March 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

[arma@mit.edu: Tor 0.1.1.17-rc is out]
by Eugen Leitl 29 Mar '06

29 Mar '06

----- Forwarded message from Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> -----

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Low mortagge ratee approvall
by Pasquale Burke 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

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by Mai Parr 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

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[Clips] Why is Hugo Chavez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines?
by R. A. Hettinga 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:32:09 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Why is Hugo Chavez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines? Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com Again, boys and girls, spoken slowly: With electronic voting, you can either have secret ballots, or not sell your vote, but not both. With equity, it doesn't matter. The whole *point* is to sell your ballot. Thus, once again, financial cryptography is the only cryptography that matters. :-). And political cryptography, like politics itself, is proven, once again, to be about nothing more than fraud and extortion. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitic…> RealClearPolitics March 28, 2006 Why is Hugo Chavez Involved With U.S. Voting Machines? By Richard Brand The greater threat to our nation's security comes not from Dubai and its pro-Western government, but from Venezuela, where software engineers with links to the leftist, anti-American regime of Hugo Chavez are programming electronic voting machines that will soon power U.S. elections. Congress spent two weeks overreacting to news that Dubai Ports World would operate several American ports, including Miami's, but a better target for their hysteria would be the acquisition by Smartmatic International of California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, whose machines serve millions of U.S. voters. That Smartmatic -- which has been accused by Venezuela's opposition of helping Chavez rig elections in his favor -- now controls a major U.S. e-voting firm should give pause to anybody who thinks that replacing our antiquated butterfly ballots and hanging chads will restore Americans' faith in our electoral process. Consider the lack of confidence Venezuelans have in their voting system. Anti-Chavez groups have such little faith in Smartmatic's machines that they refuse to run candidates in elections anymore as reports surface of fraud and irregularities from Chavez 2004 victory in a recall referendum. Yet somehow Smartmatic International and its Venezuelan owners were able to purchase Sequoia last year without the deal receiving any scrutiny from federal regulators -- including the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), which is tasked with determining whether foreign takeovers pose security risks. CFIUS generally investigates such transactions only when the parties voluntarily submit themselves to review -- which Smartmatic did not do. But it retains the authority to initiate an investigation when it suspects a takeover compromises national security. Smartmatic has a brief but controversial history. The company was started in Caracas during the late 1990s by engineers Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola. They worked out of downtown Caracas providing small-scale technology services to Latin American banks. Despite having no election experience, the tiny company rocketed from obscurity in 2004 after it was awarded a $100 million contract by the Chavez-dominated National Electoral Council to replace Venezuela's electronic voting machines for the recall vote. When the council announced the deal, it disingenuously described Smartmatic as a Florida company, though Smartmatic's main operations were in Caracas and the firm had incorporated only a small office in Boca Raton. It then emerged that Smartmatic's ''partner'' in the deal, Bizta Corp., also directed by Anzola and Mugica, was partly owned by the Venezuelan government through a series of intermediary shell corporations. Venezuela initially denied its investment but eventually sold its stake. When the vote finally came, exit polls by New York's Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates showed Chavez had been defeated 59 to 41 percent; however, when official tallies were announced, the numbers flipped to 58-42 in favor of Chavez. Venezuela's electoral council briefly posted machine-by-machine tallies on the Internet but removed them as mathematicians from MIT, Harvard and other universities began questioning suspicious patterns in the results. Flush with cash from its Venezuelan adventures, Smartmatic International incorporated in Delaware last year and purchased Sequoia, announcing the deal as a merger between two U.S. companies. Smartmatic says the recall vote was clean and that it is independent of the Chavez government. Responding to my inquiries, Smartmatic-Sequoias sent a written statement: ``Sequoia's products consist only of voting devices and systems, all of which must be federally and state tested and certified prior to use in an election. As Sequoia's products do not have military, defense or national security applications, they do not fall within the parameters of the matters governed by CFIUS.'' In fact, Smartmatic International is owned by a Netherlands corporation, which is in turn owned by a Curacao corporation, which is in turn held by a number of Curacao trusts controlled by proxy holders who represent unnamed investors, almost certainly among them Venezuelans Mugica and Anzola and possibly others. Why Smartmatic has chosen yet again to abuse the corporate form apparently to conceal the nationality and identity of its true owners is a question that should worry anyone who votes using one of its machines. Congress panicked upon hearing that our ports would be run by an American ally, Dubai, but never asked whether America's actual enemies in Venezuela have been able to acquire influence in our electoral process. Richard Brand is a second-year law student at New York University and a former staff writer for The Miami Herald. This article first ran in The Miami Herald. It is reprinted with the author's permission. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- 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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[dave@farber.net: [IP] PET Award]
by Eugen Leitl 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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Re: [p2p-hackers] guidelines for good password policy and maintenance / user centric identity with single passwords (or a small number at most over time)
by coderman 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

