July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

fingerprinting in Japan
by Rod Van Meter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave, for IP, if you wish... A ton of interesting news developments have come out of Japan in the last couple of days. It's the fingerprinting that prompts me to write, but the others are interesting, too. Bear with me for a moment: * Japan is now fingerprinting all foreigners * The CIA (USIS) worked to influence radical young Kyoto U. professors in the 1960s/70s * Japan's whaling fleet is off to the Antarctic, planning to "scientifically" study the flavor^H^H^H^H^H^Hhabits of a 1,000 dead whales * The Michelin Guide comes to Japan, and Tokyo has more stars than any other city Everyone foreign (including you, Dave) will have their fingerprints and photo taken when they come into Japan. This includes visa holders like me and permanent residents, but not including those foreigners with "special status": people born here but whose ancestry is Korean. Those traveling on diplomatic passports are also exempt. This will happen every time you come in, unless you register for the special fast-screening program, which only works at Narita; they will keep you on file. As one friend pointed out, this means that Japan will have prints and photos of every CIA agent who comes and goes using a regular blue passport -- the ones who prefer not to be recognized. As expected, the Japan Times, which is a bit more of a foreigners' mouthpiece, is more outraged than the Daily Yomiuri, but both featured it above the fold and ran several articles. One article was subtitled something to the effect of "no glitches", then the second paragraph described the glitches. I haven't had time to check the Japanese press, but I'm curious how the coverage compares. (This week is the big research exhibit for my campus, Keio SFC, being held in Roppongi. While we were debugging problem with the Reversible Lego Babbage Difference Engine (intended to demonstrate the principle of reversibility in computation) last night, a motorized wheelchair drove by. No rider, just the wheelchair. No idea if it was autonomous or remotely controlled...) Tons of links for the interested: [NATIONAL NEWS] Foreign arrivals get biometric scan Japan begins fingerprinting and photographing foreigners arriving in the country under a revised immigration law to keep terrorists out, drawing criticism from rights groups and foreign residents that their data might be abused. [MORE] -> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121a1.html [NATIONAL NEWS] Rally targets Justice Ministry MASAMI ITO http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121a2.html [NATIONAL NEWS] Kansai smooth; other areas suffer glitches ERIC JOHNSTON http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121a4.html [LIFE IN JAPAN] Starting today, 'gaijin' formally known as prints GRAEME JARVIE http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20071120a1.html [LIFE IN JAPAN] Security cameras: Ensuring safety or invading privacy? JACKIE HOFFART http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20071120vf.html [LIFE IN JAPAN] Watching them watching us MICHAEL HASSETT http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20071120zg.html [BUSINESS NEWS] Michelin's first Tokyo guide names eight 3-star eateries http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20071120n1.html [NATIONAL NEWS] 67 civic groups protest against screening system http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071120a9.html [NATIONAL NEWS] Go home whalers, says N.Z.'s Clark New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark lashes out at Japan's whaling program, saying its fleet should have stayed home rather than operate under the "deceptive" guise of a scientific operation. [MORE] -> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071120a3.html [NATIONAL NEWS] U.S. envoys involved in '60s secret nuke arms pact http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121f2.html [NATIONAL NEWS] USIS role revealed in Japan's tilt toward West HIROKI SUGITA http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121f1.html http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071121TDY01303.htm http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071122TDY03103.htm http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071121TDY02308.htm http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071121TDY02309.htm Regards, --Rod -- Rodney Van Meter Assistant Professor of Environment and Information Studies Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Japan http://web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~rdv/ ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[IP] fingerprinting in Japan
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

1 0

fingerprinting in Japan
