April 2009 - cypherpunks-legacy

Acai your answer for losing weight fast
by Staci Dillon 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

The Acai Berry diet gives you the upper hand. Infused with antioxidants that will flush unwanted toxins from your system. Acai allows for quick weight loss , and will get you those slim and sexy abs you dream of.   Visit and take

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Monogram LV wallets at superb prices
by Stone Meza 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

Look rich and successful without having to spend thousands. Nothing impresses business colleagues and friends more than a diamond studded Channel, or a classic Patek Philippe strapped around your wrist. Our Sh0p houses more than 20+ world famous brands. Prices for the originals range in the tends of thousands, but pick up a buy for just $49 up. Sale ends this week - so visit now for the best bargains. Click Here now http://dferifuo.w.interia.pl Stone Meza (Norway) Thanks! http://dferifuo.w.interia.pl

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Dear (cypherpunks@jfet.org) December 87% OFF!
by GUCCI 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

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Internet censorship in Germany is now official
by Eugen Leitl 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

So they've been logging connection info for 3+ months already, and now there's censorship (currently implemented via DNS, but this will change, of course), logging of the blocked connections, and all kind of ominous language and promises to extend the censorship list (secret, of course, and you'll get your house searched and your computers confiscated even if you link upon a link upon a link to the leaked list) to all kinds of things, and cooperation with IP owners. (achtung, kraut) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Bundeskabinett-beschliesst-Gesetzesentwurf-z…

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Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack
by Eugen Leitl 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

