July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

None
by None 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Why a separate WWW box issued a copy, I dunno. There's about a dozen of the WWW boxes tied together via AFS.

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Cato study: U.S. government leaves public unprepared for terrorism
by Patricia Mohr 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Cato Institute News Release November 27, 2000 U.S. Government Leaves Public Unprepared For Terrorism Preparation for nuclear, biological and chemical attacks is deeply flawed, study says WASHINGTON -- Many experts agree that the United States is likely to experience a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction, probably within the next decade. But how prepared is America for a nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) attack on the homeland? Not very, according to a new study from the Cato Institute. Despite spending tens of billions of dollars annually on preparation programs, the federal government has failed to take advantage of existing emergency management structures and to educate the public about how to react to an attack, argues Eric. R. Taylor, a chemistry professor and former officer in the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical branch of the U.S. Army. In "Are We Prepared for Terrorism Using Weapons of Mass Destruction?" Taylor exposes the flaws in the federal Domestic Preparedness Program (DPP), which was set up in 1997 and directs various federal agencies to train state and local governments to deal with NBC terrorism. When the federal government decided who should be trained, it targeted only cities, and then only halfway, leaving "personnel in more than 50 percent of the major U.S. population centers ... unprepared for such an attack," he says. But since NBC contamination spreads quickly, it's not just cities that need to know how to respond, Taylor argues. State and regional structures such as the State Emergency Management Agencies and National Guard units have been largely bypassed by the DPP, Taylor says. Those agencies already have experience in coordinating responses to terrorism and hazardous material disasters. Furthermore, they could have been passing on acquired knowledge to subordinate groups while the federal government moved on to other states, Taylor argues. The "pyramid effect" has been reduced by focusing on cities in isolation, he says. Even if the training programs were better targeted, Taylor argues, they are useless without public involvement. "The lack of any organized program to actively educate the public in matters of NBC awareness and preparedness is the Achilles' heel of the entire national plan," he writes. Without education, the government "will have two foes to combat during an attack: the NBC agent and rampant civil panic," he says. "The concepts and principles of NBC taught to the private first class soldier can be understood by Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public," Taylor says. But they must be taught in advance. "Any official who thinks he can adequately inform the public during an NBC incident will be preaching to the morgue," he says. Policy Analysis no. 387 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-387es.html) Contact: Eric R. Taylor, associate professor of chemistry, University of Louisiana, 337-482-6738 Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies, 202-218-4630 Randy Clerihue, director of public affairs, 202-789-5266 The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research foundation dedicated to broadening policy debate consistent with the traditional American principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. ----- End forwarded message -----

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Ultimate limits to computation
by "Hal Finney" 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

[Note subject line change] Jerry Leichter writes: > Since people do keep bringing up Moore's Law in an attempt to justify > larger keys our systems "stronger than cryptography," it's worth > keeping in mind that we are approaching fairly deep physical limits. > I wrote about this on this list quite a while back. If current > physical theories are even approximately correct, there are limits to > how many "bit flips" (which would encompass all possible binary > operations) can occur in a fixed volume of space-time. You can turn > this into a limit based solely on time through the finite speed of > light: A computation that starts at some point and runs for n years > can't involve a volume of space more than n light years in radius. > (This is grossly optimistic - if you want the results to come back to > the point where you entered the problem, the limit is n/2 light years, > which has 1/8 the spacial volume). I made a very approximate guess at > how many bit-flips you could get in a time-space volume of a 100 light- > year sphere; the answer came out somewhere between 2^128 and 2^256, > though much closer to the former. So physical limits prevent you from > doing a brute force scan - in fact, you can't even enumerate all > possible keys - in 100 years for key lengths somewhere not much more > than 128 bits. Things may not be quite as favorable as this. Here is a posting I made to cypherpunks in 2004:

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Re: On what the NSA does with its tech
by hal＠finney.org 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

