December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: whitehouse.gov/robots.txt
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

I'd suggest "wget" for spidering sites. It can be told to ignore .robots files. It is good for mirroring sites which you suspect may be taken down. Win/Unix versions available.

1 0

Re: cypherpunks discussions
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

At 11:24 AM 12/8/03 -0800, Tim May wrote: >No, I think few topics on the Cypherpunks list are taken private. > >My reasons are two-fold: First, to get them to stop lurking and >participate. Second, to work up the energy to compose an essay (or >mini-essay, whatever), I need some motivation. I am not energetic about It can also be imprudent, as in a free trip to a grand jury in a distant land, possibly with you fronting the govt the money for the trip. All to hear you mention the Bill of Rights, repeatedly, of course. Neophytes are encouraged to look up Jim Bell, Declan, John Young, etc.

1 0

Speaking of Reason
by Freematt357＠aol.com 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Tim's whine (complaint) withstanding, I just got the January issue of Reason in the mail and of interest is Mike Godwin's interview of Bruce Sterling- Cybergreen: Bruce Sterling on media, design, fiction, and the future (p 42-50). It's worth a read. Regards, Matt-

10 14

(No Subject)
by edo 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Lne is on dialup? Wow. Anyhow, I'm a newbie who has been lurking a while. Privacy concerns and what intelligent people think about it is what got me on this list.With the USA becoming the world's most totalitarian state in disguise... The sheen on the illusion of liberty here will wear thin soon, IMHO.People think that they enjoy liberty here because they can buy a gun. Yes the libertarians can claim that the guns protect them, and Afganistan and Iraq have been demonstrations of how it prevents a hostile takeover (just like someones sig about an RPG a day...) What good does it do inside the USA unless civil war breaks out? How does it protect the war protestors in NYC or those in Miami? I don't oppose guns, but just want to point out that the govt has been rapidly diminishing our civil liberties despite all the guns... As far as I'm concerned, true anonymity in finacial affairs (and secure communication channels) is the only real method open to peacefully combat the all seeing, all powerful government. I'm sure the interest in this will first focus on things like e-gold when common people see their life savings evaporate as the dollar continues its plunge. Any one with thoughts on this? Of course only a small percentage of the general public will be bright enough to see that a fiat currency does not last forever... and is dependent on the ever increasing projection of power by a nation state, which is not a stable sort of situation.The majority of them will want federal bailouts etc. What I'm curious about is digital currencies. Can anyone speak about the Digital Monetary Trust or DMT? I'm sorry I have not read the last upteen years of mail archives, but I'm interested in what people think NOW about Orlin Grabbe, DMT, e-gold etc. Anyone with anonymous or otherwise stories? People who've been part of the battle? Sorry for the ramble, but the most interesting comment recently was about David Chaums patents expiring soon... any word on its potential impact? Peace and liberty.

9 12

Re: alt.anonymous.messages
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

-------- Original Message -------- From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon(a)pobox.com> > > You do not need to use remailers to take advantage of > > alt.anonymous.messages. If someone posts directly to > > alt.anonymous. messages, still the adversary cannot tell who he > > is posting to. (Assuming his recipient sets his newsagent to > > always download all new messages) > > Oh, that's true of course; but the adversary would be able to know > that you posted something (given that he's monitoring your traffic). > That's already something, and frequently more than you'd want to > give away. Use your laptop and random open Wi-Fi hotspots (esp. a consumer's) for such sensitive communication.

2 1

Re: Has this photo been de-stegoed?
by Tyler Durden 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

Well, that sounds reasonable on the face of it, but there's got to be a lot more discussion before I'm convinced. Remember that psuedorandom or encrypted data has a certain noise spectrum. This noise spectrum is extremely different based on what PRBS one is using...PRBS 2^23-1 looks completely different from other 'noise' (and remember noise is a relative term). If you spatially fft a random photo, you'll find that the image detail energy largely occupies certain bands. These are not the bands that stego uses (or so I assume...it really can't be otherwise). The stego-able spectrum will indeed be noise, but this noise will have a certain spectrum. Stego, done well, will I assume try to mimic this noise, but there may be problems. If the message is encrypted, then merely loading that message into the photo will, I assume, NOT result in a noise spectrum that looks like real noise. So you'll need some kind of chopper or spectrum-spreader I guess. If no chopper's used, however, I'm guessing that stego-ed 'noise' doesn't look like true photo noise. If the photo has been de-stegoed stupidly (ie, by writing a random message in its place), that noise won't look like photo noise. So it seems to me that you'd need a sophisticated agent to make the de-steoed photo look like it never had stego. In other words, if the FBI are your man-in-the-middle, then you'll be able to detect that the photo was de-stegoed. If the NSA is your man-in-the-middle, you might not be able to tell. Any of you TLA lurkers wanna come in on a remailer and set me straight? -TD >From: "A.Melon" <juicy(a)melontraffickers.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: Re: Has this photo been de-stegoed? >Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 13:28:31 -0800 (PST) > >Tyler Durden (camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com) wrote on 2003-12-08: > > Is it possible to determine that the photo 'originally' (ie, when it was > > sent to me) contained stegoed information, but that it was intercepted >in > > transit and the real message overwritten with noise or whatever? > >Hardly, given the simple fact that well-encrypted content is >indistinguishable from noise. _________________________________________________________________ Dont worry if your Inbox will max out while you are enjoying the holidays. Get MSN Extra Storage! http://join.msn.com/?PAGE=features/es

