826 lines
37 KiB
Plaintext
826 lines
37 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
Computer underground Digest Wed July 15, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 38
|
|
ISSN 1004-042X
|
|
|
|
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
|
|
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
|
|
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
|
|
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
|
|
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
|
|
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
|
|
Ian Dickinson
|
|
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
|
|
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
|
|
|
|
CONTENTS, #10.38 (Wed, July 15, 1998)
|
|
|
|
File 1--Internet "Losing Virginity" Event a Scam
|
|
File 2--Free Kevin Mitnick -- Action Alert #1
|
|
File 3--Internet Privacy Ruling in Canada (excerpt)
|
|
File 4-- "EFF DES CRACKER" MACHINE BRINGS HONESTY TO CRYPTO DEBATE
|
|
File 5--Islands in the Clickstream. Prof. Communicators. July 4, 1998
|
|
File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998)
|
|
|
|
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ApPEARS IN
|
|
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
|
|
|
|
---------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
Date: Sun, 19 Jul 98 14:17 CDT
|
|
From: anonymous (deleted@by.request)
|
|
Subject: File 1--Internet "Losing Virginity" Event a Scam
|
|
|
|
((MODERATORS' NOTE: Probably not many people outside of the media
|
|
were deceived by the story that two "18 year old virgins"
|
|
intended to lose their virginity on the net.
|
|
|
|
The intro to the site's homepage, http://www.ourfirsttime.com,
|
|
said:
|
|
|
|
On August 4th, 1998..... Come and meet Diane and Mike,
|
|
two 18 year old "Honor" students who have recently
|
|
graduated from high school, and are looking forward to
|
|
starting college in the fall. They are as close to
|
|
being "typical All-American" kids as you can get.
|
|
Active in school and church. Well liked by family,
|
|
friends, and their community - but sexually, they are
|
|
both virgins.Their lives are going to change in a
|
|
unique and dramatic way. They are about to leave the
|
|
safety of youth, accept the challenges of adulthood,
|
|
and take that frightening ... but wonderful, step into
|
|
adult sexuality. There's one big difference...they are
|
|
going to let the world come along and witness their
|
|
lives over an 18 day period as this adventure unfolds,
|
|
when they lose their virginity together ....
|
|
|
|
All, of course, for a small cost. The Chicago Tribune reported
|
|
the hoax in a short inside story on July 18. The following are
|
|
extracts from Reuters.
|
|
|
|
==============
|
|
|
|
By Mark Egan
|
|
|
|
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A company that was to provide the computer
|
|
equipment to show two 18-year-olds losing their virginity on the
|
|
Internet said Friday the event was a hoax designed to make a fortune
|
|
and fool millions of people.
|
|
|
|
Seattle-based Internet Entertainment Group (IEG), which had signed a
|
|
contract to supply the computer hardware, told Reuters the organizers
|
|
planned to charge Internet users $5 each and then not deliver on their
|
|
promise that the couple would have sex "for the first time."
|
|
|
|
IEG's President Seth Warshavsky said the couple was going to have AIDS
|
|
tests and pick out condoms leading up to their Aug. 4 event and charge
|
|
viewers $5 for "age-verification" purposes. Then on the actual day,
|
|
the couple would decide they were not ready for sex, he said.
|
|
|
|
<SNIP>
|
|
|
|
Warshavsky said he was informed by Ken Tipton, the organizer of the
|
|
event, in a phone call on Friday that it was aimed at fooling more
|
|
people than Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" 60 years ago. That
|
|
realistic radio drama duped millions of Americans into thinking that
|
|
Martians had invaded New Jersey.
|
|
|
|
<SNIP>
|
|
|
|
According to IEG's Web site (www.clublove.com) Tipton told the
|
|
company, "Nobody has any intention of having sex. You won't even see
|
|
them naked. Christ, I wouldn't be surprised to find out Diane had lost
|
|
her virginity years ago in the back seat of a Chevy."
|
|
|
|
Attorney Vega said Thursday that the site had attracted "hundreds of
|
|
millions" of "hits" and could become one the biggest ever online
|
|
events. He insisted the Web site would have been free and that the
|
|
event "was not about making money."
|
|
|
|
The caper was a field day for hackers who were able to trace
|
|
"www.ourfirsttime.com" Web site to Tipton and then connect Tipton and
|
|
Vega to the same movie production company.
|
|
|
|
Vega is known in Los Angeles legal circles for his work on freedom of
|
|
speech cases. He insisted in interviews earlier this week that the
|
|
project was not a hoax but an effort to expand free speech on the Net.
|
|
|
|
IEG, which markets the sex video of actress Pamela Anderson and rocker
|
|
Tommy Lee on its Web sites, became involved with the project Thursday.
