- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Solidarity (kudos)
by fergp＠sytex.com 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I couldn't resist the opportunity to x-post this to the list, especially now that it makes me feel foolish for once suspecting the possibility of foul play at UUNet. My hat is off to Nat and all the folks at UUNet Technologies who share his views. Kudos. 8<------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------- From: nrh(a)daimajin.UU.NET (Nat Howard) Newsgroups: alt.privacy.clipper Subject: another letter to the president Date: 2 Jun 1993 19:41:01 -0400 Organization: UUNET Technologies Inc, Falls Church, VA, USA Lines: 41 NNTP-Posting-Host: daimajin.uu.net Summary: dump clipper Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1993 12:49:46 EDT To: PRESIDENT(a)WHITEHOUSE.GOV, VICE.PRESIDENT(a)WHITEHOUSE.GOV From: Nat Howard <nrh> Subject: Clipper initiative of 4/16/93 Sirs, As a citizen working in the communications field, I am gravely concerned by the 4/16/93 Clipper Chip initiative. I believe that the initiative as proposed cannot accomplish its stated goals, and will, if carried out, be poisonous to American business attempts to compete in the secure communications field. Far more important is the apparent denial in the press release of our First, Second, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendment rights: ... nor is the U.S. saying that "every American, as a matter of right, is entitled to an unbreakable commercial encryption product." I urge you to consider these actions instead: 1. Lift export controls on all cryptographic hardware and software. 2. Have the NSA work with NIST to produce a publicly-described algorithm, suitable for either hardware or software implementation, that can serve for the next 15 years as a follow-on to DES. 3. Find some fair and legal way so that all US Citizens can use, royalty-free and without other restriction, the public-key algorithms now patented by PKP. A lot of us have hopes for the human rights aspect of the Clinton-Gore ticket. Please don't let us down: withdraw, abandon, or greatly modify the Clipper Chip initiative. I emphasize that I speak here as a private citizen, and my remarks don't necessarily reflect the feelings of UUNET. 8<------- End of Forwarded Message --------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLA4NhZRLcZSdHMBNAQGJjQP/Ty6YCVBsrNfmfWiuyRK/GWHvwkLBy5tE bJOUmwnyP2nD/febFSeIPSoheKEpvVNg6nZUM7BTNPAQ5SM+papyujs5NtQNbiGT TLLS55K0X+904Iszn3ROzc/QJNaQ/RSj+7vuI+yq3L9dTcOrbKNpnU/KePkISeIp toFDESkZDnY= =F+B7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Paul Ferguson | The future is now. Network Integrator | History will tell the tale; Centreville, Virginia USA | We must endure and struggle fergp(a)sytex.com | to shape it. Stop the Wiretap (Clipper/Capstone) Chip.

