- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Visa, HNC Inc. develo
by Duncan Frissell 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com M >Same goes for the supermarket reselling my M >buying patterns. If they can sell information about me, my groceries M >are cheaper (or they make money). Selling personal information is a M >competitive advantage. For most people, this is more important than M >privacy. M > M > Marc But it's trivial in the case of supermarket "Price Plus" card programs to use a nome de guerre and a mail drop (which you should be using in any case). Thus you get the discount and the supermarket gets purchasing info which may or may not match your actual demographics depending on whether or not you lied about those as well as your name on the initial ap. Secured credit cards allow you similar anonymous use of payment facilities (if obtained in a nome de guerre) without surrendering privacy. That said, I realize that it is difficult even to convince civilians of the benfits of receiving all their mail via an agent. They consider it weird. Perhaps "celebrity stalkers" and the general breakdown in civility will ecourage the use of communications screening devices like mail receiving services, voice mail, and the coming network-based communications servers. Duncan Frissell What this metaverse needs is a cheap anonymous communications server for all who want one. This software entity located "somewhere on the nets" would receive all email, voice, fax, video, and VR communications directed to an individual, record and filter them, and forward (anonymously) those communications that meet certain pre-established criteria to its principal located "somewhere on the nets." --- WinQwk 2.0b#0

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info; ATM
by Brian D Williams 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

Paul Ferguson wrote; >Forgive me for furthering this slightly off-topic thread, but >Sprint has been offerring Frame Relay data sevices for quite some >time, both for private wide-area networks and for >interconnectivity to the global internet via SprintLink. Now, >Sprint will beat everyone else to the punch offerring up ATM - Too late; MFS plugs in leading-edge network for high-speed data transfers MFS Communications Corp. claimed the technological lead among data communications service providers last week with the launch of its end-to-end asynchronous transfer mode network. MFS, an upstart better known for its successful challenges to local telephone company monopolies, claims to have set up the first ATM network in the country. But analysts say that distinction could be fleeting, as at least one other service provider -- Sprint Corp. -- is expected to offer a similar service by year-end. Although these systems can carry regular telephone conversations, they are most apt to be used to transmit huge volumes of computer data and to make it possible for computers in widely separate locations to work together. Ultimately, Royce Holland, president of MFS, sees ATM networks providing the backbone for a telecommunications infrastructure that supplies movies to home television sets at the touch of a button. Investor's Business Daily -- August 24 -- Page 4 Sprint was also before congress last week asking that MFJ restrictions against the RBOC's entry into long distance be codified into law, and that they (the RBOC's) be restricted from entry into long distance for 10 years! can you say competition? Brian Williams Ameritech data center Cypherpatriot

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Source Code NOT available for ViaCrypt PGP
by vince＠dsi.unimi.it 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

> Just thinking. I don't think that ViaCrypt will make much money of > the people on this list. Very true. Too bad that PGP is going commercial. Even worse the fact that sources won't be available. If PGP will become a commercial product and the public domain version will be unsupported or ``left behind'' in respect of the commectial version, then I believe that some hackers will start hacking the public domain version (probably infringing PGP's copyright as well), a new version, newly-featured version of PGP (let's call it NPGP) will start being used and then the commercial version of PGP will become suspect, poorly trusted and unpopular in the Internet community. -- David Vincenzetti, system adminitrator | <vince(a)ghost.dsi.unimi.it> DSI, Universita` degli Studi di Milano, | phone: ++39 2 55006 391 via Comelico 39, 20135 Milan, ITALY | fax: ++39 2 55006 373

