- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Nanometer Bamboo Carbon TEMPEST Protection
by John Young 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

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Re: "Forest Fire" responsible for a 2.5mi *mushroom cloud*?
by Tyler Durden 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

I still think we're seeing the early stages of a Jonestown-like scenario. If we see Kim Jong Il summoning the entire NK population to PyongYang, then we can be pretty sure they're going to nuke themselves! -TD >From: John Kelsey <kelsey.j(a)ix.netcom.com> >To: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov>, "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" ><cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: Re: "Forest Fire" responsible for a 2.5mi *mushroom cloud*? >Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:27:32 -0400 (GMT-04:00) > > >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> > >Sent: Sep 13, 2004 3:50 PM > >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> > >Subject: Re: "Forest Fire" responsible for a 2.5mi *mushroom cloud*? > >... > >AN is extremely deliquescent; perhaps the sulphate was for that? > >Removing chunks with dynamite is trying rather hard for a Darwin award. > >As far as I can tell from what's reported in the new, a great deal of North >Korea's daily operation fits that category. > >--John _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Re: "Forest Fire" responsible for a 2.5mi *mushroom cloud*?
by John Kelsey 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

>From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >Sent: Sep 13, 2004 3:50 PM >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: Re: "Forest Fire" responsible for a 2.5mi *mushroom cloud*? ... >AN is extremely deliquescent; perhaps the sulphate was for that? >Removing chunks with dynamite is trying rather hard for a Darwin award. As far as I can tell from what's reported in the new, a great deal of North Korea's daily operation fits that category. --John

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pci hardware for secure crypto storage (OpenSSL/OpenBSD)
by Eugen Leitl 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

I'm looking for (cheap, PCI/USB) hardware to store secrets (private key) and support crypto primitives (signing, cert generation). It doesn't have to be fast, but to support loading/copying of secrets in physically secure environments, and not generate nonextractable secret onboard. Environment is OpenBSD/Linux/OpenSSL/gpg. Any suggestions? -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Each to his own, except in Britain
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Sep '04

13 Sep '04

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/09/14/do140…> The Telegraph Mark Steyn Each to his own, except in Britain With rumours of mushroom clouds over North Korea and genocide in Sudan, it's good to know the Government has identified the real threat in the world today. As The Telegraph reported: "Chief constables intend to site CCTV cameras on hedgerows, fences and trees along known hunting routes to enable them to photograph hunt members who break the law after hunting with hounds is outlawed. "The controversial measure was agreed at a secret meeting between David Blunkett and the chief constables of England and Wales after the hunting ban was announced last week. Police chiefs warned the Home Secretary that enforcing the ban would cost in excess of #30 million and divert resources from front-line policing." Of course. Doesn't everything? I don't know what "front-line policing" is these days - do they still have those detachments of plain-clothes officers idling over the vindaloo in curry-houses of an evening eavesdropping on adjacent diners in case anybody makes racist remarks about the waiters? But, whatever it is, "front-line policing" isn't so urgent that "resources" can't be "diverted" in order to stick a CCTV camera on every tree in England. Maybe they can all be powered by wind turbines. But, if they can't and they have to snake the electric cable down every tree trunk in simulated wood-effect vinyl casing, it will still "send the right message" - which is that the monumentally useless British constabulary is happy to invent an entirely new criminal class if it reduces the already minimal time they have to spend dealing with the real criminal class. "D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?" "Roger, Tree 74. He's just rounding Hedgerow Q89." But I don't suppose