July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
by Mark Lybrand 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been steganographically hidden in musical scores. If this is the wrong NG to post this to, please correct me. TIA Mark ------------------------------

1 0

Re: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
by Richard Heathfield 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Mark Lybrand wrote: > I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material > regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been > steganographically hidden in musical scores. Sorry, I don't have any formal references for you about hiding information in music. Nevertheless, I know it's happened, because I have done it myself, in the mid-1980s. Not only that, but it survived a cryptanalytic attack from somebody who was 99% sure that the music contained a message but was unable to work out how that message was encoded. Some time in the 1990s, I read in good old Readers' Digest of a war-time incident in which musical notation was used for encryption; this nearly got a man killed when he was asked by the Germans to play the music. He was able to shrug off the cacophony as "this modern music", and got away with it. How true this account is, I don't know. I don't know why they didn't do what I did, which is to insert musical padding into the score to maintain some semblance of melody. It's an expensive method of steganography, though, since you really do have to compose your own tunes. The problem with saving time by using existing scores is that their composition (if you will forgive the term) is public knowledge, and so a comparison with the original will reveal the significant differences. The only way around this is to prevent such a comparison, and the only certain way to do that is to compose your own tunes. You might be able to automate the padding, if your computer is soulful enough. :-) -- Richard Heathfield : binary(a)eton.powernet.co.uk "Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999. C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

1 0

Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
by Mark Lybrand 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been steganographically hidden in musical scores. If this is the wrong NG to post this to, please correct me. TIA Mark ------------------------------

1 0

Re: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
by Richard Heathfield 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Mark Lybrand wrote: > I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material > regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been > steganographically hidden in musical scores. Sorry, I don't have any formal references for you about hiding information in music. Nevertheless, I know it's happened, because I have done it myself, in the mid-1980s. Not only that, but it survived a cryptanalytic attack from somebody who was 99% sure that the music contained a message but was unable to work out how that message was encoded. Some time in the 1990s, I read in good old Readers' Digest of a war-time incident in which musical notation was used for encryption; this nearly got a man killed when he was asked by the Germans to play the music. He was able to shrug off the cacophony as "this modern music", and got away with it. How true this account is, I don't know. I don't know why they didn't do what I did, which is to insert musical padding into the score to maintain some semblance of melody. It's an expensive method of steganography, though, since you really do have to compose your own tunes. The problem with saving time by using existing scores is that their composition (if you will forgive the term) is public knowledge, and so a comparison with the original will reveal the significant differences. The only way around this is to prevent such a comparison, and the only certain way to do that is to compose your own tunes. You might be able to automate the padding, if your computer is soulful enough. :-) -- Richard Heathfield : binary(a)eton.powernet.co.uk "Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999. C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

1 0

Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Would you sign a key with a pseudonymous keyholder name?
by Nick M. Daly 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sat, 21 Jul 2012 10:12:37 -0700 (PDT), Jonathan Wilkes wrote: > > The whole point of key-signing is that you're verifying that you do > > know the providence of the data signed or encrypted by that > > key. Anonymity is the opposite of that. If you want anonymity, then > > you don't want public key encryption. They are not compatible. > > Did you mean to say, "if you want anonymity, then you don't want key > signing"? Probably. Given how researchers could uniquely re-identify a third of nameless Twitter and Flickr users based on the social graph alone [0], you might either want to avoid key signing or avoid any overlapping (reference) social interaction. Also, how'd we get back to "web-of-trust" vs. "web-of-verified-identity" again? Given all the different social understandings of the issues in different contexts, the relevant interpretation seems User * Context based (e.g., 5 users * 6 contexts = 30 interpretations). As Jonas mentioned, social standards can offer direction but the choice and interpretation still seems based, ultimately, on the user and signing statement. /me lights up the dkg signal 0: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006 _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- 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

[linux-elitists] Obfuscated TCP
by Don Marti 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Anyone following the "Obfuscated TCP" kernel patch set and userspace library? http://code.google.com/p/obstcp/ Fast opportunistic crypto at the TCP level. Looks like a useful way to make it difficult for ISPs to use services such as Phorm and NebuAd to collect user tracking data and ad revenue -- so webmasters should be all over it. And, of course, it's protection against forged RST attacks. Doesn't work if the attacker is willing to spend more and do an MITM attack, though. -- Don Marti +1 415-734-7913 mobile http://zgp.org/~dmarti/ dmarti(a)zgp.org Linux device driver unconference: http://freedomhec.org/ _______________________________________________ linux-elitists mailing list linux-elitists(a)zgp.org http://allium.zgp.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-elitists ----- 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