|
|
But 24 hours after signing the contract, the company pulled out
|
|
because it said it suspected the organizers' motives.
|
|
|
|
<SNIP>
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 08:50:02 -0700 (PDT)
|
|
From: Free Kevin <mitnick@paranoid.org>
|
|
Subject: File 2--Free Kevin Mitnick -- Action Alert #1
|
|
|
|
|
|
FREE KEVIN MITNICK -- ACTION ALERT #1
|
|
5 July 1998
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT TO APPROPRIATE FORUMS
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
1) Happy 4th of July
|
|
2) Let's Screw Kevin Again: The Movie
|
|
3) Where Are the Activists?
|
|
4) What You Can Do
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
1) Happy 4th of July
|
|
|
|
Did you have an enjoyable 4th of July weekend? Did you hang out by the
|
|
barbecue, beer in hand, and eat too many burgers and/or tofu dogs? Well,
|
|
whatever you did, it was probably more enjoyable then Kevin Mitnick's 4th of
|
|
July. Kevin spent his in the same place that he had the last few -- the
|
|
Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Los Angeles.
|
|
|
|
Kevin has been held without bail for three years and four months pending his
|
|
trial on a 25 count federal indictment, and it will likely be more than four
|
|
years without bail by the time his trial actually takes place. MDC is a
|
|
pre-trial facility and is intended for much shorter periods of detention, so
|
|
Kevin is only allowed visits from his attorney and immediate family.
|
|
Amazingly, Kevin has never had the opportunity to present evidence and
|
|
cross-examine witnesses in an adversarial detention hearing, as is required
|
|
by the Bail Reform Act.
|
|
|
|
Kevin did waive his right to a speedy trial, as most defendants do, but this
|
|
isn't quite what he had in mind.
|
|
|
|
What makes all of this worse is that Kevin is not likely to get the
|
|
facilities that he needs to defend himself properly while he is in MDC. The
|
|
government is entering loads of evidence against Kevin that exists in
|
|
electronic form, and he will need a computer and a lot of time to properly
|
|
sort through it all. So far it appears that he will be given neither the time
|
|
nor the equipment to properly prepare a defense against the government's
|
|
case.
|
|
|
|
How long will this go on? Kevin has never committed a violent crime, and
|
|
there's no evidence that there was any profit motive behind his hacking.
|
|
Violent and truly dangerous criminals get lighter treatment than Kevin
|
|
every day and no one blinks. What would the Founding Fathers have thought
|
|
of such an obvious attempt to prevent someone from obtaining a fair trial?
|
|
|
|
Let's hope that Kevin doesn't have to spend another 4th of July in custody
|
|
next year...
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
2) Let's Screw Kevin Again: The Movie
|
|
|
|
From the Exploitative Journalism Makes Good Movies department:
|
|
|
|
Miramax pictures recently announced that they will begin shooting in July on
|
|
"Takedown," a movie based on the book by Tsutomu Shimomura and John Markoff.
|
|
The book, which chronicles Shimomura's version of the events leading up to
|
|
Kevin's capture, was criticized by some as a self-serving attempt by the
|
|
authors to cash in on the hype surrounding Mitnick's arrest. People who
|
|
have seen the script for the movie say it's even worse.
|
|
|
|
Emmanuel Goldstein, editor of "2600" magazine, was one of the first Mitnick
|
|
supporters to obtain a copy of the "Takedown" script. Goldstein writes that
|
|
the script is "far worse than I had even imagined." "If this film is made
|
|
the way the script reads," he adds, "Kevin will be forever demonized in the
|
|
eyes of the public. And mostly for things that everyone agrees *never even
|
|
happened* in the first place!"
|
|
|
|
Inaccuracies in the script range from the merely comical (Kevin makes free
|
|
phone calls by whistling touch tones into the handset) to the outright false
|
|
and defamatory (Kevin assaults Shimomura in an alley with a garbage-can lid,
|
|
and Shimomura visits Kevin in prison and tells him "good work" for cracking
|
|
his systems).
|
|
|
|
Goldstein's notes on the script is online at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.kevinmitnick.com/review.html
|
|
|
|
In an article for ZDTV, columnist Kevin Poulsen writes, "nobody predicted
|
|
that the script, supposedly based on the dry, but inoffensive book of the
|
|
same name, would be filled with so much blatant fabrication. No one expected
|
|
that Kevin Mitnick might become the most feared and hated screen villain
|
|
since Hannibal Lecter."