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Software infrastructure
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Subject: Software infrastructure I like Eric's idea of a terminal program which can support encryption easily. Here are some thoughts. As Eric indicates, the issue is not so much building encryption into the program but rather of having _hooks_ by which extra functionality can be added. Encryption should be just one capability. Another might be to automatically drop into a stand-alone zmodem package like dsz or gsz so we don't have to re-implement zmodem ourselves. We had some related discussion on this last year when we were talking about the "crypto dongle". This was going to be a black box which would sit on the serial line between your PC and modem (or terminal and host computer) and would do encryption/decryption as the characters passed through it. Doing it in the terminal program, I could envision a hook which watched constantly for particular strings to be received from the host, like "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----". Several such watchdogs could be active at once. When one of them matches, it fires off a program. Or perhaps it just starts logging the incoming data to a file, and when it matches another string it fires a program. A simple scripting language could control these activities. The result would be that when you receive an encrypted message, you just list it out to your terminal and then, automatically, PGP fires up and asks you for your pass phrase (unless you SET it ahead of time in the PC's environment). It then displays the message for you. This simple model has several deficiencies. When I log into a Unix system, or Compuserve, or Portal's "Online" service, and read my mail, it is often shown to me a page at a time. This is so that I can read long messages more easily. Then after each message I can delete it, save it, reply to it, etc. If I do reply or if I want to create a new message it will drop me into a text editor to compose the message. The result is that the mail program you are running on the host computer may do some munging on the PGP message, like inserting "Press RETURN for next page" or perhaps some terminal control characters. These would have to be filtered out before PGP could run on the file, or you would have to be able to suppress them when you read this message. Also, assuming we could capture the message and run PGP on it automatically, the resulting decrypted message will have to be saved and given a file name. Then if the user wants to reply to it he is going to have to leave his terminal and run an editor. (At least, that's what I have to do now.) Plus, this only deals with the message-receiving problem, not the sending problem. I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe the PC program needs to be more than a terminal program, and become more of a whole mail-processing program. Maybe you should just download your mail file en masse from the host to your PC, pre-process it to replace (in place) the incoming encrypted messages with plaintext versions (annotated to show validated signatures), then run a PC program which will display one message at a time, let you reply, save, etc. This way the decryptions are done before you even look at the mail file and incoming encrypted mail is treated on a first class basis (the same as other mail). Then for outgoing mail you'd like to be able to drop into a user-defined editor which is run with a command line causing his file to be saved to some temp file name. Then we can automatically encrypt the outgoing mail for him based on the destination, add a remailer chain if requested, etc. Then he gives a command and all his replies and new mail are uploaded and sent. This would be pretty tough to do since there are so many different ways of sending and receiving mail on host computers. This would again have to be a customizable part of the program, where we could provide modules to deal with the common cases of Unix running "mail", elm, mh, etc., and perhaps some of the commercial services. BBS's would ideally be handled as well. Hackers could contribute scripts for supporting their favorite mail system. I don't know anything about SLIP, or POP, or any other fancy ways of hooking a PC up to a workstation. I just use it as a terminal. Would these other protocols help solve the problems above, problems of how we marry an encryption program which must run on the PC with mail-handling programs which run on another computer? Hal Finney 74076.1041(a)compuserve.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2 iQCVAgUBLAwkEagTA69YIUw3AQEuxQQAjeC/gwPHkLQZ0IladVRxiRdgARdE7ziu WWdmsHpaZ2tlq8wAXpSFbMpSZ3MS1U1TT/c/wB2DJOCuWkhs2y6WYoZiqrHz3hjA JyBSkpM1F3dYcZ8MchrjLZsur9KwXe0mIvM7VMu2Fdq+sMMgNwzEzqJoWhulAsnl weuBaeOjv7k= =zEUv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Crypto anarchy in a VW? (not the bug)
by Mark 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

>Another possibility until then, and one that would be fun for people who >like to play with EPROMS, is a card that had a cable leading to an external >EPROM socket that you could lay on your desk or on top of the case or >wherever. You burn your keys for the HD into a chip and use it as a key, >physically inserting the chip in the socket each time. There are lots >on new ways to make chips easy to plug in and out, I'm sure it wouldn't >be too hard. Heh, I have a system liek this, designed by Viglen in the UK. It was/is originally from the BBC micro to allow easy use of swapping over 'sideways' ROMS instead of opening the case. It's basically a ribbon cable with a 28way rom socket on the end with a edge connector socket on the other. Each ROM is enclosed in it's own sturdy tiny black package with an edge connector that slots into the socket that is mounted in the 'ashtray' of the Beeb. You could easily copy the idea with a rom socket, a length of ribbon cable and a ZIF socket to allow easy usage. The Viglen has pin protection so you dont spike the thing, so it's able to be used on the fly without power cycling. One thing about ROM's, they're faster than disks....easier to hide too :) >I still don't see why all of the actual encryption couldn't be done in >software though... Me either, apart from TEMPEST issues...Linux comes with slot in file system modules (as detailed in a letter to Jim) that you can easily adapt to your own uses. Ive been playing around with this idea for a while. Adding a desfs(tm) (me :) to a linux kernel is not going to be that hard I think.. (touch wood). Mark mark(a)coombs.anu.edu.au "liek", "smiel" and "soar" are derivatives of JenSpeak(tm). Spread the word.