MV writes: > Yes. They can't break a 128 bit key. That's obvious. ("if all the > atoms in the > universe were computers..." goes the argument). Not necessarily, if nanotechnology works. 128 bits is big but not that big. Eric Drexler, in Nanosystems, section 12.9, predicts that a nanotech based CPU fitting in a 400 nm cube could run at 1000 MIPS and consume 60 nanowatts, performing 10^16 instructions per second per watt. Let's design a system to break a 128 bit cipher. Let's suppose it has to do 2^10 instructions per test, so this is 2^138 instructions total, or about 10^41. Let's let it run for four months, which is 10^7 seconds, so our necessary processing rate is 10^34 instructions per second. This means we need 10^34 IPS / 1000 MIPS or 10^25 of Drexler's gigahertz cubes, call it 10^25 cubic microns or 10^7 cubic meters, a cube about 220 meters on a side. The system will consume 10^25 * 60 nanowatts or about 6 * 10^17 watts. Now, that's a lot. It's four times what the earth receives from the sun. So we have to build a disk four times the area (not volume) of the earth, collect that power and funnel it to our computers. Probably we would scatter the computers throughout the disk, which would be mostly composed of solar collectors. (Keeping the disk gravitationally stable is left as an exercise for the student, as is the tradeoff involved in making it smaller but moving it closer to the sun.) Fortunately, exhaustive key search is perfectly parallelizable so there is no need for complex communications or synchronizations between the processors. As you can see, breaking 128 bit keys is certainly not a task which is so impossible that it would fail even if every atom were a computer. If we really needed to do it, it's not outside the realm of possibility that it could be accomplished within 50 years, using nanotech and robotics to move and reassemble asteroids into the necessary disk. Now, 256 bit keys really are impossible, unless the whole contraption above can be made to operate as an enormous, unified quantum computer, in which case it could theoretically break even 256 bit keys. 512 bit keys... now those really are impossible. Hal Finney --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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We have a new Windows Tor installer
by Roger Dingledine 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Hi folks, Matt Edman has created a "package bundle" that includes Tor, TorCP, and Privoxy. We've rewritten the Tor win32 instructions to tell people to use that rather than doing all the steps manually: http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/tor-doc-win32.html If you're a Windows user, please take a look and let us know if there are any installation problems, and if there are any documentation things we should fix. Thanks! --Roger ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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Ultimate limits to computation
by "Hal Finney" 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

[Note subject line change] Jerry Leichter writes: > Since people do keep bringing up Moore's Law in an attempt to justify > larger keys our systems "stronger than cryptography," it's worth > keeping in mind that we are approaching fairly deep physical limits. > I wrote about this on this list quite a while back. If current > physical theories are even approximately correct, there are limits to > how many "bit flips" (which would encompass all possible binary > operations) can occur in a fixed volume of space-time. You can turn > this into a limit based solely on time through the finite speed of > light: A computation that starts at some point and runs for n years > can't involve a volume of space more than n light years in radius. > (This is grossly optimistic - if you want the results to come back to > the point where you entered the problem, the limit is n/2 light years, > which has 1/8 the spacial volume). I made a very approximate guess at > how many bit-flips you could get in a time-space volume of a 100 light- > year sphere; the answer came out somewhere between 2^128 and 2^256, > though much closer to the former. So physical limits prevent you from > doing a brute force scan - in fact, you can't even enumerate all > possible keys - in 100 years for key lengths somewhere not much more > than 128 bits. Things may not be quite as favorable as this. Here is a posting I made to cypherpunks in 2004:

