December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Smartcard update
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks Tonga announces yet another version of SIO/STEST, the universal smartcard software. Quick summary of changes: - Philips, Gemplus, and Schlumberger reader support added - Chipknip (IEP) specific commands added - new internal commands - infrastructure for implementing card specific commands has been added (which the chipknip commands are built on top of) At this point, we need others to start writing tables to support additional cards. If you have an ISO7816 compatible smartcard with programmer reference manual and minimal C knowledge, you can contribute to the project. Full source is at https://www.cypherpunks.to/scard/stest_download.php -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> PGP v5 encrypted email preferred. "Tonga? Where the hell is Tonga? They have Cypherpunks there?"

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Re: hashcash spam prevention & firewalls (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 20:24:59 -0800 > From: Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> > Subject: Re: hashcash spam prevention & firewalls > I think there needs to be a story for mailing lists. It might be > acceptable for the first pass to allow spamming of mailing lists but not of > individuals email addresses. (Apologies in advance to list moderators.) We have a moderator? This is news to me and I suspect the other CDR operators. Who is this person please, I would very much like to discuss a couple of issues with them... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ 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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Radio Free Cypherpunks...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, With the recent changes in the law regarding Pirate Radio is anyone looking at sending the cypherpunks traffic over a low-power transmitter so that folks in your town can tune in and listen to the traffic? Seems like a perfect means to make the issues even better known. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ 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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Re: Another of Gary Burnore's Lies Exposed
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Sam" <sam-001(a)dpinc.ml.org> wrote: > >:That's because there AREN'T any. Again, what are his motives in shutting > >:down something that he obviously considers to be a valuable asset? > > > > OBVIOUSLY? Why obviously? Obviously because he says so? > > Obviously, as in being very apparent, based upon his actions. "Obvious" because I'm the one using a remailer as a communications medium. To attempt to destroy my own means of communications would be ludicrous. Gary, on the other hand, has stated that he does NOT use remailers. He would thus have nothing to lose if any/all of them were closed down. It would be similarly ludicrous (though perhaps less so) to accuse Gary of annoying, flaming, and accusing people as part of a scheme to get Netcom shut down. Interestingly enough, Belinda Bryan, out of the blue, recently taunted a poster to netcom.general by saying, "Are you going to use anonymous remailers to attack Gary next?". It's almost as if the crew at DataBasix is INVITING "abuse" via remailers, and it has had an uncanny knack for appearing right on cue from them in the past, too. (Just like the so-called "spam bait" started showing up right after Gary's initial demand to Jeff that he turn over his logs to DataBasix.) Nor does it make sense that if I wanted to get remailers shut down, I'd limit myself to criticizing one little obnoxious clique on usenet, namely the DataBasix Gang. I doubt that anyone is likely to arouse a hue and cry against remailers from the masses by criticizing Gary, Belinda Bryan, and Billy McClatchie ("Wotan") anonymously. > > "Obviously because if he didn't find them valuable he wouldn't be using them"? > > So when he (and others) uses them to spam bait, is that finding them valuable? > > I do not recall any conclusive proof being posted, or even circumstantial > evidence, that he was responsible for spam baiting. Back when the alleged "spam baiting" was going on, Gary and Belinda were accusing "rfg" of doing it. For awhile, they accused Scott Dentice. Now they've gotten tired of accusing named individuals and have invented a mythical "anon asshole" who is supposedly responsible for just about everything imaginable. (I'm supposedly the latest re-incarnation of this evil, mean ogre.) Since Gary is adamant about there being one and only one "anon asshole" responsible for all of this, at least one of his accusations against people he's named in the past must have been a lie.