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whistle for Whistleblowing!
by L. Detweiler 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

>A quick update: Telecom Finland finally delivered. My uncontrolled, >no-AUP IP connection via EUnet (Copenhagen-Amsterdam-Alternet) went >operational yesterday. The new 486 box also arrived. Expected to go >into 100% service this weekend! Oh, the bright sun is shining through! This is absolutely perfect timing. I just ran rn and what did it have to report? alt.whistleblowing not in .newsrc -- Add unsubscribed? Cypherpunks, alt.whistleblowing has been created! Special thanks to Miron Cuperman, a First Class Grade A Cypherpunk, who took care of the electronic paperwork on this one after reading my desperate posting(s). (I don't understand though, at my site it didn't appear for over a week since the control message was sent out.) If it's not at your site send mail to your news administrator and ask if there's some kind of conspiracy going on to prevent you from seeing it :) I generally *don't* recommend that the Mycotronx postings be sent there (yet), even if someone can set up an untraceable path. I talked to the poster today and he has many plans for them that might be disrupted by any further publicity. In fact, he told me he *accidentally* posted them to the cypherpunks list! He thought it would just go to the `moderator' (Eric Hughes). Explains a bit. Watch for a FAQ to the group (possibly here first) and advertisements in other groups. Also: HOW TO CONTRIBUTE IMMEDIATELY. Find relevant material from any groups you have ever visited and FORWARD IT. Make sure to be very thorough in citing the source and background of the posting. Let the games begin! The doors are open! Fire away, soldiers! p.s. If anyone wants to run an interesting and critical project, I think that the `control' group should be monitored for message cancels in alt.whistleblower, cancelling parties should be *exposed*, and the cancelled postings in particular should be *preserved*.

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E-Mail Baloney, Part 2
by mulivor＠orion.crc.monroecc.edu 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

Here's a press release that came to me yesterday. In particular, see last paragraph. Phil Mulivor --------------------------------------------------------------------- House of Representatives Announces Public Electronic Mail Service To: National Desk Contact: Lance Koonce of the Committee on House Administration, 202-225-7922 WASHINGTON, June 2 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Chairman Charlie Rose and Ranking Minority Member Bill Thomas of the Committee on House Administration announced today the pilot program of the Constituent Electronic Mail System. This groundbreaking new service will allow citizens to communicate directly with their Member of Congress by electronic mail. The House of Representatives has established an electronic gateway to the Internet, the vast computer network that is used currently by over 12 million people worldwide. Participating Members of the House have been assigned public mailboxes which may be accessed by their constituents from their home computers. In addition, many libraries, schools and other public institutions now provide, or soon will provide, public access to the Internet. The Members of the House of Representatives who have agreed to participate in this pilot program are: Rep. Jay Dickey (AR-07), Rep. Sam Gejdenson (CT-02), Rep. Newt Gingrich (GA-06), Rep. George Miller (CA-07), Rep. Charlie Rose (NC-07), Rep. Fortney Pete Stark (CA-13), and Rep. Melvin Watt (NC-12). These Members will be making announcements in their congressional districts within the next few weeks to make their constituents aware of the new service. The Constituent Electronic Mail System represents a significant effort by the House of Representatives to expand communication with constituents. With the tremendous growth of electronic mail over the past several years, and the increasingly inter-connected nature of computer networks, the new service is a natural addition to the current methods of communication available to constituents. At the present time, House Members involved in the pilot program will largely respond to electronic mail messages from their constituents by postal mail, to ensure confidentiality. Constituents of House Members participating in the pilot program who wish to communicate with those Members will be asked to send a letter or postcard stating their interest to the Member's office. The request will include the constituent's Internet "address," as well as that constituent's name and postal address. This process will allow Members to identify an electronic mail user as his or her constituent. The pilot e-mail program will continue until sufficient feedback from participating offices has been collected to allow improvements and modifications to the system. When House Information Systems and the Committee on House Administration are satisfied that the system is sufficiently error-free, other Members of the House will be allowed to add this new service as technical, budgetary and staffing concerns allow. For more information, Internet users are encouraged to contact the House of Representative's new on-line information service. Please send a request for information to CONGRESS(a)HR.HOUSE.GOV. /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/