we'll be hearing "D'ye Ken John Peel?" much any more. The new countryside will need new songs: "Tie A CCTV Round The Old Oak Tree It's been three whole yards Since you last filmed me." I love hunting - which in my corner of the Eastern Seaboard means whitetail, bear, turkey and moose. "Hunting" in the sense of a lot of fellows prancing around in sissy gear holds less appeal, and the couple of times I've done it I had my four-fold scarf on but I'd accidentally five-folded it (or vice-versa) and people exchanged pitying glances. Still, each to his own - which is a good motto for a civilized society. But the toff thing makes hunting a hard sell. You may recall a few weeks ago I quoted John Kerry's somewhat unlikely observations on his favourite kind of hunting. He has been at pains all campaign season to be photographed with guns and in various sporting scenarios. Democrats spend most of every election year going to great lengths to demonstrate they're regular guys, and that usually involves some hunting or quasi-hunting activity. After the Republicans' triumph in the 1994 Congressional elections, Bill Clinton felt it useful to be filmed duck hunting - in order, if I remember correctly, to kill all the talk that he was a dead duck by going out and shooting a duck dead. So every newspaper had a picture of him emerging from the rough with his gun in one hand and a ventilated mallard in the other. Message: unlike the closing credits of his Hollywood pals' lousy movies, ducks were harmed in the making of this photo-opportunity. Did he really want to go hunting? I doubt it. I expect he'd much rather have been breaking in the new intern pool. But the point is he felt it was in his political interest to be seen killing animals. Can you imagine any development in British political life which would prompt Tony Blair's image-makers to tell him to climb into the jodhpurs and push off down to Badminton to be filmed yelling "yoicks!" and "tally-ho!" with the Beaufort? For all the talk of vibrant "multi-culturalism", Blair's Britain is strikingly unicultural - diversity of race, gender and orientation, but a ruthless homogeneity of metropolitan modishness imposed by a highly centralised politico-media culture. America is a federal state and thus local majorities prevail: in New Hampshire, we like hunting; in the gay environs of Fire Island, the thrill of the chase lies elsewhere. Each, as I said, to his own. In Britain, Soho's views on hunting should be no more relevant than Somerset's opinion of gay leather bars. But they are. And those Left-wing columnists who go on about the "climate of fear" in Bush's America ought to remember that, even in their wildest power-crazed dreams, Bush and John Ashcroft will never be able to issue a national ban on centuries-old traditions merely because they offend metropolitan taste. Nor, unlike the modern British state, are they able to keep the populace under 24-hour video surveillance, whether you're at the railway station, in the shopping centre, or strolling down a leafy country lane. Hunting is a small loss in a country bent on tearing up so much of its past, but it is a significant one. The criminalisation of a law-abiding group is not something respectable governments should embark on lightly, and in this case, regardless of how many trees and hedgerows they wire up to the network, the cure is almost certainly worse than the disease, extending to the police more opportunities for frivolous intrusion. The inability of Conservatives to defend hunting sums up the problems of British conservatism. At the time of the first Countryside March, Joanna Trollope said that the essential ingredients of village life are "church, pub, farms, cottages, a small school and a Big House". That's swell if you're the one in the Big House, but presenting rural Britain as a haven of deference and social order cripples its political viability. In Britain, this is an undeferential age - see Digby Anderson on oiks et al. Rural America is about individual liberty - where even the brokest of broke losers with no teeth can still have a few acres, a rusting trailer, a hunting licence and a "Survivors Will Be Prosecuted" sign at the foot of his drive. As long as British conservatism recoils from individual liberty and clings to Joanna Trollope Big-House social order, it will be unable to offer a viable modern defence of that which it wishes to conserve. -- ----------------- 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: will spammers early adopt hashcash? (Re: Spam Spotlight on
by Adam Back 13 Sep '04