http://www.wired.com/print/science/discoveries/magazine/17-05/ff_kryptos Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack By Steven Levy Email 04.20.09 The sculpture named Kryptos at CIA headquarters contains a secret message b but not even the agency's brightest can crack its code. Photo: Adrian Gaut The most celebrated inscription at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, used to be the biblical phrase chiseled into marble in the main lobby: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." But in recent years, another text has been the subject of intense scrutiny inside the Company and out: 865 characters of seeming gibberish, punched out of half-inch-thick copper in a courtyard. It's part of a sculpture called Kryptos, created by DC artist James Sanborn. He got the commission in 1988, when the CIA was constructing a new building behind its original headquarters. The agency wanted an outdoor installation for the area between the two buildings, so a solicitation went out for a piece of public art that the general public would never see. Sanborn named his proposal after the Greek word for hidden. The work is a meditation on the nature of secrecy and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code. Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalystsbalong with some of the agency's own staffersbhas seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get. Whether or not our top spooks intended it, the persistent opaqueness of Kryptos subversively embodies the nature of the CIA itselfband serves as a reminder of why secrecy and subterfuge so fascinate us. "The whole thing is about the power of secrecy," Sanborn tells me when I visit his studio, a barnlike structure on Jimmy Island in Chesapeake Bay (population: 2). He is 6'7", bearded, and looks a bit younger than his 63 years. Looming behind him is his latest work in progress, a 28-foot-high re-creation of the world's first particle accelerator, surrounded by some of the original hardware from the Manhattan Project. The atomic gear fits nicely with the thrust of Sanborn's oeuvre, which centers on what he calls invisible forces. With Kryptos, Sanborn has made his strongest statement about what we don't see and can't know. "He designed a piece that would resonate with this workforce in particular," says Toni Hiley, who curates the employees-only CIA museum. Sanborn's ambitious work includes the 9-foot 11-inch-high main sculptureban S-shaped wave of copper with cut-out letters, anchored by an 11-foot column of petrified woodband huge pieces of granite abutting a low fountain. And although most of the installation resides in a space near the CIA cafeteria, where analysts and spies can enjoy it when they eat outside, Kryptos extends beyond the courtyard to the other side of the new building. There, copper plates near the entrance bear snippets of Morse code, and a naturally magnetized lodestone sits by a compass rose etched in granite. "People call me an agent of Satan," says artist Sanborn, "because I won't tell my secret." Photo: Adrian Gaut The heart of the piece, though, is the encrypted text, scrambled, Sanborn says, by "a coding system that would unravel itself slowly over a period of time." When he began the work, Sanborn knew very little about cryptography, so he reluctantly accepted the CIA's offer to work with Ed Scheidt, who had just retired as head of Langley's Cryptographic Center. Scheidt himself was serving two masters. "I was reminded of my need to preserve the agency's secrets," Scheidt says. "You know, don't tell him the current way of doing business. And don't create something that you cannot breakbbut at the same time, make it something that will last a while." Scheidt schooled Sanborn in cryptographic techniques employed from the late 19th century until World War II, when field agents had to use pencil and paper to encode and decode their messages. (These days, of course, cryptography is all about rugged computer algorithms using long mathematical keys.) After experimenting with a range of techniques, including poly-alphabetic substitution, shifting matrices, and transposition, the two arrived at a form of old-school, artisanal cryptography that they felt would hold off code breakers long enough to generate some suspense. The solutions, however, were Sanborn's alone, and he did not share them with Scheidt. "I assumed the first three sections would be deciphered in a matter of weeks, perhaps months," Sanborn says. Scheidt figured the whole puzzle would be solved in less than seven years. During the two years of construction, there were moments of intrigue and paranoia, in keeping with the subject matter and the client. "We had to play a little on the clandestine side," says Scheidt, who talks of unnamed observers outside armed with long-range cameras and high-intensity microphones. "We had people with ladders climbing up the walls of my studio trying to photograph inside," Sanborn says. He came to believe that factions within the CIA wanted to kill the project. There were unexplained obstacles. For instance, he says, "one day a big truckload of stone for the courtyard disappeared. Never found. I saw it in the evening, went back in the morning, and it had vanished. Nobody would tell me what happened to it." Sanborn finished the sculpture in time for a November 1990 dedication. The agency released the enciphered text, and a frenzy erupted in the crypto world as some of the bestband wackiestbcryptanalytic talent set to work. But it took them more than seven years, not the few months Sanborn had expected, to crack sections K1, K2, and K3. The first code breaker, a CIA employee named David Stein, spent 400 hours working by hand on his own time. Stein, who described the emergence of the first passage as a religious experience, revealed his partial solution to a packed auditorium at Langley in February 1998. But not a word was leaked to the press. Sixteen months later, Jim Gillogly, an LA-area cryptanalyst used a Pentium II computer and some custom software to crack the same three sections. When news of Gillogly's success broke, the CIA publicized Stein's earlier crack. James Sanborn buried his sculpture's message so deeply that a CIA staffer took seven years to solve just the first three sections. Here's what we know. The first section, K1, uses a modified VigenC(re