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Money Laundering for the Nazis by President Bush's family
by Nomen Nescio 11 Oct '04

11 Oct '04

The subject says it all. Read more here: http://www.debatecomics.org/BushFamilyFortune/ We must retire this criminal from office now! Link to the full 89 MB pdf below http://www.debatecomics.org/assets/Sources/US_Fascism/ A-2%20FascistFriendly%20Power%20Brokers/ Roaming%20Ghost%20Case/Whole/full.pdf (Concat above rows to one URL)

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China Rewards Porn Snitches (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org)
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '04

11 Oct '04

----- Forwarded message from brian-slashdotnews(a)hyperreal.org -----

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E-Commerce Sites Make Great Laboratory For Today's Economists
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109744444984841427,00.html> The Wall Street Journal October 11, 2004 PORTALS By LEE GOMES E-Commerce Sites Make Great Laboratory For Today's Economists October 11, 2004 Calling them eBayologists doesn't sound quite right; Amazonists is even worse. There may not be a good name for them, but for a growing number of academics trying to test ivory-tower theories in the real world, the big online commerce sites are the new place to be. Especially for economists, Web sites and their untold millions of interactions are perfect real-world laboratories. For instance, a fast-growing specialty in economics is "auction theory," which, as the name suggests, tries to tease out the basic patterns by which auctions operate. Before eBay, an aspiring auction theorist didn't have much data to work with. As a result, many of them spent time sifting and resifting through a limited set of data on government wireless spectrum auctions of the 1990s for their auction insights. But now, with eBay and the rest, there are more data than even the most dedicated graduate student would know what to do with. EBay itself even helps with this, supplying anonymized data to university researchers under special arrangement. What exactly are economists learning? Frankly, the conclusions aren't the sort that would cause a layperson's jaw to drop; many are the sort that only a microeconomist would love. For instance, one of the cardinal rules of eBay involves the importance of a seller's reputation, or the rating given the person by those who have done business with him or her. Luis M.B. Cabral, an economist at NYU's business school, says that for an economist, it wouldn't have been immediately obvious that the eBay ranking would be important -- partly because reputations on eBay, unlike those in the real world, are essentially anonymous. But not only is reputation important, Prof. Cabral found, but it affects the prices sellers can charge and the amount of merchandise they can move. In one study, he looked at what happens to sellers with perfect ratings who receive their first piece of negative feedback. Not only did they begin selling less, but they entered a kind of downward spiral, with fewer sales and a declining reputation. "It really makes a huge difference," Prof. Cabral says. Another academic foray into the online world ended up confirming the power of brand names. Conventional wisdom among most American economists would be that prices on Web sites should be essentially the same. After all, Internet users all have "perfect information" about what everyone is charging, and they face few, if any, "switching costs" in moving from one supplier to the next. But Judith A. Chevalier, an economist at the University of Chicago business school, looked at price differences between Amazon and Barnes & Noble and found that Amazon was consistently able to charge more. And in a separate study, she found that Amazon's customer-written reviews of books do indeed affect sales, with negative reviews having more of an impact than positive ones. Prof. Chevalier theorized that prospective shoppers may suspect positive reviews are some sort of shill for the author but don't bring comparable skepticism to negative notices. Even with all the interest by researchers, some of the questions posed by the e-commerce sites remain unresolved. One of them involves the usefulness of "sniping," which occurs when a prospective buyer in an auction doesn't get involved in the bidding until the last minute, and then makes an offer the others don't have time to top. The practice works only on eBay-style auctions, which have fixed time limits. There are many eBay users who swear by the practice. In fact, there are even a number of services that will snipe for you automatically. David Reiley, a University of Arizona economist, says that for certain kinds of auction items -- including standardized electronic gear with many different bidders -- studies suggest that snipers don't do better than anyone else, either in their success rate in winning their items or in the price they end up paying. But he says there may be other kinds of merchandise, such as those with fewer bidders or prices that aren't easy to determine, where buyers should, in fact, snipe. Even that could change, he notes, if everyone sniped. It is currently unclear how many people on eBay engage in the practice. Not all of the work being done online by economists is theoretical, and savvy eBay traders would be wise to acquaint themselves with some of the literature. Lucking Reiley, for instance, along with a colleague, Rama Katkar, wanted to find out if it was better to publicly set a minimum bid for an item or to use an eBay feature called a "secret reserve," which rejects bids below a certain dollar amount without telling bidders what the minimum is. By comparing 50 pairs of identical items, one with the secret minimum and one without, the economists concluded that the secret minimum dissuaded buyers from participating in the auction, thus driving down prices. The study was done using Pokimon cards, but the finding, presumably, could hold true for anything: Beanie Babies, lawn gnomes, you name it. -- ----------------- 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'

