December 2018 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Phys.org: Hybrid qubits solve key hurdle to quantum computing
by jim bell 28 Dec '18

28 Dec '18

Phys.org: Hybrid qubits solve key hurdle to quantum computing. https://phys.org/news/2018-12-hybrid-qubits-key-hurdle-quantum.html

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Wardialing Modems Guerrilla Network Opensource Cyberspace [re: Tim May]
by grarpamp 28 Dec '18

28 Dec '18

[Now using proper Subject tech...] If you have a line, you can still dial each other and negotiate up to 33.8kbps v.34bis, add better software compression (zstd) instead of depending on v.44, and add encryption algos on each end. v.92 56k needed an ISP end to work. Companies like US Robotics and Zoom might still make v.34bis hardware modems... see USR5637. Lots of modems on used market. Full hardware modem with PCM DSP is needed to do elite first pass random phone scanning that analyzes the analog instead of depending on successful second stage "V." negotiation. Plus you get as bonus all the WAV recordings of: "Hello... Helloooooo?! WTF!!!" ;-) Anyone still have that analysis software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ITU-T_V-series_recommendations You could probably do just as well creating your own modems with today's DIY hardware platforms in your local Makerspace. Opensource it on Github. On 12/23/18, jim bell <jdb10987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > You forgot that in 1992, typical dialup modems worked at 9600 bps. Now, > most people have access to 25 megabits/sec Internet. > I occasionally see people in discussion areas claim that "the U.S. > Government" was responsible for making "The Internet".I shut that talk down, > by pointing out "Do you think that The Internet would have 'worked' if a > person, at home, had to connect up to his ISP at with a 300 bps modem? 1200 > bps? 2400 bps?"I counter by pointing out that the people REALLY responsible > for a usable Internet were those who developed the 9600 bps, 14,400 bps, and > 28,800 bps modems. Rockwell, USR (US Robotics), Hayes, Telebit, and a few > others. Had that not existed, it would have been hard to make the Internet > available to most people. > From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem > "V.32 modems operating at 9600 bit/s were expensive and were only starting > to enter the market in the early 1990s when V.32bis was > standardized. Rockwell International's chip division developed a new driver > chip set incorporating the standard and aggressively priced it. Supra, > Inc. arranged a short-term exclusivity arrangement with Rockwell, and > developed the SupraFAXModem 14400based on it. Introduced in January 1992 at > $399 (or less), it was half the price of the slower V.32 modems already on > the market. This led to a price war, and by the end of the year V.32 was > dead, never having been really established, and V.32bis modems were widely > available for $250.V.32bis was so successful that the older high-speed > standards had little to recommend them. USR fought back with a 16,800 bit/s > version of HST, while AT&T introduced a one-off 19,200 bit/s method they > referred to as V.32ter, but neither non-standard modem sold well." > > And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem > > V.34/28.8 kbit/s and 33.6 kbit/s > > × > > × > > > "Any interest in these proprietary improvements was destroyed during the > lengthy introduction of the 28,800 bit/s V.34 standard. While waiting, > several companies decided to release hardware and introduced modems they > referred to as V.FAST. In order to guarantee compatibility with V.34 modems > once the standard was ratified (1994), the manufacturers were forced to use > more flexible parts, generally a DSP and microcontroller, as opposed to > purpose-designed ASIC modem chips. > "The ITU standard V.34 represents the culmination of the joint efforts. It > employs the most powerful coding techniques including channel encoding and > shape encoding. From the mere four bits per symbol (9.6 kbit/s), the new > standards used the functional equivalent of 6 to 10 bits per symbol, plus > increasing baud rates from 2,400 to 3,429, to create 14.4, 28.8, and > 33.6 kbit/s modems. This rate is near the theoretical Shannon limit. When > calculated, the Shannon capacity of a narrowband line is {\displaystyle > {\text{bandwidth}}\times \log _{2}(1+P_{u}/P_{n})}, with {\displaystyle > P_{u}/P_{n}} the (linear) signal-to-noise ratio. Narrowband phone lines have > a bandwidth of 3,000 Hz so using {\displaystyle P_{u}/P_{n}=1000} (SNR = > 30 dB), the capacity is approximately 30 kbit/s.[7]

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CenturyLink and 911 National Downtime [was: ATT Crash]
by grarpamp 28 Dec '18