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heh heh.. whoops
by poier＠sfu.ca 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

heh <blush> <loosen collar>... sorry about the PGP export thing... I was a bit flaked out this morning what with midterms and all. Musta been thinking of something else. Sorry all Skye -- -----====> Skye Merlin Poier <====----- Undergrad in CMPT/MATH (Virtual Reality) |||| |||| email: poier(a)sfu.ca p-OO <--> OO-q THINK PGP Public Key available on finger \== ==/

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Re: Term software development/design
by Mark 03 Jun '93

03 Jun '93

Those of you with a 386 or greater and over 40Mb Hd (most of the pc's these days are usable) might want to take a look at running linux/386bsd/netbsd at home and then running term(1). It's a program with it's own packetising, compression of data (which is good for a quick and nasty anti-tap system) and you can telnet, rsh, ftp, finger etc all from the unix command line of your home machine. Uploads etc can all be done at the same time as you read mail on a remote host. the lastest version is term107.tar.z and should be avaliable from most archie sites. It has #defs for suns, nexts, hps, linux etc. When i find the guy who wrote the telnet client for it I'll probably add des encryption to it. The above is for plain modem usage, it's a semi tcp link at home and you can dial anywhere and link up in seconds, no special system file changes, just compile the remote binary and you're away. If you're just using the dialup host as a bouncer then all that is running is one innocuous looking binary, even though you might have several ftp's and telnets etc running at once. Honestly it's an admins nightmare. Linux etc also has slip and inet options if you want to explore those. The only problems I find are people being unable to listen (usefully) to your sessions and killing the line :) Most of the tools are written I find, all thats needed is the adding of encryption to them for a totally secure session. No need to write another term program, just use whats out there. Mark mark(a)coombs.anu.edu.au

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Re: WH email petition.
by dmandl＠lehman.com 02 Jun '93

02 Jun '93

> In general, petitions are a notoriously ineffective way to lobby. > That's doubly so for email versions, for obvious reasons. Even > without that problem, an electronic petition will (rightly) be ignored > on the grounds that it represents the opinions of a small elite > minority. With signatures collected in the streets and shopping malls > of America, you have at least some chance of reaching a cross-section > of people. But on the net? (And even if I'm wrong about the net's > population, would they know it?) > --Steve Bellovin In general, I agree that petitions are a major waste of time and energy; I'm also pretty convinced that this White House email link is a big scam. Why are they any more likely to take your mail seriously just because it comes over the phone lines and not in an envelope? Seems like a pretty transparent PR ploy (also an attempt to make it seem like the White House isn't a bunch of dinosaurs now that everybody and her nephew has an email address). But since it won't take much more than a couple of minutes of any of our time, I can't see an electronic petition hurting our cause any--especially because it'll certainly include the names of many esteemed professionals and braniacs with fancy scientific, corporate, and academic credentials. I think this could be a nice propaganda coup if it got publicised. It could at the very least give a big black eye to the forces of evil. --Dave.

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Mail probs
by miron＠extropia.wimsey.com 02 Jun '93

02 Jun '93

----- Transcript of session follows ----- uux: creat (TMP0000001297): Permission denied 554 elee7h5(a)rosebud.ee.uh.edu... unknown mailer error 1 ----- Unsent message follows ----- Hopefully the originator of this anon message is on the list. Miron

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help: P.S.
by John_David_Galt＠cup.portal.com 02 Jun '93

02 Jun '93

We have ftp here, but pax.tpa.com.au will not accept an ftp connection. If you know of a site that will, that has PGP, please, where is it? thanks. John David Galt

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