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Data battles amongst the "Big Three"
by fergp＠sytex.com 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Wed, 25 Aug 93 22:36:33 -0600, "L. Detweiler" <uunet!longs.lance.colostate.edu!ld231782> wrote - > Two announcements on products that will bring internet to large > audiences. One by Continental Cablevision Inc. The cable line one > apparently uses special coaxial cable modems, and apparently is > full-duplex (?). On front page of today's Wall St. Journal. > Following that, AT&T announces the Interspan `Frame Relay Services and > Information Access Services' to the internet. In the former, one gets > `cost-effective' internet capabilities, in the later Forgive me for furthering this slightly off-topic thread, but Sprint has been offerring Frame Relay data sevices for quite some time, both for private wide-area networks and for interconnectivity to the global internet via SprintLink. Now, Sprint will beat everyone else to the punch offerring up ATM - excerpted from: Communications Week August 23, 1993 pages 1, 144 Sprint Takes Lead in ATM Service Race by Robin Gareiss San Francisco -- Four months ahead of schedule, Sprint will announce this week that its asynchronous transfer mode transmission service is available immediately, according to industry analysts. The service, to be introduced at the INTEROP 93 August show here, will be the first ATM service from a major long distance carrier. [....] Sprint plans to announce flexible, user-specific pricing, according to Jeffrey Held, partner with Ernst & Young's Network Strategies practice, Vienna, Va. Sprint briefed Held on its announcement last week. Sprint originally had planned to make its ATM service available in first-quarter 1994. According to sources, the carrier has been able to step up its plans because trials have gone more smoothly than anticipated. [....] Sprint will let users access its ATM-based service via local switched multimegabit data service or dedicated -T-3 lines, sources said. As specifications evolve, Sprint also will develop interfaces between its ATM and frame-relay and SprintLink TCP/IP services, Held said. [....] 8<-------- End excerpt ------ ferguson(a)icp.net ,-) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLHyJbpRLcZSdHMBNAQHeOgP/Q/sY8kOcjsCF41+GNUl325TX00R0TtJw sxqxGw++lSsRWeA+T+fAU5at9oPaiE7zVgAgNBGoQjGy4Bz+paiyIjK+Mi9YHqa4 ufTKq2bV3ZutruznR1Nk9j3zYi/zGIkdrNg05y4pvEUcLeEgRTfnzo2EhXIu6M5l t6cUjP1XhlY= =exLc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Paul Ferguson | "Government, even in its best state, Network Integrator | is but a necessary evil; in its worst Centreville, Virginia USA | state, an intolerable one." fergp(a)sytex.com | - Thomas Paine, Common Sense Type bits/keyID Date User ID pub 1024/1CC04D 1993/03/15 Paul Ferguson <fergp(a)sytex.com> Key fingerprint = EE D2 93 7D 04 6D C6 05 AC 36 AD 9D 8E 4F 41 58

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Re: "more money than brai
by M..Stirner＠f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

Uu> From: szabo(a)netcom.com (Nick Szabo) > M. Stirner: > Only one question: WHY? If PGP is freeware for noncommercial single > users, why on earth would anyone wish to drop $100 +/- for single-user > rights to a virtually identical program? Uu> There are several business proposals floating around the cypherpunks Uu> community that would require commercial licenses. Note that I was not speaking of commercial, but single-user licenses. Uu> I encourage the Uu> various crypto-entrepreneurs elaborate if they wish. Uu> Some of the proposals are quite interesting and illuminating. Uu> There's a strong habit of keeping business ideas "trade secret", Uu> which can be a bad idea, since (a) many of the ideas Uu> are obvious; trade secrets only work for subtle but important Uu> technological bottlenecks known to a small group of mutually Uu> trustworthy people, and (b) many of the ideas need to Uu> debugged by a wide variety of crackers and experts before they will Uu> provid good privacy. Trade secrets also inhibit the progress Uu> of the cypherpunks agenda, but that's a judgement call; I myself Uu> dont' feel morally bound to Reveal All for the sake of the Uu> Movement. But, "I'll post mine if you post yours". I feel rather in the dark. If you are going to say something, please say it. I had my circumlocution buffer filled by noon today by others who beat you to the punch. However, the mere mention of money makes my cute little ears stand right up, assuming it's not in non-negotiable digital gold coins, which niether my landlady nor the Arab bodega where I buy my menudo will accept... . ~ . M. ... "The good & the possible never seemed to coincide."Orwell ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- M. Stirner - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!28!M..Stirner INTERNET: M..Stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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Re: "more money than brai
by M..Stirner＠f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