13 Sep '04

Reputation) User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Ben and Richard CLayton's paper makes several assumptions and we'll see how those pan out in the field as time goes on. We don't really know what the true cost of maintaining ownership of many machines. No doubt much lower than it should be because of poor security on microsoft OSes. But even so there must be some turn over as the user instals AV, firewalls, gets cut off by ISP, gets IP blacklisted etc. The general argument is in the FAQ quoted below. Essentially whatever resources spammers do have, hashcash is going to slow them down because the balance of CPU power vs bandwidth is such that 20-bit hashcahs with current hardware is likely to slow down the output of a typical consumer destkop+DSL line down by afact or 10-100x less spam. (Depnds on CPU power, DSL uplink, and number of Bcc recipients per message). Hashcash costs equal cpu per Bcc recipient. Without hashcash Bcc recipients to the same domain or to a hub cost a tiny bit of bandwidth -- the size of the email address (+"RCPT TO \r\n"). Will it be enough -- we don't know yet, but if widely deployed it would make spammers adapt. We just don't yet know how they will adapt. The other question Ben & Richards paper doesn't explore is the CAMRAM way of using hashcash. In this model you only pay hashcash for _introductions_. After parties have replied to a mail, the mail is whitelisted (short term by address only (risky no auth, joe-job hazard) medium term with CAMRAM email header signatures). If simple hashcash per mail turns out not to be enough, CAMRAM can increase the work factor, as people do not reply to spammers; and many emails are to-and-fro vs first introduction emails. (So the sender can afford to pay more on average). Eric sent a spreadsheet with some of this type of calculation. There may also be some mileage in Hal Finney's RPOW http://www.rpow.net where the legitimate user can re-use stamps he receives. (The scaling issues of the RPOW servers would need to be engineered carefully, there are servers, they can be per eg domain , but still compared to hashash this is more infrastructure as hashcash is pure end-to-end). Adam http://www.hashcash.org/faq/ 2c and 2d | 2c But won't spammers steal CPU time? | | Spammers already compromise security on many users machines to make | so-called "Zombie" armies to send spam from. However currently the | rate at which spammers can send mail on a zombie machine is limited | purely by the speed of those machine's internet links. A typical DSL | user might be able to send 25 unique messages per second each of size | 1KB (assumes 256kbit uplink). Or many more messages per second if the | messages are delivered to multiple users at once (using multiple Cc or | Bcc recipients). Even a 20-bit stamp takes 1/2 second per recipient on | the highest end pc hardware at time of writing. This would slow | spammers down by a factor of 10-100 or more per compromised machine | (depending on whether the messages sent are sent individually or to | many users at once). | | 2d But won't spammers deliver to many recipients at once? | | Spammers commonly optimize the amount of spam they can send over a | given link speed by delivering messages to 100s or 1000s of Bcc | recipients at once directly to an end-site, or to an ISP mail-hub. In | this way they can consume just 3.5KB of bandwidth in sending messages | to 100 recipients compared to the 100KB which would be used to send | each message separately. This would allow a spammer to send 700 | messages per second (assumes DSL with 256kbit uplink). | | Delivering in batches reduces the degree of customization the spammer | can make because all of the message bodies in a batch have to be the | same, but never-the-less is a trick spammers commonly use to increase | the number of mails per second they can send. | | However with hashcash a separate stamp is required for each individual | recipient, which stops this spammer trick. If the spammer has to put a | hashcash stamp for each recipient, even a 3Ghz Pentium 4 can only | generate 2 stamps per second, compared to 700 per second with no | hashcash, so using hashcash in this scenario slows the number of mails | the spammer can send by 350x. Adam On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 10:37:47AM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote: > On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 01:18:32PM +0100, Ben Laurie wrote: > | Adam Shostack wrote: > | > | >On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 04:13:13PM -0400, Adam Back wrote: > | > > | >| Well we'll see. If they have lots of CPU from zombies and can get and > | >| maintain more with limited effort maybe even they can, and CAMRAM's > | >| higher cost stamp on introductions only will prevail as the preferred > | >| method. > | > > | >Adam, > | > > | > You've thought about this more than me. What do you see as > | >equilibrium postal rates if the spammers have 10k, 100k, or a million > | >nodes to send? > | > > | > Will spammers run under nice? Use your graphics card as a > | >co-processor? Is the rate of new vulns high enough to keep their CPU > | >pools filled? > | > | We have some figures for that kind of stuff in > | http://www.apache-ssl.org/proofwork.pdf. > > Thanks! That was exactly what I was hoping wouldn't get said, because > I no longer believe that hashcash is substantially useful. > > Adam S --- 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'

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Re: will spammers early adopt hashcash? (Re: Spam Spotlight on
by Adam Back 13 Sep '04

