Re: happy newyear's eve

[Anonymous]

> Reagan, Ronald Wilson unres   1911-02-06  2004-06-05  U.S. 
> president

Reagan's ssn is 480-07-7456.

crypto, science, and popular writing

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 03:23 PM 1/20/05 +, Justin wrote:
>How could they possibly get clue?  Scientists don't want to write
>pop-sci articles for a living.  It's impossible to condense most
current
>research down to digestible kernels that the masses can understand.
>SciAm should close down, requiring those who care about science to
learn
>enough about it to read science journals.

That is untrue.  In fact, RSA was introduced to the wider audience
via Sci Am IIRC.

>Professors who can teach a QM course well in a semester are rare
enough.
>I doubt any one of them could write a 5000 word article on quantum
>entanglement that would be intelligible to the average cretinous
>American who wants to seem smart by reading Sci-Am.  If they want to be

>smart, they can start by picking up an undergrad-level book on QM.  But

>that requires much effort to read, unlike a glossy 5000 word article.

I disagree.  I think some here --even you-- could write such an article.

Simply state entanglement as a given, much like gravity or maxwell's
electromagnetics, and then explain how its useful.

*Why* and *how* the "givens" are correct is not necessary, perhaps
not even known.  (After all, all physics does bottom out with
phenomenology).
The same is true for explaining symmetric crypto, hasing, or PK ---just
assume a "hard" function, or a "one way trap door function", ignoring
avalanche or the number theory behind it, and go to applications
immediately.

That Sci Am has gotten lefty and soft is regrettable, but don't think
this means
that crypto and QM apps can't be explained to your grandmother.

new egold phisher - this time it's a malware executable

[sunder]

So, the e-gold phishers are at it again... received a very nice email 
this morning with an attachment.  The Received-From header showed this 
beauty: "from 195.56.214.184 
([EMAIL PROTECTED] [195.56.214.184] 
(may be forged))"

Indeed!
Don't know if it's a trojan, spyware, virus, or worm, and I couldn't 
care less since I don't use egold, but would be interesting (just for 
curiosity's sake) if someone were to disassemble it to see what it does. 
 It's probably a password grabber of some kind, so falls under spyware, 
but who knows what other evil payloads were in the attachment.

ROTFL!
-
Text said:
Dear E-gold Customer,
Herewith we strongly recommend you to install this Service Pack to your 
PC, as lately we have received a lot of complains regarding unauthorized 
cash withdrawals from our customers' accounts. This upgrade blocks all 
currently known Trojan modules and eliminates the possibility of cash 
withdrawals without your authorization. We highly recommend to install 
this Service Pack to secure your accounts.
Please note, that E-gold doesn't take any responsibility and doesn't 
accept any claims regarding losses caused by fraudulent actions, if your 
account has not been duly protected by the present Service Pack.

Please find enclosed the archive of the Service Pack installation file 
in the attachment to this message.

Cpunk Sighting

[J.A. Terranson]

John Young, Cryptome strikes again.  NPR is running a story on all of the
"sensitive information" available.  Funny shit!

-- 
Yours,

J.A. Terranson
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
0xBD4A95BF

 Civilization is in a tailspin - everything is backwards, everything is
upside down- doctors destroy health, psychiatrists destroy minds, lawyers
destroy justice, the major media destroy information, governments destroy
freedom and religions destroy spirituality - yet it is claimed to be
healthy, just, informed, free and spiritual. We live in a social system
whose community, wealth, love and life is derived from alienation,
poverty, self-hate and medical murder - yet we tell ourselves that it is
biologically and ecologically sustainable.

The Bush plan to screen whole US population for mental illness clearly
indicates that mental illness starts at the top.

Rev Dr Michael Ellner

Re: Cpunk Sighting

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 04:12 PM 1/21/05 -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
>John Young, Cryptome strikes again.  NPR is running a story on all of
the
>"sensitive information" available.  Funny shit!

LATimes ran something too!  And even included a  link to the
mental-jihadist,
terrorist-du-coeur, amateur pan-geo-opticon-astronomer who freely admits
having studied what hold buildings (and the thugs that tax them) up, as
well as once being an operative of the largest, most WMD'd military
ever.  Zeus bless his Promethian soul.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs21jan21,1,5352367.story



  January 21, 2005

  IN BRIEF / CANADA
  Many Barred From U.S. Because of Security Lists
  From Times Wire Reports

  Dozens of people from Canada have been turned back
at the U.S. border or prevented
  from boarding U.S.-bound planes because their
names are on the American "no-fly" list
  or a State Department list of possible terrorists,
documents show.