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Re: [Full-Disclosure] WWII cryptography: the dark side (fwd)
by J.A. Terranson 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:57:15 +0200 From: Christian Leber <christian(a)leber.de> To: full-disclosure(a)lists.netsys.com Subject: Re: [Full-Disclosure] WWII cryptography: the dark side On Sun, Oct 10, 2004 at 07:52:20PM +0200, Feher Tamas wrote: >(in german only or bablefish, sorry): I bablefished it and corrected the worst errors: ------- Secret code TELWA cracked: Nazi decoder developed computer forerunner 23. September 2004 Hanover - the decoder Reinhold Weber decoded the US secret code TELWA in the Second World War and built a decoding machine to crack M-209-Nachrichten. This was now revealed by Klaus Schmeh, author at the InterNet magazine Telepolis That German decoding specialists decoded in the the Second World War secret code of the allied was even not well known by experts until a few years ago. According to report of the former president of the Federal Office for security in the information technology (BSI), Dr Otto Leiberichm the Germans in the Second World War cracked the US coding machine M-209. These remarks served the Telepolis author Klaus Schmeh as important source of information, when he worked on his book 'Die Welt der geheimen Zeichen - Die faszinierende Geschichte der Verschl|sselung' ('The world of the secret signs - the fascinating history of encryption). When he published excerpts of this book with Telepolis first, this led to a small sensation: A 84 year old man from Frankfurt contacted him and reported that he was in WWII involved in the crackong of the mentioned US coding machine M-209. The 1920 in Austria born Reinold Weber, which had spent six years of his childhood in the USA, was drawn in 1941 to the armed forces. Due to excellent knowledge of the english language he was first trained as a message interpreter and later as decoder. Inserted in the decoding unit FNAST5, he succeeded to decode the TELWA messages from US radiograms and decipher also machine keys. In this time Weber and his colleagues cracked the codes of the US coding machine M-209 and intercepted explosive information. Thus there were again and again hints referring to forthcoming bombardments of German cities, which were announced usually about six to eight weeks before execution in radiograms. What counter measures the German military did with the help of these information, weber however never experienced. In April 1944 Weber had the idea to build a machine which should automate a part of the laborious deciphering computations. The company Hollerith, late IBM, was positive in an evaluation, explained however the building of such a machine takes about two years. Thus Weber with a colleague made itself alone to the work. They created a machine, which consisted of two boxes: one in the size of a desk, which contained the relays and the four turning rollers, as well as a further box with 80 x 80 x 40 cm edge length. Latter box contained 26 times 16 bulb sockets, with which by bulbs the letters of the relative attitude could be copied. Thus Webers and his colleague wrote an interesting piece of technology history, because their construction had already many thing in common with a computer with their binary logic. The computer was still not at all invented at this time, if one refrains from the British machine Colossus likewise developed for decoding, which developed about at the same time. In the middle of September 1944 Weber could prove the strength of its computer forerunner for the first time: During a night duty he determined with his machine - without the support of his colleagues - an M209 key. Which would have meant one week work without machine assistance for a three-team at least, he created within approximately seven hours. At the beginning of of 1945, weber had landed over several detours in Salzburg, wanted to use his decoding machine again. However the necessary radio engineering was missing. The equipment proved as useless. Its superior instructed to destroy the machine. With pickel, hatchet, hammer and stahlsaege Weber scrapped thereupon the equipment, whose construction had employed him several months long. Thus a historically extremely interesting computer forerunner disappeared again from the scene. Until today this equipment in no source of literature is mentioned to computer history. ------- Here is the complete Telepolis article (german): http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/18371/1.html Christian Leber -- "Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est." (Aurelius Augustinus) Translation: <http://gnuhh.org/work/fsf-europe/augustinus.html> _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html