|
|
|
|
Poulsen, himself a convicted hacker who was held for years without bail,
|
|
scored a revealing interview with one of the "Takedown" screenwriters, John
|
|
Danza. Danza told Poulsen that he had wanted to present a different view of
|
|
Mitnick's case, one that "wasn't so black and white; good and bad-- I think
|
|
Tsutomu was basically self-serving, and I thought it would be an interesting
|
|
idea if he realized that." The studio allegedly didn't buy off on Danza's
|
|
ideas, or even on his draft that stuck more closely to the book. "Then they
|
|
gave it to a high-priced polish writer who gets paid an enormous amount of
|
|
money to spice up the dialog," Danza told Poulsen, "and I think he did that
|
|
and also changed quite a bit. I've read that draft and I'm even less
|
|
satisfied."
|
|
|
|
Poulsen's article is at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/cda/index/0,2073,2115491-2103615,00.html
|
|
|
|
He's written several other articles about Mitnick's case:
|
|
|
|
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/cda/index/0,2073,2110084-2103615.00.html
|
|
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/cda/index/0,2073,2000162-2103615.00.html
|
|
http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/cda/index/0,2073,2000163-2103615.00.html
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
3) Where Are the Activists?
|
|
|
|
One of the most disturbing aspects of Kevin Mitnick's case is the lack of
|
|
support for his plight from Net activists. The same people who could probably
|
|
quote moving passages from their dog-eared copies of "The Hacker Crackdown"
|
|
seem to become very quiet when it comes to Kevin's case. Not only have groups
|
|
like EFF not lent direct legal support to Kevin, but they have done little
|
|
else to show any support for him.
|
|
|
|
It's time for Internet activists to take a stand. It's time for people to
|
|
realize that for phrases like "Cyber Rights Now" to have any meaning, they
|
|
must apply to Kevin Mitnick as well as every other netizen. Even if we assume
|
|
that the worst accusations about Kevin's hacking are true, it still becomes
|
|
quickly clear that his case has been blown way out of proportion. Kevin is
|
|
the victim of a campaign to hype his story, a campaign which has made
|
|
millions of dollars for those responsible.
|
|
|
|
Obviously, Net activist organizations have a limited amount of time and
|
|
must focus their resources. They cannot respond to every potential crisis,
|
|
and no reasonable person would expect them to. They have other, more
|
|
practical concerns as well, like the possibility of alienating potential
|
|
donors and sponsors. That's reality.
|
|
|
|
What's also reality is that Kevin's case is sure to be a landmark in the
|
|
field of computer crime, and that activists should be getting involved to
|
|
make sure that bad precedents aren't set which could impact us all. Kevin
|
|
is obviously being singled out to act as an example for other hackers, and
|
|
the message is pretty clear so far: that the government can do as it
|
|
pleases when it comes to hackers, civil rights be damned. If that's the
|
|
case, then how safe is anyone?
|
|
|
|
Why should a "computer criminal" be treated more severely than violent
|
|
criminals are? Is a hacker more dangerous to the fabric of society than
|
|
a rapist or murderer? Should someone be penalized more severely for their
|
|
crimes because they involve computers? Is a computer a weapon, something to
|
|
be feared?
|
|
|
|
Will the real activists please stand up?
|
|
|
|
Ironically, it's the movie of "Takedown," which some people feel may do
|
|
irreversible damage to Kevin's reputation, that may put him in the same
|
|
boat with some prominent netizens. EFF co-founder John Gilmore reportedly
|
|
is portrayed in a negative light in the script, as is the management of The
|
|
Well. And believe it or not, Goldstein writes that the script portrays
|
|
"'Electronic Freedom Foundation' types" who actually aid in Mitnick's
|
|
capture. Things aren't quite that bad in real life, but they could be a lot
|
|
better.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
4) What You Can Do
|
|
|
|
There are a lot of things you can do to help Kevin's situation:
|
|
|
|
A) Donate to Kevin's defense fund. This is one of the most helpful things you
|
|
can do. Over $3,000 has been raised so far, but that's just a drop in the
|
|
bucket. Kevin needs expert witnesses, research, and other things that the
|
|
court is unlikely to provide much financial help for. Information about
|
|
donating is at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.kevinmitnick.com/df.html
|
|
|
|
If you can't afford to donate, though, there are still other things you
|
|
can do.
|
|
|
|
B) Bumper stickers. The tres chic "Free Kevin" bumper stickers are available
|
|
for $1 apiece through www.kevinmitnick.com, and the money goes towards
|
|
Kevin's defense fund. You can also place a virtual bumper sticker on your
|
|
web page and link it to www.kevinmitnick.com.
|
|
|
|
C) Join the mailing list. "2600" has set up a Majordomo list for discussion
|
|
of Kevin's case, and it's a great place to stay tuned for information about
|
|
the case and other related events. Email majordomo@2600.com with the words
|
|
"subscribe mitnick" (without the quotes) as the body of your message.
