December 2014 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Snowden ran a major 2 Gbps exit node named “TheSignal”
by Seth 15 Dec '14

15 Dec '14

This may be old news to some but I found it quite remarkable to discover today that prior to fleeing what I like to call "The United State", Ed Snowden apparently ran a major Tor exit node named "TheSignal". http://pando.com/2014/07/16/tor-spooks/ Furthermore, he helped to organize and throw a freakin' Crypto Party on Oahu (contacting and co-ordinating via email with Runa Sandvik using his legal name!!) about six months prior to bailing for Hong Kong. According to the same Pandodaily article he "was trying to get some of his buddies at “work” to set up additional Tor nodes…". Not exactly a shining example of good OpSec for someone who is also secretly gathering a trove of classified documents to leak.

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tor : just keep lying
by Juan 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

http://pando.com/2014/12/09/clearing-the-air-around-tor/ " What makes Tor different from the usual thesaurus-full of government projects is that Tor is essentially a very elaborate math trick, using layers of math puzzles to create a network-within-the-network. That math is being implemented in front of a global audience of millions of sophisticated watchers. It is likely the most examined codebase in the world. It has been subjected to multiple public audits. The math, well known and widely standardized, will work for everyone, or it will not, whoever pays the bills." What a piece of dishonest garbage. Now it turns out that all software is 'math' so it either 'works' or not? All the usual problems with government funded activities magically go away because "it's math". Wow. The stupid is overwhelming. "millions of sophisticated watchers" LOL - I wonder how many people actually reviewed tor's source? 10? 50? Or maybe 0? The funny thing with these zealots is that they are way more brazen and full of shit than even the tor developers.

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Re: [cryptome] Pretty Damning Stuff. Out of the Mouths of the CIA
by Александр 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

Doug says: " *Is that perhaps why the USA government hasn't signed up to any international human rights act...one wonders. Because there is a chance some of their leaders would be prosecuted for crimes against humanity? *So many Americans are complaining about why they are hated so much in the world. Perhaps it could be something to do with the way they treat other nations, races and religions and cultures? A look in their own back yard to see if there is anything dirty there, and clean it out? *Blacks, people of colour get killed willy-nilly, even kids. The Grand Jury sees no case to answer. Racism abounds, sexism rages, yet, those very same leading Americans want to teach the rest of the worlds citizens lessons on human rights and equality. * It is indeed the highest form of hypocrisy, and a great insult to the intelligence of most people who inhabit this planet"* ____________ *BRAVO!* It is very encouraging to hear such words from an English-speaking person. Because as soon as these words (the truth) said by some Russian / Chinese / Arab person, it is instantly gets up in a column of "propaganda" or "enemy of the state". *BRAVO for the courage to speak the truth.*