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Indymedia Seizures Initiated In Europe (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org)
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

----- Forwarded message from brian-slashdotnews(a)hyperreal.org -----

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[i2p] 0.4.1.2 is available (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net)
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

----- Forwarded message from jrandom <jrandom(a)i2p.net> -----

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[TSCM-L] Interception capabilities 2000 (EC report on Echolon) (fwd)
by J.A. Terranson 10 Oct '04

10 Oct '04

No doubt many here will have an interest in this as well. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 12:40:41 -0000 From: contranl <contranl(a)yahoo.co.uk> Reply-To: TSCM-L(a)yahoogroups.com To: TSCM-L(a)yahoogroups.com Subject: [TSCM-L] Interception capabilities 2000 (EC report on Echolon) . Good morning... I gues (not)everybody has read this: "Interception capabilities 2000" http://www.europarl.eu.int/stoa/publi/pdf/98-14-01-2_en.pdf (http://tinyurl.com/4lxds) This is an official report carried out for the European Commision in 2000. It deals with the "Echolon" network and the "alleged" use of it by the US and friends for militairy and industrial espionage... Yes i know it's old stuff but not outdated and makes very good reading... So i tried to upload it to the files section...but it was refused since it is to big. I consider this standard reading and it should be in the files section since it is not that easy to find if you don't know where to look for it (yes i know now). Maybe someone can cut it into 2 pieces (Pdf) and upload it ? Tnx 73's Tetrascanner ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/UBhwlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> ======================================================== TSCM-L Technical Security Mailing List "In a multitude of counselors there is strength" To subscribe to the TSCM-L mailing list visit: http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/TSCM-L It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Star Bucks that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking is a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. =================================================== TSKS Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TSCM-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: TSCM-L-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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Fwd: Libertarian and Green Party Presidential Candidates Arrested!
by Bill Stewart 09 Oct '04

09 Oct '04

>Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 18:08:55 -0700 (PDT) >Subject: Libertarian and Green Party Presidential Candidates Arrested! >From: (another list) >While trying to enter the Bi-Partisan Press Conference tonight to serve >legal papers to the CPD: > >http://badnarik.org/supporters/blog/2004/10/08/michael-badnarik-arrested/ > >8:38PM CT > >The first report from St. Louis is in - and presidential candidates >Michael Badnarik (Libertarian) and David Cobb (Green Party) were just >arrested. Badnarik was carrying an Order to Show Cause, which he intended >to serve the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Earlier today, >Libertarians attempted to serve these same papers at the Washington, D.C. >headquarters of the CPD - but were stopped from approaching the CPD office >by security guards. > >Fred Collins reported to me from the ground that Badnarik and Cobb are in >great physical condition and great spirit. > >As soon as more details are available, they will be posted here immediately. > >8:51PM CT > >I just spoke with Jon Airheart on his cellular telephone. He reports that >while he could see no handcuffs, both Badnarik and Cobb had their hands >behind their backs, as if they were handcuffed. Airheart also confirms >that Badnarik did have the papers to serve the CPD in his jacket pocket. > >9:09PM CT > >The first AP report just hit Google News: > > Just as the debate began, two third-party presidential candidates >purposely crossed a police barricade and were arrested. Green Party >presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate >Michael Badnarik were protesting their exclusion from the debate > >And a whole lot more on the blog page... > >Mark ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart(a)pobox.com

