After being spammed with get-rich-on-the-Net messages, he bought the lists containing millions of email addresses, and he bought the DIY spam software, and now he's in business for himself, working from the spare bedroom of his mother's house in a Las Vegas suburb. I'm grateful to Roger and his Mad Libs for helping me come up with a fun spam prank. It all started a couple of weeks ago when I received the following: Do you drink bottled water? Are you looking for a discount? How about 4 cents a gallon? With our high quality water-filtration systems, you can bottle your own!! Email your name, address, phone# & email address to The Water Lady - TheWaterLady(a)----.com I copied this stupid message into my word processor, and using the search-and-replace function, swapped every occurrence of the word "water" with "urine," then sent the result to the Water Lady: I received the following advertisement and I'm wondering if it is a joke? Do you drink bottled urine? Are you looking for a discount? How about 4 cents a gallon? With our high quality urine-production systems, you can bottle your own!! Email your name, address, phone# & email address to The Urine Lady - TheWaterLady(a)----.com In a couple of hours, I got the following reply: Dear Mark: I don't know who may have done this sh*t (sic) to the message. Everywhere the word < urine > is found was originally < water >. Please accept our apologies. This is somebody's idea of a joke! Heh - it sure was. Pleased with myself, I sent the mutated mail to my friends. They got in on the action, respamming the Mad-Libbed message back to The Urine Lady. Someone even posted the message on alt.sex.fetish.watersports, with the subject "GOLDEN BOTTLES!" The post was forged to look as though it were sent by The Urine Lady herself. That same day, I got a spam trying to sell me a copy of Floodgate software, a notorious spamming program. I copied the spam to my word processor and did a few swaps. I changed "Floodgate" to "The Pig Spittle Drinkers' Toolkit," "email" to "slobber bottle," "program" to "pig-drool-extraction device," and "software" to "salivary-gland stimulator." Here's what I sent back to the spammer: SPECIAL: Buy the latest version of The Pig Spittle Drinkers' Toolkit before May 21st and receive a list of 30 slobber-bottle swappers who have millions of slobber bottles to swap with you as you build your database. HERE'S WHAT OTHER PIG SPITTLE DRINKERS' TOOLKIT USERS SAY..... "The Pig Spittle Drinkers' Toolkit is truly a dream come true! By following the instructions in the book, I was able to develop a list of 2,400 slobber bottle addresses in less than one hour. Furthermore, the technical support is outstanding. This pig-drool-extraction device will put me on a level playing field with the big boys. They don't teach this stuff in business school!" "This salivary-gland stimulator works fantastic - I'm so busy now I can't keep up with the orders and inquiries! Thanks!" "I ordered the pig-drool-extraction device and haven't stopped running with it since. With your support, (at the drop of a hat), with the finest pig-drool-extraction device ever released for public use, I started my dream business, a bulk slobber-bottle business. "If a 'dummy' like me can use this salivary-gland stimulator, anyone can! Great tool!!!" [snip] Soon, my friends and I were mutating and resending almost every spam we got. Most of the spammers wrote back saying they were mystified and expressed dismay that anyone would want to hurt their wonderful home-based business, apologized profusely, and promised that they'd get to the bottom of the nefarious campaign to defame their good name. This was our intent: to make them think that someone had intercepted their spam and was ruining their good name with wacko faux-spam. Only once did the spammer retaliate by flaming the messenger. Here's the original spam that a friend received: This is a great opportunity for your business. How would you like to get 200-300 responses per day from your advertisement? At Selective Marketing we make it happen for your business. Selective Marketing is a bulk email advertiseing (sic) company that generates hundreds to thousands of responses for your business. [snip] Here is his reply to the spammer: WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS DISGUSTING SATANIC FILTH? ALL FORTY-SIX MEMBERS OF 'CHRISTAIN VIRGINS AGAINST INTERNET SEX' RECEIVD THIS DISGUSTING PIECE OF HATE MAIL AND I DEMAND THAT YOU PROVIDE AN EXPLANATION! WE ARE CONSULTING OUR LAWYERS NOW TO SEE IF LEGAL ACTION CAN BE TAKEN! JOHNATHON JILLIAN DAVES This is a great opportunity for your penis. How would you like to get 200-300 penises per day from your penis? At Selective Marketing we make it happen for your penis. Selective Marketing is a bulk penis advertising company that generates hundreds to thousands of penises for your penis. The spammer sent 61 identical emails to my friend, which read: YOU WILL LEARN NOT TO FUCK WITH ME YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!!!!!!! (My friend said it took him "all of 30 seconds" to save the messages in a folder.) If you want to play the Mad Lib Mutated Spam game, here are some tips. (Remember, some of this stuff might get you in trouble with the long tentacle of the law, so proceed at your own risk.) 1. Usually, spams do not contain valid email addresses. But there are a couple of ways to get a real address. First, you can look up the spammer's domain name on InterNIC's Whois database. That'll yield a couple of email address you can use. The other way is to visit the spammer's Web site, which is often listed in the spam. If it isn't, just try typing the spammer's domain into your Web browser, and see if anything pops up. As a last resort, you can fax or snailmail your mutated message to the spammer, as they usually list their phone number and mailing address in their desperate quest to get their sebum-coated hands on your money. 2. If you have an AOL account, create a special email address (you are allowed up to five different addresses per account). I send most of my Mad-Libbed spams through an AOL address used exclusively for antispamming. That way, if the spammer flips out and decides to mail bomb you or forge your name on obscene Usenet postings, it won't matter. This also works with Web-based anonymous email services like HotMail. 3. If you're technically adept, you might want to try "linking two spammers to each other," as another friend suggests. By "sending mutated mail to other spammers," says my Mad Lib buddy, "maybe they will start suspecting each other of mutual spam mutating, and spamming will enter a new era of conspiracy and distrust." If you get any especially good results from playing Mad Lib Mutated Spam, please tell me about it! [Mark Frauenfelder] Send mail to Mark Frauenfelder at mark(a)wired.com Illustration by Dave Plunkert [to webmonkey] [to netsurf central]

