August 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Computer Voting Expert, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, Ousted From Elections Confer...
by Freematt357＠aol.com 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

In a message dated 8/6/2003 12:51:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: Having Mercuri and Chaum ejected is the best thing that could have happened. Absolutely correct..You should try to think up ways to get them to be even more hostile to them. Regards, Matt-

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Re: What happened to the Cryptography list...?
by Major Variola (ret) 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

At 11:49 AM 8/6/03 -0700, Tim May wrote: >On Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 11:05 AM, Adam Back wrote: >> Couldn't he just let people post in his absence? It kind of detracts >> from a list if it disappears for weeks at a time on a regular basis. He moderates it. His choice. Single point of failure, regrettable. >I enjoyed interacting with Perry about 10-11 years ago, mostly on the >Extropians list. Perry was a major political ranter (even if it is not >true that he coined the phrase "Utopia is not an option"). Amusing! Because he keeps cryptography@ politics free, for the most part. Which seems to be why some knowledgable people post there and do not bother with this group. Specialization is fine. I find it useful that both tech and techsocially clueful folks post here. >I despise people's private fiefdoms, whether Dave Farber's "Interesting >People" list or Lewis McCarthy's "Coderpunks" list or any of Bob >Hettinga's various "BearerBunks" and "Phisodex" lists. And Perrypunks, >with its quixotic policy about politics (politics banned, except when >Perry wanted to rant), was just another private fiefdom. A problem with editors in a free market? That's a bit reflexively-anarchic, no? One man's "chafing" is another's "straying off topic" I guess. >I don't dispute their property right to do with their machines as they >wish, absent contracts, but being in their fiefdoms chafes very quickly. Reputation/editing is useful for keeping S/N high, not that one can't invest personally (eg in kill files) to do this. The distributed-CP remailing architecture is interesting, and enforces an anarchic (editor-free) forum, which is a good thing, but as a result has a S/N that deters some folks who are worth listening to, who do post in the other, moderated forum. ---- "Thus ends, at least in Italy, the absurd anarchy that permits anyone to publish online without standards and without restrictions, and guarantees to the consumer minimum standards of quality in all information content, for the first time including electronic media." -Italian govt

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Re: What if all things computable are computable in polynomial time
by Major Variola (ret) 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

At 01:28 PM 8/6/03 -0400, Billy wrote: >> At 01:18 AM 8/6/03 -0700, Eric Cordian wrote: >> >What if all things computable are computable in polynomial time? > >You mean polynomials like O(n^10^10^10) ? > > subset{P} !=> easy There could still be some protection with some crypto schemes, in such a world, BUT the adversary is assumed to be much better funded, and poly work gives the adversary's algorithmicists (who can be rented cheaply when young) hope that much faster algorithms can be found, if not published :-) You really want the assurance of exponential work to break it, not just big constants. The problem is that, for public key crypto, we want functions which are easy "one way" (if you know the secret) and exponentionally tough in the length of the public key the other. If there is a "quick" (*non-expon*.) solution to your trap-door function then the adversary can reasonably do the extra work and your scheme is toast. For symmetric crypto, the same applies. You can always make *your* key longer, but the "leverage" you get --the extra work the adversary must do-- is much less if you can't demand exponential work by them (because as was suggested, presumably tongue-in-cheek, by EC, there might not be any exponential work problems) --- "The tragedy of Galois is that he could have contributed so much more to mathematics if he'd only spent more time on his marksmanship."

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Re: The last detritus of the dot bombs
by Tyler Durden 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