cipher. It's encrypted through substitutionbeach letter corresponds to anotherband can be solved only with the alphabetic rows of letters on the right. The keywords, which help determine the substitutions, are KRYPTOS and PALIMPSEST. A misspellingbin this case IQLUSIONbmay be a clue to cracking K4. K2, like the first section, was also encrypted using the alphabets on the right. One new trick Sanborn used, though, was to insert an X between some sentences, making it harder to crack the code by tabulating letter frequency. The keywords here are KRYPTOS and ABSCISSA. And there's another intriguing misspelling: UNDERGRUUND. A different cryptographic technique was used for K3: transposition. All the letters are jumbled and can be deciphered only by uncovering the complex matrices and mathematics that determined their misplacement. Of course, there is a misspelling (DESPARATLY), and the last sentence (CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING?) is strangely bracketed by an X and a Q. Sanborn intentionally made K4 much harder to crack, hinting that the plaintext itself is not standard English and would require a second level of cryptanalysis. Misspellings and other anomalies in previous sections may help. Some suspect that clues are present in other parts of the installation: the Morse code, the compass rose, or perhaps the adjacent fountain. But if anyone expected that solving the first three sections would lead to a quick resolution of the whole puzzle, their hopes were soon dashed. The partial solutions only deepened the Gillogly turned up that passage, he says, he had "the same excitement and exultation that Carter described. In a way, it seems that the plaintext is a metaphor for the work of the code breaker, or perhaps of the CIA itself." The 97 characters of K4 remain impenetrable. They have become, as one would-be cracker calls it, the Everest of codes. Both Scheidt and Sanborn confirm that they intended the final segment to be the biggest challenge. There are endless theories about how to solve it. Is access to the sculpture required? Is the Morse code a clue? Every aspect of the project has come under electron-microscopic scrutiny, as thousands of peoplebhardcore cryptographers and amateur code breakers alikebhave taken a whack at it. Some have gone off the deep end: A Michigan man abandoned his computer-software business to do construction so he'd have more time to work on it. Thirteen hundred members of a fanatical Yahoo group try to move the ball forward with everything from complex math to astrology. One typical Kryptos maniac is Randy Thompson, a 43-year-old physicist who has devoted three years to the problem. "I think I'm onto the solution," he says. "It could happen tomorrow, or it could take the rest of my life." Meanwhile, some of the seekers are getting tired. "I just want to see it solved," says Elonka Dunin, a 50-year-old St. Louis game developer who runs a clearinghouse site for Kryptos information and gossip. "I want it off my plate." Making the effort more complicated is the fact that the puzzle maker is alive and, in theory at least, a potential resource. For years, there has been a delicate pas de deux between the artist and the rabid Kryptos community. Every word Sanborn utters is eagerly examined for hints. But they also have to wonder whether he's trying to help them or throw them off track. Scheidt says that this process parallels the work of the CIA: "The intelligence picture includes mirrors and obfuscation." Photo: Adrian Gaut "It's not my intent to put out disinformation," Sanborn says. "I'm a benevolent cryptographer." Some think otherwise, and Sanborn occasionally receives messages from people enraged that he knows the secret and they don't. "It's the fact that I have some sort of power," he says. "You get stalkers. I don't know how they get my cell numbers and everything off the Internet, but they do. People have called me and said pretty terrible things. There are some who say I'm an agent of Satan because I have a secret I won't tell." Though Sanborn's usual practice is to stay in the background, every so often he feels obliged to comment. In 2005, he refuted author Dan Brown's claim that the "WW" in the plaintext of K3 could be inverted to "MM," implying Mary Magdalene. (Brown included pieces of Kryptos on the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code and has hinted that his next novel will draw on the CIA sculpture, a prospect that deeply annoys Sanborn.) Intentional or not, Sanborn's comments (or lack thereof) seem to generate an added layer of confusion. Even a straightforward question, like who besides him knows the solution, opens up new wormholes. The official story is that Sanborn shared the answer with only one person, the CIA director at the time, William Webster. Indeed, the decoded K3 text reads in part, "Who knowshat it says." What does the CIA make of all this? "When it comes to the solution," says spokesperson Marie Harf, "those who need to know, know." If anyone manages to solve the last cipher, that won't end the hunt for the ultimate truth about Kryptos. "There may be more to the puzzle than what you see," Scheidt says. "Just because you broke it doesn't mean you have the answer." All of this leads one to ask: Is there a solution? Sanborn insists there isbbut he would be just as happy if no one ever discovered it. "In some ways, I'd rather die knowing it wasn't cracked," he says. "Once an artwork loses its mystery, it's lost a lot." The day I visited Kryptos, a rare snowstorm in Virginia had blanketed the courtyard in white. I circled the sculpture carefully, marveling at the way the colors and texture of the surrounding landscape affected the panels, as some character strings became highlighted in white and other phrases shimmered, reflecting the dull light bouncing off the windows. I examined all the pieces, brushing aside the snow to uncover the Morse code and the compass rose. It was like unearthing hieroglyphs in some ancient ruin. Agents and bureaucrats shuffled past, deep in thought, clutching cups of coffee from the onsite Starbucks. In their midst, Jim Sanborn's statement in copper, wood, and granite remains, proof that even in the house of spies, some truths may never be found. Senior writer Steven Levy (steven_levy(a)wired.com) wrote about the 20th anniversary of the Mac in issue 17.01.