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Re: [off-topic CNN] Stolen Laptops and lame 'solution'
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kent Crispin <kent(a)songbird.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 11, 1997 at 09:37:42PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote: > [...] > >The end buyer should not be held responcible for the illegal activities of > >the seller. > > Regardless of responsibility, if the original owner can prove it is > stolen goods, the end buyer is out of luck -- clearly the original > owner should get their goods back. And if the end buyer provably has > clear knowledge that it is stolen property, they are an accesssory to > the crime. The question of what happens to property which is bought in good faith, but is later discovered to be stolen, is not a clear one, and is dealt with in different ways in different countries. In the US, the property nearly always reverts to the original owner, unless the thief is a government. However, I remember reading articles about stolen art which implied that that is not always the case in Europe. When the stolen article is land, or governments and/or national pride are involved, things get very strange. Greece is still trying to recover the Elgin Marbles, which were taken by a Briton from the Parthenon around 1810, during the Turkish occupation. I'm sure Egypt would also like the Rosetta stone back - this was taken by Napolean in 1799, and later captured by the British. Both are now in the British Museum. Sometimes the claims go across millenia - the record I can think of being that certain specific parcels of land in Israel are claimed by modern Jewish settlers on the grounds that their purchase from the Philistines is explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament, while there is no extant record of their sale to the modern (non-Jewish) owners. [usual disclaimers apply] Peter Trei trei(a)Process.com

