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Re: Writing A Remailer
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:06 AM 10/20/96 -0700, William Davidheiser <wgd(a)netcom.com> wrote: >Hi all. I want to try to write a re-mailer that will run on my ISP's UNIX >shell account. I am familiar with Windows socket programming (C/C++) but >have never done anything in the UNIX environment. > >Any pointers on where I should start? I'd start by looking at the existing remailers, and thinking about the problems they're trying to solve and the service objectives they have. Mixmaster code is easy to find, and I've got my own modified ghio2 somewhere under my web page (idiom.com/~wcs/remailer, probably). Freedom remailer is another Type 1. Nymservers are trying to solve a different, and harder, problem. Writing a remailer that solves a slightly different problem than the others is a good thing to do. For instance, a remailer that's useful at work, such as one that decrypts PGP mail and forwards it inside the domain, or one that only sends mail to the suggestion box account, could gain acceptance and help add respectability for remailers. I don't remember if code for the Winsock remailer is available, but it works by fetching mail from a POP3 server and remailing it out SMTP servers. Also, you could benefit from feedback from people who used to run remailers and have switched to other code or quit. The usual problem is abuse, whether it's spam posted to the net, mailbombing victims, or forging mail/postings from victims to lists/newsgroups that will generate flames in response. Any blocking code you can write is good - you definitely need to be able to block by source, destination, and Subject:, and grepping message bodies may help. Limiting source and destination to pre-approved lists is also a good feature. Good code for auto-detecting attacks would help, e.g. shutting down or blocking if you get more than N messages for a given source or destination in a given time period, with a tolerable user interface for the administrator. You also need to integrate with encryption - PGP is the obvious choice (it'll be _so_ much easier when PGP 3.0 comes out, as we've been saying for the last couple of years :-) but S/MIME or SSL may also be good. I'd recommend having the default behaviour be to refuse non-encrypted mail - otherwise, any eavesdropper can compromise your system. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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Don't ask why, thank you.
by red 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why? Date: 20th October 1996. The purpose of life,... is not to be found. I have been pursuing this thought and question to many of the people I have met in the past few weeks. Sad enough to report that I have found no answers or clues that if anyone ever know what it is or could be. One thing for sure is material and physical objects are close to replacing the purpose, the real purpose if there is one. I am still quizzed on how there is a purpose in which we all strive to attain. There must an objective somewhere which clearly states,"You, whatname whatage, will have to do this, do that." Somehow, in the pursuit for the answer I have strained my physical and emotional self. I have realised what I am doing and that I am actually directionless, like all the people I know. Doing things for the sake of doing. Clearly, I think television or rather, the mass media in general has caused the gradual eradication of purpose in life for many people. What do you want? What do I want? Sure enough, we do not ask ourselves that question once too often, but spending more time pondering about it, it really makes no sense in what we do having corellation to what we want. What is it actually that we seek in life? Which brings us back to the time when we thought we had a purpose. Could you recall the times when you really wanted something? Or someone? Why? Simply because we didn't have it. It's a mass media driven, pointless race to own something, which actually doesn't make much sense. I am not sure why all of us are acting the way we are. In trying to understand it, I began to question why I would want to know. Why do I want to know? So that I could talk about it? Write a book? Be famous and rich? Be respected? Now, take a minute off and think of what you just read. It's from the media to the people. The people made the media. People are driving people nuts. Is this what we want? Once you shrink the big picture, you realise that nothing makes any sense anyway. And what is "making sense"? What do we gain from realising all this which makes us act and live the way we are? We get to past our time. Since we were born, we had nothing except time. Shitloads of it, excuse me. So we start doing things. Things that actually do not mean much to us but, "heck, I've got all the time in my life" So, it starts to generate a sort of hype, "hey, he's doing something, maybe I should too." Then another fella comes in, "Well I've got nothing to do, maybe I should tell others what these two guys are doing" So the snowball gets rolling. The moment it stops, if it ever stops, I guess we go crazy. Now what is crazy? Understanding why we actually have no reason of being here? I'm not going to start on religion, if you're getting my rift here. So here we are, pretending that we love this and like doing that. Okay, I admit somethings are fun but 90% of the time you realise, "gee, what is it that I want?" If everyone were to ask the same question at the same time, then we'd all be crazy or something, whatever. The problem is, there's five billion people and each one not voicing what they think would hold themselves back by saying "Now, if I say that, these guys would think I'm nuts, and my..." Some do get to express, and once they express it, they are lost in the world of understanding, they realise that we all have no reasons, logical or whatsoever, to be where we are doing what we think we need to do. Now these guys are labeled "nuts" and grouped together. See how happy they are in "Cuckoo's Nest". Okay, so the interns are a little pain in the ass. But look at yourself! We are basically doing things of no relevance. Question what you do with "So?" You are bound to realise what you have probably tried to hide all your life. That we are all alone. That we are all meaningless. That we are all trying to hide from each other what we fear. No, this is not a scam. And sorry, I don't have the solution. I guess we are the same. In the dark we are alone, in the bright we skin and hide. rednax(a)tm.net.my http://www.asiapac.net/~rednax "I have seen little angels turn bad But that's just because they have grown Likewise the problems I currently access They are small matters full blown"