by Rod Van Meter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave, for IP, if you wish... A ton of interesting news developments have come out of Japan in the last couple of days. It's the fingerprinting that prompts me to write, but the others are interesting, too. Bear with me for a moment: * Japan is now fingerprinting all foreigners * The CIA (USIS) worked to influence radical young Kyoto U. professors in the 1960s/70s * Japan's whaling fleet is off to the Antarctic, planning to "scientifically" study the flavor^H^H^H^H^H^Hhabits of a 1,000 dead whales * The Michelin Guide comes to Japan, and Tokyo has more stars than any other city Everyone foreign (including you, Dave) will have their fingerprints and photo taken when they come into Japan. This includes visa holders like me and permanent residents, but not including those foreigners with "special status": people born here but whose ancestry is Korean. Those traveling on diplomatic passports are also exempt. This will happen every time you come in, unless you register for the special fast-screening program, which only works at Narita; they will keep you on file. As one friend pointed out, this means that Japan will have prints and photos of every CIA agent who comes and goes using a regular blue passport -- the ones who prefer not to be recognized. As expected, the Japan Times, which is a bit more of a foreigners' mouthpiece, is more outraged than the Daily Yomiuri, but both featured it above the fold and ran several articles. One article was subtitled something to the effect of "no glitches", then the second paragraph described the glitches. I haven't had time to check the Japanese press, but I'm curious how the coverage compares. (This week is the big research exhibit for my campus, Keio SFC, being held in Roppongi. While we were debugging problem with the Reversible Lego Babbage Difference Engine (intended to demonstrate the principle of reversibility in computation) last night, a motorized wheelchair drove by. No rider, just the wheelchair. No idea if it was autonomous or remotely controlled...) Tons of links for the interested: [NATIONAL NEWS] Foreign arrivals get biometric scan Japan begins fingerprinting and photographing foreigners arriving in the country under a revised immigration law to keep terrorists out, drawing criticism from rights groups and foreign residents that their data might be abused. [MORE] -> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121a1.html [NATIONAL NEWS] Rally targets Justice Ministry MASAMI ITO http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121a2.html [NATIONAL NEWS] Kansai smooth; other areas suffer glitches ERIC JOHNSTON http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121a4.html [LIFE IN JAPAN] Starting today, 'gaijin' formally known as prints GRAEME JARVIE http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20071120a1.html [LIFE IN JAPAN] Security cameras: Ensuring safety or invading privacy? JACKIE HOFFART http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20071120vf.html [LIFE IN JAPAN] Watching them watching us MICHAEL HASSETT http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/fl20071120zg.html [BUSINESS NEWS] Michelin's first Tokyo guide names eight 3-star eateries http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nb20071120n1.html [NATIONAL NEWS] 67 civic groups protest against screening system http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071120a9.html [NATIONAL NEWS] Go home whalers, says N.Z.'s Clark New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark lashes out at Japan's whaling program, saying its fleet should have stayed home rather than operate under the "deceptive" guise of a scientific operation. [MORE] -> http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071120a3.html [NATIONAL NEWS] U.S. envoys involved in '60s secret nuke arms pact http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121f2.html [NATIONAL NEWS] USIS role revealed in Japan's tilt toward West HIROKI SUGITA http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20071121f1.html http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071121TDY01303.htm http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071122TDY03103.htm http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071121TDY02308.htm http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20071121TDY02309.htm Regards, --Rod -- Rodney Van Meter Assistant Professor of Environment and Information Studies Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus, Japan http://web.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~rdv/ ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[IP] fingerprinting in Japan
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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[ISN] Commentary: The Threat Of Microsofts .Net