|
|
You can also get info on Kevin's case (and many other topics) from "Off
|
|
The Hook," Emmanuel Goldstein's radio program that airs on WBAI in New
|
|
York, and via RealAudio. More info is at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.2600.com/offthehook/
|
|
|
|
D) Protest the movie, "Takedown." Plans are being put in place now for
|
|
pickets of the Miramax offices in New York and Los Angeles, and there will
|
|
likely be some sort of demonstrations in North Carolina when shooting
|
|
there begins. Join the mailing list using the directions above to stay up
|
|
to date on these events. Also, write letters to those involved with the
|
|
movie expressing your feelings about the project. Individuals involved
|
|
with the production might not even be aware of the finer points of the
|
|
case, and they deserve to know what they're getting themselves into. A
|
|
list of contacts is at the end of this message.
|
|
|
|
E) Write legislators, members of the media, and anyone else you can think of
|
|
who might be able to have a positive impact on Kevin's situation.
|
|
|
|
F) Join the RC5 team. We're participating in the distributed.net effort to
|
|
crack RC5-64, and if someone on our team hits the key we will donate
|
|
our winnings to Kevin's defense fund. It's also an opportunity to get
|
|
some positive publicity for Kevin, and, after all, they're just spare CPU
|
|
cycles. You might as well use them for a good cause. More information is
|
|
at:
|
|
|
|
http://www.paranoid.org/mitnick/
|
|
|
|
G) Contact Net activists and ask them to get involved. The trial is getting
|
|
nearer, and Kevin needs help now, not in a couple of years on appeal.
|
|
|
|
H) Read, read, read. Read the books about Kevin's case, and the information
|
|
at www.kevinmitnick.com. The more information you have, the better able
|
|
you'll be to discuss the case.
|
|
|
|
I) Spread the word. Tell people about Kevin's case, hand out fliers, do
|
|
whatever you can to try to help balance out the negative hype.
|
|
|
|
J) Repost this message to appropriate forums.
|
|
|
|
K) Think of more ideas like these and post them to the mailing list.
|
|
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
CONTACTS:
|
|
|
|
For feedback about this document, contact mitnick@paranoid.org.
|
|
Emmanuel Goldstein of "2600" can be reached at emmanuel@2600.com.
|
|
Feedback on the www.kevinmitnick.com website should go to
|
|
fill@2600.com.
|
|
|
|
We can all be reached through the mitnick@2600.com Majordomo list.
|
|
|
|
ASCII art by rOTTEN.
|
|
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
People to contact about the movie "Takedown," as posted to the
|
|
mitnick@2600.com list:
|
|
|
|
Miramax Films
|
|
7966 Beverly Blvd.
|
|
Los Angeles, CA 90048
|
|
(213) 951-4200
|
|
(213) 951-4315 (fax)
|
|
|
|
Miramax Films
|
|
375 Greenwich St., 3rd floor
|
|
New York, NY 10013
|
|
(212) 941-3800
|
|
(212) 941-3949 (fax)
|
|
|
|
ANDREW STENGEL
|
|
Publicist for Miramax
|
|
(212) 625-2222
|
|
|
|
DAILY VARIETY
|
|
5700 Wilshire Boulevard #120
|
|
Los Angeles, CA 90036
|
|
(213) 857-6600
|
|
|
|
MONICA ROMAN
|
|
Variety writer who wrote internet announcement
|
|
about "Takedown" movie
|
|
(212) 337-7001 (Variety New York office)
|
|
|
|
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
|
|
5055 Wilshire Bouevard #600
|
|
Los Angeles, CA 90036
|
|
(213) 525-2000
|
|
|
|
SKEET ULRICH (actor who will play Kevin Mitnick)
|
|
ICM
|
|
8942 Wilshire Boulevard
|
|
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
|
|
(310) 550-4000
|
|
(310) 550-4100 (fax)
|
|
(this is the agency representing Skeet)
|
|
Aleen Keshishian (212) 556-5698 (Skeet's agent)
|
|
|
|
JOE CHAPPELLE (director of Takedown)
|
|
Bohrman Agency
|
|
8489 W. Third Street
|
|
Los Angeles, CA 90048
|
|
(213) 653-6701
|
|
(agency representing Chappelle)
|
|
|
|
DAVID NEWMAN
|
|
HOWARD RODMAN
|
|
JOHN DANZA
|
|
(writers of Takedown script)
|
|
There were too many Newmans to trace.
|
|
Danza is not listed with the Writers Guild.
|
|
Howard Rodman is represented by:
|
|
Creative Artists
|
|
9830 Wilshire Boulevard
|
|
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
|
|
(310) 288-4545
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 09:00:37 -0400
|
|
From: "Simon.Van-Norden" <Simon.Van-Norden@hec.ca
|
|
Subject: File 3--Internet Privacy Ruling in Canada (excerpt)
|
|
|
|
Knowing your interest in privacy and legal issues on the internet, I
|
|
thought I'd send along the following item I found today. (The Financial
|
|
Post is Canada's leading daily business newspaper.)
