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GOVERNMENT ACCREDITED LICENSED LOTTERY

[Mrs. Mildred Hugo]

PROMOTERS. WINNING NOTICE FOR CATEGORY \"A\" WINNER

 Dear Lucky Winner,
RE: BONUS LOTTERY PROMOTION PRIZE AWARDS WINNING NOTIFICATION
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final 
draws of De Lotto Netherlands International Lottery programs.
The online cyber lotto draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 25,000 
e-mail addresses of individual and corporate bodies picked by an advanced 
automated random computer search from the internet. No tickets were sold.
After this automated computer ballot, your e-mail address emerged as one of two 
winners in the category \"A\" with the following:

 Ref Number: 35149/337-5247/LNI

 Batch Number: 26371545-LNI/2004

 Ticket Number: 54866235
You as well as the other winner are therefore to receive a cash prize of € 
800,000.00.  (EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND EURO ONLY) each from the total payout.
Your prize award has been insured with your e-mail address and will be 
transferred to you upon meeting our requirements, statutory obligations, 
verifications, validations and satisfactory report.
To begin the claims processing of your prize winnings you are advised to 
contact our licensed and accredited claims agent for category \"A\" winners 
with the information below:
 Mr.ANDREW WELL,
 Financial Director,
 Netherlands Development Finance Company,
 De Amsterdam’s
 Port Bijlmerplein
 888 1102 MG Amsterdam
 1000 BV Amsterdam

 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 TEL: +31.623.766.830
 FAX: +31.847-376-880
NOTE: All winnings must be claimed not later than 20 days. After this date all 
unclaimed funds would be included in the next stake. Remember to quote your 
reference information in all correspondence.
You are to keep all lotto information away from the general public especially 
your reference and ticket numbers. (This is important as a case of double 
claims will not be entertained).
Anybody under the age of 18 and members of the affiliate agencies are 
automatically not allowed to participate in this program.
Thank you and congratulations!!!

 Yours faithfully,
 Mrs. Mildred Hugo
 Games/Lottery Coordinator.
 De Lotto Netherlands International
 www.lotto.nl


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Original message follows.

Allergies Making You Miserable?

[Sydney Starks]

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Make Your Computer Programs, Data Invisible to Everyone Except Yourself with MyInvisibleDisk - Infobahn Sdn. Bhd.

[R.A. Hettinga]

  

  
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 See More Related Computers News
News Released: December 27, 2004

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-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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'

Re: Finally, the Killer PKI Application

[D. Popkin]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-

"R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> 

>  But SSL's greatest weakness is that it is oriented toward synchronous
> transactions, requiring a direct connection between participants.

Yep.  Makes it difficult to thwart traffic analysis.

>  Security in the Message
> The solution to this problem, as put forth in standards by OASIS and
> the W3C, is to absorb security into the message itself.  That is,
> provide a means of authentication, integrity, and confidentiality
> that is integral to the message, and completely decoupled from
> transport channels.

... the way encrypted email has always been.

>  The Trend Away from Channel-Level Security

> ... Furthermore, everyone is building systems predicated to have key
> pairs on both sides of a transaction: at the message producer
> (client), and the message consumer (server).

> ... SSL is sufficient for Web-like, client/server application, but
> large enterprise computing is built on asynchronous messaging;

This is welcome news also for pseudonymous p2p commerce.

> So PKI is back.

Maybe a work-around can be devised.

> Scott Morrison

D. Popkin


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Version: 2.6.3ia
Charset: noconv

iQBVAwUBQdDl3PPsjZpmLV0BAQGyVAIAu5Zc+PFv8CuKkzFv3hmnkIlZ/bXVmMNQ
zg2o1rG/4omH5RFn9B4VXJsCxespviw+Ysnpa31XgQ8f9LdxYCIz4w==
=MbdB
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Scientists close to network that defies hackers

[R.A. Hettinga]

The Financial Times



Scientists close to network that defies hackers
By Clive Cookson, Science Editor
Published: December 28 2004 02:00 | Last updated: December 28 2004 02:00
Scientists have taken what they say is a big step towards an intrinsically
secure computer network which banks and other institutions could use to
transmit data without risk of hacking.