Uu> From: bei(a)dogface.austin.tx.us (Bob Izenberg) # Only one question: WHY? If PGP is freeware for noncommercial single # users, why on earth would anyone wish to drop $100 +/- for single-user # rights to a virtually identical program? Uu> Dumb as it may sound, at work the people from Finance want to see that Uu> we've paid for all the software on our machines. Yes, I've received several replies like yours, but note that company use was not the question - I understand the "why" there, complete with all the corporate shareware/freeware phobia - but the question was why a _private single user_ would pay $100 for the honor of a licensed private single-user release of a freeware program. THAT doesn't make sense, thus my question. . Conceivably, someone with assets (certainly not me, but I suppose such people exist somewhere) might be worried about the sound & fury emanating from PKP concerning lawsuits against all freeware PGP users, but $100 is mighty high insurance against an event with that low of a probability. ********************************************************************* * <m..stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.fidonet.org> - PGP Key D30909 via servers * * > What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not <* * > warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit <* * > of resistance? Let them take arms!" - Thomas Jefferson, 1787 <* ********************************************************************* ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- M. Stirner - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!28!M..Stirner INTERNET: M..Stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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E-trade opinions (fwd)
by remail＠tamsun.tamu.edu 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

Forwarded from misc.invest: In article <476(a)complex.complex.is> frisk(a)complex.is (Fridrik Skulason) writes: >Do you ever thing we will see something like E-trade on the Internet ? They tell me that the Internet is not secure, so you would risk having your password compromised. But, yes, I assume that this will come eventually. >I would really like to see a service I could connect to using Telnet...as the >services that are currently available are impractical for me - AOL is totally >out of the question, as connecting to them would involve an international >phone call, and CompuServe would require going through the X.25 network, >which is not cheap either....I already pay around $7000/year for decent >Internet access, and don't want to double that by using X.25 I have been told that one can telnet to compuserve.com, but when I tried it I got Unknown host. ....

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Re: Coming Soon: Commercial version of PGP!
by George A. Gleason 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

How soon before a Mac compatible version is available? Or will the current version run under Soft PC on the Mac, which is essentially a PC-emulator...? If yes to either, sign me up...! -gg(a)well.sf.ca.us

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Re: Visa, HNC Inc. develop neural network as a weapon to fight fraud
by jon barber 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

> Visa, HNC Inc. develop neural network as a weapon to fight fraud About time too. I recently had a run in with a local bike mechanic and had to stop a cheque for 650 pounds. However, my cheque guarantee card is also a Visa card, and so the scumbag filled out a Visa slip using the details on my cheque - without my permission of course. This was successfully paid to him by Visa. However, I told my bank what had happened and they freaked. It seems I'm definitely going to get the money back after about 3 months (!!). The bank were very embarrassed and want me to tell the police as it's a criminal offence. It's always struck me how people could easily fill out Visa slips from discarded receipts, get the money and split. Jon.

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Re: Attacks on remailers
by J_G_Thomas%CAASD1＠mwmgate1.mitre.org 26 Aug '93

26 Aug '93

Samuel Pigg <b44729(a)achilles.ctd.anl.gov> wrote: > Actually what I was proposing was the direct usage of SMTP itself rather > than going through the host machine's mail system. As anyone can do it, > it would help with the usage of student accounts as remailers. > And with direct SMTP (socket connections to port 25 of the receiving machine) > you have some control over the header information that is generated. > The protocol is outlined in RFC821 if anyone wants to look at it. The trouble is, one side (the receiver) is still keeping logs, since only sendmail (or some other root process doing the same job) can bind to port 25. On most machines, that means logs. There are plenty of ports over 1000 that user processes can bind to, and that cypherpunk remailers can support, if we want to go that way. I think it's worth thinking about. (This is in addition to receiving mail delivered normally to their e-mail adresses, probably either by port-25/sendmail or uucp). We could start by having cypherpunk remailers talk to _each_other_ on an agreed- upon, unlogged port, using RFC 821 protocol. Final hops to non-remailer addresses will have to be handled on port 25, of course, but within the remailer web we can avoid sendmail logs entirely. After that's implemented, we could talk about using a different protocol. A new protocol is probably the cleanest way to solve the problem of traffic analysis of messages addressed with encrypted address blocks. The best way to get security in a remailer chain is to nest your encryption, so only one layer gets peeled off in each remailer hop. That isn't possible with encrypted address blocks, since the sender will only know the address (and public key) of the first remailer in the chain. All hops after the first one must send the same message out as they got in, with just a layer off the encrypted address block. But if remailers talked to each other by first doing RSA-signed Diffie- Hellman key exchange, then encrypting the traffic, a packet snooper wouldn't be able to correlate incoming and outgoing messages. The latter is one of the "expensive" attacks, I think, and should be thought about after we make sure the logs aren't being kept. Thoughts? Joe (they're trying to pry me away from my NeXT, so don't reply directly to the From: line; use jthomas(a)mitre.org)

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