  The incidents are detailed in daily briefs from
the Homeland Security Department. They
  contain no classified information.

A
department spokesman

confirmed that the memos,

posted at

http://cryptome.org , were

legitimate.

Airport Screening Gets Smarter

[R.A. Hettinga]

The Wall Street Journal

  January 20, 2005

Airport Screening Gets Smarter
Government Rolls Out Tests
 Of Systems to Improve
 Detection of Explosives

By KATHRYN KRANHOLD
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 20, 2005; Page D1


Prepare to get puffed on.

The government is stepping up its investment in technology designed to make
screening people and baggage at airports easier and more reliable.

General Electric Co. will announce today that the federal Transportation
Security Administration has certified its new machines that more precisely
detect explosives in checked luggage, reducing false positives and making
it possible to do fewer manual searches of bags. The machines, already in
place in European cities and Israel, will be tested in U.S. airports this
year, according to industry sources.

In addition, the TSA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, plans to
expand a pilot program using so-called Explosive Trace Portals to scan
passengers for explosives. These machines, made by GE and Smith Detections,
a unit of London-based Smiths Group PLC, work by blowing puffs of air at
passengers, collecting samples of ion-charged air, and instantly analyzing
it for explosives, sounding an alarm if any trace is detected.

The GE machines are currently in five U.S. airports, including San Diego
and Tampa; as many as nine other cities will be added this year, according
to the TSA, including Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Las Vegas and San
Francisco. A Smith Detections unit is in New York's Kennedy Airport.

Bomb sniffer: GE's 'trace portal,' now in five U.S. airports, tests people
for explosives.



The technology should go some way toward resolving complaints about the new
security procedures in place since 9/11. The TSA has been under fire for
the way screeners conduct personal searches, and for mishandling
passengers' checked bags during searches.

In the latest figures, from November 2004, the TSA received 652 complaints
regarding its screening procedures, and an additional 678 complaints about
its handling of personal property. That compares with 218 complaints about
courtesy and 42 about the processing time.

But the technology is advancing faster than the government's ability to
deploy it. At current spending levels, says David Plavin, president of
Airports Council International-North America, an airport trade group, it
will take 15 to 20 years to automate airports' baggage systems with the
advanced screening and more-efficient explosives-detection technology.

"We're way, way below what large-scale deployment would need," he says.
"We're not in the right ballpark."

TSA funding for the new technologies has varied from year to year. This
year, the TSA has $180 million to purchase explosives-detection systems, up
20% from $150 million in 2004. Additionally, the TSA has announced about $1
billion in grants to pay for airport construction to install screening
machines as part of automated baggage systems.

GE and analysts who follow the company believe that the market for security
technology will continue to grow in the U.S. and overseas as ports and
other transportation systems look for ways to screen for explosives.

A TSA spokeswoman said the administration is "committed to aggressively
deploying the newest technology available" within the authorized budget.

Explosives screening has also moved to cruise ships and commercial air
cargo. Recently, Miami's airport officials placed one of its
explosives-detection screeners at its port area to screen luggage for
passengers boarding cruise ships. The TSA also has a small program
screening commercial air cargo at a handful of airports in cities including
Miami and Dallas. The machines are made by GE and L-3 Communications, a New
York City-based manufacturer of security technology, also approved by the
TSA.

There is competition to produce lower-cost machines. The TSA recently
certified another manufacturer, Reveal Imaging Technologies, based in
Bedford, Mass., which has developed baggage screening machines that are
smaller and less expensive than those made by GE or L-3.

GE's newest machines scan bags that have been flagged, checking the
molecular makeup of a suspect item.



Reveal's machines cost about $500,000 apiece, compared with more than $1
million for GE's and L-3's. But these machines may be viable only in
smaller airports.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, as part of a federal mandate, the country's 450
airports installed explosive-trace detection machines or
explosive-detection machines based on advanced medical computed tomography,
or CT technology. The explosive-detection machines, made by GE and L-3,
detect items of a certain density that could be an explosive.

The machine isn't foolproof; a chunk of cheese or a fruitcake, for example,
can falsely trigger an alarm. Once a bag is tagged as having a possible
bomb inside, airport security employees further evaluate