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Re: 27C3 on Tor
by Mike Perry 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Thus spake Roc Admin (onionroutor(a)gmail.com) > Found the presentation at least and watching it now. You have to skip > to 3:30 for the actual presentation. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMInOosdBk&feature=related Here's a direct link to the relevant section: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMInOosdBk#t=31m38s The work seems to be pretty thorough, but it would be nice to have a paper and/or the source to their classifier. The 27c3 website doesn't seem to list much: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4140.en.html The results aren't very specific in the video. It looks like they covered the major pitfall of timing attack research (the Base Rate Fallacy) with their presentation of the True Positive rate and the False Positive rate, but it's not 100% clear, because there's only a single slide with the results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMInOosdBk#t=46m20s The other detail that's not clear is if you train your detector for 5 interesting websites, and 2000 uninteresting ones, what happens if the target is browsing sites outside of those 2000 uninteresting ones? -- Mike Perry Mad Computer Scientist fscked.org evil labs ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: 27C3 on Tor
by Mike Perry 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Thus spake Roc Admin (onionroutor(a)gmail.com) > Found the presentation at least and watching it now. You have to skip > to 3:30 for the actual presentation. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMInOosdBk&feature=related Here's a direct link to the relevant section: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMInOosdBk#t=31m38s The work seems to be pretty thorough, but it would be nice to have a paper and/or the source to their classifier. The 27c3 website doesn't seem to list much: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4140.en.html The results aren't very specific in the video. It looks like they covered the major pitfall of timing attack research (the Base Rate Fallacy) with their presentation of the True Positive rate and the False Positive rate, but it's not 100% clear, because there's only a single slide with the results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMInOosdBk#t=46m20s The other detail that's not clear is if you train your detector for 5 interesting websites, and 2000 uninteresting ones, what happens if the target is browsing sites outside of those 2000 uninteresting ones? -- Mike Perry Mad Computer Scientist fscked.org evil labs ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [cryptography] Digital cash in the news...
by Adam Back 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Bitcoin does not have to end with the pyramid scheme outcome - where it stalls and all those still holding any lose - so long as there remain people willing to exchange goods for bitcoin after the dust has settled. Anyway my point is even if the deployment phase is a wild ride, with some winners and some late losers who bought in above the final stable value, so long as a stable value results at the end, I dont see that as a big problem. Its not like we havent had bubbles and instability in various phases of any other forms of money or assets. If you take out the speculation, currently with people minting coins until they get to 21 million coins that would be inflation (limited inflation due to the mining cost); but also that more people are joining is deflationary (less coins per person). Then there is supply and demand - supply from minting (so long as the sell price is above minting cost), supply from people cashing out, and demand from people buying in. Cashing out and buying in maybe for trading or speculation. Once the 21 million coins are created bitcoin would remain deflationary during the next phase as until the user base grows to saturation. Once bitcoin grows to saturation, the remaining deflation would be limited by the underlying population and economic growth. That might be workable rate of deflation. Adam On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 11:55:38PM +1000, Ian G wrote: > On 13/06/11 5:54 PM, Adam Back wrote: >> Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme, and doesnt have to have the collapse and >> late joiner losers. If bitcoin does not lose favor - ie the user base grows >> and then maintains size of user base in the long term, then no one loses. > > Um, Adam, that's the very definition of a pyramid scheme :) > > No-one need lose as long as the size of the user base grows, long term! > > So everyone is incentivised to bring in new victims^H^H^H^H^H^H users :P > > That's why they're illegal, typically. > >> I think in the current phase the deflation (currency increasing in value) >> helps increase interest and number of users. > > Um, yeah, whatever. Look, whatever you do, don't tell anyone of your > friends or family to invest in it. > >> Say that in the next phase bitcoin stops rapid expansion and reaches some >> stable number of users, the deflationary period stops, and the remaining >> users use it for transactions only (not speculation). I dont see the losers >> in that scenario. > > No, but the scenario is incomplete: Those speculating on an increase > in value will realise it has reached stability. So they'll sell. > Which will cause a reduction in value. Which will cause a run, as > those that didn't understand the mechanics of a pyramid scheme get > their rude lesson. > >>> However. Unless the laws of financial conservation have been repealed >>> by the design, those who follow have to invest a lot and come out with >>> less... > > > > iang _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[liberationtech] Drones are not storytellers or why Syrians need better storytelling was Re: Pirate Bay turns to drones
by Brian Conley 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Not only the development costs, but the litigation/jail time costs as well are a huge issue with more innovative applications of drone tech. Further, the idea of implementing drones in Syria first of all is a huge safety risk, and could fundamentally change the perception of an already hostile regime to encourage increasingly worse actions. Secondly, the drones for human rights stuff all forgets a fundamental issue, people care about stories, not grainy footage, unless the crimes are so enormous, and even then they don't encourage action nor do they help inform outsiders what exactly Syrians want or need. For example, there is a fundamental difference between videos like these that Iraqis we worked with in Baghdad were producing years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVib2fMtP1w http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/2008/07/28/al-sahwa-mistakes-in-adhamiya/ http://www.aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/10/08/us-military-destroys-iraqi-homes-b… ...and shaky content and long range images of what often may or may not be the "heinous crimes" individuals claim. see this video for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kQMSkdo_jc&feature=player_embedded I think its pretty clear why more efforts are not being made to more effectively and repeatedly tell the stories of individual refugees and people who have lost homes and loved ones. The people documenting are most often men, and as a man who has had the same problem myself when documenting police violence, war, etc, we too often resort to documenting horrible events, both because we are shocked and because that involves an adrenaline rush and provides its own sort of benefit to us as individuals, and leaves beside the wayside any review of whether this content is really moving minds or pushing forward a liberation agenda. As a trainer who has worked with individuals all over the world