13 Sep '04

Reputation) User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Ben and Richard CLayton's paper makes several assumptions and we'll see how those pan out in the field as time goes on. We don't really know what the true cost of maintaining ownership of many machines. No doubt much lower than it should be because of poor security on microsoft OSes. But even so there must be some turn over as the user instals AV, firewalls, gets cut off by ISP, gets IP blacklisted etc. The general argument is in the FAQ quoted below. Essentially whatever resources spammers do have, hashcash is going to slow them down because the balance of CPU power vs bandwidth is such that 20-bit hashcahs with current hardware is likely to slow down the output of a typical consumer destkop+DSL line down by afact or 10-100x less spam. (Depnds on CPU power, DSL uplink, and number of Bcc recipients per message). Hashcash costs equal cpu per Bcc recipient. Without hashcash Bcc recipients to the same domain or to a hub cost a tiny bit of bandwidth -- the size of the email address (+"RCPT TO \r\n"). Will it be enough -- we don't know yet, but if widely deployed it would make spammers adapt. We just don't yet know how they will adapt. The other question Ben & Richards paper doesn't explore is the CAMRAM way of using hashcash. In this model you only pay hashcash for _introductions_. After parties have replied to a mail, the mail is whitelisted (short term by address only (risky no auth, joe-job hazard) medium term with CAMRAM email header signatures). If simple hashcash per mail turns out not to be enough, CAMRAM can increase the work factor, as people do not reply to spammers; and many emails are to-and-fro vs first introduction emails. (So the sender can afford to pay more on average). Eric sent a spreadsheet with some of this type of calculation. There may also be some mileage in Hal Finney's RPOW http://www.rpow.net where the legitimate user can re-use stamps he receives. (The scaling issues of the RPOW servers would need to be engineered carefully, there are servers, they can be per eg domain , but still compared to hashash this is more infrastructure as hashcash is pure end-to-end). Adam http://www.hashcash.org/faq/ 2c and 2d | 2c But won't spammers steal CPU time? | | Spammers already compromise security on many users machines to make | so-called "Zombie" armies to send spam from. However currently the | rate at which spammers can send mail on a zombie machine is limited | purely by the speed of those machine's internet links. A typical DSL | user might be able to send 25 unique messages per second each of size | 1KB (assumes 256kbit uplink). Or many more messages per second if the | messages are delivered to multiple users at once (using multiple Cc or | Bcc recipients). Even a 20-bit stamp takes 1/2 second per recipient on | the highest end pc hardware at time of writing. This would slow | spammers down by a factor of 10-100 or more per compromised machine | (depending on whether the messages sent are sent individually or to | many users at once). | | 2d But won't spammers deliver to many recipients at once? | | Spammers commonly optimize the amount of spam they can send over a | given link speed by delivering messages to 100s or 1000s of Bcc | recipients at once directly to an end-site, or to an ISP mail-hub. In | this way they can consume just 3.5KB of bandwidth in sending messages | to 100 recipients compared to the 100KB which would be used to send | each message separately. This would allow a spammer to send 700 | messages per second (assumes DSL with 256kbit uplink). | | Delivering in batches reduces the degree of customization the spammer | can make because all of the message bodies in a batch have to be the | same, but never-the-less is a trick spammers commonly use to increase | the number of mails per second they can send. | | However with hashcash a separate stamp is required for each individual | recipient, which stops this spammer trick. If the spammer has to put a | hashcash stamp for each recipient, even a 3Ghz Pentium 4 can only | generate 2 stamps per second, compared to 700 per second with no | hashcash, so using hashcash in this scenario slows the number of mails | the spammer can send by 350x. Adam On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 10:37:47AM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote: > On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 01:18:32PM +0100, Ben Laurie wrote: > | Adam Shostack wrote: > | > | >On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 04:13:13PM -0400, Adam Back wrote: > | > > | >| Well we'll see. If they have lots of CPU from zombies and can get and > | >| maintain more with limited effort maybe even they can, and CAMRAM's > | >| higher cost stamp on introductions only will prevail as the preferred > | >| method. > | > > | >Adam, > | > > | > You've thought about this more than me. What do you see as > | >equilibrium postal rates if the spammers have 10k, 100k, or a million > | >nodes to send? > | > > | > Will spammers run under nice? Use your graphics card as a > | >co-processor? Is the rate of new vulns high enough to keep their CPU > | >pools filled? > | > | We have some figures for that kind of stuff in > | http://www.apache-ssl.org/proofwork.pdf. > > Thanks! That was exactly what I was hoping wouldn't get said, because > I no longer believe that hashcash is substantially useful. > > Adam S --- 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'

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Re: "Forest Fire" responsible for a 2.5mi *mushroom cloud*?
by Major Variola (ret) 13 Sep '04

13 Sep '04

At 06:59 AM 9/14/04 +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote: >(The nitrate was desensitised with ammonium sulfate and stored outside, >whenever anyone needed any they'd drill holes and blast off chunks with >dynamite. AN is extremely deliquescent; perhaps the sulphate was for that? Removing chunks with dynamite is trying rather hard for a Darwin award. When I was a teen I would save the instant-cold packs after soccer games, and recrystalize the AN within. It melts and gives off bubbles but I never collected enough N20 nor did it detonate.

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Re: Flying with Libertarian Hawks
by Tyler Durden 13 Sep '04

13 Sep '04

Damn right. 'Conservative' means agreeing with the most vocal proponents of the current right wing apparatchiks. It seems to have little or no relationship to fiscally conservative ideas. "Left wing" now refers to anyone who disagrees with the 'Conservatives', even if said left wing policies are practically identical to those of the 'right'. -TD >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Flying with Libertarian Hawks >Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 05:53:06 -0700 > >At 07:53 AM 9/10/04 -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote: > ><http://www.techcentralstation.com/090904A.html> > > > >Is it possible for one to be libertarian about policies at home and > >neo-conservative about policies abroad? After all, isn't the principle >of > >non-coercion incompatible with the interventionist policies of the >current > >Administration? Simply put: is there such an animal as a libertarian >hawk > >and if he exists, why do we so seldom hear from him? > >On the contrary, the Ayn Rand institute has been taken over by >vocal Zionists. They would never bomb Dimona but if a non-israeli >semite even thinks about uranium, its missiles away. > >Or if the South Koreans do a bit of clandestine enrichment, no big deal, > >they're "our" *friends*. > > >----- >"Stop shedding our blood to save your own and the solution to this >simple > but complex equation is in your hands. You know matters will escalate >the more you >delay and then do not blame us but blame yourselves. Rational people do >not risk their >security, money and sons to appease the White House liar." UBL > >The only language the American people understand is >dead Americans. -EC _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/

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Re: will spammers early adopt hashcash? (Re: Spam Spotlight on Reputation)
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Sep '04

13 Sep '04

--- begin forwarded text

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