On 3/27/06, Alen Peacock <alenlpeacock(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ... > The overarching theme of the book is that theoretically secure systems > with usability problems end up being neither secure (because users > subvert them) nor usable. very true. > Some findings from Chap 7 include the fact > that a significant number of users did not comply with instructions > for password generation it is my personal hunch that if users had just one password they needed to remember they could remember a good one. the janus stuff we are working on uses loop-aes volumes specifically so you can store passwords in a browser, store capability URL's, keep accounts and logins in a text file, etc. [i'd love to know of any studies to this end though. i have tried experiments to see just how much entropy i can commit to memory and it is more than enough for a good interactive authentication. i think this is within the ability of most, if they had a desire to do so and understood the benefit.] so the goal is to provide a usable system with a single password, and make it user centric, so that all the other credentials and secrets associated with other digital identies can benefit from this bootstrap (and presumably share this more secure bootstrap).

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German CA TrustCenter insolvent (fwd)
by J.A. Terranson 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 08:35:12 +0200 From: Stephan Neuhaus <neuhaus(a)st.cs.uni-sb.de> To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: German CA TrustCenter insolvent Original article at http://www.heise.de/security/news/meldung/64224 It seems that the German TC TrustCenter GmbH (formerly TC TrustCenter AG) is now insolvent. TrustCenter was accredited to issue "qualified signatures", which is what you need in Germany if you want your digital signature to be as binding as your handwritten one. It is as yet unclear why TrustCenter ran out of money, but the fact that German banks sold their TrustCenter stocks to BeTrusted (now part of Cybertrust) in 2004 shows that the banks had lost their confidence in PKI. An interesting question is of course what happens with TrustCenter's private keys. Are they being auctioned off to the highest bidder? Fun, Stephan

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off the record howto / best practices
by coderman 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

verify fingerprint: "Buddy List" -> Tools Menu Options -> Preferences Menu Option -> Plugins Menu Option -> Select Username from Known Fingerprints -> Press "Verify fingerprint" action -> VIEW FINGERPRINT AND APPROVE/REJECT IF EXPECTED --- Fingerprint for you, coderman42 (AIM/ICQ): A59CDCB3 46468A16 27D21678 270AF0B5 0B0477CF Purported fingerprint for anonymous: 0B0477CF 270AF0B5 27D21678 46468A16 A59CDCB3 --- -> Select "i have" verified action only if expected is true using verified otr credentials: -> Select "OTR: Not Private" image button at lower right corner if secure channel is down -> Verify "OTR: Private" image button at lower right corner before chat example of a failed key agreement: the "OTR: Unverified" image was never shown at the lower right corner of the window indicating an initial OTR exchange had taken place. ---cut--- (02:12:01) anonymous: hi code (02:12:05) Attempting to start a private conversation with anonymous... (02:12:11) coderman42: hello (02:12:14) coderman42: do you have OTR? (02:12:38) anonymous: hold on (02:12:51) coderman42: k (02:13:39) anonymous: *** Encrypted with the Gaim-Encryption plugin 02:17 (02:18:16) coderman42: sorry, no worky for you. (02:18:19) coderman42: try again (02:18:29) coderman42: what client / OS are you using? (02:18:38) coderman42: i recommend a unix like system with gaim (02:19:46) anonymous: i am on gaim and i was useing gaim encrypt (02:21:47) Attempting to start a private conversation with anonymous... (02:22:00) coderman42: maybe you were; it is not working currently. 02:22 (02:22:33) anonymous logged out. (02:23:04) anonymous logged in. (02:23:10) coderman42: wb (02:23:12) Attempting to start a private conversation with anonymous... (02:23:23) coderman42: (02:23:12) Attempting to start a private conversation with anonymous... (02:23:27) coderman42: waiting ... (02:23:44) coderman42: brb (02:26:58) anonymous: *** Encrypted with the Gaim-Encryption plugin 02:27 (02:28:45) anonymous logged out. ---end-cut-- remember to protect your keys.

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increase in sexual desire
by Elwood Oakley 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

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by Sharlene Johnson 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

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