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That Evil Internet, Pt. XXIII
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Caught an interesting segment on this evening's PBS news program with Jim Lehrer. Two senators were discussing whether the U.S. should sign the international agreement banning chemical warfare. Sen. Kyl maintains that verification is impossible and that Iraq, Libya, and North Korea will never participate. Sen. Nunn responds that we should sign anyway. Besides, he adds in the non sequitur of the week, anyone can get instructions on how to build chemical weapons on the Internet. I guess the Internet isn't just for pornography and conventional bomb-making advice anymore. Dave Rose

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Re: Hacking Mobil Telephone System ?
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 11 Sep 1996 18:56:10 -0400 (EDT), Mark O. Aldrich wrote: >After having traveled in Europe, I was certainly familiar with the >difference in the notation. You also think, however, that I would have >paid more attention to what the hell I was reading before I shot off my >mouth (via my keyboard), but I didn't. I think this is called a "brain >fart" (note to our European brothers and sisters - over there, I think you >call it a "mental fugue" or "Parliamentary election," I'm nor sure which). I've always wondered if the makers of mailer software couldn't include a delay option, so that, say, a message might be held for 10 minutes and then sent. Imagine how many of the "Sorry about x; I meant y" posts we'd never see. # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # cadams(a)acucobol.com | V.M. (619)515-4894 "I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to play games on a computer in any case when the whole system is a game. Word processing, spreadsheets, telecoms -- it's all a game. And they pay you to play it." -- Duncan Frissell

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Re: (Fnord) Edupage, 10 September 1996
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- >************************************************************ >Edupage, 10 September 1996. Edupage, a summary of news about information >technology, is provided three times a week as a service by Educom, >a Washington, D.C.-based consortium of leading colleges and universities >seeking to transform education through the use of information technology. >************************************************************ > >TOP STORIES > Wired World Will "Diminish National Sovereignty" >[..] >WIRED WORLD WILL "DIMINISH NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY" >A leading Clinton Administration official on information security and >cryptography matters says that traditional notions of sovereignty, national >security and warfare will be undermined by the year 2020, when the whole >world is "wired" and e-cash is the norm. 24 years from now? He thinks it'll take that long?!? 24 years _ago_ the 4004 microprocessor barely existed. And if anything, change is accelerating very rapidly. >The result will be less powerful >governments in relation to criminal organizations such as the Mafia and >international drug cartels, Organizations which exist only because of the existence of government... >says Michael Nelson, who adds that organized >crime members are already some of the most sophisticated users of computer >systems and strong encryption technology. In addition, computer crackers >will pose a more significant threat. In response, Nelson advocates >resolving the issue of whether unauthorized access of a computer is an "act >of trespass" or an "act of war," and prosecuting the intrusions accordingly. >(BNA Daily Report for Executives 6 Sep 96 A14) I'd sure like to be able to corner this guy and point out that there are people who believe that _regulating_ the Internet should either be considered an "act of trespass" or an "act of war." And does he want to be punished, or merely stopped? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Bay Area Cypherpunks Meeting Saturday 9/14, 12-6PDT, Stanford
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The monthly Bay Area Cypherpunks Meeting will be held Saturday, September 14th, at the picnic tables outside Tressider Hall at Stanford University. Lunch and general hanging out begin at 12:00, Program begins at 1:00. The coffee shop at Tressider will be open, though the main cafeteria won't be. Some items on the agenda include John Gilmore's SWAN project, Encrypting 5% of the net by Christmas Highlights of Crypto '96 meeting in Santa Barbara Bagels and bagel paraphrenalia The remailer crisis - anon.penet.fi, creative new spammer attacks Censorship Firewalls for SG, CN, DE, etc. - designing workarounds The Bernstein Lawsuit - court date is Friday Sept. 20 Bring show&tell items. You can find a map of the Stanford campus on the web at http://www.stanford.edu/home/visitors/campus-map.html To confuse Stanford alumni, the map has been realigned with the North end up, so visitors can use it. From Campus Drive East, turn North on Mayfield Ave, turn right on Lagunita Dr, and park in the lot. Walk north to Tressider, and the tables are on the west=left side. Look for the crowd of drug smugglers, money launderers, and Suspicious Persons. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> # You can get PGP software outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto

