- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: Sandy and I will run a cypherpunks "moderation" experiment in Jan
by Rich Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:56 PM 1/6/97 +1000, Robert Barnes <rbarnes(a)gil.com.au> wrote: [snip] >My bottom line feeling with respect to this is that we cannot >expect freedom unless we are willing to exercise responsibility. >It is apparent that the people who are noisiest about freedom of >speech and content censoring are working tirelessly to abuse >the list and provoke the very opposite of their stated ideals. Hmmm. There has been some of that, but some of use who have spoken about freedom of speech have done so because of legitimate concerns, not just to gain advantage in an ongoing, juvenile campaign. >As for the spammers who have run riot in recent months, >moderation will remove the burden of re-transmitting this unwanted >garbage from the list server and save us all the time and effort >currently wasted dealing with it. Not completely. The plan John mentioned didn't elimainate the full version of the list -- it just added a modertated version. There will still be some garbage floating through Toad Hall, but not as much :) I think the idea of two versions of the list is an excellent one, and it avoids the issues raised by presenting the list in only a moderated form. If people want the spam they can have it, and if they don't they can take advantage of John and Sandy's work, and read a more coherent version of the list. I will certainly choose the latter, but it is nice to know that the choice is mine. John and Sandy -- thanks for getting this rolling. Rich ______________________________________________________________________ Rich Burroughs richieb(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~richieb U.S. State Censorship Page at - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/state dec96 issue "cause for alarm" - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/cause

1 0

Re: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice
by Dave Hayes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> writes: > Rich Graves wrote: > > Bill Frantz wrote: > > > At 10:54 AM -0800 12/31/96, Timothy C. May wrote: > > > >Our focus is more radical. We are effectively a cyber-militia, > > > >fulfilling Jefferson's recommendation that a revolution happen > > > >every 20 years. (Funny, there hasn't been one in more than 200 years.[snip] > > >I would say that the street action which effectively eliminated legally > > >mandated racial segregation about 25 years ago qualifies as a revolution.[snip] > > Cryptoanarchy, as envisioned here, is not about people mobbing in the > > streets. It's fundamentally about insulating oneself from the mobs in > > the streets. However, revolutions tend to have unintended consequences.[snip] > Looks like we're coming to the old "irresistable force meets immovable > object" consensus, yes? Interesting. I suspect that all of you have forgotton that in order for there to be a revolution, there has to be something to revolt against. It works the other way too: in order to have elitist rulers, there have to be sheep. If you desire neither, then you have to renounce BOTH positions. It's not easy, but it -always- works. ------ Dave Hayes - Altadena CA, USA - dave(a)jetcafe.org Freedom Knight of Usenet - http://www.jetcafe.org/~dave/usenet No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

1 0

Re: John Gilmore, 58, dead of AIDS
by aga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 5 Jan 1997, Paul Pomes wrote: > |Somebody said it was a lie, but has anybody really SEEN this queer lately? > > Why do you care so much about Mr Gilmore's sexual orientation? Could there > be some internal conflict about your own that you'd like to share with us? > It would make a nice change from your usual rantings. > We care about his sexual orientation because it supports the proposition that MOST of the problem people currently on UseNet are "confirmed" homosexuals. Here is a list of three of the biggest problem people, and they are ALL problem people. J.D. Falk Peter Berger John Gilmore Of course, tale and Chris lewis have not been confirmed as homosexuals, so the percentage of "homos per.problem humanoids" will decline. > /pbp > -- > Fire mission ... battery one round ... rifle company in the open. Fire for > effect. (6 105mm rounds later) Add four hundred, left two hundred, > battalion six rounds. Fire for effect. > -- Lt Allen Bell, Chorwan Valley, Korea 1951 > > Nonetheless, the inordinately high percentage of homosexuals in the newsgroup administration is probably explained by the same social factors as the extremely high number of jews in the medical and legal professions and the high number of blacks in sports.

1 0

Double crypt strength
by Rick Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am curious as to the strength of Un*x crypt when used upon itself. I was thinking of was to obfuscate passwords and a few came to mind (obviously not original): 1. Use a hashed passphrase. 2. Encrypt your original password and then used that as your password. (Or triple, quadruple, ad inifinitum...) Re #1: I know that a good hash will take a pass phrase and reduce it to a statistically random sequence. I'm not intending to use the hash for verfication, but for two reasons: 1. Get a nice random jumble 2. Come out with something shorter than I came in with. Re #2: This I thought might help spoil a dictionary attack. Granted, if the attacker knows that you are doing this, it only adds one step in his process, but if he doesn't it turns his attack into plain brute force. Plus, for Un*x users, it's right there on the command line and only adds a few seconds to the entire procees of changing passwords. The added benefit with both of these is that the user does not have to remember some cryptic string, but can remember his normal password/phrase. By this, it is obviously not a commercial-use scheme, but one for individual users. (If everyone used the same algorithm, it'd be kinda pointless, right?) So with everyone (hashing down/reencrypting) their (passphrases/passwords) with different algorithms, all attacks are reduced to brute force. Either that, or the attacker has to figure out what algorithm the user used, still making a dictionary attack that much harder. So what are the comments on a system like this? Obviously, they are not original ideas, but I would like to know what has been said about them. Rick Osborne / osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com / Northrop Grumman Corporation ------------------------------------------------------------------------- What the hell, it's only 4 month's grant - I can live in a cardboard box, and catch pigeons for food. After all, I've got raytracing to do!