3 2

Zombie Patriots and other musings [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl(a)mfn.org> > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Anatoly Vorobey wrote: > > > On Tue, Dec 09, 2003 at 12:47:27AM +0100, edo wrote: > > > With the USA > > > becoming the world's most totalitarian state in disguise... > > > > That's a pretty silly thing to say. > > Sure you don't want to educate yourself on those other states in the > > world? > > It's not silly at all: look again. He said "becoming". And it is. Fast. > It's *long* past time for the inhabitants here to have taken up arms and > blown holes in a *lot* of Federal heads. > > Just a few hundred dead federal goons, spread over a relatively short period > (~6 months), where the attacks were obviously coordinated, made against > officers enforcing particularly rancid unconstitutional laws (say the federal > tax code), and without discoverable perpetrators, would result in an almost > instantaneous shortage of officers available to enforce such uncontitutional > laws - the survivors would simply refuse. > > Long fucking overdue. At first it seems that there isn't much one person or even a few can do about this, but I'm no longer so sure. The politics and power of government is, in the end, always dispensed from the end of a gun. For this reason very few citizens even consider contending with the government for political purposes until they fell there is little choice. Nothing less than a guerilla war seems necessary to restore something akin to the original constitutional balance in the U.S. But where to recruit these people? My suggestion: the terminally ill. Many TI come to the table with a 'gift', the certainty of impending death and for some the possibility of fearlessness for physical harm or imprisonment. While the majority of the TI will not see any reason to buck the system in their final days (ideological disagreement, fear for the effect on their families, lack the health, resources, skills or mentality for such a ' final adventure ') I did some back of the envelope calculations that show that more than 100 people die in the U.S. every day who could fill the bill. I've coined the term Zombie Patriots to signify the TI who volunteer to give their last full measure to the American Restoration. Operating alone or in small groups they could form the backbone of an American Civil Liberties Army. ZPs need an education in how to create a personal plan of action and acquire the needed skills and resources (Paladin Press where are you when we need you). A Domestic American Patriot Family Fund may also be desired.

1 0

Two interesting communication privacy tools
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

1. Invisiblog http://invisiblog.com/ lets you publish a weblog using GPG and the Mixmaster anonymous remailer network. You don't ever have to reveal your identity - not even to us. You don't have to trust us, because we'll never know who you are. 2. File-Exchange https://www.meshmx.com/fe/ allows you to exchanging files with other people without giving away your identity or harming your privacy. Furthermore it is so simple that you need nothing else but a web browser. No need for special software, hardware, resources etc. How to use it? You simply upload a file through the front end and get back an "access-key". This key can be send to any other person by email, instant-messaging or IIP. Anyone who has that key can download the file again by entering the key into the front end.... By default the file will render unaccessible one hour after it had been uploaded.

1 0

Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

-------- Original Message -------- From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> > On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass(a)SAFe-mail.net wrote: > > E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in > > checking account holder identification > > Unfortunately, they also don't due much if any due diligence in > identifying themselves in messages to real or potential customers, > so it's extremely difficult to determine if I've gotten any > administrative messages that really _were_ from them > as opposed to the N fraudsters sending out mail asking you to - > log in to e-g0ld.com or whatever fake page lets them steal > your egold account number and password so they can drain your balance. Actually they do. Sort of at http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/alert.html - Never click hypertext links in HTML formatted e-mail to access your account. - Confirm that you are on the e-gold website before entering your e-gold passphrase into either a logon form or a payment authorization form (see note below about e-gold shopping cart interface): - Verify the address/location/URL starts with: https://www.e-gold.com/ - Verify that the site certificate is issued by VeriSign to www.e-gold.com > > A policy of PGP-signing all their messages using a key > that's published on their web pages would be a good start, > though it's still possible to trick some fraction of people > into accepting the wrong keys. Too few customers would know what to do with such a key. >For now, my basic assumption > is that any communications I receive that purport to be from them > are a fraud, and it's frustrating that there's no good mechanism > for reporting that to e-gold. They know about most of the fraudulent emails circulating. They don't want to hear about them from customers because it would exhaust what customer service resources they have. I have never received an email from e-gold following my account creation confirmation and I beleive its their policy not to send emails for just this reason.

2 1

Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
by Freematt357＠aol.com 11 Dec '03

11 Dec '03

In a message dated 12/10/2003 10:34:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: > I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify > information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, > by the way). > > If I ever determine that E-Gold personnel have faked an account on my > behalf, You're a moron Tim. Everybody here probably gets the scammers messages, I get e-gold and paypal cons on regular basis- E-gold never advertised itself as anything other than what it is, a bailee. What e-gold is really good is for is micropayments and I have personally found it good for making payments internationally. I know the principals involved, and I've personally viewed one of their vaults and the gold, etc. is really there. Regards, Matt-

1 0