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Mondex -Reply
by Raymond Mereniuk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>> Anonymous <nobody(a)replay.com> 10/19/96, 12:00am >>> Timothy C. May must have been sharing needles with a rabid hedgehog. To Anonymous Just as a matter of interest, my own personal interest, what type of society do you come from? The insults are not the type normally originating from a person of the American type culture as these insults would mean nothing to the average American. I have been to places where people give serious concern to such statements but I doubt many people in those places read this list and I doubt anyone on this list does anything but delete your messages. But, please give me a hint where you developed this classy style of insulting the character of Mr T. C. May. Normally Lurkin Raymond

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Re: Writing A Remailer
by Michael Peponis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Hi all. I want to try to write a re-mailer that will run on my ISP's UNIX > shell account. I am familiar with Windows socket programming (C/C++) but > have never done anything in the UNIX environment. Developing these things is actually eaiser to do in UNIX than Windows. I guess it depends on where you wish to being. Do you wish to write a remailer from scratch, or do you wish to just run a remailer? In either case, take a look at what other people have done, one site I like is ftp.hacktic.nl, there is source for a number of remailers there, among other things. You could compile that, and see what you like and dislike about a given remailer, and then adjust the code appropriatly. Most are written in C, so if you know C, you won't have very many problems. One thing to note, UNIX privilages, you would want to run your remailer as a deamon, a constantly running program(similar to a DOS TSR or NT Service). I am not sure if your ISP gives you enough access to run deamons. Good Luck Michael Peponis

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Re: is there no end to AP & Creative Wiretap Arguments? [RANT]
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Schear wrote: > >Steve Schear wrote: [snip] > >If you read the US declaration of Independence it is very clear that its > >authors rejected natural law arguments. The rights that they hold to be > >"self evident" are extreemly abstract principles which could be > >justified within almost any ethical system. The removal of the word > >"God" was deliberate and reflects a concious rejection of the natural > >law argument. I read the DOI, and its meaning was clear. It stated that while people are disposed to put up with the excesses of govt. to a certain bearable extent, that when the govt. tilted toward totalitarianism, the people should revolt. How can you say "Self Evident" and "extremely abstract" in the same context? Self evident merely means that when you subtract out the factors of disinformation that are applied in political/economic areas to guarantee the cash flow to the bosses, you can see clearly that nobody has a Right, "divine" or whatever, to rule someone else. It's not abstract, religious, or anything. Think of the analogy in sound reproduction. The salesman is trying to tell you that perfect reproduction doesn't exist, so you should consider that $20,000 system to be like a "very fine musical instrument". On the other hand, your finely-tuned mind is aware that there is an "true original" sound that you're trying to reproduce, and whether it's 100% attainable is not the relevant issue. In other words, don't let the bosses confuse you with their rhetoric, if you're well-read and intelligent, you should be able to trust your own instincts. That's what self-evident means. As to the removal of "God", they said "...endowed by their Creator...", and I think that Creator when capitalized is more than clear, i.e., "God". Almost all of the signers were Freemasons, whose membership requires belief in God (although I don't know that they require extensive testing as to how their members conceptualize God), and so it would appear that the exclusion of the term God would be more an act of conciliation or even superstition than a rejection of anything.