1 0

Re: Sandy and I will run a cypherpunks "moderation" experiment in Jan
by Rich Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:06 AM 1/6/97 -0800, toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca wrote: >I believe that every "EASY $$$ MONEY" posting ought to be forwarded >to the webmaster at the site from which it originated. > Those who are harboring these generous souls should also be afforded >the opportunity to rake in the cash. I can hardly see how anybody >could possibly resent being reminded of the wonderful opportuninties >they are making it possible for us to learn of. Be careful when mailbombing in retribution for spam. Often the aricles are forged, and sometimes it's with the direct intention of getting someone else mailbombed. I traded some email with a system administrator a few days ago in this boat -- they had cancelled a customer's account, and to get revenge the former customer sent out a bunch of spam that was forged to look like it came from this sys admin's domain. Even if the site wasn't literally mailbombed, the system administrator had to spend a lot of time, I'm sure, delaing with unhappy recipients of the spam, like myself. Mailbombing is almost always a bad plan, IMHO, besides being a denial of service attack and probably illegal in a lot of places. Rich ______________________________________________________________________ Rich Burroughs richieb(a)teleport.com http://www.teleport.com/~richieb U.S. State Censorship Page at - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/state dec96 issue "cause for alarm" - http://www.teleport.com/~richieb/cause

1 0

Re: Anonymous Post Control
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Well the obvious answer seems to me to stop majordomo at toad.com > > accepting ANY messages from anonymous sources but let pseudonyms > > post, pseudonymous posting allows the owner of the nym to accumulate > > reputation capital without disclosing his or her true identity. > > Paul Bradley accumulated oodles of reputation capital with his > obscene rants about "brute force attacks on one-time pads". I do not see what was remotely "obscene" about a slip up of this kind, and please refrase from using the plural where it is not appropriate, I posted such a mistake once and immediately realised what I had said and retracted it. > > Now he wants more censorship. If you had cared to comment in the rest of my posting to your reply you would have seen that immediately after stating this solution I confirmed that I do not encourage this or condone it as it is censorship, but that it was merely a solution, not a good one granted but still worthy of mentioning. For those who (ahem) overlooked that part of my posting here it is again. >Bear in mind of course that this is a purely technical answer and I >happen not to believe that anonymous posting should be stopped. But of course you chose not to comment this in as it allowed you to credibly rant about me wanting censorship, at least argue with someone you have a dispute with rather than just randomly picking people and quoting parts of their posts out of context then flaming them. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

1 0

No Subject
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto wrote: > > (If you think our list is bad, you ought to see lists which are completely > > dominated by one-line witticisms and inside jokes....) > > Or 10,000 messages saying only, "Merry Christmas", followed a few days > later by another 10,000 messages saying, "Happy New Year". > Anyone who needs 'proof' that I am speaking the truth, here, (and who > has a 10Gb hard drive), can just send me their email address, and I > would be glad to forward them. Thanks for your kind offer. Please send the material to: dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Better send several copies of each message to make sure none get lost.) I can also get mail at: aga(a)dhp.com Might as well send to both accounts. Thanks again!

1 0

Spam Trading
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If anyone is unhappy with the spam they receive on CypherPunks, I am willing to trade some of my spam from other conferences. Send Me: 1 "Jimmy Gilmore is a cocksucker." I Will Send You: 1,000 "Merry Xmas" Send Me: 1 "Timmy May is a cocksucker." I Will Send You: 1,000 "Happy New Year" Send Me: 1 "Help! I ran that file from fuck(a)yourself.up" I Will Send You: 1,000 "Welcome to the Conference" Send Me: 1 "unsribrive" I Will Send You: 1,000 "Sorry You're Leaving" I can only offer you these amazing deals because one of the conferences I subscribe to is OCD-L (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder List). No need to 'ACT NOW', I'll have plenty of "Merry Xmas" and "Happy New Years" messages continuing to trickle in from the Procrasinators Support list.

2 1

Modified Token Posting Scheme
by Mixmaster 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>The proposal to limit "noise" posts by using re-usable tokens is >interesting because it has the effect of filtering and at the >same >time remains responsive because the "moderator" passes judgement >after posting has occurred. > >In essence, the poster is betting that the moderator will approve >the post retroactively. > >The purpose of limiting the tokens available is to give them >value >so that there is a cost associated with losing the bet. > >However, distribution of the tokens has the same problems that >centrally >planned economies have distributing bread. Should people wait in >line, >receive bread at random, or get their bread through connections? > None of >these solutions is attractive. > >The right way to implement the scheme is to use dollars for >tokens >because the USG has already solved the problem of giving the >tokens >value. > >The "moderator" returns the money to people when posts are >worthwhile >and keeps it otherwise. This means that the "bet" can be quite a >bit >larger than a dollar because responsible posters will get their >money >back. Starving graduate students will not be discouraged from >posting. >Abusive posters, anonymous posters, or spam artists will have to >pay >a substantial fee for the privilege. > >Of course, there's no reason to have just one moderator on the >list. >A moderator could just be an e-mail account that forwards mail to >the list if valid payment is received. (Moderators should PGP >sign >their messages so mail forging won't work.) Readers could filter >on which moderators have approved the kinds of posts they want to >read. > >The effect of this scheme is to allow newcomers, infrequent >posters, >or anonymous posters to get through killfiles without taking the >time and effort to develop a reputation. > >Peter Hendrickson >ph(a)netcom.com Why the FUCK don't we just find the antichrist or call on GOD to kill all spammers and then buy a gun and shot holes in the computer?? this whole isssue will never be solved without action get a fuckin real job!!!!!!

1 0

Re: Modified Token Posting Scheme
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:55 PM 1/6/97 -0800, Ed Falk wrote: > >How about this simple policy scheme: > > 1) posts from known list members forwarded to list automatically > 2) posts with "approval cookie" also forwarded automatically > 3) otherwise, forwarded only after approval by moderator, whose charter > only permits spam filtering. Seems this is what the STUMP scheme we read about yesterday does. I suggest Sandy and John take a good look at it. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm

1 0