|
|
|
|
--
|
|
|
|
Internet providers on defensive after Philip Ruling
|
|
More FP Technology stories
|
|
|
|
By KEITH DAMSELL
|
|
Technology Reporter The Financial Post
|
|
|
|
Corporate Canada is enthusiastic but Internet providers are
|
|
feeling defensive after struggling Philip Services Corp. won a
|
|
court order that may curb investors' online chat. "What's wrong
|
|
about making people more responsible?" asked Toronto corporate
|
|
lawyer and Internet surfer Derrick Tay. "Accountability is not a
|
|
bad thing." On Thursday, it was disclosed Philip had won court
|
|
ordersthat will force Internet providers to turn over the names,
|
|
addresses and messages of chat group users who have been
|
|
criticizing the company and its officers since April.
|
|
|
|
The industrial waste recycling and metals firm has becomethe
|
|
focus of angry and malicious gossip on the Internet after a
|
|
copper trading scandal earlier this year that left it with losses
|
|
of about US$200 million.
|
|
|
|
<SNIP>
|
|
|
|
The ruling is expected to have broad implications for investors
|
|
who talk on the Internet. If the court order remains
|
|
unchallenged, their anonymity will disappear. The decision is
|
|
believed to mark the first time a Canadian court has waded into
|
|
privacy issues in cyberspace.
|
|
|
|
<SNIP>
|
|
|
|
The developing technology of cyberspace means e-mail containing
|
|
hate messages may not even stem from the Internet provider in
|
|
question, Remborg said. By Friday afternoon, several Internet
|
|
providers had complied with the court order. "We haven't decided
|
|
what we want to do with the information," said Philips
|
|
spokeswoman Lynda Kuhn. "The goal was to stop the defamation."
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 11:27:12 -0700 (PDT)
|
|
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com>
|
|
Subject: File 4-- "EFF DES CRACKER" MACHINE BRINGS HONESTY TO CRYPTO DEBATE
|
|
|
|
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
|
|
July 17, 1998
|
|
|
|
CONTACTS:
|
|
Alexander Fowler, +1 202 462 5826, afowler@eff.org
|
|
Barry Steinhardt, +1 415 436 9333 ext. 102, barrys@eff.org
|
|
John Gilmore, +1 415 221 6524, gnu@toad.com
|
|
|
|
"EFF DES CRACKER" MACHINE BRINGS HONESTY TO CRYPTO DEBATE
|
|
|
|
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION PROVES THAT DES IS NOT SECURE
|
|
|
|
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today
|
|
raised the level of honesty in crypto politics by revealing that the
|
|
Data Encryption Standard (DES) is insecure. The U.S. government has
|
|
long pressed industry to limit encryption to DES (and even weaker
|
|
forms), without revealing how easy it is to crack. Continued adherence
|
|
to this policy would put critical infrastructures at risk; society
|
|
should choose a different course.
|
|
|
|
To prove the insecurity of DES, EFF built the first unclassified
|
|
hardware for cracking messages encoded with it. On Wednesday of this
|
|
week the EFF DES Cracker, which was built for less than $250,000,
|
|
easily won RSA Laboratory's "DES Challenge II" contest and a $10,000
|
|
cash prize. It took the machine less than 3 days to complete the
|
|
challenge, shattering the previous record of 39 days set by a massive
|
|
network of tens of thousands of computers. The research results are
|
|
fully documented in a book published this week by EFF and O'Reilly and
|
|
Associates, entitled "Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research,
|
|
Wiretap Politics, and Chip Design."
|
|
|
|
"Producing a workable policy for encryption has proven a very hard
|
|
political challenge. We believe that it will only be possible to
|
|
craft good policies if all the players are honest with one another and
|
|
the public," said John Gilmore, EFF co-founder and project leader. "When
|
|
the government won't reveal relevant facts, the private sector must
|
|
independently conduct the research and publish the results so that we
|
|
can all see the social trade-offs involved in policy choices."
|
|
|
|
The nonprofit foundation designed and built the EFF DES Cracker to
|
|
counter the claim made by U.S. government officials that governments
|
|
cannot decrypt information when protected by DES, or that it would
|
|
take multimillion-dollar networks of computers months to decrypt one
|
|
message. "The government has used that claim to justify policies of
|
|
weak encryption and 'key recovery,' which erode privacy and security
|
|
in the digital age," said EFF Executive Director Barry Steinhardt. It
|
|
is now time for an honest and fully informed debate, which we believe
|
|
will lead to a reversal of these policies."
|
|
|
|
"EFF has proved what has been argued by scientists for twenty years,
|
|
that DES can be cracked quickly and inexpensively," said Gilmore.