Tim May wrote... "Way too many people think they can become the next Tony Robbins, that Neanderthal on late night t.v. selling motivational tapes" Well, I think a lot of people actually get some real $$$ doing this kind of stuff. And as an engineer/physicist by training, I can't help thinking this is bulsshit as well at best, and a real danger at worst...I can't imagine how much damage George Guilder caused in Telecom. Nevertheless, if people are wiling to regularly pay for "motivational speakers" (I'm thinking of Chris Farley), perhaps they are providing some kind of value that is not so easily assessed...a lot of folks probably grew up in Church-going homes and they are used to be Preached at. So...companies pay for oporae preachers to give their sales folks (for instance) a warm-and-fuzzy. BUT...it's clear to me that there's a lot of money going to sheisters like this. -TD >From: Tim May <timcmay(a)got.net> >To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com >Subject: The last detritus of the dot bombs >Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 11:40:09 -0700 > >As I'm feeling chatty this morning, I'll comment on another trend I've been >seeing a lot of. While reading the Andrew Orlowski piece on Robin Hanson >and the PAM/terror futures thing > >( the URL is <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32170.html> ) > >I got to thinking about "What ever happened to Max More?" (the founder of >the Extropians group) > >I did some Googling and found out he and his wife (Natasha Vita-More...the >Extropians often change their names to more future-sounding monikers) are >some kind of "motivational coaches" or involved in software to do the same. > >Then while Googling on Omnivora Policy Systems, or whatever that >"disappearing ink" company is, I ran across the name Jeff Ubois, the guy >who attended some of my parties. His resume is chockfull of references to >"motivational' and "coaching" and similar squishy-soft consulting gigs. > >Way too many people think they can become the next Tony Robbins, that >Neanderthal on late night t.v. selling motivational tapes. > >The good ideas, the good companies, the good technology...it comes from >good ideas and good products, not from EST nonsense, not from motivational >coaches, not from late night hucksters. > >Having talked to some of these folks, though not for the past few years, it >really bugs me to see them going down this bullshit path. > > >--Tim May >"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any >member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to >others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient >warrant." --John Stuart Mill _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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Colored people
by Tim May 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 08:39 PM, Mac Norton wrote: > There was a weapons charge as well, which will always complicate > matters considerably. The unconventional life is a more or less fine > thing until it gets perpendicular to the conventional life, usually in > the form of law enforcement agents. When that happens, and it almost > surely will, what is necessary is a relatively big bunch of money, or > a plea bargain. > > What happened here is happening to young men (yes, usually men, and as > in this case, of color) Where did this "of color" nonsense get started? I thought colored people wanted to be called by other names, now they and their whiteliberal supporters are routinely using the silly name "people of color." (Of course, we live in an age where homosexuals call themselves "queers" and propagate the name--Queer Nation, Queers of Color, Queer Eye for the Pervert Guy, etc.--and yet file lawsuits when others call them queers. And we live in an age where negroes call themselves and other negroes "niggers" and name their minstrel acts "Niggaz with Attitude" but then insist that persons of whiteness call them "NWA" so as not to use the "offensive" "N-word.") If the coloreds want to be called that, fine with me. --Tim May

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"Anarchy" gene in bees
by R. A. Hettinga 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

<http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/020422/020422-16.html> -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Year in Jail for Web Links
by Eric Cordian 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

An anarchist has been sentenced to a year in jail for having links to explosives information on his Web site. AmeriKKKa is further fucking the First Amendment by restricting whom he may associate with in the future, and what views he may espouse. As is usual in most criminal cases today, the defendent was forced to plea bargain to avoid the threat of worse charges if he went to trial. http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/05/anarchist.prison.ap/index.html ----- LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A federal judge sentenced a man to a year in prison Monday for creating an anarchist Web site with links to sites on how to build bombs. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson sentenced Sherman Austin to more than the prosecutor had recommended under a plea bargain. Austin, 20, pleaded guilty in February to distributing information related to explosives. ... -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: Trouble at HavenCo?
by Freematt357＠aol.com 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

In a message dated 8/5/2003 2:51:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, timcmay(a)got.net writes: Sterling had placed much too much emphasis on the havens' attempt to be physically secure by owning small countries and not nearly enough (if any) emphasis on using strong cryptography to achieve security inside cypherspace I agree except to say that there must be a minimal level of freedom and security in which to operate. You'd have to be not in a place like Rwanda where the Hutu might literally hack you and your hardware with their machetes. Or be in another similar condition where the network lines are pounded into pretty jewelry. Communities like the Amish can only flourish in communities such as the US which largely leaves them alone (This is changing unfortunately.) I do remember we discussed the ridiculous notion of placing machine guns on Haven-Co's platform- As if the Brits would allow such a thing in their territorial waters. Regards, Matt-

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Slow but interesting sender-hiding covert channel program
by Bill Stewart 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

Rob Lemos reports on the following presentation at Blackhat by Mark Loveless of Bindview; I've got some comments. ----------------- PROGRAM WOULD HIDE NET COMMUNICATIONS CNET reports about a program called NCovert, which uses spoofing techniques to hide the source of communications and the data that travels over the network. The technique makes it almost impossible to track where the original message came from, because the data holds only the addresses of the recipient and the third-party server. http://news.com.com/2100-1002-5058535.html -------------------------------- The technique works by hiding four bytes of data in the TCP header's ISN field, bouncing packets off one or more innocent third-party machines, setting your destination IP address to the third-party and forging your recipient's IP as the source, so the recipient appears connection accepts or rejects from real, fake, or random locations, and the real message is hidden in the header fields. The connection type can be something credible like email or http. Of course, there _are_ ISPs that do spoof-proofing, so if your ISP does this, you won't be able to forge the recipient's address on your outgoing packets usefully. Spoof-proofing usually limits you to addresses in the subnet used by your internet connection - if you've got a /24, you can impersonate one of 254 locations near yours, but if anybody's seriously trying to track you, you're busted. There's also the problem that, unless it's sending call setups that the recipient is rejecting, there'll be a lot of half-open TCP connections on the recipients, which is a DOS problem. It's cute, though. Also, Bindview's security tools site does have an interesting spoofing-detection program that works by looking at TTL values for packets you receive that are suspected of being spoofed - it traces a connection to/from the purported source IP address and sees whether the time-to-live field on the suspicious packet is close enough to one from the real route to be believable or declares it to be bogus if it's too far off.

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nCipher edges closer to break even (fwd)
by Jim Choate 06 Aug '03

06 Aug '03

http://theregister.co.uk/content/7/32178.html -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage(a)ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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