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Re: Photo ID is not needed for key signings...
by Mark Grant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Joshua E. Hill (jehill(a)w6bhz.calpoly.edu) wrote: > Because _these_ people _are_ binding true names to keys. That's > what _this_ is about. No, they're binding supposedly government-issued ids to keys. There's a difference. There are three problems with signing keys based on government-issued ids. 1. There's no link between a driver's license and an email address, so anyone with a license for 'Mark Grant' could claim to be the owner of the 'mark(a)unicorn.com' key. 2. Governments will issue fake ids to their agents, so there's no proof that that 'Mark Grant' is 'really' 'Mark Grant' and not 'Joe Sasquatch, NSA, FBI, BATF'. 3. Thieves have got fed up with faking individual licenses and can now do so wholesale; see the following from a recent RISKS Digest (18:94) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 16:39:50 -0500 (EST) >From: GaryG4430(a)aol.com Subject: Thieves steal license machines Excuse me Sir, but would you watch my Golden Goose while I go get a cup of coffee? Published in the *Portland Oregonian*, 25 Mar 1997, p.2, Around the Nation: Thieves steal license machines MIAMI - Last year, Florida bought computers to make driver's licenses that are virtually impossible to counterfeit. But brazen South Florida thieves have been stealing the computers, sometimes later returning to the scene to pick up accessories. In seven burglaries at five virtually unprotected driver's license offices from Key Largo to Okeechobee, crooks have gathered the $15,000 computers, software and supplies for five complete systems -everything they would need to crank out the state's new high-tech, counterfeit-resistant licenses. Yup, only our high-tech systems can make our high-security, tamperproof, extremely valuable documents. And you can't just buy one of these system just anywhere... Gary Grossoehme, Oregon Electronics [Also commented on by Bob_Frankston(a)frankston.com, who notes that if the new licenses are considered "foolproof", it only increases their value! PGN] ------------------------------

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It's only QA.
by bluelist＠hotmail.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thee BlueList is NOT harassment. It's NetWare Quality Assurance. No VM/CMS SMTP bugs here. This time it's a Linux Smail test. In the future, look for similar tests of HP SendMail, SGI/SVI, IBM OS/2, etc.

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just testing ...
by cypherpunks＠Algebra.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thee BlueList is NOT harassment. It's NetWare Quality Assurance. Check the headers on this, and you'll see that they are somewhat misleading. Maybe there's some Mail Transfer Agent bugs that need fixing. Or, could it be the specifications of how this is supposed to work? In the future, look for similar tests of HP SendMail, SGI/SVI, IBM OS/2, etc.

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Re: [CNN] Stolen Laptops and lame 'solution'
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:22 PM 6/11/97 +0000, Raymond Mereniuk wrote: > >> >> > The call goes to a Canadian office >> > that in turn phones the cops. So far, >> > it has a 100 percent recovery rate. >> > >> ====== 100% of WHAT? Systems with it installed which are stolen? How >> would you know what systems do NOT call in? >> It's like the question the clerk asks at the airport: "Did anyone put >> anything in your luggage you don't know anything about?" >> >> Now that the word is out, of course, the wily thief will eschew pluggin in >> until the hard drive is reformatted and installed >> with a clean OS. As usual: the stupid will be caught. > >This has been discussed on this list before, about 1 year ago. The >Computrace software is installed on a place on the hard drive where >DOS utilities like Fdisk and Format can not get at it. This is the >same as Diskmanager Version 7 or higher, Fdisk and Format will not >remove this version of Diskmanager. > Unless you overwrite the MBR and the first TRACK on the disk. Well, the bar is raised by about 3 minutes with DEBUG, thanks.

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Press release: F-Secure SSH for ISPs !
by Elisabeth Grace Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

- Data Fellows announces F-Secure SSH for Internet Service Providers - Telecom Finland the first ISP to integrate strong encryption with commercial Internet services Here is the latest press release regarding F-Secure SSH for ISPs -- the file is available from the Data Fellows ftp server as \partner\f-secure\marketng\presskit\sshtelec.zip (Also available from N: as file:N:\DF\Press-Releases\f-secure\SSHtelec.rtf) Enjoy! Best regards, Elisabeth Baker ----------------------------------------------------------------- Elisabeth.Baker(a)DataFellows.com Tel +358 9 478 44551 International Publication Coordinator GSM +358 50 560 6350 Data Fellows Security Software Fax +358 9 478 44599 Päiväntaite 8 * 02210 Espoo * Suomi - Finland kotiosoite: 24º55'21" E and 60º11'09" N -smm http://www.DataFellows.com -----------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Flag burning vote TOMORROW and government-imposed ratings
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote: > > Jut woke up, but I would argue "no." This would be the first > constitutional weakening of the First Amendment ever. Hardly a move that > strengthens free speech protections. First constitutional weakening yes, but hardly the first weakening. :( What about virtual flag burning? Any Javafolks out there wanting to protest could write a nice "Click Here to Burn the Flag of these here United States... Just like Vince's Be a Crypto Runner page." Flaming Flag Monger Citizen Unit #401598424628

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