From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 94 12:37:27 PST
To: werewolf@io.org (Mark Terka)
Subject: Re: Storm Brewing Over Forged Bob Rae Posting?
In-Reply-To: <i5pwkOwscgm5075yn@io.org>
Message-ID: <199412112037.MAA16882@netcom18.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mark Terka wrote:

> Anybody taken note of the ruckus about a forged posting from Bob Rae (the
> premier of the Canadian province of Ontario)? Seems like some joker posted
> a fake message from Rae through Hal's remailer at portal.
> 
> Now all the lame press (and some even LAMER USENET readers) are screaming foul.
> I bet there will be renewed interest in the cypherpunk remailer's in the next
> few days :>

Thanks for mentioning this, but I had some trouble finding it in the
*.canada.* newsgroups. I found it in "ont.general" after seeing
mention of the controversy in "alt.anonymous."

The newspaper article cites comments from a manager at Portal,
denyning responsibility, so we _may_ be seeing some repercussions. (I
have no idea if Hal has been contacted...perhaps he can comment here.)

In other news, seen in the various anon server groups, there's a
raging debate about some remailers censoring^H^H^H^Hscreening for
content, and not passing on (plaintext, obviously) messages they
dislike, or think are offensive, or insulting/supportive of
Scientology, etc. (I haven't read the Scientology debate yet, but
apparently a remailer named "Homer" is involved, one way or another.)

Once again, and not for the last time, it is critical that
*remailer-hosting sites* be placed at arms-length from *specific
instances of remailer accounts*. To put it more simply, a site like
c2.org could offer _dozens_ of remailer accounts.

(The site owner is not supposed to look at mail, according to the
ECPA...in my non-lawyerly view, this provides valuable protection for
the site owner. Not for the remailer account owners, but, then, they
are presumably acquired through pseudonyms, aren't they?)

In yet another piece of news, Netcom has apparently been
hacked/attacked rather badly. The "netcom.general" discussion group
(local to Netcom) is filled with garbage posts, forged posts,
cancelled articles, etc. Messages about "root" being forged appeared,
then disappeared. Netcom is quiet on this, but has been running
"crack" on all of their machines for the last several days--apparently
to (somehow?) help to find security flaws....I have no idea why
running crack to find weak passwords of users is such a high priority.
Maybe the apparent attack is related, maybe not.

News has basically stopped flowing into Netcom, and mail is still
somewhat squirrelly. 

Phil Karn asked me if the "Internet Liberation Front" was/is my doing.
Nope. (The ILF--not to be confused with the "Information Liberation
Front," which I may or may not know something about--was apparently
claiming to have cracked some other online service providers. I don't
know if the current situation at Netcom is related to this.)

--Tim May


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