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The Esther Dyson Flap
by Chuck Thompson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't quite understand the position taken by Mr. Assange and Mr. Unicorn regarding recent statements attributed to Ms. Dyson. I would appreciate some additional insight. It appears as though they are both critical of statements (taken out of context according to Dyson) because of her position with the EFF. It appears that they both believe that she has no right to her opinion if it is contradictory to the policy of the EFF. If such an EFF policy exists, and if Dyson is of a different opinion, the fact that she holds office in an organization with which she is not in total agreement should not count against her. In fact, it is to her credit that she has the courage to speak her mind, considering that hers is an elected position. She has something to lose by speaking her mind publicly. Mr. Unicorn remains anonymous, thereby mitigating repercussions which might otherwise accrue to him as a result of the expression of his opinion. I agree with Mr. Unicorn that the EFF should state its position unequivocally. I do not agree that officers or staff of EFF should not be allowed to disagree with that position, if in fact they do. In the case of Ms. Dyson, how can we know whether she agrees or disagrees with a non-existant policy? She has, evidently, spoken her mind. Isn't that what freedom of speech allows? Imagine, if you will, where we would be right now if all elected representatives were censured for disagreeing with stated government policy. That ability is what makes this country great - and, what you both seem to be saying you stand for. Is your position solid only if everyone agrees with you and you them? Whatever happened to "defending to the death your right to say it"? Pouncing on someone, without knowing all the facts, who is vulnerable because of their position smacks of dirty politics - it is distasteful. Why not ask for the facts from the source? Then state your opinions or make your threats about not contributing financially. In keeping with the message, you have the right to take a cheap shot. I'd just like some insight into your thinking. Regards, Chuck Thompson

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Any cypherpunk solutions to this problem?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To the degree that he's correct, how can such problems be solved while increasing privacy, security, etcetera? What sort of decentralized replacements for the current DNS system can be used, preferably with prevention of removal of DN for political reasons? -Allen From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 27-AUG-1996 06:03:35.07 [Maybe the next Internet myth to bust up is this stuff about the Internet being decentralized. "Designed to survive a nuclear attack", etc etc. I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. The net has little redundancy, the backbones are in the hands of a small number of large companies, and all of the detailed mechanics of getting your packets to their destination are fragile and prone to propagating errors. The high levels of service to which we've grown accustomed are due to the hard work of specific people, not to the intrinsic properties of the machinery. The net works because those people are able to do the right thing. The conditions that *let* them do the right thing may disappear next month, or the month after that. So let's forget the technological determinism and lose our complacency about the future, and instead have a little gratitude to the hackers who make it work and a little political concern for the architectural choices that are coming right up on the horizon.] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 14:15:06 -0700 (PDT) From: risks(a)csl.sri.com RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Monday 26 August 1996 Volume 18 : Issue 38 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 24 Aug 1996 08:53:31 -0700 From: stevenw(a)best.com (Steven Weller) Subject: DNS failure [from Matthew Dillon] The following describes DNS meltdown at my ISP the other day: all DNS services were unavailable, despite multiple servers being online. Lack of DNS assured that other working services were unavailable to everyone who didn't have IP addresses written down. Here is a technical explanation of the DNS failure, for those of you interested. First, a synopsis of how DNS works... every site on the net serves their own DNS records. Some sites serve other people's DNS records. For example, BEST serves the DNS records for best.com, best.net, and most of our customer's custom domains. No site serves more then a small fraction of the DNS records on the internet from their own database. The way DNS works is that when a domain name needs to be resolved, our DNS server (anyone's DNS server) first goes to the NIC to ask where to go to resolve the domain name. The NIC itself cannot resolve domains, it can only tell our DNS server where to go to resolve a domain. Our DNS server then goes to the specified remote site to resolve the domain name belonging to that site. The remote site replies with the answer