- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Patents and trade secrets was: Encryption algorithms used in PrivaSoft (fwd)
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:47 PM 9/20/95, Ian Goldberg wrote: .... > - Ian "I heard that 'x*y=[(x+y)/2]^2 - [(x-y)/2]^2' is a patented way > to multiply numbers of the same parity. Can anyone verify this > and/or produce a reference?" .... That trick is probably at least 200 years old. There were once "quarter square" tables published that started i q(i) 000 000 001 000 002 001 003 002 004 004 005 006 etc. i [1^2/4] It works for all parities. ab = q(a+b) - q(a-b) These tables were published in nautical navigation books. Mechanical analog computers sometimes used this trick to multiply shaft positions. There would be a cam that computed the square of one angle, expressed as another angle.

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Cypherpunks, Sun and JAVA
by Harry S. Hawk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today at the Sun JAVA presenation in NYC.. Sun staff member Hal Stern who was talking about security mentioned Cypherpunks.. when talking about Thomas Jefferson saying roughly that Jefferson would be one if he was a live. He might read this list (Hi Hal!). Anyway he gave a good talk on securty and actually seemed to be aware of many of the issues. /hawk -- Harry Hawk Manager of Computer Services Warwick Baker & Fiore 212 941 4438 habs(a)warwick.com

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Miami FL key signing
by jpb＠miamisci.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm interested in setting up a key-signing in the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale area on 28 or 29 October. Location is flexible, but the date isn't very - a friend of mine is going to be in town from Down Under from some time on the 27th to the morning of the 31st and he'd like to snag as many signatures on his key as possible. Joseph Block <jpb(a)miamisci.org> "The subjection to which the American citizen is now exposed every day of his life is so great that the whole idea of liberty ("That which does not injure one's neighbor") is almost totally lost. The greatest of despots, Louis XIV, never told his subjects what they could or could not eat and drink, and he never told them how to conduct their private lives." - -- Jeff Cooper -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMGIQGmGnwFiC3O2NAQEIpQgAwSto9BFdkm1qmtDnDsjAe5JDzP/GrKIm 3yvAA0Uzzl5kg2PVqRWqj4uM0O9ExBO9AN/7iFDinAaEAJTAmfzWQF8ZHNo/EmrM lH3Ec84asrbBBy0pYbQuT3Sj2CDGWk6HtlBOIyn/PKljIW0tz6AeCN0i9T7kNLhO zX6N+4Oq+w2HX9p+OFAbeSE8zlUEh4KNM2bn16GOW+DpxGfGln2Zir3zli4LCZUi UYlVyGWgxiVWzc1a83dar3WByyxcQaGDBL+wtm5bUJGTBywI/8KI8loCYY/6nIvn w1pqqvTsEKfez+Q3ej7L6nl8XOK4tO9E+hUNF7p9fdXnqCz20j/uyQ== =8pcs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: economic espionage (@#$%^&*) (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 22:46:09 -0400 (EDT) > From: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)polaris.mindport.net> > Subject: Re: economic espionage (@#$%^&*) > > > > ah yes, just like the way Clinton alone came up with the whole > > Clipper idea as a way to balance the legitimate goals > > of law enforcement with the right to privacy in society. > > Uh, how do you see balancing in the economic intelligence issue? > Do you believe espionage is never justified? > "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail" almost lost a war. > All out espionage should, idealy at least, only take place if there is evidence that a nations indipendance is directly involved. By this I mean active methods versus passive eavesdropping. It is one thing to send aloft satellites to record cellular traffic between cars and quite another to actively insert agents provocateur. > 'Intelligence officials in the United States estimate that at least twenty > foreign nations are currently engaged in intelligence activities > "detrimental to our economic interests...."' > I had hoped they were better investigators than this, only 20? Or perhaps this is a truer indication of our national paranoia. > > 'The White House Office on Science and Technology estimates losses to U.S. > businesses from foreign economic espionage at nearly one hundred billion > dollars per year.' > What are its estimates on what US business gains with its present industrial espionage infrastructure? Without these numbers the quoted above are useless. Jim

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NSCP: Unch..vol rises...morn selling
by carolann＠censored.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Volume Rose. Morning selling. Afternoon buying. It's now a good bull, bear tussle. I'd sure speculate on the "patch" until tomorrow afternoon. If not there, by 2:00 unload any position. This is a good day trading stock for now. Lots & lots of movement. Symbol : NSCP Exchange : NASDAQ Description : NETSCAPE COMMUNICATIONS CORP COM Last Traded at: 58 3/4 Date/Time : Sep 21 4:00 $ Change : 0 % Change : 0.000000 Bid : 58 3/4 Ask : 59 Volume : 436900 # of Trades : 550 Opening Price : 55 Last Shares : 5 Day Low : 54 1/4 Day High : 59 1/8 52 Week Low : 45 3/4 52 Week High: 74 3/4 -- Member Internet Society - Certified BETSI Programmer - Webmistress *********************************************************************** Carol Anne Braddock (cab8) carolann(a)censored.org 206.42.112.96 My Homepage The Cyberdoc *********************************************************************** ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [017/713] ------------------- M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M MF=O0H+*%(-S%&>S%+FS&<LS%3(Q&#W1"<]2%`H^;,]^1C$'HBN8PX$4SYAU^ MPGD<Q0ZLA0D+,`MCT!LA**4M[-JPAK9F?40!AJ,CW"'%DR#:'9?Q)3[%<DQ` ------------------------------------------------------------- for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/