by InfoSec News 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.kingpublishing.com/fc/new_technology/commentary.htm BY WHITFIELD DIFFIE AND SUSAN LANDAU For more than two centuries Americans have prided themselves on protecting their freedom by limiting the concentration of power. With its famous balance of power, the U.S. Constitution divides federal power among the three branches of government, while the Bill of Rights provides other checks all of which have served the country well. With new threats have come new protections. In the nineteenth century, corporations grew and multiplied, and some amassed the kind of power we had always sought to limit in our own government. Anti-trust laws were passed to guarantee that commercial power would be distributed among competing companies in every sector of business. These protections have also served us well. But now a new threat has arisen that may be less obvious but more dangerous. While computer and communication technology have enhanced our lives in many ways, they have also caused fundamental changes that make protecting ourselves from the concentration of power more difficult--in part because these technologies have made it feasible to build organizations that are larger and more globally-distributed than ever before. The result: we need to be more alert to potential abuses of power. The fact that everything is interconnected makes it possible to concentrate power in a new way. A business that holds a monopoly in one area may be able to use its influence to extend its monopoly in entirely new ways. This is what is happening as Microsoft attempts to extend its monopoly over personal computer operating systems into the Internet world. Microsoft .NET (pronounced dot net') is a far-reaching project to channel the personal information of all customers who browse, shop, and congregate on the Internet into Microsoft or Microsoft-controlled companies. It is made up of components: Passport establishes an individual's identity on the Internet .NET My Services collects various pieces of private information--including .NET Contacts, .NET Location, .NET Inbox, .NET Documents, .NET Devices, and .NET Wallet. The control over computer software that Microsoft has achieved through its dominance of operating systems has limited competition and innovation throughout the computer field. Through .NET, it is attempting to exert the same control over all Internet commerce. Just as kings got to grant or deny royal charters to businesses, the Redmond giant, if successful, may be able to say who can do business on the Net and who can't. But there is another and more immediate problem with .NET--something that could evolve from a problem to a national crisis even if Microsoft is well behaved or well regulated in the use of its new powers. That is the problem of security, as opposed to privacy. What is the difference? If Microsoft knows everything about everyone--and the information being collected by Passport and My Services make that look quite likely--the company could still be constrained in how it uses that information by laws or corporate privacy policies. That presupposes, however, that Microsoft is actually in control of the information it has collected. Microsofts security record is nothing to brag about. Windows is the most widely used yet one of the least secure operating systems around. Microsoft programs have shown themselves vulnerable to worms, viruses, and break-ins, on Microsoft's own computers and on everybody else's. The Melissa virus spread through Microsoft's word processing and e-mail programs, sending itself to the first 50 people in each of the infected machine's address lists. A year later the ILOVEYOU virus infected the Web through a different part of Microsofts e-mail package. More recently Microsoft's own internal systems were hacked, and the intruders spent over a month accessing system source code, likened to Microsoft's crown jewels, before their unlawful entry was discovered. Why should Passport be any different? Early security analyses show that compromises made for the sake of universal availability make Passport less secure than it might have been, less secure than it should be, and perhaps just plain insecure. The My Services databases will be a particularly ripe target for hackers. (Since all users of Microsoft's free Hotmail service have Passports, many unknowingly, there are already 160 million Passport users.) Remember, Willie Sutton used to rob banks because that's where the money is. Suppose that in a year or two Microsoft has succeeded in funneling the lion's share of information about people's identities, preferences, financial assets, and shopping habits to itself and putting them all in one big database. If Microsoft can't protect its own systems: what hope is there for Microsoft databases that will contain the credit, locations, and private files of millions upon millions of users? Suppose somebody breaks in. Everyone's personal and financial information would suddenly be in the hands of the intruders. Or worse--they could be scattered about in a series of resulting malfunctions. The extent of the financial, social, and political disaster that could result is hard to imagine. If history has shown us anything, it's that the best protection lies in decentralizing power and promoting competition. We need to take the same approach to our digital identities and make sure that who and what we are is not held captive by a single entity. Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau are respectively distinguished engineer and senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems and co-authors of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, MIT Press, 1998. Diffie is also the co-inventor of public-key cryptography. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo(a)attrition.org with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail. --- 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' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Tor 0.2.1.14-rc is out