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Faulty 'No-Fly' System Detailed
by R. A. Hettinga 09 Oct '04

09 Oct '04

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18735-2004Oct8?language=printer> The Washington Post washingtonpost.com Faulty 'No-Fly' System Detailed By Sara Kehaulani Goo Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 9, 2004; Page A01 The federal government's "no-fly" list had 16 names on it on Sept. 11, 2001. Today, it has more than 20,000. The list, which identifies suspected terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes, expanded rapidly even though the government knew that travelers were being mistakenly flagged, according to federal records. The records detail how government officials expressed little interest in tracking or resolving cases in which passenger names were confused with the growing number of names on the list. More than 2,000 people have complained to the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines, at one point, were calling the agency at least 30 times a day to say that they had stopped a passenger whose name was similar to one on the list but after further investigation was determined not to be a terror suspect, according to a TSA memo. More than 300 pages of documents related to the no-fly and related lists were released late Thursday night by the TSA and the FBI in response to a federal court order. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit on behalf of Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, two peace activists who wanted to know why their names had turned up on a no-fly list. The documents reveal early symptoms of what are now known to be flaws with the watch lists. Travelers who were flagged by the lists said they now foil the system by altering how their names are spelled on their tickets -- adding their middle initials, full middle names or titles, for example. Government officials do not announce when they stop passengers actually on the lists. The only publicly known case involved Yusuf Islam, once known as the pop singer Cat Stevens, who was prevented last month from entering the country. The information revealed by the documents is "not very comforting," said Thomas R. Burke, a San Francisco attorney representing the peace activists and the ACLU. The TSA acknowledges that the system for checking passenger names for suspected terrorists needs fixing, and it plans to overhaul it in a new program called Secure Flight. The Justice Department declined to comment. The false matches "underscore the need we have to get more information on passengers to adjudicate those that are not a risk," said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. Every time a passenger books a ticket, the airline checks the traveler's name against two enormous government databases, or watch lists, of people the government believes pose a threat. The FAA created two lists in 2001: a no-fly list and a so-called selectee list, both of which airlines compare against reservation records. When the TSA was formed in 2002, it took over maintenance of the lists from the FAA. The no-fly list grew from 16 names supplied by the FBI in 2001 to 1,000 names by the end of 2002, according to the newly released TSA documents. There are now more than 20,000 names on the no-fly list, some which are aliases, according to a homeland security source who is not allowed to release such numbers. There are several thousand names on the selectee list, according to the source. Internal TSA memos direct airlines to refuse boarding to a passenger on the no-fly list and to alert the local FBI. Travelers on the selectee list are to be directed to a law enforcement officer and put through additional security procedures in order to board the plane, the documents said. Airlines declined to say exactly what kind of technology they use to match names. But the documents make clear that in the months after Sept. 11, carriers were having difficulty with the task. The Air Transport Association, the airline trade group, met with the TSA's top policy director in December 2002 to address the "false positives problem," according to a TSA memo. "This has been such a headache for me," wrote one Alaska Airlines executive, whose name was redacted, in an e-mail to the TSA a week before the meeting. "Any solutions . . . would be greatly appreciated." TSA officials wrote letters and e-mails of apology to passengers who complained of being mistakenly flagged by the lists. But in an internal memo, officials said there was little the agency could do. "While a few carriers keep track of 'false positives' the majority do not," wrote Chad Wolf, now TSA's number-two policy official, in a December 2002 e-mail to agency legislative affairs official Cori Sieger. "Consequently, TSA does not have the ability to record this data nor is there a pressing need to do so." Passengers are falsely flagged by the lists in such large numbers because of the kind of technology airlines use to compare the reservation lists to the watch lists, according to experts in name-matching technology. Each airline conducts the matches differently. Many major carriers use a system that strips the vowels from each passenger's name and assigns it a code based on the name's phonetic sound, according to the Air Transport Association. The name-matching technology is "too simplistic for a very complex problem," said Jack Hermansen, co-founder of Language Analysis Systems Inc. in Herndon, a company that has a competing name-matching technology that factors in a name's cultural origin. "It's these accidental matches that cause the big problem." The phonetic-code concept is traced back to a program called Soundex patented in 1918, which was used by Census Bureau officials to help sort out names that sounded similar but might be spelled differently. The name "Kennedy," for example, would be assigned the Soundex code K530, which is the same code assigned to Kemmet, Kenndey, Kent, Kimmet, Kimmett, Kindt and Knott, according to genealogy Web sites that use the technology. Today's systems are more sophisticated than Soundex, but they grew from the same origins, experts said. "The reason this technology is used is you're really trying to protect against typing errors," said Steven Pollock, executive vice president at TuVox Inc., a company that sells speech-recognition software. "When someone types in a name, the problem and the challenge is people will spell names incorrectly. . . . Names are definitely the toughest things to get [right], no doubt about it." But the phonetic coding systems tend to ensnare people who have similar-sounding names, even though a human being could tell the difference. Earlier this month, for example, Rep. Donald E. Young (R-Alaska), said he was flagged on the "watch list" when the airline computer system mistook him for a man on the list named Donald Lee Young. ) 2004 The Washington -- ----------------- 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'