Toshiba Research Europe is one of several laboratories around the world
racing to commercialise quantum cryptography, a technology that uses
quantum mechanics to generate unbreakable codes. The Cambridge-based
company says it has produced the first system robust enough to run
uninterruptedly for long periods without human intervention.

The Toshiba researchers have tested the system with MCI, the international
telecommunications company, and plan next year to carry out trials with
financial institutions in London.

Secure digital communication uses long prime numbers as keys to encode data
at one end and decode at the other. Inquantum cryptography, individual
photons - light particles - transmit the secret keys down optical fibres.
Each photon carries a digital bit of information, depending on its
polarisation. To outwit hackers, the keys are changed many times a second.

The extreme delicacy of these quantum bits is both the strength and
weakness of quantum cryptography. On the positive side, a hacker cannot
eavesdrop on the data transmission without changing it and alerting sender
and receiver to the breach of security. But the system is easily disturbed
by tiny fluctuations such as temperature changes in the transmission
apparatus or movements in the optical fibres.

Previous quantum cryptography transmissions have lasted only for minutes
and required continual adjustment by experts, says Andrew Shields, head of
Toshiba's quantum information group. His laboratory managed to extend the
running time to a week's "entirely automated and uninterrupted session".

The Cambridge researchers stabilised the system and reduced the error rate
by sending a bright "guardian pulse" of light down the fibres immediately
after each information-carrying photon.

Mr Shields said: "The technology is now sufficiently mature to be used in
real-world situations and we are currently discussing applications with
interested parties. In the first instance we expect quantum cryptography to
be used in companies' private networks - for example, to provide secure
traffic in a link between two sites within a metropolitan area."

Besides Japanese-owned Toshiba, large electronics companies competing to
commercialise quantum cryptography include NEC of Japan and Hewlett-Packard
of the US. There are also two start-ups, Magiq Technologies of the US and
ID Quantique of Switzerland, with first generation quantum cryptography
products on the market, although sales have not been large.
-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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'

LAPD: We Know That Mug

[R.A. Hettinga]

Wired News

LAPD: We Know That Mug 
Associated Press

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66142,00.html

08:33 AM Dec. 26, 2004 PT

LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with
facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil
liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not
identity people accurately.

 "It's like a mobile electronic mug book," said Capt. Charles Beck of the
gang-heavy Rampart Division, which has been using the software. "It's not a
silver bullet, but we wouldn't use it unless it helped us make arrests."


 But Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union of Southern California, said the technology was unproven and could
encourage profiling on the basis of race or clothing.

 "This is creeping Big Brotherism," Ripston said. "There is a long history
of government misusing information it gathers."

 The department is seeking about $500,000 from the federal government to
expand the use of the technology, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
Police have been testing it on Alvarado Street just west of downtown Los
Angeles.

 In one recent incident, two officers suspected two men illegally riding
double on a bicycle of being gang members. If they were, they may have been
violating an injunction that barred those named in a court documents from
gathering in public and other activities.

 As the officers questioned the men, Rampart Division Senior Lead Officer
Mike Wang pointed a hand-held computer with an attached camera at one of
the men. Facial-recognition software compared his image to those of recent
fugitives, as well as to dozens of members of local gangs.

 Within seconds, the screen displayed nine faces that had contours similar
to the man's. The computer said the image of one particular gang member
subject to the injunction was 94 percent likely to be a match.

 That enough to trigger a search that yielded a small amount of
methamphetamine. The man did turn out to be the gang member, and was
arrested on suspicion of violating the injunction by possessing illegal
drugs. The city attorney's office has not yet decided whether to charge the
man.

 The LAPD has been using two computers donated by their developer, Santa
Monica company Neven Vision, which wanted field-testing of its technology.
The computers are still considered experimental.

 The Rampart Division has used the devices about 25 times in the two months
officers have been testing them. The technology has resulted in 16 arrests
for alleged criminal contempt of a permanent gang injunction, and three
arrests on outstanding felony warrants.

 On one occasion, the computer was used to clear a man the officers
suspected of being someone else, police said.