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Why should your children suffer,!
by Trent Hawkins 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

confession i miss saved by the bell acre of land is my favorite song of his from the spring/summer 09 toast catalog i have been laying in bed sick since monday it seems to be getting worse by the day not better i am so irritated and antsy i miss my family and i want to clean my house i really really need my bedroom to be simple and uncluttered and white for calming purposes you know what i mean what a few hours on a sunny day can do for you one more thought about best friends a few months in the life of this infertile girl all the sudden im 30 i thought id be driving a mini van full of kids and happily decorating my own home but life has shown me again that i am not in control and as i wait for more children and a sense of being settled from brora if you eat like this people will give you crap because its so not trendy anymore but if it will help a woman who would do anything to ovulate and conceive do that (and i know personally quite a few that this was the key for) then who cares what anyone says and jennifer aniston doesnt eat carbs so there cate what did you play on the computer then isnt life surprising i was laying awake thinking last night about how different my life has gone then what i thought (in a good way) and as ive been laying in my misery ive been thinking a lot about that penny and just how lonely id be if she wasnt there with me Ill show you what ive been working on soon- theyre presents and i have to give them away first have a nice monday off to the kindergarten valentines day party

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dick claims torture success
by Eugen Leitl 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

(if it's not torture, he should get lots) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/cheney-obama-cia-torture-memos Senior Bush figures could be prosecuted for torture, says Obama President says use of waterboarding showed US had 'lost moral bearings' as Dick Cheney says CIA memos showed torture delivered 'good' intelligence * Ewen MacAskill and Robert Booth * guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 21 April 2009 11.30 BST Dick Cheney Former US vice-president Dick Cheney has asked the CIA to declassify memos detailing 'success' of torture. Photograph: Kevin Wolf/AP Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, President Obama disclosed today . He said the use of torture reflected America "losing our moral bearings". He said his attorney general, Eric Holder, was conducting an investigation and the decision rested with him. Obama last week ruled out prosecution of CIA agents who carried out the interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members at GuantC!namo and secret prisons around the world. But for the first time today he opened up the possibility that those in the administration who gave the go-ahead for the use of waterboarding could be prosecuted. The revelation will enrage senior Bush administration figures such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney. The Obama administration views the use of waterboarding as torture, while Cheney claims it is not. Obama, taking questions from the press during a visit by King Abdullah of Jordan, reiterated he did not believe in prosecution of those CIA agents who carried out the interrogations within the guidelines set down for them. But "with respect to those who formulated'' the policies, "that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws". He added: "I don't want to prejudge that." Ewen MacAskill on Obama's reluctance to prosecute torturers Link to this audio He also opened the way for a Congressional inquiry into the issue. Meanwhile the former US vice-president Dick Cheney has called for the disclosure of CIA memos which reveal the "success" of torture techniques, including waterboarding, used on al-Qaida suspects under the Bush administration. Cheney said that, according to secret documents he has seen, the interrogation techniques, which the Obama administration now accepts amounted to torture, delivered "good" intelligence. He hinted that it had significant consequences for US security. Cheney was speaking out in response to the release by Barack Obama of four Bush administration memos detailing the agency's interrogation methods used against al-Qaida suspects. "One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort," Cheney said in an appearance on Fox News. "I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country. "I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was." Obama yesterday visited CIA headquarters to defend the publication of the internal documents. The row gathered further momentum yesterday when it emerged that one detainee, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had been subjected to waterboarding 183 times and another, Abu Zubaydah, 83 times. Obama is keen to try to put the row behind him, reluctant to see prosecutions that could be politically divisive and distract attention from his heavy domestic and foreign agenda. In a speech to about 1,000 staff aimed at restoring CIA morale, Obama, who promised last week that CIA operatives would not be prosecuted, reiterated that he would stand by them. "Don't be discouraged by what's happened in the last few weeks," Obama said. "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn." At a private meeting with 50 rank-and-file CIA members at their headquarters in Langley, Virginia, before his speech, Obama heard "understandable anxiety and concern" from agents fearful of prosecution. The CIA's director during the Bush administration, Michael Hayden, who criticised the release of the memos, warned on Sunday that agents could be vulnerable because of the memos, facing civil lawsuits or congressional inquiries. Sensitive details were blacked out in the memos seen by most of the media on Thursday but over the weekend Marcy Wheeler, of the Emptywheel blog, found a copy in which crucial details were not masked. That copy showed that Mohammed had been subjected to waterboarding b which simulates drowning b 183 times in March 2003. He had been arrested in Pakistan at the start of that month. Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002. Mohammed had admitted to involvement in terrorist actions before his capture but, after being interrogated, confessed to a list of incidents and plots that included the 1993 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, as well as a plot to attack Heathrow, Big Ben and Canary Wharf, the beheading of the US journalist Daniel Pearl, and the Bali bombing. Abu Zubaydah denied involvement with al-Qaida. Obama, defending himself against those in the CIA who argued that he should not have released the memos, said legally he had no grounds for blocking a freedom of information request from the US human rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union. "I acted primarily because of the exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was public," Obama said. Standing in front of a wall with 89 stars, each depicting an officer killed in action, Obama praised the CIA as the "tip of the spear" in protecting the US from its enemies. Obama said he understood that intelligence officials must sometimes feel that they are working with one hand tied behind their backs. But, rebutting Hayden, he said: "What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when its expedient to do so. "So yes, you've got a harder job and so do I, and that's OK. And over the long term, that is why I believe we will defeat our enemies, because we're on the better side of history." Hayden had argued that the harsher interrogation techniques had provided valuable information and said that the techniques did not amount to torture. Human rights lawyers question the credibility of the confessions because they were obtained under duress. The White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked yesterday why Bush administration lawyers could not be prosecuted, said: "The president is focusing on looking forward."