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10 minute delay considered inconsequential
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:15 AM 9/12/96, Adamsc wrote: >I've always wondered if the makers of mailer software couldn't include a delay >option, so that, say, a message might be held for 10 minutes and then sent. >Imagine how many of the "Sorry about x; I meant y" posts we'd never see. I expect there would be little effect. I suspect most of us write articles, send them out, and only notice the mistakes, typos, whatever when they are pointed out. (Very few people reread their posts prior to seeing them on the list an hour or two later, is my strong hunch. A delay of 10 minutes would not inspire many to read and reread their posts...most likely they'd just move on to other articles, other posts, and the 10 minute delay would be utterly inconsequential.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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RE: robert and hipcirme web sight
by !.!..............................# 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It's obvious that this guy's true passion is fractals and raytracing. >He threw in some bomb-making stuff, but he scanned it out of a book and >probably never tried it. Compared to the rest of the site, it looks like >an afterthought. Someone who was really interested in chemistry would >have taken the time to retype the info and add their own comments. He >had a reason to have some "anarchist" info on there but he's not really >interested in it. So basically this guy is a mathematician/artist trying >to pretend he's an anarchist. If his true passion is fractals and raytracing, then why would he expend energy things other than fractals and raytracing. He may be an anarchict but wish to invest his time in fractals and raytracing rather than in explaining anarchy. >Same goes for the remailers. He claims he likes remailers and anonymity, >but he's lying. Anyone who really liked remailers/anonymity/privacy would >have pages and pages about how to use remailers, and why privacy is a good >thing. He has a reason he needs to be anonymous, but it's not because >he supports privacy. He publishes a PGP key, because he wants to pretend >he's an anarchist, and Louis Freeh told him that all evil terrorist >organizations use PGP. But he doesn't like PGP, he doesn't advocate PGP, >and he doesn't tell you where to get PGP. If his true passion were re-mailers and anonymity then he would spend pages and pages writing about them rather than just admitting to supporting them. .00010000.

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Re: Erasing Disks
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was asked of an outline of Peter Gutmann's paper, "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" in The Sixth USENIX Security Symposium Proceedings in private mail. Since I think the question is of general interest I am posting the answer and Bccing the original questioner. The paper starts with the comment that most secure data destruction guides are classified. There is the suspicion that the unclassified ones do not cover the newer recording materials and techniques, and will not protect you against government attackers. The analysis techniques for disks examined were Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM) and its close cousin, Magnetic Force Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM). "It is possible to build a reasonably capable SPM for about US$1400, using a PC as a controller." (See http://www.skypoint.com/~members/jrice/STMWebPage.html) This cost is conceivably within the range of a high school student. Peter discusses the way that data can be recovered from under new data (due to the difference in the magnetic domains depending on whether the bits were the same or different), and beside new data due to positioning errors of the head. When trying to develop a secure erasure technique, you need to know the encoding technique used on the disk. (e.g. FM, MFM, RLL, PRML etc.) He recommends a 35 pass erasure scheme as follows: 1-4 Random 5 0x55 6 0xAA 7 0x924924 8 0x492492 9 0x249249 10 0x00 11 0x11 12 0x22 13 0x33 14 0x44 15 0x55 16 0x66 17 0x77 18 0x88 19 0x99 20 0xAA 21 0xBB 22 0xCC 23 0xDD 24 0xEE 25 0xFF 26 0x924924 27 0x492492 28 0x249249 29 0x6DB6DB 30 0xB6DB6D 31 0xDB6DB6 32-35 Random He recommends using cryptographically random numbers and randomly permuting the deterministic passes to further confuse attackers. He warns about disabling any disk caches which may be present, and discusses the problems of erasing data on now-bad sectors. He points out that data which has been left for a long time is harder to erase than recently written data. He mentions that the most powerful commercially available deguassers aren't powerful enough to erase modern disks or DAT tapes. (N.B. Deguassing a disk will also erase the factory-written control tracks, making the disk useless.) He notes that ECC may make destruction of data more difficult. He recommends burning floppy disks. He also discusses recovering data from DRAM and SRAM devices. He mentions that data which has been stored in DRAM for 10 minutes will be detectable after power is removed. He recommends that sensitive data (such as crypto keys) have their bits flipped every second or so. This technique has the beneficial side effect that the page remains recently used and is less likely to be paged out.