which our DNS server (a) caches for future reference, and (b) returns to the original requester. The caching is important, because otherwise a DNS server would have to re-query the remote DNS server every time someone wanted to resolve a domain. DNS records propagate through caches. It is simply not possible to run a DNS system with caching turned off, it would create an impossible load on the internet. Around 4:00 a.m. yesterday, some unknown site's cache got corrupted. The corruption propagated to many (hundreds) of other sites on the internet and eventually propagated to us. This corruption hit a bug in the DNS server program that wound up corrupting the program, causing DNS to loose major records. Restarting the server in this case does not solve the problem because, due to the caching on remote sites, the corrupted record repropagates almost instantly. BEST was hit by this problem very hard due to the large number of custom domains we serve... so many DNS requests come into BEST and are made by BEST that our servers would hit the corruption out on the internet within 10 seconds of starting up. Worse, this particular corruption tended to destroy the root records (stored in memory), called SOA records, for the domains served locally. This destroyed the mail system causing mail messages to bounce rather then to simply be delayed, because the DNS server was saying 'site X does not exist' rather then timing out. It's worst possible corruption that can occur in a DNS system. -- It turns out that the last two BIND releases contain a bug that, when a corrupted record of the type that started propagating at 4:00 a.m. is received, results in the destruction of other **unassociated** records stored in memory. The particular release of BIND that we were using had been running perfectly for several *months* before this incident. It was not something recently installed. There are two fixes to the problem: (1) One can lock out those sites where the corrupted records come from, and (2) One can revert to an older release. (1) is not a good solution because, due to the nature of DNS, corruption can propagate to many sites and it would be impossible to keep up to date and lock all of them out. We wound up taking action #(2) and reverting to an older release of bind which, fortunately, did not have the bug that caused the problem. We had to revert to BIND 4.9.3. Unfortunately, we did not think to do this for many hours because we were all convinced that the problem was external in nature and just didn't think to try a reversion. In hind sight, that is the first thing we should have tried since we had the friggin binary for the older version sitting in our source tree. As far as DNS goes... the DNS we run is not 'bsd' or 'sgi' .. it's the *official* world-wide BIND distribution run by Paul Vixie. It is really not appropriate to run the older versions shipped with most operating systems due to massive, massive security holes. The corruption problem was unavoidable. What *was* avoidable was the long period of time that elapsed before the problem got fixed, which I take full responsibility for. We spent most of that time trying to track down where the corruption was coming from... a near impossible task. Around 6:00 p.m. scuttlebutt started propagating regarding a possible bug in the last two BIND releases at which point we instantly reverted to an earlier version, which fixed the problem, then started banging our heads against the wall for not trying it earlier. Matthew Dillon Engineering, BEST Internet Communications, Inc. <dillon(a)best.net> ------------------------------ Date: 15 Aug 1996 (LAST-MODIFIED) From: RISKS-request(a)csl.sri.com Subject: Abridged info on RISKS (comp.risks) The RISKS Forum is a MODERATED digest. Its Usenet equivalent is comp.risks. => SUBSCRIPTIONS: PLEASE read RISKS as a newsgroup (comp.risks or equivalent) if possible and convenient for you. Or use Bitnet LISTSERV. Alternatively, (via majordomo) DIRECT REQUESTS to <risks-request(a)csl.sri.com> with one-line, SUBSCRIBE (or UNSUBSCRIBE) [with net address if different from FROM:] or INFO [for unabridged version of RISKS information] => The INFO file (submissions, default disclaimers, archive sites, .mil/.uk subscribers, copyright policy, PRIVACY digests, etc.) is also obtainable from http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html ftp://www.CSL.sri.com/pub/risks.info The full info file will appear now and then in future issues. *** All contributors are assumed to have read the full info file for guidelines. *** => SUBMISSIONS: to risks(a)CSL.sri.com with meaningful SUBJECT: line. => ARCHIVES are available: ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks or ftp ftp.sri.com<CR>login anonymous<CR>[YourNetAddress]<CR>cd risks or http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/VL.IS.html [i.e., VoLume, ISsue]. The ftp.sri.com site risks directory also contains the most recent PostScript copy of PGN's comprehensive historical summary of one liners: get illustrative.PS ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 18.38 ************************

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Cocktail Party Conversation...
