December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

enemy of the state movie
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

fun wired article on new movie "enemy of the state" with privacy /cpunk implications. bamford quoted, info on NSA, rotenberg, spy satellites, etc. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/16507.html happy xgiving folks I am thankful for cyberspace <g>

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salon article reply
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

dear Mr. Lasica: your article is mostly fair and accurate but fails to delve into some obvious and basic issues. 1st, check out david brin's recent book on privacy.. you cover only a tiny facet of the issues, of people that argue privacy should be protected. consider a very interesting alternative view.. 2nd: it is easy to take any digital image of a naked woman and paste the head of any other person on top of it, to the point that it is indistiguishable from a real picture. tell this to the mother of the daughter who's naked pictures were posted. 3rd: you fail to mention anonymity/pseudonymity, the starkly obvious solution to all the pseudo-problems you raise. your article is fairly mild but reflects the constant refrain of journalists to phrase every news story as some kind of looming or scary crisis. the issues you speak of have been debated among cpunks for years with more insight. not expecting you to know abut cpunks, but you coulda done a teeny better on that article. a decent article nonetheless on important issues.. please purchase a few clues from the nearest cpunks and try,try again. take care

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old posts saved/archived/privacy article, salon
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

salon article on how old posts are saved on the net, and how it affects privacy. "I felt helpless and violated" sez one poor hapless chic http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/

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No Subject
by holist 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wonder if this is also old hat to you people. If it turns out to be another FAQ, I promise to read some. At a conference in Budapest yesterday (held by Network Associates) I was interpreting for a certain professor Christoph Fischer, from Karlsruhe University. He claimed to be a premier international hacker-hunter and described several fascinating cases, such as industrial espionage performed by the French secret service commissioned by French companies at Boeing and Siemens (the latter resulting in a 6 billion Deutschmark railway contract going to a French company rather than Siemens), as well as a case of extortion in Germany, when someone he referred to as "some crazy person" attempted to blackmail the German government by threatening to fly model aircraft into the turbines of commercial jet aircraft at take-off, which, as it turned out, is indeed a feasible means of causing a major disaster. The professor was called in by a panicky German government, about ready to send off the cash, to try to locate "the crazy person". The extortionist was sending the notes via e-mail, using what the professor referred to as "e-mail anonymiser servers" in the US. "This is not too widely publicised", he went on to say, "but all insiders are aware that all e-mail anonymiser services in the U.S. are operated by the FBI." He went on to say it took them about ten minutes to discover with the help of their American friends which account the mail was originating from. A more serious obstacle was posed by the fact that it was an AOL account and that the subscriber had specified a bogus credit-card number generated by widely available software for generating feasible bogus credit-card numbers, and installed the internet applications from one of those AOL CD-ROMs that were published in very large numbers. They were forced to begin monitoring some 30 thousand phonelines (another very interesting fact: according to the professor, during the so-called "4+2" negotiations just before the Berlin wall came down, the two Germanies agreed to provide the FBI with direct access to the backbone of the German telephone network - consequently all German telephone calls and a high percentage of all European international calls, so they could listen in on those without even making an effort - in fact, he claimed, it is easier for the FBI to listen to German phonecalls than it is for the German authorities themselves), which, in addition to costing a horrendous amount of money, resulted in a bunch of data every day that took them two days to process. So, Fischer said, it would have been hopeless if the fellow had not owed the German tax authority one and a half million Marks - the tax authority busted him (following the lines of their own, independent investigation), took his computer, and he was busted. Quite a few of the messages to cypherpunks seem to come from anonymous remailers in the US. Comments? holist

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Anon Mail Server?
by James Hillenbrand 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What is a good server that I could send mail through anonymously.. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -------==== James Hillenbrand ====------- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ICQ NUMBER (UIN) : 7621556 PERSONAL E-MAIL : JamezHill(a)Audiophile.com ALT. E-MAIL : MegaHertz(a)Audiophile.com HOMEPAGE : http://www.ThePentagon.com/DaMaGe NOTES : Pumpin' BASS lower than you can hear and louder than you can stand! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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PipeNet 1.1 and b-money
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've discovered some attacks against the original PipeNet design. The new protocol, PipeNet 1.1, should fix the weaknesses. PipeNet 1.1 uses layered sequence numbers and MACs. This prevents a collusion between a receiver and a subset of switches from tracing the caller by modifying or swaping packets and then watching for garbage. A description of PipeNet 1.1 is available at http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai. Also available there is a description of b-money, a new protocol for monetary exchange and contract enforcement for pseudonyms. Please direct all follow-up discussion of these protocols to cypherpunks.

