- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Canon copiers
by XXCLARK＠indst.indstate.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Called a Canon copier dealer today. Here's what he said regarding the copying of currency [only after my convincing him I was not inter- ested in a career in funny money]: All Canon color copiers have _always_ marked their output with the serial number of the machine on which they were produced. [I failed to ask about non-color copiers.] He mentioned, specifically, currency, photographs and food stamps as examples of copied items from which the serial number could be recovered by Canon. Canon color laser copiers CL-300 and CL-500, not currently being produced, but still available, do _not_ have the anti-currency device included. They _do_, he said, place the machine serial number in copies made. Canon color laser copiers CL-350 and CL-550 _do_ have the anti- currency device included, which he said is a black box to local repair- men. He continued to say that not only would these models, when given currency to copy, produce only a black rectangle, but also: - store a copy of what one had attempted to copy in memory, and; - lock the machine in such a manner that only someone from the Canon factory "might" be able to render the machine useable. These machines also place the machine serial number in copies it allows to be made, he said. Only on the last item did his answer seem uncertain. His first response was that "the machine would be virtually destroyed." Anyone want to test this for us? He _did_ suggest which Canon copier would do a good job copying currency. I still haven't found the trade mag in which I originally read this...

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Re: hi/. .
by mench＠cs.unr.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > hey, send me info on your movement! > > pete > > > > Well, this morning I was a bit constipated, so I ate four bran muffins, > and by late afternoon I succeeded in producing quite a decent bowl > movement. All in all I'd have to say I'm feeling much better now. Thanks > very much for asking. > > l8r, thug > Oh, thanks very much for the smartass reply. I take it this is a list? so do I send to Cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com? Also, I'd like to get a hold of Chris Odhner. Chris! email me! pete

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dc-nets
by root＠satelnet.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Marc Ringuette, and Yanek Martinson are some of the folks on this list who > are interested in working on DC-Nets....Yanek even claims to have a > primitive one running on his local machine and is interested in volunteers > to test it on a larger basis. I did write a dc-net system in perl that uses e-mail as the transport mechanism. It worked quite well when all the "participants" were on the same machine, and with immediat emessage delivery, no batching or queuing. As soon as I attempted to run it with a few people over the net, there were severe synchronization problems. E-mail messages are not guaranteed to arrive in the same order as they were sent, or to arrive to all the addressees within the same time frame. DC-nets work only if all the participants see the same set of messages in the same sequence. I have since decided that e-mail is not a very good transport mechanism for a dc-net and am experimenting with tcp/socket connections instead. That seems to be working pretty well, but has quite a high load on the network. If someone does want to work on some sort of a synchronisation protocol for the e-mail based dc-net, let me know and I will send you the perl code. The tcp version is not ready enough to give to anyone, and I have been quite busy with a few other (only marginally cypherpunks-related) projects and can't spend very much time on the dc-net system.

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Re: Sharing a secret
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I know that there is a way to have a key, K, divided into >n parts such that any i of them are needed to recunstruct >K. The property holds that no i-1 parts are sufficient, >and ANY i parts will do. How does this work exactly? Is >it really the case that no i-1 parts give information? >Is there a way to cheat? With a key K of size j (goddamn fortran anyway), i parties can share the secret with a threshold of i (requiring all i parties key part) by generating i parts P such that K = Pi XOR Pi-1 XOR ... P1. All the parts P are the same size as K, which keeps the effort of guessing a missing part equal to j, or the size of the key k itself. Such a scheme is not ideal for keys K that have a deterministic characteristic.

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700 club
by Mike Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> The right to encryption and the "right" to abortion don't have the same > basis - encryption kills no one. Amen! But encryption IS regulated as a munition. In military applications, weak crypto could (and has) cost some people their lives. Strong crypto reduces the power of governments or other entities to oppress people of differing views. Strong crypto is a powerful influence to resist oppression of one group by another, just as Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Speech, and the Right to Bear Arms do. I don't see strong crypto as a threat to Christians. Strong crypto is a major threat to totalitarian governments, spies, and criminals. Strong crypto is a minor inconvenience for certain law enforcement agencies in some circumstances. Three out of four isn't ideal, but life just isn't that simple. By the way, if you think 700 Club support for strong crypto without key escrow is strange -- call my BBS for some amusement. You will find Bible search software, church management tools, and two file areas devoted to cryptography. Not everyone on this list is an athiest, anarchist, or whatever. Mike Johnson mpj(a)csn.org BBS 303-938-9654

