I don't know whether you all have seen this: I've got a double-sawbuck that says it's nonsense, but those of you who are into recreational paranoia may enjoy it. I especially enjoyed the mention of the Bilderbergers...
From: fringeware@io.com (FringeWare Inc) To: lefty@apple.com Precedence: list List-Server: fringeware-request@io.com Errors-To: fringeware-owner@io.com X-Www-Page: http://io.com/commercial/fringeware/home.html Keywords: exchael psychotes convestuffican geneur existration tription Subject: HACK - U HAVE NO PRIVACY Reply-To: holo@netcom.com (D. Ronan Hallowell) Date: Wed, 25 May 1994 21:51:06 -0700 (PDT)
Sent from: holo@netcom.com (D. Ronan Hallowell)
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Date: Wed, 25 May 94 09:42:11 -0700 From:paul.geronca@support.com To: sfraves@techno.Stanford.EDU
[mod's note: We received another forwarded copy of this message annotated with a msg saying it's a hoax...?]
NSA can crack PGP
A lot of people think that PGP encryption is unbreakable and that the NSA/FBI/CIA/MJ12 cannot read their mail. This is wrong, and it can be a deadly mistake. In Idaho, a left-wing activist by the name of Craig Steingold was arrested _one day_ before he and others went to stage a protest at government buildings; the police had a copy of a message sent by Steingold to another activist, a message which had been encrypted with PGP and sent through E-mail.
Since version 2.1, PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy") has been rigged to allow the NSA to easily break encoded messages. Early in 1992, the author, Paul Zimmerman, was arrested by Government agents. He was told that he would be set up for trafficking narcotics unless he complied. The Government agency's demands were simple: He was to put a virtually undetectable trapdoor, designed by the NSA, into all future releases of PGP, and to tell no-one.
After reading this, you may think of using an earlier version of PGP. However, any version found on an FTP site or bulletin board has been doctored. Only use copies acquired before 1992, and do NOT use a recent compiler to compile them. Virtually ALL popular compilers have been modified to insert the trapdoor (consisting of a few trivial changes) into any version of PGP prior to 2.1. Members of the boards of Novell, Microsoft, Borland, AT&T and other companies were persuaded into giving the order for the modification (each ot these companies' boards contains at least one Trilateral Commission member or Bilderberg Committee attendant).
It took the agency more to modify GNU C, but eventually they did it. The Free Software Foundation was threatened with "an IRS investigation", in other words, with being forced out of business, unless they complied. The result is that all versions of GCC on the FTP sites and all versions above 2.2.3, contain code to modify PGP and insert the trapdoor. Recompiling GCC with itself will not help; the code is inserted by the compiler into itself. Recompiling with another compiler may help, as long as the compiler is older than from 1992.
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-- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.