 So far, the city attorney has filed seven injunction cases in arrests that
involved the technology. A judge dismissed a case after questioning the
technology, but it has been refiled. Suspects in two cases pleaded guilty.

 Other experiments with facial-recognition software have had mixed results.
Officials in Tampa, Fla., stopped using it last year because it didn't
result in arrests. And a Boston's Logan International Airport in 2002, two
systems failed 96 times to identify people who volunteered to help test it.
The technology correctly identified 153 other volunteers.

 Luis Li, chief of the Los Angeles city attorney's criminal branch, said
the technology should not present legal problems because it was used only
as an initial means of identification.

 "If you are standing in the street, you have no expectation of privacy,"
he said.

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
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'

[fc-announce] FC05 Preliminary Program Now Online

[R.A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.1.0.040913
From: "Stuart E. Schechter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [fc-announce] FC05 Preliminary Program Now Online
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 11:37:27 -0500

The program and preliminary schedule can be found at:
   http://www.ifca.ai/fc05/program.html

   An official call for participation will be sent out as soon as
registration is open.  (We expect this to be early next week.)

   If you've yet to make travel arrangements, I would encourage you to stay
in Dominica on Thursday night (3/3) or longer to avoid a rush to the airport
after the morning program.  In the past, attendees who have stayed after the
conference have found that this is an excellent time to meet with others.


Keynote Speakers


Lynne Coventry (NCR)
Bezalel Gavish (Southern Methodist University)

Panel Sessions
==

Financial Technology in the Developing World
Allan Friedman (Harvard) - Organizer
Alessandro Acquisti (CMU)
H William Burdett, Jr. (Foley & Lardner, LLP)
Jon Peha (CMU)

Phishing
Steve Myers (Indiana University) - Organizer
Drew Dean (SRI)
Stuart Stubblebine (Stubblebine Research Labs)
Richard Clayton (Cambridge, UK)
Markus Jakobsson (Indiana University CACR)

Research Papers
===

Fraud within Asymmetric Multi-Hop Cellular Networks
Gildas Avoine (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland)

Information-Theoretic Security Analysis of Physical Uncloneable Functions
P. Tuyls
B. Skoric
S. Stallinga
A.H. Akkermans
W. Ophey (Philips Research Laboratories, The Netherlands)

Views, Reactions and Impact of Digitally-Signed Mail in e-Commerce.
Simson L. Garfinkel
Jeffrey I. Schiller
Erik Nordlander (MIT)
David Margrave (Amazon.com)
Robert C. Miller (MIT)

Identity-based Partial Message Recovery Signatures
(or How to Shorten ID-based Signatures)
Fangguo Zhang (Sun Yat Sen University, P.R.China)
Yi Mu
Willy Susilo (University of Wollongong, Australia)

How to Non-Interactively Update a Secret
Eujin Goh (Stanford University)
Philippe Golle (Palo Alto Research Center)

Interactive Diffie-Hellman Assumptions with Applications
to Password-Based Authentication
Michel Abdalla
David Pointcheval (Ecole Normale Superieure)

Achieving Fairness in Private Contract Negotiation
Keith Frikken
Mikhail Atallah (Purdue University)

Protecting Secret Data from Insider Attacks
David Dagon
Wenke Lee
Richard Lipton (Georgia Tech)

RFID Traceability A Multilayer Problem
Gildas Avoine
Philippe Oechslin (EPFL Lausanne Switzerland)

A User-Friendly Approach to Human Authentication of Messages
Jeff King
Andre dos Santos (Georgia Tech)

Countering Identity Theft through Digital Uniqueness,
Location Cross-Checking, and Funneling
P.C. van Oorschot (Carleton University)
S. Stubblebine (Stubblebine Research Labs)

Policy-Based Cryptography and Applications
Walid Bagga
Refik Molva (Eurecom)

A Privacy Protecting Coupon System
Liqun Chen (HP Laboratories)
Matthias Enzmann (Fraunhofer SIT)
Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (University of Bochum)
Markus Schneider (Fraunhofer SIT)
Michael Steiner (IBM T.J. Watson)

