Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 4 Mar 1999 15:52:13 -0500 (EST) | From | "Richard B. Johnson" <> | Subject | Re: [patch] PIII/Katmai & FXSAVE support, disable serial-#, 2.2.2 |
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On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Nicholas J. Leon wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Mailing lists wrote: > > # So it's impossible to include such possibility to web browser, but > # with PIII psn such possibilities became real. And I never buy PIII until > # psn will be removed at all. I don't thrust Intel. I don't thrust that > # once disabled this psn possibility can't be reenabled in some (may be > # undocumented) way. > > But whats the big deal? Consider this scenerio: you walk into CompUSA. You > buy a CPU. You pay cash. You go home and install it. > > Whats the big deal? Theres still no connection between you and your serial > number. >
When I was a young kid, everybody was worried about the Russians. The whole country was watching each other to see if neighbors had any "Communist characteristics".
I thought that this was amusing. I had access to a Teletype-500 at school that was not connected to anything. However, by mucking around, I could make it print a random assemblage of characters.
I took a printout and made a "thermal" copy (we didn't have Xerox then). I then made a copy of the copy.
Then I went to a store and bought a box of envelopes. I took one out of the center, was careful not to touch it, and threw the rest away.
I addressed the envelope to Radio Moscow, Moscow, USSR, using a new ball-point pen which I also threw away. Without touching anything, I inserted the "encrypted" message, added a stamp and mailed it from a mailbox in a city 30 miles from where I lived.
Within two weeks, the FBI visited me at school. Although I never admitted nor told anybody anything, they knew everything. They even knew how I got to the city 30 miles from where I lived.
Those were the days in which J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on practically every man, women, and child. These records were kept by humans. Now they use computers.
If you don't want somebody to know what you are typing on your computer, turn off the power. The only thing that keeps you safe from prying eyes is statistics. There are just too many persons typing at computers at any one time, so your pecking away is mere noise in a sea of information.
It takes only a single photo-diode, a lens, and a video amplifier for me to duplicate on my computer screen everything that's on your screen if ANY light from your terminal gets outside your home or office. I'm not talking about being able to see the face of the terminal. All you need is (even defused) light from the terminal screen. This is because, in the process of writing pixels, the horiz/vert scanning does this in a very ordered way.
The light coming from the terminal is modulated (flickers) in this ordered way. The tiny pixels are contained in the high-frequency information, these bursts of high frequencies lie between the horizontal sweep-rate, and the groups of horizontal lines lie between the vertical refresh. Putting this information back together is trivial, even for a High School student. Any HAM Radio Operator knows how to do it.
Modem connections are often monitored by "Long Lines" the inter- city department of your telephone company. Everything you do can be seen at the Central Office if somebody bothered to hook up available equipment.
The US Department of Energy monitors Internet communications supposably to protect the United States nuclear power plants. The main facility is is Kansas City, Kansas (not MO). Keyword searches are automatic. If something seems "strange" the data are saved and a human can look at it.
The point is that serial numbers inside chips mean nothing. The idea was to be able to write Internet-access-blocker programs that would keep kids out of porn sites by having parents register their kids computers. Nothing in the computer could be bypassed by kids, which are getting smarter all the while. The actual protection would occur at the porn site. It is the actual computer that would be denied access rather than some local "trap" program that could be readily bypassed.
If any government wanted to be bothered to watch your activities all the tools already exist. You can help keep the guys and gals in Kansas City employed by putting "grep bait" in your signature file.
Cheers, Dick Johnson ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ***** Penguin : Linux version 2.2.2 on an i686 machine (400.59 BogoMips). Warning : It's hard to remain at the trailing edge of technology. Bait : plutonium Cuba president assassination killed Iran Honduras nitrate tritium toluene ammonium subway 747 pits iodine critical nuclear
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