|
|
"Now that the public knows, it will not be fooled into buying products
|
|
that promise real privacy but only deliver DES. This will prevent
|
|
manufacturers from buckling under government pressure to 'dumb down'
|
|
their products, since such products will no longer sell." Steinhardt
|
|
added, "If a small nonprofit can crack DES, your competitors can too.
|
|
Five years from now some teenager may well build a DES Cracker as her
|
|
high school science fair project."
|
|
|
|
The Data Encryption Standard, adopted as a federal standard in 1977 to
|
|
protect unclassified communications and data, was designed by IBM and
|
|
modified by the National Security Agency. It uses 56-bit keys,
|
|
meaning a user must employ precisely the right combination of 56 1s
|
|
and 0s to decode information correctly. DES accounted for more than
|
|
$125 million annually in software and hardware sales, according to a
|
|
1993 article in "Federal Computer Week." Trusted Information Systems
|
|
reported last December that DES can be found in 281 foreign and 466
|
|
domestic encryption products, which accounts for between a third and
|
|
half of the market.
|
|
|
|
A DES cracker is a machine that can read information encrypted with
|
|
DES by finding the key that was used to encrypt that data. DES
|
|
crackers have been researched by scientists and speculated about in
|
|
the popular literature on cryptography since the 1970s. The design
|
|
of the EFF DES Cracker consists of an ordinary personal computer
|
|
connected to a large array of custom chips. It took EFF less than
|
|
one year to build and cost less than $250,000.
|
|
|
|
This week marks the first public test of the EFF DES Cracker, which
|
|
won the latest DES-cracking speed competition sponsored by RSA
|
|
Laboratories (http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/). Two previous RSA
|
|
challenges proved that massive collections of computers coordinated
|
|
over the Internet could successfully crack DES. Beginning Monday
|
|
morning, the EFF DES Cracker began searching for the correct answer to
|
|
this latest challenge, the RSA DES Challenge II-2. In less than 3
|
|
days of searching, the EFF DES Cracker found the correct key. "We
|
|
searched more than 88 billion keys every second, for 56 hours, before
|
|
we found the right 56-bit key to decrypt the answer to the RSA
|
|
challenge, which was 'It's time for those 128-, 192-, and 256-bit
|
|
keys,'" said Gilmore.
|
|
|
|
Many of the world's top cryptographers agree that the EFF DES Cracker
|
|
represents a fundamental breakthrough in how we evaluate computer
|
|
security and the public policies that control its use. "With the
|
|
advent of the EFF DES Cracker machine, the game changes forever," said
|
|
Whitfield Diffie, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and famed
|
|
co-inventor of public key cryptography. "Vast Internet collaborations
|
|
cannot be concealed and so they cannot be used to attack real, secret
|
|
messages. The EFF DES Cracker shows that it is easy to build search
|
|
engines that can."
|
|
|
|
"The news is not that a DES cracker can be built; we've known that for
|
|
years," said Bruce Schneier, the President of Counterpane Systems.
|
|
"The news is that it can be built cheaply using off-the-shelf technology
|
|
and minimal engineering, even though the department of Justice and the FBI
|
|
have been denying that this was possible." Matt Blaze, a cryptographer
|
|
at AT&T Labs, agreed: "Today's announcement is significant because it
|
|
unambiguously demonstrates that DES is vulnerable, even to attackers with
|
|
relatively modest resources. The existence of the EFF DES Cracker proves
|
|
that the threat of "brute force" DES key search is a reality. Although
|
|
the cryptographic community has understood for years that DES keys are
|
|
much too small, DES-based systems are still being designed and used
|
|
today. Today's announcement should dissuade anyone from using DES."
|
|
|
|
EFF and O'Reilly and Associates have published a book about the EFF
|
|
DES Cracker, "Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap
|
|
Politics, and Chip Design." The book contains the complete design
|
|
details for the EFF DES Cracker chips, boards, and software. This
|
|
provides other researchers with the necessary data to fully reproduce,
|
|
validate, and/or improve on EFF's research, an important step in the
|
|
scientific method. The book is only available on paper because
|
|
U.S. export controls on encryption potentially make it a crime to
|
|
publish such information on the Internet.
|
|
|
|
EFF has prepared a background document on the EFF DES Cracker, which
|
|
includes the foreword by Whitfield Diffie to "Cracking DES." See
|
|
http://www.eff.org/descracker/. The book can be ordered for worldwide
|
|
delivery from O'Reilly & Associates at http://www.ora.com/catalog/crackdes,
|
|
+1 800 998 9938, or +1 707 829 0515.