Analysis of a Multi-Party Fair Exchange Protocol and Formal
Proof of Correctness in the Strand Space model
Steve Kremer
Aybek Mukhamedov
Eike Ritter (University of Birmingham, UK)

Secure Biometric Authentication for Weak Computational Devices
Mikhail J. Atallah
Keith B. Frikken (Purdue)
Michael T. Goodrich (UC Irvine)
Roberto Tamassia (Brown)

Small Coalitions Cannot Manipulate Voting
Edith Elkind (Princeton University)
Helger Lipmaa (Helsinki University of Technology)

Efficient Privacy-Preserving Protocols for Multi-Unit Auctions
Felix Brandt (Stanford)
Tuomas Sandholm (Carnegie Mellon University)

Risk Assurance for Hedge Funds using Zero Knowledge Proofs
Michael Szydlo (RSA Security/Independent)

Testing Disjointness of Private Datasets
Aggelos Kiayias (University of Connecticut)
Antonina Mitrofanova (Rutgers University)

Time Capsule Signature
Yevgeniy Dodis (NYU)
Dae Hyun Yum (POSTECH)

Probabilistic Escrow of Financial Transactions
with Cumulative Threshold Disclosure
Stanislaw Jarecki (UC Irvine)
Vitaly Shmatikov (UT Austin)

Approximation in Message Authentication
Giovanni Di Crescenzo
Richard Graveman (Telcordia)
Gonzalo Arce
Renwei Ge (U Delaware)

Systems & Applications Presentations


Securing Sensitive Data with the Ingrian DataSecure Platform
Andrew Koyfman (Ingrian Networks)

Ciphire Mail Email Encryption
Lars Eilebrecht (Ciphire Labs)


___
fc-announce mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.ifca.ai/mailman/listinfo/fc-announce

--- end forwarded text


-- 
---

Natural selection acts on the quantum world

[R.A. Hettinga]

 Close window??

Published online: 23 December 2004


 Natural selection acts on the quantum world

Philip Ball

Objective reality may owe its existence to a 'darwinian' process that
advertises certain quantum states.

If observing the world tends to change it, how come we all see the same
butterfly?


A team of US physicists has proved a theorem that explains how our
objective, common reality emerges from the subtle and sensitive quantum
world.

If, as quantum mechanics says, observing the world tends to change it, how
is it that we can agree on anything at all? Why doesn't each person leave a
slightly different version of the world for the next person to find?

Because, say the researchers, certain special states of a system are
promoted above others by a quantum form of natural selection, which they
call quantum darwinism. Information about these states proliferates and
gets imprinted on the environment. So observers coming along and looking at
the environment in order to get a picture of the world tend to see the same
'preferred' states.

If it wasn't for quantum darwinism, the researchers suggest in Physical
Review Letters1, the world would be very unpredictable: different people
might see very different versions of it. Life itself would then be hard to
conduct, because we would not be able to obtain reliable information about
our surroundings... it would typically conflict with what others were
experiencing.

Taking stock

The difficulty arises because directly finding out something about a
quantum system by making a measurement inevitably disturbs it. "After a
measurement," say Wojciech Zurek and his colleagues at Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico, "the state will be what the observer finds out it
is, but not, in general, what it was before."

 They survive monitoring by the environment to leave 'descendants' that
inherit their properties. ?

Wojciech Zure
Physicist, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New MexicoBecause, as Zurek
says, "the Universe is quantum to the core," this property seems to
undermine the notion of an objective reality. In this type of situation,
every tourist who gazed at Buckingham Palace would change the arrangement
of the building's windows, say, merely by the act of looking, so that
subsequent tourists would see something slightly different.

Yet that clearly isn't what happens. This sensitivity to observation at the
quantum level (which Albert Einstein famously compared to God constructing
the quantum world by throwing dice to decide its state) seems to go away at
the everyday, macroscopic level. "God plays dice on a quantum level quite
willingly," says Zurek, "but, somehow, when the bets become macroscopic he
is more reluctant to gamble." How does that happen?