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The true fact about the immunity of a man
by Mayra Rosado 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

cate chose these pretty little traditional valentines cards from bunny cakes i love them and then suddenly and to my surprise i met and married the man i had no idea i was dreaming of but he was perfect for me and better than anything i had imagined or sought after before i had a really tumultuous teenager-hood i was a happy and smart little kid it was surprising when so much angst welled up inside me from anthro one thing i enjoy about facebook is the old pictures that friends and fam upload to walk down memory lane together with you we gave the universe one out- if grant found a job he loved before springtime wed stay put even though we wanted to go to cali really bad and even though grant had been looking for a different job for a long time different boyfriends came and went through all this some i thought i could marry some i was mad at myself for hanging around some that broke my heart dinner i kind of snack or have a lunch type meal again dinner is tricky because i still need to prepare dinner for my family so i do but im not super hungry at night so i just eat whatever broccoli a little of what theyre having or snacky stuff or chicken wings or crispy thin crust pizza but i always end the day with a low carb ice cream bar from toast but i couldnt stop looking at the picture because it shows the place where i played for the first 12 years of my life from the spring/summer 09 toast catalog and as ive been laying in my misery ive been thinking a lot about that penny and just how lonely id be if she wasnt there with me she didnt want to print off her name- signing was a must and i think im done cutting kits for a while the girl loves a project i mean LOVES it was like so fun to her to print them off plan how she wanted to present them go to the store for candy sign and put them together she just bossed me around and made sure i tied the string right what an adventure it is i have never been an animal person i swore id never have a dog who wants to pick up poop not me but somehow in my baby hungry weakness i was convinced to relent by the other two mccalebs who said they desperately needed a puppy fine whatever just take care of her and pick up the poop but the commonality between each experience was- it was out of my hands i occasionally fell in love with someone who couldnt be had i occasionally had to run from someone who wouldnt let me go where are neighborhoods like that anymore with bushes big enough to hide in and kids that go around the block together all afternoon and normal sized houses and the old winkfields next door ok i dont need the winkfields but id sure love to give my kids the rest and again when you are at a good weight and having regular cycles you can absolutely add in a lot more whole wheat and whole grain foods as well as all fruits and vegetables and other good carbs like beans if your cycles get a little kooky or you gain weight thats when you know you need to reduce again

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Stop any bacterial development with Augmentin.
by Salvatore Hodge 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

Off to the kindergarten valentine party different boyfriends came and went through all this some i thought i could marry some i was mad at myself for hanging around some that broke my heart let me explain Buoy let me preface this by saying that there is no one size fits all eating plan for someone with hormonal issues for some women cysts irregular cycles lack of ovulation and too much testosterone and its effects are directly related to bad insulin regulation in their body for these women they may be able to restore better regularity with avoiding blood sugar spikes by not eating carbohydrates therefore eliminating the insulin problem that is why so many women can conceive with metformin or glucophage because these medicines work at that level what do you look for in a best friend but the pattern is still available valentines day preparations cate (incredulously) what were you a child of adam and eve with that heres the stuff i eat salad with chicken a different salad with chicken repeat repeat this is the hard thing about it not a ton of delicious options im kind of kidding ive found a few other yummy things too it was the first time i realized that things dont always go how you think they will and that it all can turn out better than you imagined Ill show you what ive been working on soon- theyre presents and i have to give them away first have a nice monday a conversation today snacks NUTS i would die without nuts i love roasted almonds cashews peanuts i also love those roasted edamame they taste like nuts even though theyre not and nuts taste really good with a few slices of swiss cheese also deli meat slices celery with peanut butter on it a few whole grain crackers with cheese beef jerky sugar free snack packs stuffed mushrooms hard boiled eggs string cheese protein bars crudites and more NUTS i am determined where are neighborhoods like that anymore with bushes big enough to hide in and kids that go around the block together all afternoon and normal sized houses and the old winkfields next door ok i dont need the winkfields but id sure love to give my kids the rest all kits are shipped phew one of my resolutions for 2009 was to stop ignoring the etsy shop and to not spin my wheels all day (these two problems are very related) i am the queen of walking in circles around the house and not really getting anything accomplished i wouldnt care except for that it drives me nuts part of the problem is my insomniatic nights which leave me only half there during the day times ( which then leads to high caffeine consumption) so i decided step one is to get good nights sleeps i am trying to change my night time routine to a peaceful herbal tea quiet inspiration seeking few hours it helps if i keep our room clean and the sheets freshly washed and calming reading more- tv less- at night is a goal then hopefully my days will be a little more with it because i hate wasting time

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PurpleOnion: HS Address Generator (+ Managed Router Impl?)
by Eugen Leitl 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

----- Forwarded message from Marcus Griep <tormaster(a)xpdm.us> -----

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