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Re: Another of Gary Burnore's Lies Exposed
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Sam" <sam-001(a)dpinc.ml.org> wrote: > >:That's precisely my point. And now he refuses to disclose his motives for > >:that demand or what he intended to do with the names and addresses contained > >:in those logs. Every time he's asked the question of why he attempted to > >:violate the privacy of hundreds or perhaps thousands of remailer users, it > >:elicits another tantrum that goes, "Lies! Prove it! Why are you harassing > >:me? What are your demands?" > > > > You still can't answer it so you ignore it. > > What is the nature of the harassment that you are complaining about? Has > this anonymous individual mailbombed you? Made threatening phone calls in > the middle of the night? All I see are a bunch of posts, without any > profanities, that make a bunch of cogent points, and claims. Is this what > you consider harassment? Is this what you call "harassment"? > > That must mean that I'm harassing you as well, right? That is exactly my objection to the tactics of Gary Burnore and the DataBasix gang. NOW Gary claims that he's not against remailers, yet his treatment of Jeff Burchell speaks for itself. In the past, he's said things like "remailers have their place, but their operators should prevent them from being used for abuse". That sounds reasonable, until you read between the lines. He calls the kind of discussion that the three of us are engaging in "harassment", and has even, upon occasion, accused posts critical of him of constituting "libel". Yet he offers no suggestion of how a remailer operator is supposed to detect and prevent "libel". He has offered no handy-dandy Perl script which will act as a "truth filter" and detect the truth or falsity of a particular post, since posting the truth about someone, as unflattering as it may be, is not "libel". Actually, Gary may unwittingly prove to be a "friend" of remailers, yet. His dealings with people who challenge him publicly should serve as an object lesson as to why people may wish to think twice before broadcasting their e-mail addresses to the world with every Usenet posts. Most people, I would suspect, would not consider it great fun to speak their mind and face retaliation by having an old state tax lien (complete with street address) dredged from the archives and posted worldwide to usenet, with the threat that unless the criticism ceases, "there's more where that came from". It's sort of hard to harass an anonymous poster in that fashion, so Gary has to settle for juvenile taunts of "anon asshole".

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Re: hashcash spam prevention & firewalls
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk>: > I am looking at writing some hashcash > (http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/hashcash/) based spam prevention > software. > So what we want is a filter to bounce messages without the required > hashcash postage, we ideally want this to happen at the ISP or > organisational SMTP server end, rather than at the recipients end, > because a) it is simpler for 1 service provider to install software > than 100,000 neophytes, Hashcash in this context suffers from the 'fax effect' - the catch 22 of "We won't install what isn't widely used". > and b) it reduces bandwidth consumption on > dial up users pay per second lines as the spam is killed before they > see it. I have not (yet) persuaded demon to allow user-defined procmail rules on the ISP end of the phone lines. Anybody know an ISP who does this ? I'll be with them in days if they match the other services I want. I can't imagine ISPs installing something at all exotic if they refuse to use procmail. > Secondly the proxy approach prevents some of the SMTP server functions > from operating properly because the process on the other end of the > socket is our hashcash proxy on localhost rather than the remote mail > hub No loss. > If the postage is valid, replay the headers to the real SMTP server > (with IP masquerading so that the IP address appears to be coming from > the originator, so that the SMTP server will not get upset about > reverse DNS look up mismatches etc). Then act as a dumb proxy for the > rest of the connection passing data through to the normal hashcash > server. The above paragraph looks like a strange (and IMHO wrong) way to mix firewall technologies. If you are passing mail through a proxy you won't want to either IP masq or lookup DNS records internally. > There are a few techniques to reduce the overhead of preventing spam > with hashcash. One is to require valid hashcash only on the first > message to a given address. (Spammers being hit and run types, and > even having to generate hashcash for each spamee once would be > expensive for a spam list of 10 million unwilling spam recipients). > Better, is to require valid hashcash on all mail, _until_ the > recipient replies to a mail. This is good because people rarely reply > to spammers. This means a huge database of who has replied to whom. Must the reply have headers indicating In-Reply-To a recognisable message ? -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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Re: Fw: Jim Bell Sentenced (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 10:45:19 -0500 > From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> > Subject: Re: Fw: Jim Bell Sentenced (fwd) > Now, is it not true that we've self-censored ourselves into believing > Jim is just a fool, rather than a gutsy guy willing to do what most > of us will not, instead preferring covert self-censorship over the > all-too-easily opposed group-think kind. Spin-doctor alert. Jim Bell plea bargained period. Had he had one iota of the 'guts' you so blithely banter about the case would be going to trial. Plea-bargaining = capitulation = self-censorship ____________________________________________________________________ | | | | | We built your fort. We will not have it used against us. | | | | John Wayne - Allegheny Uprising | | | | | | _____ 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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Re: Another of Gary Burnore's Lies Exposed
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