Quantum mush

The Los Alamos team define a property of a system as 'objective', if that
property is simultaneously evident to many observers who can find out about
it without knowing exactly what they are looking for and without agreeing
in advance how they'll look for it.

Physicists agree that the macroscopic or classical world (which seems to
have a single, 'objective' state) emerges from the quantum world of many
possible states through a phenomenon called decoherence, according to which
interactions between the quantum states of the system of interest and its
environment serve to 'collapse' those states into a single outcome. But
this process of decoherence still isn't fully understood.

"Decoherence selects out of the quantum 'mush' states that are stable, that
can withstand the scrutiny of the environment without getting perturbed,"
says Zurek. These special states are called 'pointer states', and although
they are still quantum states, they turn out to look like classical ones.
For example, objects in pointer states seem to occupy a well-defined
position, rather than being smeared out in space.

The traditional approach to decoherence, says Zurek, was based on the idea
that the perturbation of a quantum system by the environment eliminates all
but the stable pointer states, which an observer can then probe directly.
But he and his colleagues point out that we typically find out about a
system indirectly, that is, we look at the system's effect on some small
part of its environment. For example, when we look at a tree, in effect we
measure the effect of the leaves and branches on the visible sunlight that
is bouncing off them.

But it was not obvious that this kind of indirect measurement would reveal
the robust, decoherence-resistant pointer states. If it does not, the
robustness of these states won't help you to construct an objective reality.

Now, Zurek and colleagues have proved a mathematical theorem that shows the
pointer states do actually coincide with the states probed by indirect
measurements of a system's environment. "The environment is modified so
that it contains an imprint of the pointer state," he says.

All together now

"State of Fear" by Michael Crichton

[Anonymous]

Just finished reading it (It was a Christmas present).

The story involves the heroes foiling a plot by eco-terrorists who attempt to 
create "natural" disasters in an effort to push their agenda regarding global 
warming. 

Along the way the Crichton presents a pretty convincing argument that 
scientists don't really have a good enough understanding of our climate to 
really estimate the impacts of mankind and that many of the events claimed to 
be evidence of global warming are statistically insignificant and contain a 
huge amounts of bias. In addition, he provides references to many examples 
where mankind has failed miserably at trying to "manage and preserve" the 
environment.

He also makes a feast (literally, read the book :-) ) of Hollywood stars who 
push environmental causes and claim to pine for the more "simplistic and 
environmentally friendly" life of native islanders all the while living in 
their huge mansions, driving their SUV's and traveling around the world in 
private jets.

The title "State of Fear" comes the concept well known to many on the list that 
best way to control society is via fear. In this case fear of global warming. 

There are a lot of footnotes and an extensive bibliography of the current 
research both supporting and debunking global warming.

It will interesting to see if this book makes it into a movie (It almost seems 
like a rebuttal of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"). 

Crichton's other books include, "The Andromeda Strain" (I'm sure most of us 
old-timers on the list will recognize that one), "Disclosure", "Airframe", and 
(the one most new subscribers will recognize), "Jurassic Park".

I recommend taking a look.

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

[R.A. Hettinga]

The Washington Post

washingtonpost.com
Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War


By Dana Priest
 Washington Post Staff Writer
 Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01

 The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and
celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from
Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and
handcuffed passengers.

 The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc.,
lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each
one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security
number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an
extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.

 Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor
are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories --
just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence
officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine
operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects
from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream
helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the
jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.

 Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in
the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to
congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown,
the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane
spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk
detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden,
usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling
stops.

As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of
the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges
to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World
Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to
transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods
outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N.
Convention on Torture.

The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential
directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush
administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for
this article.

 "Our policymakers would never confront the issue," said Michael Scheuer, a
former CIA counterterrorism officer who has been involved with renditions
and supports the practice. "We would say, 'Where do you want us to take
these people?' The mind-set of the bureaucracy was, 'Let someone else do
the dirty work.' "

 The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the CIA's secret
operations, a world that current and former CIA officers said should not
have been so easy to document.

 Not only have the plane's movements been tracked around the world, but the
on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also
connected to a larger roster of false identities.