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Re: GoldBug SF projects [was: Bittorrent Bleep]
by grarpamp 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Bernd Stramm <bernd.stramm(a)gmail.com> wrote: > To the extent that linux versions of these projects are available, I put > them in the opensuse build system. > From there you can get RPMs, and a few DEBs, including the source versions. > OBS signs them. If I wanted to try Unix/OBS versions I would. And I might if these issues are ever resolved and they are picked up and looked at by more Unix's. > So quit whining I'm defending users who might be considering running the binaries you distribute. As far as I can tell, no one has ever been able to reproduce them from your sources. And you haven't posted sufficient details about your platform to make whatever compilation notes you posted worthwhile. "32 bit windows" could be anything. I also can't find OpenPGP signatures for the binaries or the sources that you distribute. Nor can I find a reply from you or "Mike Weber" or anyone else regarding all these issues. > If you use windows, it is your own fault. So if I use the source without blobs I'm safe, but if I use your windows binaries I'm rooted? Or should this mean that you know windows sucks but you're writing to it anyways, and perhaps you don't care much about the implementation quality there. Now because you're a member of GoldBug Messenger on SF... / http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047137.html / "[Today ...] the EFF in conjunction with the Chaos Computer Club announced a / new secure Instant Messenger called: GoldBug.sf.net (http://goldbug.sf.net)" Are you suggesting that users ignore the falsehood you put in your announcements and just trust your software? (Is that what all those anonymous 5-star 1-review posts of GoldBug to mostly second and third class windows software aggregator sites are about... building trust? You can google for those.) Or are you saying that you somehow forgot to post your own project denial of Randolph / Thomas posting as if they were associated with your projects? Ok, well maybe you did forget that, so let's see who has control... Currently: http://sourceforge.net/projects/goldbug/ "Brought to you by: berndhs, mikeweber" ... and what they do with that control... / http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047137.html This gnupg thread also shows two other witnesses to... / "a review on sourceforge which indicates that the CCC has no idea / of it" / "... I also note that about 30 minutes ago, a representative of the Chaos / Computer Club (CCC) posted a one-star review of GoldBug in which he said / that CCC had never heard of GoldBug, despite GoldBug claiming to be / associated with CCC. / / About five minutes ago the GoldBug project admin disabled reviews and / the one-star review is no longer visible. / / This kind of behavior on the part of the GoldBug project leaders is / deeply irresponsible. This, by itself, should persuade people to not / use it. Responsible programmers *welcome* criticism -- we don't / suppress it." Currently: http://sourceforge.net/projects/goldbug/reviews "This project does not allow reviews to be posted." Now of course back then "Mike Weber" may have been the only one in the SF GB project, plus the apparent, in my opinion, shills Thomas and Randolph. However, you are now also on the SF GB project since at least Oct 26 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131004145711/http://sourceforge.net/projects/… https://web.archive.org/web/20131026004244/http://sourceforge.net/projects/… So lets see if your project has improved its behaviour since pointed out by people on gnupg list in Jul 2013... no it hasn't. To wit: Your project just censored my post and turned on list moderation so that no one else can speak. Oopsie, footshot ;-) https://web.archive.org/web/20140922090221/http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug… https://web.archive.org/web/20140922201304/http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug… http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug/mailman/goldbug-forum/ "1 message has been excluded from this view by a project administrator." 14 out of 15 posts. "Your mail to 'GoldBug-Forum' ... is being held ... Post to moderated list" So the question now begs, with you being fully aware, and perhaps even complicit... why do you remain associated with projects that have serious issues? If you choose to remain, you definitely need to get "Mike", and you, to post an answer on this stuff. And if you choose to leave, an exit statement from you would surely serve you well as a possible member of the FOSS/Suse community. > So quit whining As long as all these questions remain unanswered, I will not quit defending users, or the names of Tor, EFF, CCC. Last minute additions... # These two addresses are '550 user unknown' ... berndhs(a)users.sourceforge.net mikeweber(a)users.sourceforge.net # A story about one particular Michael Weber http://www.businessinsider.com/swiss-software-developer-bitcoin-2014-4 # Another email found spot-on and dooble - "Alexis Megas" - textbrowser(a)gmail.com, textfield@us... # They uncensored my post to their list (second in this thread), # but have not yet approved my first from this thread, or possibly # this third post. http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug/mailman/goldbug-forum/ # I'm aware of no replies other than Bernd above. Maybe for Goldbug et al it's all about the cute puppies... / http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047137.html / "Some net communities already call it the 'Neuland Messenger' due to / the Font Name of the Logo." Really, they do call it that? Well shoot your foot again, seems that phrase has no applicable google search results on the net other than your own announcement and a ... http://www.infodog.com/RESULTS/brdrsl.htm?evno=2000110102&bno=31800 "Bern"ese mountain show dog. You silly "novice bitches", hopefully the twitters will have their way with you and your apparently bogus projects too. https://twitter.com/GoldBugIM Bye bye.