28 Dec '18

https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/search?q=centurylink&sort=relevance&t=w… https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/a9z6tb/centurylink_outage_west… https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/aa030y/centurylink_customers_r… https://www.reddit.com/r/centurylink/comments/a9zwkx/centurylink_down_all_o… https://downdetector.com/status/centurylink https://status.ctl.io/ https://i.redd.it/dsd0r48tnw621.png " Spoke to CenturyLink this morning about a downed 10G LAN PHY in WA, the guy I talked to said they had a major DWDM outage causing problems all over the west side of the country. Their own internal ticketing system is currently down, ControlCenter is unreachable from various locations on the west side, all kinds of problems. They were working with their DWDM vendor, weren't able to give me an ETR. 6:30pm Eastern, I've repeatedly tried to reach 3rd level escalation lines xxxxxxxxx or xxxxxxxx however both numbers were flooded and indicated all services are unavailable upon each attempt and ultimately was unable to get through. Called the 4th level escalation lines xxxxxxxx or xxxxxxxx and spoke with Director of operations - who indicated that they still do not have an ETA, however assured me that they have engaged onsite hardware vendor support on all fronts to solve the problem and restore service. Efforts to regain visibility to sites in Atlanta, GA and Chicago, IL remain ongoing. Once visibility has been restored the filter will be applied to limit communication traffic between sites which was causing CPU spikes that in turn prevented the devices from functioning properly. From the call I'm on, I've been told they had lost complete management access due to these issues and had to wait for someone to be on site to resolve it. That's pretty extreme. "

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Bitcoin Private Denies Fraud Allegations and Calls for Halt to BTCP Trading
by jim bell 28 Dec '18

28 Dec '18

https://www.ccn.com/bitcoin-private-denies-fraud-allegations-and-calls-for-…

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The Economist (1988): One world currency in 2018 - not on track
by Zenaan Harkness 27 Dec '18

27 Dec '18

The globalists sought to usher in a one world currency system by 2018. Iraq and Libya were flattened, Syria flattening began, with Iran and North Korea intended on the tail end. Russia stepped in to support its long time ally Syria, and the one world government, one world currency, and one world carbon tax, is a project receding rather than rolling out. And some still wonder why Russia is so maligned? The Psychological Warfare Behind Economic Collapse https://www.silverdoctors.com/headlines/world-news/the-psychological-warfar… …The globalist magazine The Economist announced in 1988 the coming of a one-world currency system, one that would be launched in 2018 and that would require the decline of the U.S. economy and the dollar to open the door to the reset. …

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Timothy C. May tribute - TDS “#1 Timothy C. May Fan Site”
by Zenaan Harkness 27 Dec '18

27 Dec '18

True Neons shine brightly, ready to rock the boat if a jolly ole boat rocking be needed. At some times technology is called for. At others, grass roots or other action is needed. True punks know the difference. Stormer, Volume 70: A Death March For Timothy C. May dailystormer.name/stormer-volume-70-a-death-march-for-timothy-c-may/ PS, Merry Christmas to you and those you care for.

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L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department (The Great Bitcoin Heist)
by Razer 27 Dec '18

27 Dec '18

The NewYorker, from 2014 "I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that?" https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-depar… Rr Sent from my Androgyne dee-vice with K-9 Mail

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Tim May 1992 Post on Future of Cyberspace/Cryptology/Digital Money/Transnationalism
by John Young 26 Dec '18