by Roger Dingledine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Tor 0.2.1.14-rc marks the first release candidate for the 0.2.1.x series. It begins fixing some major performance problems, and also finally addresses the bug that was causing relays on dynamic IP addresses to fall out of the directory. This is a release candidate! That means that we don't know of any remaining show-stopping bugs, and this will become the new stable if there are no problems. Please test it, and tell us about any problems that you find. https://www.torproject.org/download.html.en Changes in version 0.2.1.14-rc - 2009-04-12 o Major features: - Clients replace entry guards that were chosen more than a few months ago. This change should significantly improve client performance, especially once more people upgrade, since relays that have been a guard for a long time are currently overloaded. o Major bugfixes (on 0.2.0): - Finally fix the bug where dynamic-IP relays disappear when their IP address changes: directory mirrors were mistakenly telling them their old address if they asked via begin_dir, so they never got an accurate answer about their new address, so they just vanished after a day. For belt-and-suspenders, relays that don't set Address in their config now avoid using begin_dir for all direct connections. Should fix bugs 827, 883, and 900. - Relays were falling out of the networkstatus consensus for part of a day if they changed their local config but the authorities discarded their new descriptor as "not sufficiently different". Now directory authorities accept a descriptor as changed if bandwidthrate or bandwidthburst changed. Partial fix for bug 962; patch by Sebastian. - Avoid crashing in the presence of certain malformed descriptors. Found by lark, and by automated fuzzing. o Minor features: - When generating circuit events with verbose nicknames for controllers, try harder to look up nicknames for routers on a circuit. (Previously, we would look in the router descriptors we had for nicknames, but not in the consensus.) Partial fix for bug 941. - If the bridge config line doesn't specify a port, assume 443. This makes bridge lines a bit smaller and easier for users to understand. - Raise the minimum bandwidth to be a relay from 20000 bytes to 20480 bytes (aka 20KB/s), to match our documentation. Also update directory authorities so they always assign the Fast flag to relays with 20KB/s of capacity. Now people running relays won't suddenly find themselves not seeing any use, if the network gets faster on average. - Update to the "April 3 2009" ip-to-country file. o Minor bugfixes: - Avoid trying to print raw memory to the logs when we decide to give up on downloading a given relay descriptor. Bugfix on 0.2.1.9-alpha. - In tor-resolve, when the Tor client to use is specified by <hostname>:<port>, actually use the specified port rather than defaulting to 9050. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha. - Make directory usage recording work again. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha. - When starting with a cache over a few days old, do not leak memory for the obsolete router descriptors in it. Bugfix on 0.2.0.33. - Avoid double-free on list of successfully uploaded hidden service discriptors. Fix for bug 948. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha. - Change memarea_strndup() implementation to work even when duplicating a string at the end of a page. This bug was harmless for now, but could have meant crashes later. Fix by lark. Bugfix on 0.2.1.1-alpha. - Limit uploaded directory documents to be 16M rather than 500K. The directory authorities were refusing v3 consensus votes from other authorities, since the votes are now 504K. Fixes bug 959; bugfix on 0.0.2pre17 (where we raised it from 50K to 500K ;). - Directory authorities should never send a 503 "busy" response to requests for votes or keys. Bugfix on 0.2.0.8-alpha; exposed by bug 959. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Tor 0.2.1.14-rc is out
by Roger Dingledine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Tor 0.2.1.14-rc marks the first release candidate for the 0.2.1.x series. It begins fixing some major performance problems, and also finally addresses the bug that was causing relays on dynamic IP addresses to fall out of the directory. This is a release candidate! That means that we don't know of any remaining show-stopping bugs, and this will become the new stable if there are no problems. Please test it, and tell us about any problems that you find. https://www.torproject.org/download.html.en Changes in version 0.2.1.14-rc - 2009-04-12 o Major features: - Clients replace entry guards that were chosen more than a few months ago. This change should significantly improve client performance, especially once more people upgrade, since relays that have been a guard for a long time are currently overloaded. o Major bugfixes (on 0.2.0): - Finally fix the bug where dynamic-IP relays disappear when their IP address changes: directory mirrors were mistakenly telling them their old address if they asked via begin_dir, so they never got an accurate answer