by Charles Gimon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

...of the clueful who should know better... "Ms. Denning, I'd like to introduce Ms. Dyson. Ms. Dyson, Ms. Denning." *********************************************************************** Wild new Ubik salad dressing, not | gimonca(a)skypoint.com Italian, not French, but an entirely | Minneapolis MN USA new and different taste treat that's | http://www.skypoint.com/~gimonca waking up the world! | A lean, mean meme machine. ***********************************************************************

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Re: The Earliest CP Remailer *DID* Emphasize Anonymity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:27 AM 9/3/96, Bill Stewart wrote: >At 11:05 AM 9/2/96 -0700, Tim wrote: >>No, the focus was at _least_ as much on providing anonymity as on >>protection from eavesdroppers or traffic analysts. More so, actually. >>How do I know this? Well, I was the one who did the presentation on >>Chaumian mixes at the first meeting, describing them as remailers and using >>paper envelopes-within-envelopes to illustrate the concept. >>Later that day, in the "Crypto Anarchy Game" we played to educate the > >Thanks for the history correction; I got involved with Cypherpunks about >a year after the initial meeting/game, so I'm going on other people's >comments about the intent of mixes and remailers. Out of curiousity, >did either spam or blackmail show up during the first run of the game? A full range of interesting behaviors showed up. Usually this was publicized via the "out-of-band" channel of someone yelling "Hey, I was just told to deposit $100 credits to the account of "AnonymousBanker" or else my digital pseudonym will be published." A murder-for-hire business was started, several weapons-trading schemes developed, etc. Information selling was a big market success. (Not very surprising, given that Eric and I devised the playing cards, roles to be played (banker, assassin, money launderer, freedom fighter, whistleblower, etc.), and doled out crypto-currency (Monopoly money). The idea was not to discover real-world lessons, of course, but to graphically demonstrate some of the technology, some of the ways crypto-anonymity would change interactions, etc.) >>And all of the early uses were explicitly to anonymize the sender, not to >>deter eavesdropping (which conventional crypto works well for, anyway). > >Keeping the sender's identity hidden from the recipient is a different >problem than keeping either of them hidden from Untrusted Third Parties. >Conventional crypto is fine for keeping message content secure from >eavedroppers, but isn't enough to prevent traffic analysis; >that requires either mixes or at least message pools or broadcasts. Yes, but my point was more that we were more concerned about building a solid foundation which would solve a larger class of problems than just straight encryption would. Remailers do this. Anonymity of sender was a dominant mode in the game, for various reasons. But anonymity of receiver was also possible (we faked message pools by pinning messages to a board and then letting them be taken down, but not letting others spend time seeing which were taken down...obviously a determined person could have seen which were removed, and by whom...). Regarding traffic analysis, at least one person (George ?) set himself up as an NSA traffic analyst and tried to deduce pseudonym/true name mappings. (We gave some people roles as "NSA," "narc," and whatnot.) I no longer recall all the details of how the game evolved, interesting behaviors seen, etc. I think someone posted a summary of his reactions to the game a few weeks afterward, circa September/October 1992. It should be in any archives that cover this period. --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: The Earliest CP Remailer *DID* Emphasize Anonymity
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:05 AM 9/2/96 -0700, Tim wrote: >No, the focus was at _least_ as much on providing anonymity as on >protection from eavesdroppers or traffic analysts. More so, actually. >How do I know this? Well, I was the one who did the presentation on >Chaumian mixes at the first meeting, describing them as remailers and using >paper envelopes-within-envelopes to illustrate the concept. >Later that day, in the "Crypto Anarchy Game" we played to educate the Thanks for the history correction; I got involved with Cypherpunks about a year after the initial meeting/game, so I'm going on other people's comments about the intent of mixes and remailers. Out of curiousity, did either spam or blackmail show up during the first run of the game? >And all of the early uses were explicitly to anonymize the sender, not to >deter eavesdropping (which conventional crypto works well for, anyway). Keeping the sender's identity hidden from the recipient is a different problem than keeping either of them hidden from Untrusted Third Parties. Conventional crypto is fine for keeping message content secure from eavedroppers, but isn't enough to prevent traffic analysis; that requires either mixes or at least message pools or broadcasts. > Kleinpaste .... Julf .... I've also been pleased by how long Julf's remailer stayed in business. # 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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Assassination Politics Question