|
|
|
|
**********
|
|
|
|
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the leading civil liberties
|
|
organizations devoted to ensuring that the Internet remains the world's
|
|
first truly global vehicle for free speech, and that the privacy and
|
|
security of all on-line communication is preserved. Founded in 1990 as a
|
|
nonprofit, public interest organization, EFF is based in San Francisco,
|
|
California. EFF maintains an extensive archive of information on
|
|
encryption policy, privacy, and free speech at http://www.eff.org.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 19:23:37 -0500
|
|
From: Richard Thieme <rthieme@thiemeworks.com>
|
|
Subject: File 5--Islands in the Clickstream. Prof. Communicators. July 4, 1998
|
|
Islands in the Clickstream:
|
|
Professional Communicators
|
|
|
|
|
|
From one point of view, all we humans do is communicate. We broadcast
|
|
information about ourselves all the time, just as our planet broadcasts
|
|
information into space. (Isn't there a better name than "space?" "Space"
|
|
sounds like Greeks calling all the non-Greeks "barbarians." The Universe
|
|
is teeming with life, and all we can call it is "space?")
|
|
|
|
But I digress.
|
|
|
|
All humans communicate, yes, but there are also men and women who call
|
|
themselves "professional speakers." I am just back from a convention of two
|
|
thousand of them. The National Speakers Association has been a tent for
|
|
twenty-five years under which every conceivable kind of "professional
|
|
speaker" comes to work and play.
|
|
|
|
Nick Carter, one of the great veterans of the speaking business, calls
|
|
himself a professional communicator, not a professional speaker. By making
|
|
that distinction, he captures the essence of life in the digital world.
|
|
|
|
The digital world is interactive, modular, and very much in flux, and
|
|
because it is back-engineering the way we imagine everything, we see our
|
|
selves as modular and transitory too. We imagine life as a kind of
|
|
plug-and-play digital game. We build symbolic modules in our minds and live
|
|
in those morphing modules even as our intuition tells us that there is a
|
|
larger matrix of possibility from which they all emerge.
|
|
|
|
In a world of simulations, we achieve our goals by maintaining some
|
|
consistency of artifact and design. We sustain a professional identity the
|
|
way a business engages in branding. In a way that prior generations could
|
|
not imagine, our intentions really do generate the landscapes of our lives.
|
|
The primacy of intentionality extends far beyond tasks or projects to our
|
|
selves and personas, the identities we present to the world. We become who
|
|
we intend to become, and when we alter the matrix of our lives, when we
|
|
move through any kind of dramatic passage or transition, we must build a
|
|
symbolic bridge even as we cross the chasm to become the self we are
|
|
imagining, adding modules to the modules of which we are already built.
|
|
|
|
Back to that great circus of "professional speakers." Enter the tent, the
|
|
first thing you notice is that every single one of us is hopelessly
|
|
neurotic. What a bunch we are, honestly. We traffic in symbols, nothing but
|
|
symbols, and because we know that we're always dancing in the middle of the
|
|
air, we pretend all the more that there's firm ground under our feet. We
|
|
look around at all the beautiful people and compare our fluttering, anxious
|
|
insides with the polished veneer of these practiced actors. We come
|
|
together because we need one another deeply, but the minute we're together,
|
|
we pretend we don't. We present images of accomplishment and success that
|
|
would make even a Bill Gates doubt his vocation.
|
|
|
|
But then, that's all of us, isn't it? Isn't that life in a knowledge
|
|
economy? What happens at that convention is what happens in the digital
|
|
world. We can choose to believe the symbols or we can see through them to
|
|
both the childlike fears and the real contribution of the people who invent
|
|
them. We come back to both the digital world and that convention because
|
|
every year we find more real connection, more modular structures to channel
|
|
the flow of energy and information, and suddenly we discover that we have
|
|
real friends in a world in which no one can know enough to make it alone.
|
|
|
|
Maintaining integrity in a world of simulations is, at best, pretty tricky.
|
|
Integrity once meant "walking the talk," the congruence of action and
|
|
speech. Now integrity means alignment of our selves and ALL of the digital
|
|
images we create.
|
|
|
|
The worst mistake we can make is to confuse our presentations for the
|
|
imperfect foundation on which they stand.
|
|
|
|
The story is told of a violinist whose notes were diced and spliced by an
|
|
expert mixer until the concerto he had played a dozen times had been turned
|
|
into one perfect performance. He was listening to the sound track with
|
|
obvious delight and turned to a colleague. "Isn't that magnificent?"
|
|
|
|
"Yes," said his friend. "Don't you wish you could play that well?"
|
|
|
|
Our egos always airbrush our self-portraits. Our minds are like PhotoShop,
|
|
making everything look better. The war between memory and pride, noted
|
|
Nietzsche, is always won by pride. Session musicians are replaced by
|
|
synthesizers, actors by their own more perfect digital scans. How can we
|
|
believe those images represent who we really are? And yet they do
|
|
because our images of ourselves are generated by interacting in and through
|
|
the matrix of those digital symbols. Mental artifacts couple with digital
|
|
ones. The simulation becomes the real landscape, perception becomes
|
|
reality. The symbolic universe we inhabit defines our larger life in a way
|
|
we can never escape.