[Dewayne-Net] Wireless access for all? Google plan would
by Dewayne Hendricks 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

offer free Internet throughout SF Reply-To: dewayne(a)warpspeed.com Wireless access for all? Google plan would offer free Internet throughout SF - Verne Kopytoff and Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writers Friday, September 30, 2005 Google Inc. has proposed to blanket San Francisco with free wireless Internet access, placing a marquee name behind Mayor Gavin Newsom's effort to get all residents online whether they are at home, in a park or in a cafe. The offer by the Mountain View search engine was one of many competing bids received by the city before its deadline Friday. Officials will now review the submissions and make a decision about which, if any, of the candidates get the green light for so-called Wi- Fi service. In joining the competition, Google is showing yet another sign of its boundless ambition. In the past few months, the company has released a succession of new products including instant messaging and telephone service that take it further from its search engine roots. The proposal furthers existing speculation that Google intends to create a free national Wi-Fi network. If so, it could pose a serious challenge to existing Internet service providers, such as SBC-Yahoo, Earthlink, Comcast and America Online, which charge subscriptions for wire connections. "This is a great opportunity to provide a community service to the Bay Area," said Chris Sacca, who oversaw Google's wireless Internet bid in San Francisco. "This furthers the goal of providing access to all residents and visitors on as wide a scale as possible." Mayor Newsom unveiled a goal of a free, city-wide Wi-Fi network last year as part of his state of the city address. Since then, officials have been weighing how to carry out despite a tight budget, finally asking for proposals from over the summer. As part of its proposal, Google said it could do the job without charge to either the city or residents. Google is a neophyte in wireless Internet access. It's experience is limited to tests at a gym and cafe near its headquarters and at Bryant Park, in New York City. Separately, Google sponsors free Wi-Fi service in San Francisco's Union Square in conjunction with a local start-up, Feeva. Competitors who submitted responses to the city's request for comments said Google's proposal is not entirely surprising. But they questioned the company's ability to follow through on its plans. Donald Berryman, EVP and president of municipal networks for Earthlink, questioned if Google had the know-how to be an Internet service provider. He said providing the deal for free is also not sustainable in the long run. "We've looked into free service and we haven't found a model where free works," said Berryman. "At some point free becomes less sustainable because there's no way to upgrade service and the networks when no one's paying for it." Chuck Haas, CEO of MetroFi, which runs two wi-fi networks in Cupertino and Santa Clara, wondered if Google would be meet the city's goals for coverage. But he said the idea of free service is not entirely far-fetched. He said his company submitted a proposal in which wireless broadband would be free across San Francisco but would be paid for with ads and would have no technical support or services for users. For $19.99 a month, subscribers would get enhanced service with no ads and customer support. "I believe we'll have enough people that want full security and customer support with no ads that we could make money," Haas said. "But no matter who the city chooses, I don't think the city will have to pay for this network." SBC spokesman John Britton said his company encourages competition, but feels that governments should seek greater investment from private companies to increase broadband service. He said in San Francisco's case, the city is already served by SBC and enjoys more than 400 free wi-fi hotspots, more than any other in the country. "We feel there is already widespread broadband available today," Britton said. Vince Vasquez, a policy fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, which receives funding from SBC, said there has never been a company willing to volunteer this kind of a network. But even if it's free, it might represent too much involvement by the city in a sector that should left to private industries, he said. "Our concern is with public money and publicly controlled internet access," said Vasquez. "We take a lot of caution about how government should intervene in the market." URL: <http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/01/ GOOGLE.TMP> Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

1 0

[IP] Wireless access for all? Google plan would offer free Internet
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

throughout SF X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.734) Reply-To: dave(a)farber.net Begin forwarded message:

1 0

[linux-elitists] Obfuscated TCP
by Don Marti 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Anyone following the "Obfuscated TCP" kernel patch set and userspace library? http://code.google.com/p/obstcp/ Fast opportunistic crypto at the TCP level. Looks like a useful way to make it difficult for ISPs to use services such as Phorm and NebuAd to collect user tracking data and ad revenue -- so webmasters should be all over it. And, of course, it's protection against forged RST attacks. Doesn't work if the attacker is willing to spend more and do an MITM attack, though. -- Don Marti +1 415-734-7913 mobile http://zgp.org/~dmarti/ dmarti(a)zgp.org Linux device driver unconference: http://freedomhec.org/ _______________________________________________ linux-elitists mailing list linux-elitists(a)zgp.org http://allium.zgp.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-elitists ----- 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