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:10 PM 9/2/96 -0500, correspondent wrote: >If there are more than one accurate prediction for an even, how will >CP Server will allocate the prizes? What made me think of that is >that, only in the case of famous peoples, a very smart individual >might make a prediction simply out of being smart and informed. To a first approximation, they could split the reward among the correct guessers. This is an issue that I considered in some detail a year ago, but which (surprisingly enough) hasn't been raised by others. As I pointed out in AP part 1, it is necessary to reduce "shotgun guesses" among people who simply guess a date (or many dates) and make a bet. That's why I included the system of requiring the predictor to include a payment with the prediction, in such a way that the prediction remains anonymous while the included money is always paid to the AP organization. This might initially appear to be a burden to the potential "guesser"/killer, but in fact if he understands the reason for it he'll want the system in place: It's one of the main ways to avoid the situation where multiple people make guesses for a particular person and date, and thus it would tend to ensure that the successful "guessor" is the only one to make that guess. Some of my analysis in AP part 1 was superficial and not really accurate, because in the example it gave, it suggested that the amount of money that would have to be included might be as little as 1/1000th of the reward money. However, chances are it'll usually be somewhat higher for this reason: Let's say a person does something REALLY AWFUL, such as Jeffrey Dahmer or another multiple murderer. Suddenly, he goes from completely anonymous to Public Enemy #1. One would suppose that if AP was operating "efficiently," he'd be dead in a week. However, if indeed he's dead in a week, and you only have to pay 1/1000th per day to place your bet on his demise, you could (hypothetically) make your bet for all seven days, paying a total of 7/1000th of the prize, and assuming the death occurred any day that week you'd be guaranteed to share in that prize. But that's the problem: You'd only _share_ in that prize, because many other people would get the same idea and they'd make similar bets, and the thing would simply turn into a Lotto-type game. The potential killer out there, aware of this problem, would hesitate to make his bet under those circumstances, because it is almost certain he'd lose at least part of the prize to others. The result would be a great deal of suspense, because nobody would know when somebody is actually going to place a prediction and carry out a killing. The AP organization would rake in the money from all those bets, but the killing would be delayed and the betting public would become unhappy. At some point the "prediction" donations would slow down, and perhaps a killer would take this as a cue to actually make his prediction. One way to avoid this is to carefully adjust the amount of payment that's required with the "prediction," raising it _just_enough_ to deter all but "informed guessing" among people who know what's going to happen. Or, at least, to reduce "uninformed guessing" to a level which doesn't dramatically affect the fulfillment of the donations. The problem with this is that this price-setting would be a lot of work, and is not likely to produce the "right" price. It would be somewhat akin to the kind of central planning that the communists never did very well. The problem with trying to set a price like this is that to do it right, requires WAY too much knowledge, knowledge that will often only be known by a small number of people that you can't identify. Perhaps the most obvious solution is to allow the free market to decide how much a given prediction is worth. In other words, the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith. Instead of asking for some specific amount of money along with any given prediction, simply announce that along with a prediction the predictor ought to include some portion of digital cash, although there would be no minimum amount required. Assuming the associated prediction turns out to be true, the reward fund will be distributed on a pro-rated basis, divided up based on the amount of prediction. For example, if you're the killer and you include a dollar with your prediction, and I'm a random, guessing predictor and I include a dime, you get 1/1.1 of the reward and I get 0.1/1.1. Had you included $10 with your prediction, you'd have won 10.00/10.10, and I'd get 0.1/10.10. Sure, the amount a predictor included might be as little as a dime, and if that's the only correct prediction he'll get the entire amount of the reward. But a killer would be stupid to ONLY include a dime, because somebody else could, likewise, include a dime per day for a prediction for a given person, and then he'd get half of the reward if nobody else did the same thing. And since it would only cost him $0.10 per day or $36.50 per year for a given person, he'd be dollars ahead to do this. It should be clear that a person who really KNEW that the target would die on a particular day would want to include enough digital cash to help ensure that he's the beneficiary of a good fraction of the reward, ideally most or all of it. On the other hand, he won't want to include so much that it's "too much" a proportion of the reward itself, since the payment is non-refundable and it reduces his net reward. The random guesser likewise wants to maximize his share, but unlike the killer does not have the specific knowledge that the death will occur on that particular day. With this system, the market is responsible for finding its own equilibrium point. The AP organization need not decide how likely a given death is, and how much money to ask for. Its job is made substantially simpler. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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[BEATING A NOT QUITE DEAD] Passive Trojan [HORSE] (was:Re: HAZ-MAT virus)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>The key to the success is that the application in question has to be >compromised to respond to these codes, either by design or by hacking. >Either way the individual responsible must modify the execution >mechanism, not just the data itself. A well-written program is hard to exploit, but badly written programs can often be exploited in ways that allow execution of untrusted code. For instance, the fingerd bug exploited so spectacularly by Robert Morris handed a program more input that it was ready to accept, and the program stupidly kept writing the input into the array, past the end, and out into the stack, where it could be later interpreted as executable code. If a popular GIF or JPEG interpreter was written that badly, you could possibly devise a GIF that lies about how big it is and encourages the program to scribble on its stack. Now, there probably aren't any like that, and it'd probably have to be Netscape or MSIE or Lview to be widespread enough to make an attack like that worthwhile. (I'd bet on MSIE, of the three of them :-) Does Microsoft have some sort of Really Cool Extension to JPEG, allowing Macros for Self-Modifying JPEGs, trying to out-do Netscape's animated GIFs?) >Let's see -current examples of computing items with this kind of a >"feature"... magic cookies, macros, OLE, DDE, MS Objects, JAVA, and the >list keeps growing. Back when Good Times came out, everyone denied that it was possible for there to be any risk from a text file (though, as I pointed out, escape-sequence hacks have been used occasionally for over 15 years), and not long after that, the MSWord Macro Viruses started appearing. Bad Code can't always be hacked usefully, but it can always be hacked... # 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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Re: The Esther Dyson Flap
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:59 AM 9/3/96, Chuck Thompson wrote: >I don't quite understand the position taken by Mr. Assange and Mr. Unicorn >regarding recent statements attributed to Ms. Dyson. I would appreciate >some additional insight. > >It appears as though they are both critical of statements (taken out of >context according to Dyson) because of her position with the EFF. It >appears that they both believe that she has no right to her opinion if it is >contradictory to the policy of the EFF. Certainly no one is suggesting she should have her right of free speech taken away from her, as a citizen. Rather, these are precarious times for the future of the Net, with actions in many countries, including the U.S. to restrict the Net in various ways. Esther Dyson is in an influential postition, not just because of her new role as Chairman of the EFF. Anytime a person of her influence is seen to be supporting limitations on what private citizens can communicate to others or to the public at large, this is cause for worry. (As both John Gilmore and Stanton McCandlish have noted, anonymity has a long history in the United States. From the Federalist Papers, to anonymous leafletting (upheld by the Supreme Court), to anonymous letters to the editor, to the basic architecture of the Postal System and the phone system, anonymity has been with us for a long time. Esther Dyson says that anonymity on the Net can do more damage than anonymity in other forums, and thus may need to be regulated and restricted in various ways. I disagree, as "the Net of a Million Lies" (to use Vinge's term) has grown up with anonymity, and few people take the anonymous (or not) rants and charges made in the millions per day with the same degree of certainty they take print comments. Put another way, there is no clear and present danger. And the Net makes for effective counterspeech. As free speech advocates note, the proper remedy for bad speech is more speech. (The links between "free speech" and "anonymity" are fairly obvious, and curtailing one curtails the other. "Congress shall make no law restricting speech" says nothing about anonymous speech being subject to regulation.) Further, the computerized nature of Net speech makes other remedies available as well. For example, reputation-ratings services. And digital signatures (to preclude forged comments). Speech on the Net closely resembles idiots, scholars, dweebs, and scoundrels ranting in public parks. Sometimes they accuse the mayor of adultery, sometimes they rant about UFOs, sometimes they merely utter obscenities. All are