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[crypto-philo]OTP or DES?
by walrus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is a thread going in coderpunks about some software company that claims to have invented a software OTP that uses a PRNG. The local experts have ruled that this is impossible and I would have to agree, but this thread got me thinking. I would argue that the security of an OTP is derived not from the fact that it really is secure, but from the fact that it is claimed to be an OTP. Imagine a plaintext, encrypted with triple-des. It looks like a bunch of 1's and 0's to the casual observer, but to you it is your secret plan to take over the world. Or so you would have us believe if we crack the cypher. actually you plan to take over the world using a completely different plan. It is quite easy to take the bits of the des-encrypted message, and calculate the OTP key nessasary to decrypt the message into your real plan. It would seem you could build a key to have your message say anything of equal length. Why then must a true OTP be based on a true RNG? Because one of the actual possible keys of a real OTP is indeed the encrypted des message, you can claim that it is an otp and no-one can prove otherwise. They can say "But we cracked your des key and can decypher this message!" and you say "nope i used an OTP, that is a false message, here is what it really says! The fact that by PURE coincidence that OTP could be decrypted using that particular key means nothing, because a true OTP can generate that bit sequence. So in conclusion i would say that we can give pgp complete and perfect security but the simple process of changing the header from ---Begin PGP message--- to ----Begin OTP message----. This makes you immune from decryption because no one will ever know or can ever prove that the decryption they got is the correct one. Any comments? Walrus

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Re: Question: OTP
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:30 PM 10/19/95 -0500, "Robert J. Shueey" <rshueey(a)tcgcs.com> wrote: >ok, not to drag this disscussion out, but apparently I am missing something. What you're missing is that the IPG guy is a troll. The reason there are contradictions is that he's making the stuff up as he goes along. Maybe he's having a good time. Maybe he's a tentacle of the spammer pretending to be D..V.. On the other hand, the POTP folks are serious. Wrong, but serious, actually selling a product and trying to convince other people to include it in their email systems. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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Re: IP: - Biham/Shamir Differential Fault Analysis of DES, etc
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:45 PM 10/18/96 -0700, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> wrote: >Note that this attack requires physical access to the DES chip, to >stress it so it will fail. It works great against "tamper-proof" >devices such as smart cards. It doesn't work against encryption >happening at any distance from the attacker (e.g. across the network). It's probably most useful for defeating attempts to force smart cards on the public as the government's solution to Key Recovery (e.g. Clipper 4 fails, so after the election they come out with Clipper 5 or the Anti-Terrorism Airplane Traveller's License Smartcard.) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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anonymous oddsman
by winsock＠c2.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A quickie post-debate-update from the oddsman. Looks like Ladbroke House is still heavy on Clinton, with prices the same as last time, William Hill and Ladbroke's have now agreed on a {bearish} number for Dole, but the strange disparity in Perot odds remains. The oddsman still seeks a Moscow correspondent for UK arbitrage opportunities. Possible nym soon, so stay tuned. Prices @ 09:10 BST Sat 18th Oct 96 +---------+----------------+----------------+ | | Ladbroke's | William Hill | +---------+----------------+----------------+ | Clinton | No bets taken | 1:16 | | Dole | 7:1 | 7:1 | | Perot | 50:1 | 500:1 | | Browne | Not currently offered by either | +---------+----------------+----------------+ | Phone | +44-800-524524 | +44-800-444040 | | Numbers:| | | +---------+----------------+----------------+ The oddsman's roving reporter can't get any reply on the phone from Coral, so they may be out of the running on this year's horse race. I'll keep you posted -- 'till next post-time. anonymous oddsman "Demeaning the integrity of the U.S. Presidential election process for you on a regular basis, at no charge."

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RE: Goodbye [NOSTALGIA]
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Dale Thorn C'mon now, you guys sound like a bunch of old men, groaning over the checkers board about how you can't keep track of the six or seven medications you take every day. ........................................................................ I was not complaining about an inability for keeping track of the list traffic. Neither was I bemoaning the fact that things change or go out of use, nor discussing the nature of true invention, nor seeking after general judgements on pinnacles per se. None of my statements were in reference to things per se, but only as they relate to the cypherpunks, to the present circumstance of the S/N ratio, and to James A. Donald's conclusions about the list. .. Blanc

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