 Each of the officers of Premier Executive is linked in public records to
one of five post office box numbers in Arlington, Oakton, Chevy Chase and
the District. A total of 325 names are registered to the five post office
boxes.

An extensive database search of a sample of 44 of those names turned up
none of the information that usually emerges in such a search: no previous
addresses, no past or current telephone numbers, no business or corporate
records. In addition, although most names were attached to dates of birth
in the 1940s, '50s or '60s, all were given Social Security numbers between
1998 and 2003.

The Washington Post showed its research to the CIA, including a chart
connecting Premier Executive's officers, the post office boxes, the 325
names, the recent Social Security numbers and an entity called Executive
Support OFC. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

According to former CIA operatives experienced in using "proprietary," or
front, companies, the CIA likely used, or intended to use, some of the 325
names to hide other activities, the nature of which could not be learned.
The former operatives also noted that the agency devotes more effort to
producing cover identities for its operatives in the field, which are
supposed to stand up under scrutiny, than to hiding its ownership of a
plane.

The CIA's plane secret began to unravel less than six weeks after the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.

On Oct. 26, 2001, Masood Anwar, a Pakistani journalist with the News in
Islamabad, broke a story asserting that Pakistani intelligence officers had
handed over to

2004: The Year That Promised Email Authentication

[R.A. Hettinga]

 

CircleID

2004: The Year That Promised Email Authentication

By: Yakov Shafranovich
>From CircleID
Addressing Spam
December 27, 2004

 As the year comes to a close, it is important to reflect on what has been
one of the major actions in the anti-spam arena this year: the quest for
email authentication. With email often called the "killer app" of the
Internet, it is important to reflect on any major changes proposed, or
implemented that can affect that basic tool that many of us have become to
rely on in our daily lives. And, while many of the debates involved myriads
of specialized mailing lists, standards organizations, conferences and even
some government agencies, it is important for the free and open source
software (FOSS) community as well as the Internet community at large, to
analyze and learn lessons from the events surrounding email authentication
in 2004.

 "THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST"

 The quest for email authentication did not start from scratch.
Authentication systems are a well known field in computer security, and
have been researched for quite some time. Nevertheless, it is only during
this past year that email authentication has gained a prominent push mainly
due to the ever increasing spam problem. As well known, the original email
architecture and protocols was not designed for an open network such as the
Internet. Therefore, the original designers failed to predict the virtual
tidal wave of junk email that took advantage of lack of authentication in
the Internet email. As the result, a junk email filter is considered one of
the essential tools any Internet citizen must have in his toolkit today.

 The push towards email authentication started in earnest with the
publication of a proposal called RMX by a German engineer called Hadmut
Danisch in early 2003. While other previous proposals have been published,
none have gained any kind of traction. Hadmut's proposal on the other hand
coincided with the opening of the Anti-Spam Research Group (ASRG) of the
Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), which as an affiliate body of the
IETF. The IETF created and currently maintains the Internet email
standards, and an IETF affiliate was a logical body to work on addressing
the spam problem on the Internet at large. Being that the ASRG brought
together a sizable chunk of the anti-spam world, RMX gained more exposure
that none of the previous work in the field ever had. What followed was a
succession of proposals forked off the original RMX proposal until the
spring of 2004 when most of them were basically confined to the dustbin of
history together with RMX. In the end, only two proposals with any sizable
following were left: Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Microsoft's
Caller-ID.

 The author of SPF, Meng Wong, managed to attract a large community to his
proposal, giving it a much larger deployed base than any competitor. In
many ways this effort can be compared to some of the open source projects,
except this time this was an open standard rather than a piece of software.
On the other side of the ring, so to speak, was Microsoft which surprised
the email world with their own proposal called Caller-ID at the RSA
conference in early 2004. Eventually, the IETF agreed to consider
standardization of email authentication by opening a working group called
MARID in March of 2004. With the merger of SPF and Microsoft's new
Sender-ID proposal, hopes were running high about the coming success of
email authentication and the coming demise of spam. Yet, ironically this
working group earned itself a record by being one of the shortest in the
existence of the IETF - it has lasted a little over six months until being
formally shutdown in September of 2004.