about their new address, so they just vanished after a day. For belt-and-suspenders, relays that don't set Address in their config now avoid using begin_dir for all direct connections. Should fix bugs 827, 883, and 900. - Relays were falling out of the networkstatus consensus for part of a day if they changed their local config but the authorities discarded their new descriptor as "not sufficiently different". Now directory authorities accept a descriptor as changed if bandwidthrate or bandwidthburst changed. Partial fix for bug 962; patch by Sebastian. - Avoid crashing in the presence of certain malformed descriptors. Found by lark, and by automated fuzzing. o Minor features: - When generating circuit events with verbose nicknames for controllers, try harder to look up nicknames for routers on a circuit. (Previously, we would look in the router descriptors we had for nicknames, but not in the consensus.) Partial fix for bug 941. - If the bridge config line doesn't specify a port, assume 443. This makes bridge lines a bit smaller and easier for users to understand. - Raise the minimum bandwidth to be a relay from 20000 bytes to 20480 bytes (aka 20KB/s), to match our documentation. Also update directory authorities so they always assign the Fast flag to relays with 20KB/s of capacity. Now people running relays won't suddenly find themselves not seeing any use, if the network gets faster on average. - Update to the "April 3 2009" ip-to-country file. o Minor bugfixes: - Avoid trying to print raw memory to the logs when we decide to give up on downloading a given relay descriptor. Bugfix on 0.2.1.9-alpha. - In tor-resolve, when the Tor client to use is specified by <hostname>:<port>, actually use the specified port rather than defaulting to 9050. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha. - Make directory usage recording work again. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha. - When starting with a cache over a few days old, do not leak memory for the obsolete router descriptors in it. Bugfix on 0.2.0.33. - Avoid double-free on list of successfully uploaded hidden service discriptors. Fix for bug 948. Bugfix on 0.2.1.6-alpha. - Change memarea_strndup() implementation to work even when duplicating a string at the end of a page. This bug was harmless for now, but could have meant crashes later. Fix by lark. Bugfix on 0.2.1.1-alpha. - Limit uploaded directory documents to be 16M rather than 500K. The directory authorities were refusing v3 consensus votes from other authorities, since the votes are now 504K. Fixes bug 959; bugfix on 0.0.2pre17 (where we raised it from 50K to 500K ;). - Directory authorities should never send a 503 "busy" response to requests for votes or keys. Bugfix on 0.2.0.8-alpha; exposed by bug 959. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[FoRK] food for the dhs line eater
by Damien Morton 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Step 1. Acquire Chinese RC aircraft factory Step 1a Design foam copy of a WWII Stuka aircraft Step 1b Stage dive bombing competitions with good prize money to encourage this new sport Step 1c Ramp up production to meet the demands of this new sport Step 2. Clone Ardupilot Step 3 Clone Gumstix Step 4. Port OpenCL to gumstix Step 4a Implement rudimentary human body recognition software Step 5 Design a custard pie with good aerodynamics Step 6 mount custard pies under the wings of Stuka aircraft Step 7 release thousands of autonomous custard pie dive bombers over washington for maximum cream-based terrorism _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[ISN] Commentary: The Threat Of Microsofts .Net
by InfoSec News 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.kingpublishing.com/fc/new_technology/commentary.htm BY WHITFIELD DIFFIE AND SUSAN LANDAU For more than two centuries Americans have prided themselves on protecting their freedom by limiting the concentration of power. With its famous balance of power, the U.S. Constitution divides federal power among the three branches of government, while the Bill of Rights provides other checks all of which have served the country well. With new threats have come new protections. In the nineteenth century, corporations grew and multiplied, and some amassed the kind of power we had always sought to limit in our own government. Anti-trust laws were passed to guarantee that commercial power would be distributed among competing companies in every sector of business. These protections have also served us well. But now a new threat has arisen that may be less obvious but more dangerous. While computer and communication technology have enhanced our lives in many ways, they have also caused fundamental changes that make protecting ourselves from the concentration of power more difficult--in part because these technologies have made it feasible to build organizations that are larger and more globally-distributed than ever before. The result: we need to be more alert to potential abuses of power. The fact that everything is interconnected makes it possible to concentrate power in a new way. A business that holds a monopoly in one area may be able to use its influence to extend its monopoly in entirely new ways. This