[liberationtech] What's up with mesh?
by Sascha Meinrath 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi all, I'd originally planned to stay out of the discussion, but given a lot of the questions that were posed to the list, thought I'd jump in. Below are some quick answers and links to primary sources on various facets of the discussion. Generally speaking, mesh wireless has been both widely successful and little understood. Between 2000-2003, my development team worked with MIT Roofnet on first-generation open source mesh Wi-Fi. Roofnet was a prototype network, as was the work we did as part of the cuwireless initiative (which became the CUWiN Foundation). Neither network offered service level guarantees since both technologies were highly experimental -- thus, while Steve Weis's experience was quite correct, it is based on technologies from a decade ago. As for OLPC mesh, it was doomed from the start. I still remember when we first got a shipment of OLPC boards -- CUWiN was part of the original mesh development team -- and realized that they'd used a Marvel chipset, which had no open source driver. When we requested the necessary reference docs, we were told that they were proprietary information -- so open source developers couldn't develop for OLPC. Soon afterward, other developers ran into the same problem -- a fairly good write-up of the problem is available at: http://www.cmosnetworks.com/OLPC-MarvellIssue-MyWriteUpOfTheSituation.html As for Shervin Pishevar's OpenMesh initiative -- I do hope it works out, but haven't yet seen any meaningful information about the technologies they're implementing. While Shervin has gotten a good amount of press, I do worry since I haven't found any technical specifications, repositories, or an active developer community behind the initiative. Matt Van Hoven's link to the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition's mesh initiative (http://detroitdjc.org/wireless-mesh) is actually one of the collaborations that OTI has helped coordinate and implement. We'll be expanding the network this summer and during the Allied Media Conference (happening this week -- http://alliedmedia.org) so for anyone who wants to see these technologies for themselves, we'll be running some hands-on workshops this week. Shaddi Hasan rightfully points out that "management overhead is much higher than most expect" -- one of the key deliverables for the State Department supported work we're undertaking is to improve auto-configuration on these systems. One of the key problems isn't whether the technologies work (they do), but that they're not very accessible to non-techies. Our broad goal is to get as close to zero-conf (zero configuration) as possible. That said, community wireless networks are _extremely_ large-scale -- from thousands of nodes covering Athens, Greece (http://awmn.net) to multi-layered mesh in Vienna, Austria (https://map.funkfeuer.at/wien) to hybrid mesh/hub-and-spoke regional networks covering the Djursland region of Denmark (http://djurslands.net) to the 13,000+ node network of networks throughout the Catalonia region of Spain (http://guifi.net) The folks running all of these networks are good friends, so if folks have questions for them, I'm happy to make intros. As I wrote two years ago, open source mesh has been doing 80+ mbps over multi-KM links for quite some time (http://www.saschameinrath.com/2009/june/12/open_source_802_11n_big_breakthr…) thus the throughput problem isn't usually the mesh itself, it's the Internet uplink. Griffin Boyce points out the importance of Intranet communications -- which is exactly right! The mesh networks we built in Urbana, IL did exactly this and we've been calling for this type of technology for years now (see, for example, http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/rise_intranet_era) The NYT didn't really cover the technologies involved in our work, but the ad-hoc mesh wireless we've been building is, in fact, an Intranet -- thus, Internet connectivity, while useful, isn't needed for network participants to communicate with one-another. Charles Wyble has also pointed out that Atheros is currently by far the front-runner for open source mesh wireless. Their recent sale to Qualcomm has left a lot of us quite concerned for the future of their relative openness, however. For those looking closely at the NYT "Internet-in-a-suitcase" picture, you'll see several piece of Ubiquiti gear -- they are, in fact, pretty amazing gear for the price point. Once the FreedomBox Foundation gets their tech functioning, that will be another really useful resource within a community Intranet as well. Meanwhile, other key groups that we've been working with around the globe include the Serval Project (http://www.servalproject.org) Gnu Radio (http://gnuradio.org) and the OpenBTS initiative (http://openbts.sourceforge.net) FunkFeuer (http://funkfeuer.at) and the OLSR crew (http://www.olsr.org) of course -- the Tor Project (http://www.torproject.org) etc. -- all of whom have folks who are working with us on Commotion (http://tech.chambana.net/projects/commotion) Happy to answer any follow-up questions folks have, --Sascha Meinrath Director, Open Technology Initiative New America Foundation _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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