Blank Frank and Lori Banks

[Andrew Jenks]

You can always chat with MS about "fixing" the password problems.  If
your child is a minor, you've got the right to access that information
(and depending upon your state, maybe even if he isn't).

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Stewart [mailto:bill.stewart at pobox.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 12:35 AM
To: Lori Banks; cypherpunks at toad.com
Subject: Re: Blank Frank and Lori Banks


At 07:51 AM 1/23/01 -0600, Lori Banks wrote:
> I just read an interesting email that you sent concerning cracking
.pwl
files.  
>I have a need to crack a .pwl file, but I don't know how to make that
program work. 
> I'm really not computer literate (if you can't tell).  
>I am a concerned parent that has stumbled upon information that is 
>not good regarding my teen and the Internet.  
>Could you help me find out what these passwords are or how to work that
program? 
> I downloaded some sort of password pwl program and it showed 17
passwords, 
>but they are encrypted. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mrs. Banks  

Mrs. Banks - Cypherpunks is a large, noisy mailing list.
In addition to talking about cryptography, privacy, and the effects
on economics and politics of being able to talk and conduct business
without government interference, and random other topics,
we end up receiving lots of mail from people pretending to be
teenagers asking us about bombs, hacking, credit cards, etc.
Some of them are clueless kiddies who think we'll tell them
how to steal stuff to make bombs so they can be rilly kewl d00ds,
some of them are annoying kiddies who've found they can stir up
lots of annoyed discussion by posting provocative or clueless questions,
and some are probably cops who think they can stir up business
by finding people doing stuff with Bombs and Computer Crime
that make good headline material.*

So don't be surprised if readers like Blank Frank take you for 
one of these three categories (start at the middle and work your way
out),
and either gives you the flames you're looking for or
the abuse you deserve if you're one of the clueless types.
Your message could be perfectly legitimate, but it's just
dripping with troll bait....  We haven't had anybody
saying their somebody's Mom who wants to break into her kid's
machine before, but hey, there's a first time for everything.
On the other hand, many of us were once teenagers who had
parents who didn't understand us (what a surprise, eh?)
and a request saying "I don't trust my kid and I want to crack
his passwords to spy on him" isn't guaranteed to get more
sympathy for you than for your kid.

Anyway, that being said, there are only a few reasons for having
lots of Microsoft password files around.  One is that your son has
created
lots of logins on your home computer, either for his friends to use
or because he's creating lots of different identities for himself.
The former is something you may want to talk to him about,
depending on how much control you want to have over that computer
(is it his bedroom game machine or are you running the family business
on it?)
Another is that he has logins of his own on multiple machines using
Microsoft-style logins.   That's kind of odd - is he running a bunch
of web pages on FrontPage-based servers, or is he cracking into
corporate machines?

The "17 passwords" is pretty close to a magic number, which is the
number
of "access devices" it takes for possessing stolen/cracked passwords
to become a US Federal crime.  I forget if the number is 15,
in which case by asking us to crack them you're asking us to
commit a Federal crime (remember the discussion about cops trying
to win friends and influence headlines through entrapment?),
depending on whether you have authorization to access the machines
that those passwords apply to (if you give us permission to crack the
passwords for your own machine, it's not a crime, but if they're
the passwords for your kid's publishing accounts on commercial porn
sites,
that might be criminal, and if they're for accounts your kid's
trying to break into, or if you're really the kid or a cop,
it could be criminal.)  

So if you're thinking about breaking into your kid's machine,
because you don't trust him, yes, you've got some relationship
problems you'll have to deal with.  Not much different from asking
your kid where he went and having him say "Out" - either you go
ask all the neighbors where he went because he won't tell you,
or you work on the relationship, or you hire a private detective
to track him, just as you could probably hire Access Data or somebody
to break his password files, if you were willing to risk criminality.
I'd recommend going for the relationship....


===================
*  (Perhaps some are even good cops trying to do what they think is 
their job by stopping clueless kiddies from posting dangerous inaccurate

information where more clueless kiddies will find it.  
We do have some cops and Feds on the list that are open about it, 
and they're good folks we go shooting with :-)


				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639