rashidk(a)mailexcite.com (Rashid Kaman) wrote: > X-No-Archive: yes > >The whole "spam bait" issue is obviously a smoke screen, since the alleged > >spam-bait came AFTER the demand for Jeff's logs. > > The spambaits, at a rate of a dozen a day in early and mid-April, came > BEFORE Jeff Burshell, presented with their existence, offered in late > April, to turn over his machine logs. I'm not sure how you're involved in this scenario, nor what your source of information is. I was quoting from a public post by Jeff Burchell, the operator of the remailer in question, and he specifically stated that the so-called "spam baits" began AFTER Gary Burnore had demanded that Jeff turn over his remailer logs to DataBasix, and BEFORE Belinda Bryan sent him the letter claiming to be with DataBasix' "legal department" and formalizing that demand. Read it for yourself: -> I still don't know what the hell is going on with DataBasix, Wells Fargo -> and Gary Burnore, but I suspect that someone used huge.cajones to say -> something extremely unflattering about Burnore (from what I can tell, -> he had it coming). Burnore then decided that he would make things -> difficult for me. First, he wanted the user who had posted something -> "inflammatory" about him revealed. When I told him that I couldn't -> do that, he carried on about mail logs and identifying the host that -> a message came from (the usual). I didn't explain to him that my -> machine keeps logs, but not anything involving a *(a)cajones.com -> address. He then requested the logs, which I denied (and told him -> to get his lawyer to send a request...) Here comes the key part: -> Between the time he first contacted me, and the time I received the -> letter from Belinda Bryan, is when the baiting of databasix addresses -> began (slowly, with just a few posts). It appears that his account differs from yours.

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by 95059550＠moneymakers.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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technical spam prevention
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

the problem of spam prevention has concerned me for a long time. the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack-- yet it is incredibly vulnerable to spam. the initial assumption was that all nodes on the network are friend, not foe, i.e. trusted. this concept is breaking down as the net scales massively. some people warned long ago that spam would become an increasing problem on the net as it scaled, and that the technical visionaries would wise to try to cooperate and come up with approaches. such a point of view is not popular on this list, which is not really big on collaboration (despite that some of the greatest successes and fame have come from it, such as via the code cracking ring). but increasingly events are forcing people to come together to come up with solutions. there are many promising approaches to spam prevention. the one I like is a system whereby the receiver can specify how much money it costs to receive an email from anyone. the mail is rejected if it doesn't contain this fee. different people can configure their incoming mail different. Gates may charge, say, $1000. joe schmoe would charge, say, $1. an interesting part of this model is that if someone you like sends you mail, including the fee, there is nothing to prevent you from reimbursing them in a return message (or paying their own fee with the money they supply). such a system would be a very powerful spam prevention system. (due credit goes to TCM for being one of the first for advocating this.) however, I would like to suggest that spam prevention is a great test for a *reputation*system*, something we have talked about a long time here but found it very difficult to implement. the reputation system would rate people based on their lack of email complaints, and allow queries that could screen email based on poor ratings. such a system would not immediately block spam, but it could be implemented in a way such that spam becomes far less powerful. there are two problems with spam that any designer has to confront. there are some internet providers who do not want their users to spam. if they inserted a few header into the outgoing mail such as the following, it would allow excellent screening heuristics: 1. total bytes sent through this email address. 2. total age of this account in days. the sender is free to calculate the ratio if it prefers, or use various heuristics on the straight values themselves. now, I consider this pretty easy. the more difficult problem is that there are some IPs that do not wish to ban spammers-- they may be making a business out of it. a reputation system that weeds out these sites may be buildable-- but it's the most difficult problem. I think a lot of fame and glory will go to someone who invents effective spam prevention mechanisms-- increasingly I think the future of cyberspace depends on solving this very difficult and seemingly intractable problem. (if anyone can point me to a mailing list that focuses on technical spam prevention, I'd appreciate it.)

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