\ I quote from his conclusion, "Data overwritten once or twice may be recovered by subtracting what is expected to be read from a storage location from what is actually read. Data which is overwritten an arbitrarily large number of times can still be recovered provided that the new data isn't written to the same location as the original data (for magnetic media), or that the recovery attempt is carried out fairly soon after the new data was written (for RAM). For this reason it is effectively impossible to sanitize storage locations by simple overwriting them, no matter how many overwrite passes are made or what data patterns are written. However by using the relatively simple methods presented in this paper the task of an attacker can be made significantly more difficult, if no prohibitively expensive." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | "Lone Star" - My personal | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | choice for best movie of | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | 1996 | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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An old _Discover_ article explaining RSA
by scrappo.reverb＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I had found this article in an issue of Discover I've had for a few years. It is a comic strip-type article by Larry Gonick article explaining, in Layman's terms, the very basics of RSA. This article was printed in the April 1992 issue of Discover magazine (some liberties taken regarding pictures, etc.). Box1:Prime Time featuring SEYMOUR Cloak-and-Dagger Mathematician! (sh!) Box2:PRIME NUMBERS-numbers that can't be broken into a product of smaller factors- have always been one of the most amusing and USELESS topics in mathematics. Box3:Then why are Banks, Businesses, Mathematicians, and Government SPY AGENCIES fighting over prime numbers? (STOP RIGHT THERE!) Box4:It has to do with CRYPTOGRAPHY-secret codes. (The patriotic thing to do would be NOT to read one more word!) Box5:In the computer age, cryptography is MATHEMATICAL: Inside the computer, every MESSAGE is a string of ONES and ZEROES: a number, in other words. (PLEASE!!!) Box6:ENCRYPTING a message means scrambling this number, using a reversible formula based on a secret number or numbers called the KEY. message-->key-->cyphertext DECRYPTING the cyphertext is done by applying the key in reverse. Box7:It would seem that both the sender and receiver need to know- and conceal-the key, but in the 1970's, WHITFIELD DIFFIE and MARTIN HELLMAN showed a way to MAKE KEYS PUBLIC! (Hippy-Diffie!) Box8:Knowing how to SCRAMBLE, said Diffie, is not the same as knowing how to UNSCRAMBLE. Consider the egg!!! Box9:Suppose a code had TWO KEYS, a scrambler and an UNSCRAMBLER... and suppose it was IMPOSSIBLE to compute one key from the other-in the sense that no computer could do it in less than the lifetime of the UNIVERSE??? (crank crank crank) Box10:You'd have an UNBREAKABLE CODE! (Wait... Almost got it...) Box11:It works like this: Everyone owns a unique pair of keys. One remains private. But the other, public key is listed in a directory. To send me a message, you look up my public key and use it to scramble the message. My private key is the only way to unlock the message. Result:total secrecy and privacy!! Box12:Diffie's idea soon became a reality, as three guys at M.I.T. created a public-key algorithm known as RSA, from their initials. (picture)Rivest (picture)Shamir (picture)Adleman Box13:RSA's unbreakability depends on the "impossibility" of FACTORING large numbers. (15? that's 3 x 5! Easy!) (3,447,981,101,346,271,113,552,476,003,201, 119,181,244,551,900,123,549,822,344,722,436,001? um..) Box14:It's not hard to find two large PRIME NUMBERS P and Q. But if I hand you their PRODUCT, PQ, your supercomputer will never find P and Q again. (SOB!) Box15:Under RSA, each user gets a 160 digit number, N, which is the product of two large primes, P and Q. Box16:The number N is made public, while P and Q remain secret. A simple formula completes the encryption, which can't be cracked without FACTORING! (ngh) Box17:The National Security Agency didn't like this! The spy bureau wants the ability to crack any code! (Your assignment Seymour: FACTOR FASTER!!) Box18:But spies aren't the only ones who need cryptography! Anyone who transmits ELECTRONIC DATA wants to secure the information's integrity. (Why? What? This is an OPEN SOCIETY!) Box19:Unbreakable public-key code would effectively Protect money transfers from tampering Shield sensitive business data from the competition Immunize software against viruses (Allow us to gossip securely by E-Mail!) Box20:So-After years of resisting Public-Key systems, the government in 1991 finally endorsed one as a new NATIONAL STANDARD. (I WAS WRONG! EMBRACE ME!) Box21:Unlike RSA, however, the government's DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm) depends on a single, government-issue PRIME NUMBER. (Take a P! Not any P!) Box22:Within months, mathematicians had shown how this could give the government, and the government alone, the ability to BREAK the code-and so the argument continues... (Trust, Where is the trust??)

