From: trump@pluto.ee.cua.edu (Louis Edward Trumpbour)
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 93 19:51:12 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <9302260351.AA17473@pluto.ee.cua.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


things on my mind

well i am relatively new to the cypherpunks list so i have a

few comments to make on my behalf.

 

(1) i read in a message about the current rise in the member

    of subscribers and this rise was passively related to

    Mondo. There was also some concern expressed in this

    message about the number of people dropping the list and

    from those comments i reply that the list does generate

    an awful lot of mail.  And this mail is often quite

    technical (well if i was talking from a technically

    illiterate point of view it would very technical...

    i generally can follow the idea and their technicality

    though) and this technicality is a turn off to the Mondo

    type. I know that Mondo has said allot about the problems

    of personal security on the information age but not in

    tech-speek... i believe that most of the Mondo types will

    unsubscribe from this list because it is not a part of

    their focal of interest. Yes the list talks about current

    issues but again from a technical point of view and for

    the Mondo crowed n general it is a real turn off.

 

(2) Att Mail is nice. If anyone cares i will find out about

    what features it has... i.e. ftp, telnet, irc, etc... My

    sister is an Att employee and she is given an attmail.com

    address for her on the go and work sight mail... it is

    nice because i can stay in contact with her because

    Att mail has a 800 international dialup. My sister has a

    portable NCR computer with modem and can get my mail

    where ever she is. In 1992 she was back and forth from

    Puerto Rico and New Jersey for AT&T now she is all over

    Europe. A very nice convenience for the (wo)man on the

    run.

 

(3) Am I from D.C. and i am unsure if the world knows about

    this but in November the Secret Service raided our 26oo

    meeting at the Pentagon City mall. I know that we here in

    D.C. have all the more concern about security and

    frequently use are PGP keys because there is little doubt

    that our BBS are being taped et cetera and i am certain

    that in the near future there will be an upsurge of us

    D.C. boyz to your list.

 

(4) About DES.

    The data encryption standard is, no doubt in my mind,

    quite cracked by NSA. If it is not completely cracked it

    is at least very easy to get into by these boys. I have

    found that there is too much evidence that NSA has gotten

    in to DES pretty well. For starters (not a proof by the

    way) the cryptographers who work for NSA spend most of

    their time breaking encryption and its pretty mind

    boggling to think that no short cuts have been found to

    DES by a bunch of dedicated cyptographers. Damn if that

    was my job and my field of knowledge i am sure i would

    have at least a little short cut of some sort.  So i have

    been doing a little work on DES but i am unsure about the

    validity of my ideas and their effects on encryption...

    if i do feel that i find something i will certainly let

    it out but i was just wondering if people had any DES

    source in all or any languages??? it would be very

    helpful to get cross language DES source...

 

Well i hope that this note wasn't too boring but i felt that

i had to get it out to the list. so hopefully i will get some