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PipeNet 1.1 and b-money
by Steve Moyzis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know if this was supposed to have gone to Bugtraq, or it came to me because I 'visited' their "snoop server" acoupla times. If you already rec'd the original, then "Never Mind". >Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 15:33:49 -0800 >From: Wei Dai <weidai(a)eskimo.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net >Cc: onions(a)itd.nrl.navy.mil >Subject: PipeNet 1.1 and b-money >Sender: owner-onions(a)itd.nrl.navy.mil > >I've discovered some attacks against the original PipeNet design. The new >protocol, PipeNet 1.1, should fix the weaknesses. PipeNet 1.1 uses layered >sequence numbers and MACs. This prevents a collusion between a receiver >and a subset of switches from tracing the caller by modifying or swaping >packets and then watching for garbage. > >A description of PipeNet 1.1 is available at >http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai. > >Also available there is a description of b-money, a new protocol for >monetary exchange and contract enforcement for pseudonyms. > >Please direct all follow-up discussion of these protocols to cypherpunks. >

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Rootfest
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://slashdot.org/articles/98/11/26/1841245.shtml "RootFest is a conference for the computer underground, as well as the computer security professionals, engineers, networking people, feds, script kiddies, and anyone else who would like a chance to meet people and learn. When: RootFest 99 will be held May 21-23, 1999. Where: Minneapolis, Minnesota,..." RootMonger

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Re: Old Hat
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On the morning of Thurs, 26-Nov-98 at 10:17:48 -0800, holist unwisely said: > "This is not too widely publicised", he went on to say, > "but all insiders are aware that all e-mail anonymiser > services in the U.S. are operated by the FBI." > Quite a few of the messages to cypherpunks seem to come > from anonymous remailers in the US. > > Comments? Comment? COMMENTS? How about this, FUDSpreaderBreath: Stick Fischer and his claims up your ass. This is not too widely publicised <whisper, whisper>, I went on to say, but all insiders are aware that this kind of FUD is unadulterated ratshit. While there is no doubt _some_ official presence in the remailer network, the proposition advanced here is preposterous. > He went on to say it took them about ten minutes to > discover with the help of their American friends which > account the mail was originating from. It would probably take more than ten minutes just to find the phone number of their FBI contact, much less find him at his desk and not humping some summer intern, much less expect that he would know a remailer from his no doubt ultra-tight asshole, much less have him run down the pointy-haired manager to give him permission to find and communicate with a suitably cleared propellor head, much less find that the remailer in question was, indeed, operated either by them or by their snaky friends over at the NSA, much less check their surreptitious logs for the offending traffic, much less find that that traffic indeed did not originate from another remailer _not_ under their control, etc. etc. Ten minutes, in bureaucrat time, is about what it takes to rub two brain cells together to make a realistic approximation of a human thought. By this time, action in the physical universe is still a long, long way off. This report is likely to be nothing more than a complete fabrication of the facts, even if the underlying case was real. > just before the Berlin wall came down, the two Germanies > agreed to provide the FBI with direct access to the > backbone of the German telephone network Except that telephone networks don't have "backbones." More fantasy. And there was no single "German telephone network," and probably still isn't. > it is easier for the FBI to listen to German phonecalls > than it is for the German authorities themselves), which, > in addition to costing a horrendous amount of money, > resulted in a bunch of data every day that took them two > days to process. Highly doubtful. First, it's not in the FBI's brief to be doing large-scale foreign-based surveillance of foreign telephone systems. Second, there is no reason to believe that the FBI would have a substantially easier time of processing large amounts of resulting data than would the Germans. The Germans know how to use computers, too, and being congenitally statist, they no doubt have more facilities in place closer to the sources of information than do U.S. authorities at home or abroad. This claim also ignores the fact that the FBI have their hands full right at home and don't have the resources to be conducting large-scale surveillance of the phone calls of entire foreign nations. Oh, sure, we see increasing extraterritorial operation by small numbers of FBI, but that doesn't equate to monitoring the entire German phone system(s) or a significant segment thereof and identifying some nitwit dialing in to AOL. Is AOL even _in_ Germany? If so, what is it called, GOL? Gassholes On Line? The idea that a state security apparatus would find an AOL account to be a significant obstacle is laughable. > So, Fischer said, it would have been hopeless if the > fellow had not owed the German tax authority one and > a half million Marks - the tax authority busted him > (following the lines of their own, independent > investigation), took his computer, and he was busted. So we are to believe that after monitoring the entire German telephone system to identify who was calling in and using a particular AOL account, and successfully pegging him, the Germans were powerless to do anything, and had to call down their Tax Zombies to have an excuse to grab the guy's computer, which presumably then provided them with the "evidence" against him. Right. If the German authorities overhear in a bar that you might have forbidden literature, they will be there the same night, ransacking your home. How is it that with evidence that a certain person was the user of an AOL account they had identified as the source of extortionary messages, they were powerless to break down his door? I could admire the FUD spreaders just a teensy bit if they weren't so completely brain dead. They can't even invent a plausible FUD scenario. That the USG is operating one or more remailers is a no-brainer. That they are operating _all_ U.S. remailers is beyond the realm of reality. That the FBI has more than a casual hand in such things is not likely. Running remailers would be right up the NSA's, uh, alley, but maintaining a traffic watch on virtually _all_ remailers worldwide would be much more their style. Now _there's_ an opportunity for the spooks to have some real fun, though it's anything but certain they would be willing to "share," for a variety of reasons. The capabilities they have are protected as secrets even more than the information they gather. FUDBusterMonger It Ain't FUD til I SAY it's FUD!

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Evil Bandwidth Plot Exposed
by Brown, R Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We're still getting clueless people forwarding us email virus hoaxes. Pen-Pal, Buddy Frogs, Good Times, whatever. And I just realised who has to be responsible! Who has a motive for this "crime"? These things do no-one any real harm, they just take up bandwidth. Networks get saturated and maybe we have to buy more kit. It must be the router manufacturers. Maybe there is a secret team at Cisco or IBM generating new hoaxes to keep the email market growing.

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