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jury nullification/selection
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry if I was too terse earlier. I hadn't intended to start a big FIJA dustup. I think that government sleaziness is not only useful in a true nullification argument ("he's guilty but you should acquit anyway") but where it reflects on the credibility of testimony and the prosecution's case in general. It's easy to imagine a prosecution which rests on the testimony of people who lie every day (criminally involved informants, jailhouse informants, and undercover cops) and/or real evidence which was gained through the use of subterfuge and trickery (like wiretap/body wire evidence). The idea is to make the government look sleazier and trickier than the defendant(s) and the defense witnesses. If the government's evidence ends up being tainted directly or indirectly by lying, trickery, etc., then the defense can argue "Hey. You can't trust anyone who got up on that stand and talked to you. And if you don't know who to trust and you think everyone's lying, the government's got no case. And if they've got no case, the judge will tell you that you must acquit." So I think that public distaste and discomfort with weirder and sleazier tactics on the part of cops can be (and is) discussed and used and "voted on". "Not guilty" doesn't necessarily mean "innocent", sometimes it means "The prosecution didn't have enough evidence I thought I could trust." And yes, I agree that even mentioning nullification during voir dire will probably get you kicked off of a jury; and I think that's partly because one party or the other will be scared of nullification, and partly because the term "jury nullification" makes people think of FIJA and associated loons. Nobody wants a loon on the jury. (I don't think everyone who argues for nullification is a loon, but some of them sure are - and there's no good way to figure out whether someone's a loon or not in the middle of jury selection.) And I also agree that the jury selection process tends to select away from a true cross-section of society; but the few easily available examples (big trials like OJ or the Menendez Bros. or Wm. Kennedy Smith or whoever) are poor examples because they're not typical. Trials where lots is at stake (death penalty or celebrity defendant or big $ civil trials) tend to have longer processes (which weed out everyone who isn't incredibly boring) but it's not at all uncommon to pick a jury in a morning or in a day or two. In federal court, the judge usually questions the jury instead of the attorneys (which is faster), and may or may not ask questions that the attorneys have suggested. Also, sometimes one side or the other will *want* especially analytical or technical or well-trained jurors. Attorneys want to pick a jury they can persuade, but they also want to pick a jury that can understand their theory of the case. So I guess my point is that while the jury system isn't perfect, it is in some ways a much more direct way to "vote" on how things work in the judicial and law enforcement systems. I think it's more immediately and directly democratic than the electoral system. All of the legal bullshit aside, it's possible to think about trials as a way for people who have some sort of problem (they've been injured or accused of a crime or whatever) to tell a group of uninvolved people about the problem and ask them what the right thing to do is. Yeah, that's really oversimplified, but I think that what juries do is important and that what they do has a political and a moral dimension even if attorneys aren't supposed to talk about it during argument. -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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Re: Child porn as thoughtcrime
by amnesia＠chardos.connix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Chuck Thompson writes: > > Well Andrew, pornography is meant to lead to arousal, which can lead to > aggression, which may lead to abuse. It's a fairly common path according to > what I've read on deviancy. Going into a bank can lead to casing out the joint, which may lead to a heist. Should this make the posession of pictures of banks illegal? I don't think that anyone here is advocating kiddie porn. The problem that TCM pointed out is that in fighting kiddie porn, legislators have started banning _thoughts_ that _could_ lead to child abuse. This is one great leap forward into the police state. > Following is one association's opinion, but > don't stop there, read for yourself what some of the deviants themselves > have to say: You're seeing the trees and missing the forest. It could be any activity, say the abuse of animals, that winds up being used as a wedge to create the police state. If the government started tatooing red 'P's on the foreheads of convicted pedophiles, would anyone notice the irony? Bobo

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