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Technology | Top 20 computer threats unveiled
by R. A. Hettinga 09 Oct '04

09 Oct '04

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/3727692.stm> The BBC Saturday, 9 October, 2004, 11:41 GMT 12:41 UK Top 20 computer threats unveiled The yearly hit parade of hackers' favourite security vulnerabilities has been published. Issued by the respected Sans Institute, the Top 20 list helps organisations find out if they are closing the most commonly exploited loopholes. With more than 2,500 software vulnerabilities found every year many organisations need help to know which ones to tackle first. The list includes loopholes found in both Windows and Unix/Linux software. Big hitter "It's a first things first list," said Alan Paller, head of the Sans Institute, a non-profit group which trains and certifies computer security professionals. "It can be very helpful for people that are trying to fix their vulnerabilities." He told BBC News Online that it was the list of the vulnerabilities hackers were attacking now. TOP 10 WINDOWS 1. Web servers & services 2. Workstation service 3. Windows remote access services 4. Microsoft SQL server 5. Windows authentication 6. Web browsers 7. File-sharing applications 8. LSAS 9. E-mail programs 10. Instant messaging Each entry in the Top 20 mentions a category of software and the accompanying report fleshes out individual vulnerabilities and what organisations can do to close these holes. Almost 60% of the loopholes listed this year were in the 2003 Top 20 list. Mr Paller said this was because only half of all organisations bother to patch their systems. "These vulnerabilities are like little diseases that you cannot wipe out if 50% of people do not have the vaccine," he said. Mr Paller said we will only see significant changes in the Top 20 when organisations get to the point of finding and fixing vulnerabilities automatically. Shrinking holes Gerhard Eschelbeck who studies vulnerabilities for online security firm Qualys said: "It gives people a benchmark to measure themselves against." TOP 10 UNIX/LINUX 1. Bind domain name system 2. Web server 3. Authentication 4. Version control systems 5. Mail transport services 6. Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) 7. Open secure sockets layer (SSL) 8. Misconfiguration of enterprise services 9. Databases 10. Kernel He said that better information about vulnerabilities popular with the virus writing and hacking communities can help organisations protect themselves. "The underground knows this data very well," he said. "We want to level the playing field here between the guys that have the data and the bad intentions and the people that need to know about this so they can do their job effectively." Mr Eschelbeck's work on vulnerabilities shows that every 21 days, on average, the number of web-facing systems vulnerable to a particular loophole shrinks by 50% as people patch machines. For internal machines, such as the PCs on workers' desktops, the number shrinks 50% every 62 days. This difference, said Mr Eschelbeck, comes about because of the sheer number of PCs have on desktops and the time it takes to scan them and see which vulnerabilities they are hosting. -- ----------------- 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'

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