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Keith Alexander's IronNet Cybersecurity Comsec
by John Young 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

Recognize former (and current?) NSA officials, among 30, working for Keith Alexander's IronNet Cybersecurity, Inc. <http://t.co/JruGTeDTRQ>http://cryptome.org/2014/12/keith-alexander-comsec.htm http://ironnetcyber.com/

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more blasphemy
by Juan 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

and more! pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/ "Perhaps it’s somewhat understandable that salaried Tor developers like Andrea Shepard and Jacob Appelbaum went on the attack......Both Appelbaum and Shepard circulate in radical anti-police state circles, and my article pointed out that they earn $100,000-plus annual salaries working for a nonprofit federal government security contractor—a nonprofit that gets at least three-quarters of its annual funding from the Pentagon, State Department, and other federal agencies. In other words, Tor anti-National Security State rebels are living off the largesse of their NatSec State nemesis." "Morgan Marquis-Boire, a former Googler who was recently poached by Pierre Omidyar to run security at First Look, called me a loony conspiracy theorist for reporting on Tor’s government funding—but then contradicted himself by arguing that this “conspiracy theory” is a matter of public record. It was a baffling, oxymoronic argument to make—accusing my article of being both a wild conspiracy theory, yet also boring old news that no one should bother reading—but for some reason, Tor defenders thought this self-contradiction made perfect logical sense:" "As it turned out, Halpin, like the Tor developers and their defenders, had other reasons to try to discredit reporting on funding and conflicts-of-interest. Halpin is the president of LEAP, a small privacy/encryption outfit that gets most of its funding from various government sources—including more than $1 million from Radio Free Asia’s “Open Technology Fund.” This fund just happens to be a major financial backer of the Tor Network; last year alone, the Open Technology Fund gave Tor $600,000. The fund also happens to be run out of the Broadcasters Board of Governors (BBG), an old CIA spinoff dedicated to waging propaganda warfare against regimes hostile to US interests. The BBG—which until recently was called the International Broadcasting Bureau—has also been one of the biggest backers of Tor going back to 2007." "No wonder all these people are so upset by my reporting. They’ve branded themselves as radical activists fighting The Man and the corporate surveillance apparatus—while taking money from the US government’s military and foreign policy arms, as well as the biggest and worst corporate violators of our privacy. By branding themselves as radical activists, they appear to share the same interests as the grassroots they seek to influence; exposing their funding conflicts-of-interests makes it hard for them to pose as grassroots radicals. So instead of explaining why getting funding from the very entitities that Tor is supposed to protect users from is not a problem, they’ve taken the low road to discredit the very idea of reporting on monetary conflicts-of-interests as either irrelevant, or worse, a sign of mental illness."

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blasphemy!
by Juan 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

As far as I can tell this hasn't been posted on the list "Almost everyone involved in developing Tor was (or is) funded by the US government" http://pando.com/2014/07/16/tor-spooks/ The comments from the tor fanboys are both revolting and amusing. These people are as mindless as jesus freaks.

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Re: Microsoft accepts Bitcoin
by Ryan Carboni 12 Dec '14

12 Dec '14

> > Basically the > future of finance is less humane (Bitcoin is hard currency) and more unfair > (Bitcoin is unfairly distributed). It is also not, in practice, > distributed I suggested on the bitcoin forums and devlist that currency minting be the square root of current block hashing power, this would be inflationary yes, but it would stabilize the currency and incentize mining (unlike current plans to reduce fees further). but you know, a hundred people who first heard of bitcoin through the cryptography mailing list either lost their bitcoins, or own combined a large percentage of bitcoins. inequality begets instability. the funny thing is that after the next block subsidy cut, a 51% attack would easily be committed. but if there's a major war, the world's internet connections will be disrupted, and bitcoin would probably die in areas in which mining is less than the biggest contiguous block of miners. Bitcoin is the worst currency to hold during WWIII, you literally cannot spend it until the world internet is repaired.

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Gaagle
by Juan 12 Dec '14

12 Dec '14

Yes! I had misplaced this link but finally found it again. I don't think it can get any better than this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F7SUWb9LPI (unintentional self-parody, that is)

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Microsoft accepts Bitcoin
by grarpamp 12 Dec '14

12 Dec '14

https://commerce.microsoft.com/PaymentHub/Help/Right?helppagename=CSV_Bitco… BTC price jumps 6% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG2vMISThpA

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