 "ALL THAT IS GOLD DOES NOT GLITTER"

 During the work of IETF's MARID group the quest for the email
authentication begun to permeate circles outside the usual cadre of
anti-spam geeks. Technology publications, and even the mass media have
begun to take note of the efforts occurring on an obscure mailing list
tucked away among 200 other even more obscure groups, prodded in many cases
by the public relations spokesmen of various companies in the anti-spam
space, including Microsoft. Yet in many ways that was one of the fatal
blows to the group and any hope of a common standard for email
authentication.

 Several major issues arose during the operation of the working group. The
first major issue that has been bubbling beneath the surface was technical
in nature. SPF has come from a group of proposals that worked with the
parts of the email infrastructure that was unseen by most users. This
included email servers that exchanged email among ISPs and were unseen. In
the technical lingo this type of authentication was known as "path
authentication". It focused on authenticating the path the message took
place between servers, and dealt with machines instead of end users.
Sender-ID approached the problem from a different 

[IP] Cell phones for eavesdropping - finally some public "chatter" (fwd from dave@farber.net)

[Eugen Leitl]

- Forwarded message from David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -

From: David Farber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 16:11:00 -0500
To: Ip 
Subject: [IP] Cell phones for eavesdropping - finally some
 public "chatter"
User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.1.0.040913
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


-- Forwarded Message
From: RISKS List Owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 11:49:56 -0800 (PST)
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [RISKS] Risks Digest 23.64


Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 20:39:48 +0200
From: Gadi Evron <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Cell phones for eavesdropping - finally some public "chatter"

/Pun intended on the subject line!/

Okay, so, we have all known cell phones are "dangerous".

Stepping out of the cellular protocols security and vendor-side systems, and
forgetting for a second about interception of transmissions through the air,
Trojan horses/worms that may install themselves on the cell phone and even
bluetooth risks, there is the long talked of risk of "operating" a regular
un-tampered cell phone from a far and the risk of modified devices.

Sorry for stating the obvious, but cell phones are transmitters.

For years now paranoid people and organizations claim that eavesdropping
through a cell phone is a very valid risk. Much like somebody pressing
"send" by mistake during a sensitive meeting is a very valid yet different
risk.

Some of the stricter organizations ask you to do anything from (top to
bottom) storing the cell phone in a safe, through shutting it off or
removing the battery, and all the way to *only* "don't have that around here
while we are in a meeting". Then again.. *most* haven't even heard of this
risk.

Forgetting even this risk, many of us even ignore the obvious. I usually ask
people who talk to me while I'm on the phone "even if the NSA (for example)
is not interested in what I have to say or not capable of intercepting it
and even that I don't care if they heard my conversations...  Should the
person I talk to hear our conversation?"

Lately there seems to be some more awareness about the "dangers" of cell
phones. Knowing which risk is more of a threat than the other is another
issue.

It seems to me that other than in the protocols, where there has been a
serious learning curve (and GPRS seems very promising), cellular companies
keep doing the same mistakes, and we can see the security problems of the PC
world reappearing in cell phones, much like those of the main frames
re-appeared in PC's (to a level).

History repeated.  Heck, I can't even disable Java or the web browser in
most cellular computers (we really should refer to them as computers now).

Here are some URL's on the subject:

Here is one about modified cell phones, which also mentions the risk of
eavesdropping through a cell phone as mentioned above:
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200206/msg0003
1.html

Here is a product for sale, a cellular phone BUILT for eavesdropping:
http://wirelessimports.com/ProductDetail.asp?ProductID=347

Also, check out the IEEE Pervasive article that mentions this problem area,
although discusses more the issue of malware:
http://csdl.computer.org/comp/mags/pc/2004/04/b4011abs.htm

Or Google for "symbian +virus", for example.

Thanks go to David Dagon for the links.

