Biological Warfare
I came up with an idea for fighting GAK. Biological warefare. This is a tried and true formula for war. The Europeans used it to great effect against the Native Americans in the form of Rabies and Smallpoxs. The Europeans even used a form of it even earlier, throwing the rotting corpses of dead horses into beseiged cities to spread desease. The more modern chemical warefare has been used in both world wars and possibly by Saddam Hussain during the Gulf War. What I propose is a virus. For GAK to work, there have to be lines of code in the encryption program to give the government access. It has been commented here that anyone who can get the source code can comment those lines out. Let's be frank, very few will have that option. However, a software patch could be made that commented out the offending code of any given product. Perhaps also altering some visible part of the program so that you know that your conversations are now secure. Perhaps the addition of a small ascii character to the corner of the screen. The program that delivers the patch could be made in the form of a rather innocuous computer virus. Or, if you prefer, a worm. This way, the program can travel the same highways of silicon that the GAKked messages travel to deGAK the software that it targets whenever it encounters it. Give the software a relatively short lifespan, on the order of a year or so, before all copies check thier date and decide to self destruct. No need for the virus if the software has been upgraded. Then you'd need a new version of the virus. The project would be a large one as persons would have to get ahold of the source. Probably through decompiling it and figuring out what the now undocumented source does at each step. The actual virus would be easy to code by comparison. This should not preclude fighting the onset of GAK, rather the functional incorporation of GAK. What is the government going to do with 50,000 americans who have been using unGAKked software because they didn't know that it had been infected? Keep the visual clue as small as possible, maybe an extra period in a line of periods. That way an argument can be made for ignorance of the crime. That is all.
At 2:43 PM -0700 9/17/97, Sean Roach wrote:
I came up with an idea for fighting GAK. Biological warefare. This is a tried and true formula for war. The Europeans used it to great effect against the Native Americans in the form of Rabies and Smallpoxs. The Europeans even used a form of it even earlier, throwing the rotting corpses of dead horses into beseiged cities to spread desease. The more modern chemical warefare has been used in both world wars and possibly by Saddam Hussain during the Gulf War.
While I support your general goals, the idea of releasing Sarin or anthrax or other agents near the warrens of the burrowcrats in Washington is likely to backfire. Although the rodent extermination might succeed, the rodents have a prodigious ability to breed more of themselves. It's not clear that calling in the Orkin man to rid the infestation in the Congress will accomplish anything. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
On Wed, Sep 17, 1997 at 03:47:47PM -0700, Tim May wrote: [...]
While I support your general goals, the idea of releasing Sarin or anthrax or other agents near the warrens of the burrowcrats in Washington is likely to backfire. Although the rodent extermination might succeed, the rodents have a prodigious ability to breed more of themselves. It's not clear that calling in the Orkin man to rid the infestation in the Congress will accomplish anything.
As I am sure Tim is intelligent enough to realize, this argument also applies to the "suitcase" option, and all the other fantasies of righteous violence that float through this list. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
participants (3)
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Kent Crispin -
Sean Roach -
Tim May