is what is happening as Microsoft attempts to extend its monopoly over personal computer operating systems into the Internet world. Microsoft .NET (pronounced dot net') is a far-reaching project to channel the personal information of all customers who browse, shop, and congregate on the Internet into Microsoft or Microsoft-controlled companies. It is made up of components: Passport establishes an individual's identity on the Internet .NET My Services collects various pieces of private information--including .NET Contacts, .NET Location, .NET Inbox, .NET Documents, .NET Devices, and .NET Wallet. The control over computer software that Microsoft has achieved through its dominance of operating systems has limited competition and innovation throughout the computer field. Through .NET, it is attempting to exert the same control over all Internet commerce. Just as kings got to grant or deny royal charters to businesses, the Redmond giant, if successful, may be able to say who can do business on the Net and who can't. But there is another and more immediate problem with .NET--something that could evolve from a problem to a national crisis even if Microsoft is well behaved or well regulated in the use of its new powers. That is the problem of security, as opposed to privacy. What is the difference? If Microsoft knows everything about everyone--and the information being collected by Passport and My Services make that look quite likely--the company could still be constrained in how it uses that information by laws or corporate privacy policies. That presupposes, however, that Microsoft is actually in control of the information it has collected. Microsofts security record is nothing to brag about. Windows is the most widely used yet one of the least secure operating systems around. Microsoft programs have shown themselves vulnerable to worms, viruses, and break-ins, on Microsoft's own computers and on everybody else's. The Melissa virus spread through Microsoft's word processing and e-mail programs, sending itself to the first 50 people in each of the infected machine's address lists. A year later the ILOVEYOU virus infected the Web through a different part of Microsofts e-mail package. More recently Microsoft's own internal systems were hacked, and the intruders spent over a month accessing system source code, likened to Microsoft's crown jewels, before their unlawful entry was discovered. Why should Passport be any different? Early security analyses show that compromises made for the sake of universal availability make Passport less secure than it might have been, less secure than it should be, and perhaps just plain insecure. The My Services databases will be a particularly ripe target for hackers. (Since all users of Microsoft's free Hotmail service have Passports, many unknowingly, there are already 160 million Passport users.) Remember, Willie Sutton used to rob banks because that's where the money is. Suppose that in a year or two Microsoft has succeeded in funneling the lion's share of information about people's identities, preferences, financial assets, and shopping habits to itself and putting them all in one big database. If Microsoft can't protect its own systems: what hope is there for Microsoft databases that will contain the credit, locations, and private files of millions upon millions of users? Suppose somebody breaks in. Everyone's personal and financial information would suddenly be in the hands of the intruders. Or worse--they could be scattered about in a series of resulting malfunctions. The extent of the financial, social, and political disaster that could result is hard to imagine. If history has shown us anything, it's that the best protection lies in decentralizing power and promoting competition. We need to take the same approach to our digital identities and make sure that who and what we are is not held captive by a single entity. Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau are respectively distinguished engineer and senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems and co-authors of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, MIT Press, 1998. Diffie is also the co-inventor of public-key cryptography. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo(a)attrition.org with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail. --- 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' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

1 0

[FoRK] food for the dhs line eater
by Damien Morton 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Step 1. Acquire Chinese RC aircraft factory Step 1a Design foam copy of a WWII Stuka aircraft Step 1b Stage dive bombing competitions with good prize money to encourage this new sport Step 1c Ramp up production to meet the demands of this new sport Step 2. Clone Ardupilot Step 3 Clone Gumstix Step 4. Port OpenCL to gumstix Step 4a Implement rudimentary human body recognition software Step 5 Design a custard pie with good aerodynamics Step 6 mount custard pies under the wings of Stuka aircraft Step 7 release thousands of autonomous custard pie dive bombers over washington for maximum cream-based terrorism _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0