26 Dec '18

Tim May 1992 Post on Future of Cyberspace/Cryptology/Digital Money/Transnationalism ---------- Source: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2013-September/000741.html>https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2013-September/000741.html From: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 11:06:29 PDT To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Some (Pseudo)Random Thoughts Message-ID: <9210141805.AA04539(a)netcom2.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Some thoughts on the recent meetings and what we're doing: 1. The importance of trading physical goods in the Crypto Anarchy Game. This, in my view, has been given undue and misleading importance. Physical goods are inherently easy to trace through remailers (via sniffers, radioactive tracers, weight of packages, and many other physical cues), are hard to store physically (imagine getting 100 parcels for later remailing), and, most importantly, have none of the "envelope within envelope within...." protection accorded to the bits of a cryptographic remailing, or DC-Net, system! The elegance of cryptographic protocols is lost with physical goods. Furthermore, physical delivery of any good, whether drugs, stolen missile components, antiquities and art items, whatever, is fundamentally a hard problem to solve...smugglers and thieves have been dealing this since the beginning of time. Stings can be easily arranged, delivery is not anonymous (one merely watches who takes delivery, or who opens a train station locker, etc....this is all SOP for narcs and counterespionage types), and a raid on a remailing entity will result in confiscation of the physical goods and (likely) prosecution of those caught holding the stuff. (Raiding a bit remailing entity produces only random-appearing bits...granted, the authorities may well outlaw bit remailing, or use the RICO and conspiracy/sedition laws to prosecute, but that's another topic.) Our recent emphasis on physical goods, and all the ideas pouring in on what other kinds of "contraband" besides drugs can be used, is misleading. None of the richness of the cryptographic world is faithfully preserved. I urge we get back to our roots and deal only with things that can be expressed purely in bit form. 2. The "colonization of cyberspace" does not mean there is no interaction with the physical world, of course. But that interaction can be mediated with money made by converting information or digital money into physical money. Several methods for this conversion path can be considered: -Alice sells information in the cyberspace domain for the equivalent of, say, $30,000. She converts this to "real" dollars by using an escrow entity which hold both sides of the transaction until it's completed. They then mail the information to the purchaser and send an ordinary check "for services rendered" to Alice for $30K. She reports it on her taxes, probably as a "consulting fee" (for which essentially no government supervision currently exists, nor is likely to....), and the conversion has taken place. (Note: there are still elements of trust involved, notably involving the escrow agent, but trust works pretty well for many things, especially when reputations are at stake. Understanding how real businesses depend on reputations is a missing part of modern cryptology analyses of transactions...the protocol analyzers and number theorists almost never take into account how reputations work in the real world, But I digress.) -Alice and Bob trade information such that Bob gets the information worth about $30K, as above, and Alice gets another piece of information she can use in the "real world" that is worth about $30K. This might be stock tips, or, better, information she can turn around and sell in the "open market" of a service like AMIX! There are lots of wrinkles, inefficiencies, etc., to be worked out. -And then there is digital money. You all know about this, or should. David Chaum, DigiCash, blinded notes, credentials, etc. The handout for the first meeting had a glossary of terms. (IMHO, we should be spending more of our time at our meeting discussing this, and less in playing more interations of the Game.) The fascinating novel "Snow Crash," by Neil Stephenson, makes a mistake in having Hiro Protagonist a very wealthy man in the Metaverse (Stephenson's term for the virtual reality cyberspace) but a very poor man in the Real World. Information _is_ money. Information is liquid, flows across borders, and is generally convertible into real money. (One simple conversion strategy, alluded to above, is for Alice to sell her information for, say, $500K, and then to receive a "consulting contract," perhaps called a "retainer," of $50K a year for the next 20 years. Her retainer is fully legal, is perhaps handled through cut-outs who specialize in this kind of thing, and is a low-risk way to "launder" money from cyberspace into the real world. I have a lot more to say on these schemes, perhaps later.) 3. Are we emphasizing "The Game" too much? If the goal is to produce a paper-based game, similar to "Monopoly" or fantasy role-playing games, then I suppose more practice is needed. But I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to try to design such a game. (Those who wish to should do so, then commercialize it, and become the Avalon Hill of crypto games!) If the goal is educational, for newly interested folks, then I also question how much more effort should be put into it. The ideas of anonymous remailers, of digital money, etc., are, I think, gotten across in the first 60 minutes of the game, especially if some of the formalism is first explained (as it was at the first game, where digital mixes, tamper-resistand modules for implementing mixes, the "Dining Cryptographers Protocol," and digital money had all been freshly covered, so participants were putting the theory to test). I found the first game was instructive, the second much less so (and _not_ because of the focus on drug selling...that was a relatively minor issue). My impression is that many of the newcomers--and they should jump in here with their own reactions (too bad we don't have hypertext links!)--didn't really know how remailing mixes work, how digital psueodnyms can protect privacy in transactions, and how the "Game" was intended to exercise these concepts. 4. We need to talk about the charter or purpose of the "Cypherpunks" or "Cryptology Amateurs for Social Irresponsibility" (CASI--Eric Hughes's term) group. -Is it mostly educational? -Is it a lobbying group, as are EFF, CPSR, and the like? -Is it to produce remailers, digital money, and other programming? -Is it subversive? Now clearly we can't say it's subversive (any bets on who's gatewaying these messages to Other Listeners?). But we also don't want to skew things toward "YALG" (Yet Another Lobbying Group), nor do we want to be a spoon-feeding educational group for people with a casual (and transient) interest in crypto stuff. 5. There have have been several messages so far about worries about the legal implications of these topics, about how some corporate-affiliated subscribers will desubscribe "real fast" if certain discussion trends continue, and so on. Now we can't please everybody, but maybe we ought to talk about this sensitive issue soon, and _in person_. Since it relates to our charter, Point 4 above, I recommend we do this at our next meeting. I'd favor that over another iteration of the Game. In conclusion, we are in at the beginning of Something Big. While I'm somewhat skeptical about the claims for things like nanotech, I see this whole cyberspace/cryptology/digital money/transnationalism ball of wax being _much_ easier to implement. Networks are multiplying beyond any hope of government control, bandwidths are skyrocketing, CPUs are putting awesome power on our desktops, PGP is generating incredible interest, and social trends are making the time right for crypto anarchy. I look forward to hearing your views. -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | PGP 2.0 and MailSafe keys by arrangement.

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The Star Online: Is quantum computing a cybersecurity threat? - Tech News
by jim bell 26 Dec '18

26 Dec '18

The Star Online: Is quantum computing a cybersecurity threat? - Tech News. http://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/12/26/is-quantum-computing-a-…

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Re: cypherpunks Digest, Vol 66, Issue 55
by morlockelloi＠yahoo.com 26 Dec '18

26 Dec '18

Mr. May was amiable in person and exhibited high integrity. My take is that he detected the plague of identarianism early on, before many did, and had instinctive revulsion to it. Too bad so few did the same. > From: John Young<jya(a)pipeline.com> > Subject: Re: Timothy C. May tribute - TDS â#1Timothy C. May Fan Siteâ > > Tim relished hurling offensive language in the way Trump (and a slew > of others) do against herdish PC. But he does not curse and spout > vulgarities as if linguistic propriety enhances credibility, hard to > imagine him bragging of grabbing pussies.

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