|
|
|
|
"Professional speakers" had better become "professional communicators" and
|
|
so had everybody else. The symbolic modules we construct are bridges
|
|
between the thought of taking a step and the step itself, a Big Toy we can
|
|
climb to the next level of self-representation and self-understanding. We
|
|
need that bridge because we are headed for a cliff. The cliff is our
|
|
extinction, the moment of our translation as a species into something else,
|
|
something that we half-create and half-discover as we take control of our
|
|
evolution, spread throughout the solar system and to the nearest stars, and
|
|
become utterly other.
|
|
|
|
Yes, we do need a better name than "space" for the gregarious universe. And
|
|
a better name than "human" for what we are becoming. And a better name than
|
|
"aliens" for the others we encounter. And a better name than "writer" or
|
|
"speaker" for people who give names to emergent realities. Both the names
|
|
and the realities have already been invented somewhere in the deeper matrix
|
|
under us all. We ride a river of archetypal energy streaming from an
|
|
underground canyon, rafting a whitewater river that is a dream, not ours,
|
|
under a sky of multiple moons.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
**********************************************************************
|
|
|
|
Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by
|
|
Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions
|
|
of computer technology. Comments are welcome.
|
|
|
|
Feel free to pass along columns for personal use, retaining this
|
|
signature file. If interested in (1) publishing columns
|
|
online or in print, (2) giving a free subscription as a gift, or
|
|
(3) distributing Islands to employees or over a network,
|
|
email for details.
|
|
|
|
To subscribe to Islands in the Clickstream, send email to
|
|
rthieme@thiemeworks.com with the words "subscribe islands" in the
|
|
body of the message. To unsubscribe, email with "unsubscribe
|
|
islands" in the body of the message.
|
|
|
|
Richard Thieme is a professional speaker, consultant, and writer
|
|
focused on the impact of computer technology on individuals and
|
|
organizations.
|
|
|
|
Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1998. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
ThiemeWorks on the Web: http://www.thiemeworks.com
|
|
|
|
ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1998 22:51:01 CST
|
|
From: CuD Moderators <cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu>
|
|
Subject: File 6--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998)
|
|
|
|
Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are
|
|
available at no cost electronically.
|
|
|
|
CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest
|
|
|
|
Or, to subscribe, send post with this in the "Subject:: line:
|
|
|
|
SUBSCRIBE CU-DIGEST
|
|
Send the message to: cu-digest-request@weber.ucsd.edu
|
|
|
|
DO NOT SEND SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE MODERATORS.
|
|
|
|
The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-6436), fax (815-753-6302)
|
|
or U.S. mail at: Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL
|
|
60115, USA.
|
|
|
|
To UNSUB, send a one-line message: UNSUB CU-DIGEST
|
|
Send it to CU-DIGEST-REQUEST@WEBER.UCSD.EDU
|
|
(NOTE: The address you unsub must correspond to your From: line)
|
|
|
|
CuD is readily accessible from the Net:
|
|
UNITED STATES: ftp.etext.org (206.252.8.100) in /pub/CuD/CuD
|
|
Web-accessible from: http://www.etext.org/CuD/CuD/
|
|
ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in /pub/Publications/CuD/
|
|
aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53) in /pub/eff/cud/
|
|
world.std.com in /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
|
|
wuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
|
|
EUROPE: nic.funet.fi in pub/doc/CuD/CuD/ (Finland)
|
|
ftp.warwick.ac.uk in pub/cud/ (United Kingdom)
|
|
|
|
|
|
The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from the
|
|
Cu Digest WWW site at:
|
|
URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/
|
|
|
|
COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST is an open forum dedicated to sharing
|
|
information among computerists and to the presentation and debate of
|
|
diverse views. CuD material may be reprinted for non-profit as long
|
|
as the source is cited. Authors hold a presumptive copyright, and
|
|
they should be contacted for reprint permission. It is assumed that
|
|
non-personal mail to the moderators may be reprinted unless otherwise
|
|
specified. Readers are encouraged to submit reasoned articles
|
|
relating to computer culture and communication. Articles are
|
|
preferred to short responses. Please avoid quoting previous posts
|
|
unless absolutely necessary.
|
|
|
|
DISCLAIMER: The views represented herein do not necessarily represent
|
|
the views of the moderators. Digest contributors assume all
|
|
responsibility for ensuring that articles submitted do not
|
|
violate copyright protections.
|
|
|
|
------------------------------
|
|
|
|
End of Computer Underground Digest #10.38
|
|
************************************
|
|
|