-- End of Forwarded Message


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Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

- End forwarded message -
-- 
Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl
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In war on terrorism, U.S. drafts shops to be on guard

[R.A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 10:07:46 -0800
To: "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Vinnie Moscaritolo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: In war on terrorism, U.S. drafts shops to be on guard

 In war on terrorism, U.S. drafts shops to be on guard

 By Steve Johnson
 Knight Ridder Newspapers

 SAN JOSE, Calif. - It may surprise some people to learn that one of the
linchpins in this nation's war on terrorism is the Bin & Barrel Mini Mart
in Fremont, Calif.

 Manager Sonia Cheema certainly was when her dad bought the store in October.

 Under federal rules still being fine-tuned, she discovered, the Bin &
Barrel - like thousands of other businesses - must have a written plan for
foiling money-laundering terrorists. It also must have a "compliance
officer" to ensure the plan is heeded, train its employees to spot shady
transactions and regularly audit its own performance.


 That's not all.

 While not widely known, the Bin & Barrel and every other U.S. business
must steer clear of people on the government's 192-page list of "specially
designated nationals," which has more than 5,000 names and is updated
frequently. Otherwise, business people could face huge fines and a long
stay in prison.

 "Oh gosh! Imagine one person coming to cash a check and going through a
list," said the 25-year-old Cheema, who has temporarily stopped cashing
checks and processing money orders, at least until she understands the
federal rules better. "It's going to be a lot of work. ... I don't think
it's worth it."

 Previously, banks were pretty much the only businesses that had to worry
about money launderers. But that changed after the terrorist attacks on
Sept. 11.

 On Sept. 24, 2001, President Bush signed an executive order barring
business dealings with anyone on the specially designated list, which
includes the names and aliases of suspected terrorists, drug kingpins and
their associates. Those failing to comply can be fined $10 million and
jailed up to 10 years.

 That was followed a month later by enactment of the USA Patriot Act, which
forces "financial institutions"- broadly defined to include everything from
liquor stores to pawn shops - to have detailed programs for combating money
launderers. Under its enforcement provisions, business operators face
potential $500,000 fines and 10-year prison terms.

 The Patriot Act already is in effect for casinos, mutual funds,
credit-card firms, banks and "money service businesses" like the Bin &
Barrel, which offer such things as check cashing and money transfers.

 Still others - jewelers, vehicle dealers, travel agents, loan companies,
investment firms and people involved in real estate closings - are waiting
for the government to issue their regulations under the act.

 As word about the law spreads, many business people don't like what they
are hearing.

 "A lot of our members are just starting to wake up to all of the things
they are required to do," said Karen Penafiel, assistant vice president for
advocacy for the Building Owners & Managers Association International. When
the group's executive committee held a briefing on the act in November, she
said, "there was a sense that, 'you've got to be kidding."'

 Expecting businesses - especially tiny ones - to keep track of terrorists
strikes some people as silly.

 "It's just lame," said Pat Kennedy, who owns Alpine Recreation, a Morgan
Hill, Calif., RV dealership. "I'm trying to imagine any local terrorist
picking up his motor home and doing a little camping."

 Palo Alto, Calif., attorney Jonathan Axelrad has similar concerns about
the law's potential application to venture capital funds. Forcing the
funds' managers to monitor money laundering "would simply be an expensive,
unnecessary burden," he said, because the risks and withdrawal limits of
such investments would likely be unattractive to terrorists.

 But terrorists are capable of using a wide range of businesses and
purchases - including recreational vehicles - to hide their assets,
according to federal officials, who insist the new rules already are paying
off.

 They note that from Feb. 18, 2003, through Nov. 9, 2004, they received
tips from various financial institutions about suspicious activity in 129
terrorism-related cases. That resulted in 648 grand jury subpoenas, nine
arrests and two indictments.

 Even so, compliance with the act has been spotty so far.

 William Fox, director of the U.S. Treasury Department's Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network, told Congress in September that only 21,058 of the
estimated 200,000 money service businesses nationwide had registered with
his agency, as required under the Patriot Act.

 Although firms that handle small transactions are exempt under the law, he
testified, "we believe there are a significant number of money services
business required to register that have failed to do so."

 The reason for that isn't clear. But even among companies that have heard
of the law, many remain perplexed about it

something to test ...

[Joe Schmoe]

A test message.

--Josh



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