potentially dangerous, potentially ignorable, potentially humorous. And yet in none of these cases is there a demand that identification be produced, that one's papers be in order, that a "free speech license" be produced upon demand by the authorities. (Some might say that the physical personna of the speaker means that a means of last resort--apprehending the person--exists to track down a speaker of illegal thoughts, and that this is the kind of last resort that is currently lacking for Net speech. Perhaps. But this very same lack is evidenced with anonymous pamphlets, with anonymous pieces written for newsletters (where even an editor may not know the author), and with phone calls, say, to radio call-in programs. Clearly someone calling "The Howard Stern Show" and making a preposterous, or even illegal, claim is reaching many more people than is some anonymous message to a Usenet newsgroup. Again, where is the clear and present danger with anonymous Net speech that would justify (putatively) greater restrictions on Net speech than other speech channels have?) >Pouncing on someone, without knowing all the facts, who is vulnerable >because of their position smacks of dirty politics - it is distasteful. Why >not ask for the facts from the source? Then state your opinions or make >your threats about not contributing financially. Well, many of us did not pounce. Speaking for myself, I strongly suspected that the newspaper article had summarized a more-nuanced point and had effectively taken just a convenient sound bite. (Also, I'd heard Dyson speak on anonymity issues before, and knew her to have some doubts about full-blown crypto anarchy.) Now that she has somewhat clarified what it was she actually said, more issues have been raised. I believe she does not understand the problems implicit in trying to provide "accountability" for online speech. What if, for example, I offer to forward things I receive to various online forums? Am I then violating a law by "anonymizing" a message? Am I supposed to check identities? (How?) Are remailers to be declared illegal? If not, all other "accountability" laws go out the window. This is the "knife edge," or "fork in the road," I've long talked about. If anonymity is outlawed, it will take draconian measures to enforce it--citizen-unit ID cards, officially issued encryption keys, escrow, monitoring of communications, massive penalties to deter illegal use of encryption, and other police state measures. On the other hand, if enough degrees of freedom are left untouched, the result is a growing, expanding crypto anarchy. Government will find itself powerless to control commerce (handled via encrypted channels), will find it doesn't know the True Names of various Net entities, and will end up being chased into an enclave of things it _can_ control. My strong hunch is that no stable solutions lie between these two extremes. This is one of those "decision points" for modern society, with attractors pulling the solution to one side or another. We know which side we stand on. It's possible that Esther Dyson is finding herself on the other side, alongside Dorothy Denning, Louis Freeh, Donn Parker, and the other advocates of "responsible freedom." (Anytime you hear someone speaking of "responsible freedom," look out.) I don't call her our enemy. Perhaps she just hasn't thought things through as deeply as many of us have. Given that I think EFF has pretty much lost any role it may have once had, for a variety of reasons we're probably all tired of hearing about, I'm not too worried about what the EFF says or does on this issue. I'm more worried, to be honest, that a person as influential _for other reasons_ as Esther Dyson is talking about responsible freedom and the need to limit certain forms of speech. --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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LInteger Version 0.1: A C++ MPILIB
by janke＠unixg.ubc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- LInteger is a C++ library designed to allow programmers to create and perform arithmetic on objects representing nearly arbitrary precision integers. Thanks to C++'s support for operator overloading, the use of the large integers in this library should be nearly as easy as the use of regular int's. In fact, much code which performs arithmetic on regular int's can be converted to code to perform the same arithmetic on arbitrary precision integers merely by substituting "LInteger" for "int". This library is free for both commercial and non-commercial use. (See the COPYRIGHT notice included in the source distribution for exact details.) The current version of this library is only implemented for i386+ processors, and will, probably, only compile unhacked under gcc. Additionally, it has only been tested on the Linux operating system, though I am fairly confident that it will compile, unhacked, under the OS/2 and Windows versions of gcc. (Please let me know if you get it to work!) The basic multiprecision methods are implemented in i386+ assembly language for high speed. Multiplication is performed recursively resulting in O(lg 3) performance. Modular multiplication can be performed via Montgomery representations for a noticeable performance gain when a large number of these modular multiplications are performed. HTML