in conflict areas and the developing world, I have found that women are the best trainees, followed closely by older men. Young people are often too caught up in the moment and the injustice of it all to more effectively document or listen to recommendations about composition, pacing, etc. I guess this is a bit off-topic, but after spending a long time in a fairly pointless discussion with a man from Hama about this subject last night, I felt the need to mention it here. I'm still trying to sort out exactly why I think the idea of drones as human rights documentation may make sense, but it certainly cannot replace storytelling or investigative reporting. On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:32 AM, Andrew Lewis <andrew(a)pdqvpn.com> wrote: > Yes, telecomix is looking at drones, and really the proposal by TPB is > outlandish to current drone builders/operators, but most of the limitations > seem to be artificially limited technical issues that no one has thought > past due to limitations by US/UK/EU regulations. If you disregard these > rules, long range drones are well within the realm of possibility. I think > an open source drone program is possible, if people are willing to commit > the resources and accept the overall development costs. > > Andrew Lewis > Twitter: ThePunkbob > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Mar 23, 2012, at 4:53 PM, KheOps <kheops(a)ceops.eu> wrote: > > > Indeed, we're working on drones to film and livestream stuff in hostile > > environment such as Syria :) Will keep you posted if something concrete > > is somehow produced :) > > > > On 03/23/2012 04:57 PM, David Johnson wrote: > >> It sounded ridiculous, but ideas can come from jokes. > >> > >> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 9:48 AM, KheOps <kheops(a)ceops.eu > >> <mailto:kheops@ceops.eu>> wrote: > >> > >> This is a joke - at least according to tetsu0, one of the TPB folks > :) > >> > >> On 03/23/2012 04:44 PM, David Johnson wrote: > >>> http://thepiratebay.se/blog/210 > >>> > >>> > >>> /TPB LOSS/ > >>> > >>> /We were down a few hours earlier today. There's no need to worry, we > >>> haven't been raided this time. We're only upgrading stuff since we're > >>> still growing./ > >>> > >>> /One of the technical things we always optimize is where to put our > >>> front machines. They are the ones that re-direct your traffic to a > >>> secret location. We have now decided to try to build something > >>> extraordinary./ > >>> > >>> /With the development of GPS controlled drones, far-reaching cheap > >> radio > >>> equipment and tiny new computers like the Raspberry Pi > >>> <http://www.raspberrypi.org/>, we're going to experiment with sending > >>> out some small drones that will float some kilometers up in the air. > >>> This way our machines will have to be shut down with aeroplanes in > >> order > >>> to shut down the system. A real act of war./ > >>> > >>> /We're just starting so we haven't figured everything out yet. But we > >>> can't limit ourselves to hosting things just on land anymore. > >> These Low > >>> Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) are just the first attempt. With modern > >>> radio transmitters we can get over 100Mbps per node up to 50km > >> away. For > >>> the proxy system we're building, that's more than enough./ > >>> > >>> /But when time comes we will host in all parts of the galaxy, > >> being true > >>> to our slogan of being the galaxy's most resilient system. And all of > >>> the parts we'll use to build //that system on will be downloadable./ > >>> > >>> > >>> -- > >>> > >>> David V. Johnson > >>> Web Editor > >>> Boston Review > >>> Website: http://www.bostonreview.net > >>> > >>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview > >>> Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com > >>> > >>> > >>> Mailing Address: > >>> San Francisco Writers' Grotto > >>> > >>> 490 2nd Street, 2nd Fl. > >>> San Francisco, CA 94107 > >>> > >>> > >>> Cell: (917)903-3706 <tel:%28917%29903-3706> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> liberationtech mailing list > >>> liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu > >> <mailto:liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu> > >>> > >>> Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: > >>> > >>> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > >>> > >>> If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you > >> click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in > >> a daily digest?" > >>> > >>> You will need the user name and password you receive from the list > >> moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: > >> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > >>> > >>> Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list > >> moderator. > >>> > >>> Please don't forget to follow us on > >> http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech > >> <http://twitter.com/#%21/Liberationtech> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> liberationtech mailing list > >> liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu > >> <mailto:liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu> > >> > >> Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: > >> > >> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > >> > >> If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you > >> click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in > >> a daily digest?" > >> > >> You will need the user name and password you receive from the list > >> moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: > >> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > >> > >> Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list > moderator. > >> > >> Please don't forget to follow us on > >> http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech > >> <http://twitter.com/#%21/Liberationtech> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> -- > >> > >> David V. Johnson > >> > >> Web Editor > >> Boston Review > >> Website: http://www.bostonreview.net > >> Twitter: http://twitter.com/BostonReview > >> > >> Tumblr: http://bostonreview.tumblr.com > >> > >> > >> Mailing Address: > >> San Francisco Writers' Grotto > >> > >> 490 2nd Street, 2nd Fl. > >> San Francisco, CA 94107 > >> > >> > >> Cell: (917)903-3706 > >> > >> > > > > _______________________________________________ > > liberationtech mailing list > > liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu > > > > Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: > > > > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > > > If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click > above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily > digest?" > > > > You will need the user name and password you receive from the list > moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > > > Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. > > > > Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech > _______________________________________________ > liberationtech mailing list > liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu > > Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: > > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click > above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily > digest?" > > You will need the user name and password you receive from the list > moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech > > Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. > > Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech > -- Brian Conley Director, Small World News http://smallworldnews.tv m: 646.285.2046 Skype: brianjoelconley public key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xCEEF938A1DBDD587<http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE827FACCB139C9F0> _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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