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Re: House National Security committee guts SAFE, worse than no
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jonah Seiger wrote: > The Administration WANTS legislation to impose key recovery and wants > continued export restrictions. It has passed the Senate Commerce > Committee, it's in the current export policy, and the FBI is likely to get > it approved by the Intelligence committee tomorrow. > > If they succeed and mandatory key recovery becomes law, there will > certainly be court challenges (and CDT would join that fight), but it won't > be as clear cut as the CDA case was, and it's doubtful we would have the > strength (and the resources) of as broad a coalition of plaintiffs. We may > be right, but that doesn't guarantee victory. *IF* they succeed? (You been on extended vacation?) Any bets that the double-secret guys nab a suitcase-nuke carrying dark-skinned person a few days before they need to win a crucial vote in the war against the citizens? Double-SecretMonger

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Radioactive RNG & tracking systems...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, A friend of mine has been working on a radioactive RNG and while playing with it a potentialy interesting application came to mind. In short, by placing radioactive RNG's in some sort of grid across an area it becomes possible to track radioactive sources by comparing the magnitude of a correlation function between them. This could be extended to include just about any kind of RNG that is sensitive to some environmental factor, say air pressure or magnetic intensity... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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netscape bug
by tomw＠orac.engr.sgi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <DF8qC9.4Cw(a)sgi.sgi.com>, "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> writes: > P.M. notes that anywhere there is a data-driven buffer overflow (which > he suspects are all over netscape) he can get code to execute anything > he wants. this reminds me of the > Morris internet worm that ran exactly the same way. it used a > bug in the finger demon that caused a string buffer overwrite > (via strcpy, instead of strncpy) to execute customized code. > my question: I have not seen the specifics of how this works. does > this require specialized knowledge of the native machine language on the > host machine? or is it just used to cause something like a core dump > to get a command line or something like that? I question the accuracy of this. The fingerd bug was that a string in the static data area was read in with gets which could be overflowed. At some point in memory after this input buffer was the string constant that stored the name of the finger command. What the Morris work did was to overflow the input buffer and replace the string constant "finger" with "csh". When fingerd then exec'ed the command, that gave you a shell running on the machine. While it is certainly true that you can stomp on memory in static buffers, it's not clear that you can execute whatever code you insert there. If the buffer happens to be allocated off the stack (and the stack grows down) then you can modify the return address. Of course, you have to know the address of whatever code you want to execute. And that code has to do something useful. Presumably, if there are two bugs, one which lets you write over a static buffer and one for a buffer allocated from the stack, then you could execute code of your choosing. Of course, that also assumes that you can execute from the data area which is not always true. -- Sure we spend a lot of money, but that doesn't mean | Tom Weinstein we *do* anything. -- Washington DC motto | tomw(a)engr.sgi.com

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Fraud Fraut Froth
by anonymous＠freezone.remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NY Times, Sept 21, 1995. Fraud Can Flourish Without the Internet To the Editor: Your Sept. 19 front-page article on the discovery by two University of California graduate students of a flaw in Netscape, the software used for purchases over the Internet's World Wide Web, raises a number of obvious questions. First, who needs high tech to perpetrate fraud? Any unscrupulous commercial employee could use or sell your credit card number without employing technology. Every time you hand your card to a waiter in a restaurant, it disappears for several minutes. The department store clerks and gas station attendants you deal with also have access to your card number. How secure is that? Ever give your credit card number over the phone to make a purchase from a mail-order house? Or to secure a reservation at a hotel? Who's to say that the employees you're speaking with are honest? Or that your phone is not tapped? Or theirs? I shop on the Internet; I may get ripped off. What's my liability? Fifty bucks -- same as the other scenarios I've described. That's in my credit agreement with the card issuer. So why all the hoopla? Is credit card fraud significantly more prevalent on the Internet than in other modes of purchasing? Or is the banking industry whipping up hysteria among purchasers to curb fraud losses? Was the work of those graduate students funded by someone -- directly or indirectly? If so, by whom? A banking consortium? A high-tech company working on some patentable security scheme? Robert Herrig Peekskill, N.Y., Sept. 19,1995. The writer is a systems consultant.

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Re: GAK patents, anyone? Re: GAK patents, anyone?
by Antonomasia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date Arrived: 10Sep_19:13:47 From: roach_s(a)alph.swosu.edu ----------- ... > Back up just a minute. > Aren't inventions protected if the patent is pending? If not, why do such > well known companies who undoubtly have savvy legal council produce products > stamped "patent pending"? I've always regarded it as "We applied for a patent and it hasn't actually been refused yet, so keep off." [The following is based on various magazine articles, net discussions etc.] Until the last year or so (when it harmonised with GATT) US law produced "submarine patents". These were patents applied for, subject to a period of waiting of course, and then (if granted) were valid _from the date of the application_ i.e. back-dated. This meant you could quite innocently find yourself being clobbered by a patent that had only just sprung into existence. There were other problems including the US granting patents to the 'inventor' - rather than the 'first to file'. 'First to file' is actually a good indication of who the inventor is. The other scheme just got inventor-identity disputed by the lawyers. For a vision of patents as they should be, I know nothing to beat Phil Karn's web pages. http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/patents.html -- ############################################################## # Antonomasia ant(a)notatla.demon.co.uk # # See http://www.notatla.demon.co.uk/ # ##############################################################

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