documentaion for all public methods is included. There is currently no pseudo-random or probable prime number generation included. These are my highest priorities for the next release which will, hopefully, come out shortly after I read Rabin-Miller. :) A link to the latest version of this library can be found at http://www.interchg.ubc.ca/janke/linteger/index.html Once you have the file linteger-v0.1.tar.gz, uncompress and untar it with tar -zxvf linteger-v0.1.tar.gz. Next, cd to the newly created directory linteger-v0.1 and read the file README for details on how to proceed. The message digests for linteger-v0.1.tar.gz are MD5: B518B338D59A8376095B9CAD74EA2E16 SHA: 445D8D1555DC18AB0DF47B9B0381F0B07D4CB644 HAVAL: 53774BA2BF60116DF9F0F476913252188DFD9D3828D19B6795BC14C19EFA7FEE -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMitSJR6H/su8/YEZAQH3lwQAsBpNY0rEW1U5vq5hkxdnqxgk1ZZtSV3K 5gTlYu7Z3OAqsqC62Qi7LlkI2dzhrNWYr/G+OXdFfCaHfBcNlePgHsj6xF4oCy3U iGy9yiCxP7Xs4xb8CjHYkW7S/HfVwyiY2AMxGJ/YfFzvi1MJTIT2A8z4Par5qwWe XuG7XztGzAI= =wq2q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The most ridiculous SPAM in my lifetime
by geek＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is the American reincarnation of Ostap Bender. Next spam from him will be about interplanetary chess congress, no less I am sure. Here's what his Web page says (excerpt): IRS> The Internet Registration Service Has Created An On-Line Service That IRS> Will Simultaneously Register Your Web Site With The Top 400 Internet IRS> Directories And Search Engines Operating On The Internet. IRS> IRS> The Proper Registration Of Your Web Site In These Directories And Search IRS> Engines Will Insure You That When Your Potential Customers Perform A IRS> "Net Search," Your Web Site Will Be Included In The "Search Results," And IRS> Your Web Site Will Become A Selection For Anyone Searching The Internet IRS> For The Products Or Services Your Company Sells. IRS> IRS> To Compete In This Fast Paced "Information Age" You Must Secure Your IRS> Place In As Many Of These Directories And Search Engines As Possible... If IRS> You Do Not... The Competition Will Simply Pass You By. IRS> IRS> In Order For You To Complete Your Internet Registration, All You Need To IRS> Do Is Complete The On-Line Registration Forms On The Following Pages IRS> And Submit Them To Our Offices Along With Your Registration Fee Of ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ IRS> $395. You Can Pay Your Registration Fee By Credit Card, Or By Company ^^^^^^^ IRS> Check. If You Are Paying By Check, Please Make Your Check Payable To: IRS> Internet Registration Service. And Mail It To: >From nking(a)pvnet.com.mx Mon Sep 2 22:13:17 1996 Return-Path: nking(a)pvnet.com.mx Received: from galaxy.galstar.com (ichudov(a)galaxy.galstar.com [204.251.80.2]) by manifold.algebra.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with SMTP id WAA13038 for <geek(a)algebra.com>; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 22:13:15 -0500 Received: from neptuno.pvnet.com.mx ([200.23.229.18]) by galaxy.galstar.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id WAA07844 for <geek(a)algebra.com>; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 22:00:37 -0500 Received: from nking.pvnet.com.mx ([200.23.229.43]) by neptuno.pvnet.com.mx (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id VAA27361 for <geek(a)algebra.com>; Mon, 2 Sep 1996 21:59:40 -0500 Message-ID: <322B57BF.704(a)pvnet.com.mx> Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 21:55:11 +0000 From: NORMAN KING <nking(a)pvnet.com.mx> Reply-To: nking(a)pvnet.com.mx Organization: Internet Registration Committee X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0b7Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: geek(a)algebra.com Subject: IMPORTANT MESSAGE!!! Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit IMPORTANT MESSAGE!!! Dear Sirs, It Has Recently Come To The Attention Of The Internet Registration Committee That Your Web-Site Has Not Been Properly Registered On The Internet Or On The World Wide Web. This Could Result In Your Potential Customers Being Unable To Locate You Or Find Your Web-Site On The World Wide Web. Proper Web-Site Registration On The Internet Is Required In Order For Your Web-Site To Be Successful. There Are Currently More Than 400 Hundred Internet Directories And Search Engines Operating On The Internet. It Will Be Necessary For You To Register Your Web-Site With The Majority Of These Directories And Search Engines In Order For Your Web-Site To Become Easily Located By Your Potential Customers. If You Do Not Become Registered With A Large Number Of These Internet Directories, Your Web Site Could Become Impossible For Your Customers To Locate, Your Web-Site Will Become Inaccessable, Therefore Becoming Dormant, Unprofitable And Inactive. In Order To Resolve This Situation, We Urge You To Contact Our Web-Site Registration Service At The Internet Address Below By Clicking Your Mouse On This Link: http://adgrafix.com/mail/irs.html It Is Imperative That This Situation Be Resolved Immediately! We Hope That We Can Help You To Resolve Your Registration Problem As Soon As Possible. Thank-You, Sincerely, NORMAN KING - Administrator Internet Registration Service

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