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cellular
by abootch＠sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey Cypherites, While taking a *study* break last night I caught the last couple of minutes of a report on the cellular phone hacking on Prime Time Live - KABC(?) west coast. Someone, presumably, from one of the cellular phone co's came up with a security scheme that would stop people from hacking into other people's accounts - using digital signatures! When asked how long this *technology*'s been around he answered its been out for awhile, only it has been implemented yet because no one was willing to pay for it. I wonder.... Also, they mentioned something about 400 people being caught by the S.S. so far this year(?) on cellular hacking charges. Is this correct? I didn't catch the whole show and am not sure if I ingested what was being said properly (I was too tired to chew) so if anyone caught the whole piece or knows more please post. Thanks.

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Warning about exposing anon id
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am a strong believer in the importance of being able to have an anonymous identity with a reputation. As such, let me post a warning about the most common way people are revealing their identities to me. If you see a post to cypherpunks from an anonymous user of the Finish remailer. That is, an####(a)anon.penet.fi, and you reply to cypherpunks and to that person, then the article that appears on cypherpunks will have your real name and e-mail address, but the message received by the original poster will be from your anonymous id. It's easy to put the two together and establish a list of who is who. Personally, I am ignoring it when this happens, but if I wanted to, I could have a list of about 15 of you by now. It's important to understand how an anonymous service works if you want to rely on it. Also realize, that even if you don't think you are using the service, it is allocating an id for you when you reply to an anonymous poster. You will receive a message about this auomatically from the remailer. Wonderer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: Are we gatewayed to Usenet?
by Joe Thomas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: > I believe someone has gatewayed the list onto > Netcom, which is available to many thousands of > subscribers, including local POPs (points of > presence) in Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, > Austin, and of course all up and down the West > Coast. > > . . . > > It also opens us up to more disruptive flaming > and puerile argumentation. Chilling thought: strnlght(a)netcom.com A subscriber to Washington-based Digital Express recently asked on the digex.general group that the cypherpunks list be gatewayed to a newsgroup there, too. It hasn't shown up there, and I hope it doesn't. Mailing lists just "feel" a little more private, and their central administration makes possible some control over abusers. Has anyone sent mail to postmaster or news@netcom to ask them what they're doing? I'd feel a little funny doing so myself, since I'm not a subscriber. I have asked Digex not to gateway the list, though. Joe

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RE: Are we gatewayed to Usenet?
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message Tue, 9 Nov 93 12:38:52 PST, tcmay (Timothy C. May) writes: > I believe someone has gatewayed the list onto Netcom, which is > available to many thousands of subscribers, including local POPs > (points of presence) in Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Austin, and > of course all up and down the West Coast. > > Is this such a good idea? And should it be unilaterally done? If there > was discussion of this, I must've missed it somehow (which I doubt). I think this is a terrible idea. Yes, the list is not secret, and I expect that half the nyms on it are TLA employees, but converting the list to a feed on a commercial service such as netcom, delphi, or digex, is not what I want to see. IMHO, of course, but a bad idea. Since I'm a netcom user too, i'll fire up rn from the east coast. Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)netcom.com Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Re: Should we oppose the Data Superhighway/NII?
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu says: > I'm not sure what you mean by "various groups," but I do think that > a very basic net connection, with minimal services (access to > government records, public domain postings, and similar information) > should be provided either free or at a very minimal cost. In New York City, the effective variable cost of an internet mail/news connection is $27 a month -- less than you can panhandle in about threen hours during rush hour, and I'm assuming you never use the phone for anything else and call a couple times a day. The cost is still dropping, and will doubtless be nearly invisible even without any government intervention within a few years. My poorest unemployed friend living in Hell's Kitchen in a fifth floor walkup apartment in roach-infested tenement (no joke) has an internet connection via Panix. I therefore see no reason for government guarantees of net access -- it is obvious that anyone with even minimal initiative can get one already, or will be able to within a few years. The cost of a net connection is far less than the cost of, say, smoking, and there are homeless people who still manage to smoke. Perry

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