October 2017 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Fwd: [messaging] Panoramix decryption mixnet messaging spec and design documents
by grarpamp 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: dawuud <dawuud(a)riseup.net> Date: Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 10:53 PM Subject: [messaging] Panoramix decryption mixnet messaging spec and design documents To: messaging(a)moderncrypto.org Hi, I just wanted to make you all aware that I've published our design and specification documents for our mixnet project: https://github.com/Katzenpost/docs Our design is based off of the Loopix anonymity system [LOOPIX]. [LOOPIX] Piotrowska, A., Hayes, J., Elahi, T., Meiser, S., and Danezis, G., “The Loopix Anonymity System”, USENIX, August, 2017 <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.00536.pdf> Firstly, we wrote specifications: https://github.com/Katzenpost/docs/tree/master/specs But that's a lot of reading and goes into fairly high detail suitable as implementation guidelines. When I was at PETS2017 I repeatedly explained our mixnet messaging system to people and I now realize we need a shorter document to serve this purpose of introduction. Here's a rough draft design document which can hopefully serve as an introduction: https://github.com/Katzenpost/docs/blob/master/drafts/mixdesign.txt Here's a rough draft user interface design doc: https://github.com/Katzenpost/docs/blob/master/drafts/user_interface.txt If you hate the name Katzenpost, I totally do not care at all. We can change the name later. In conclusion, let's talk about mixnets. We can talk mixnets here and/or on our mixnet mailing list: https://lists.mixnetworks.org/listinfo/mixnetworks If you hate mixnets then you are probably just grumpy and should go for a walk and breath some fresh air. Cheers! David Stainton _______________________________________________ Messaging mailing list Messaging(a)moderncrypto.org https://moderncrypto.org/mailman/listinfo/messaging

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Analysis of the Privacy and Security Risks of Android VPN Permission-enabled Apps
by Razer 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

A little old, but many of these "VPNs" are still probably insecure... For the record, from August 2016: > Millions of users worldwide resort to mobile VPN clients to either > circumvent censorship or to access geo-blocked con-tent, and more > generally for privacy and security purposes. In practice, however, > users have little if any guarantees about the corresponding security > and privacy settings, and perhaps no practical knowledge about the > entities accessing their mobile traffic. In this paper we provide > a first comprehensive analysis of 283 Android apps that use the > Android VPN permission, which we extracted from a corpus of more than > 1.4 million apps on the Google Play store. > > We perform a number of passive and active measurements designed to > investigate a wide range of security and privacy features and to study > the behavior of each VPN-based app. Our analysis includes > investigation of possible malware presence, third-party library > embedding, and traffic manipulation, as well as gauging user > perception of the security and privacy of such apps. Our experiments > reveal several instances of VPN apps that expose users to serious > privacy and security vulnerabilities, such as use of insecure VPN > tunneling protocols, as well as IPv6 and DNS traffic leakage. We > also report on a number of apps actively performing TLS > interception. Of particular concern are instances of apps that > inject JavaScript programs for tracking, advertising, and for > redirecting e-commerce traffic to external partners. 16 page pdf: https://research.csiro.au/ng/wp-content/uploads/sites/106/2016/08/paper-1.p… https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2987443.2987471

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The Saker - A crash course on the true causes of “antisemitism”
by Zenaan Harkness 11 Oct '17

11 Oct '17

Yes I know, ordinarily such a subject line would simply not pass muster, and perhaps many spam filters will bin it by default - worry not dear reader, evidently your spam filtering abilities are a cut above the average :) The Saker brings the usual insight and concise, fact based analysis to the table. Enjoy :) A crash course on the true causes of “antisemitism” - http://thesaker.is/a-crash-course-on-the-true-causes-of-antisemitism/ - http://www.unz.com/tsaker/a-crash-course-on-the-true-causes-of-anti-semitis…

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Punked: Jamie Dimon re Cryptocurrency is Scam
by grarpamp 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/75gskt/fullpage_crypto_ad_… https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/75gyat/crypto_and_jamie_dimon_in_… Now that's advertising ;) btw, $5k within 48 hours.

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OpenBSD 6.2 Released
by grarpamp 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

https://www.openbsd.org/62.html https://wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD

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"the Jim Bell effect" on Bitcoin price
by jim bell 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

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Timelock encryption
by George Violaris 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Some interesting reading regarding timelock encryption. Given crypto breakthroughs through cryptocurrency and smart contracts, it is interesting to be able to apply such techniques in fields such as insurance, bonds, trading, etc. The big issue up to now with these is that a trusted third party, e.g, a server, was required to keep track. However now with bitcoin and blockchain technologies, this kind of research is starting to change. - Gwern.net - Self-Decrypting Files: https://www.gwern.net/Self-decrypting-files Rabin & Thorpe - Time-Lapse Cryptogrpahy: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cat/tlc.pdf / http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cat/papers/tlc-poster.pdf Tibor Jager - How to Build Time-Lock Encryption: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/478 Jia Liu and Saqib A. Kakvi and Bogdan Warinschi - Extractable Witness Encryption and Timed-Release Encryption from Bitcoin ./gv

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RFD: Harrison and Appelbaum - Whistleblowers and Wikileaks
by grarpamp 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

https://roomfordiscussion.com/interview/sarah-harrison-jacob-appelbaum-wiki… Whistleblowers & Wikileaks “Days later, Harrison said goodbye to Snowden and flew to Berlin. She had been with him in Moscow for four months. On what was said to be legal advice, she declined to return to the UK. The German capital and East Berlin in particular was now a hub for a growing number of Snowden exiles: Poitras, journalist Jacob Appelbaum and Harrison. For anyone with a sense of history this was ironic. Stasiland had become and island of media freedom” (The Snowden Files, L. Harding, p.333). This was 4 years ago, but how is the situation today for the people who helped Edward Snowden? How has WikiLeaks changed since then? Is Edward Snowden still in a critical situation? What about Chelsea Manning and all the other whistleblowers? Where do we draw the line between truth telling and treason? This and much more will be discussed on the 12th of October at Room for Discussion with two of the main figures that were in the eye of the cyclone during the Snowden case in 2013! We will have the honour to interview Sarah Harrison (one of the closest advisers of Julian Assange) and Jacob Appelbaum (former ‘evangelist’ of the Tor Project and hacktivist) on the current state of whistleblowers and of Wikileaks. We hope to see you there! Practical Information Guests: Sarah Harrison & Jacob Appelbaum Interviewers: Paolo Destilo & Valentina Gianera Time: 13:00 – 14:00 Date: 12th of October

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Carbon fiber bombs
by jim bell 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Check out this post in the South Korea vibe: South Korea developing graphite 'blackout bombs' to paralyse North's electrical grid https://www.yahoo.com/newsroom/vibes/south-korea/v-50a3291a-1aa0-3389-b071-… Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

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Re: IBM OpenPOWER9 CPU [re: Closed Intel / AMD Firmware]
by Steven Schear 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Agreed that the POWER series are at (or perhaps above) most people's price point. Its a shame non-SOC ARM PCs aren't common to avoid the easily hidden backdoors afforded by integrated processors. Warrant Canary creator On Oct 8, 2017 7:22 PM, "grarpamp" <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Steven Schear <schear.steve(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Why not switch to much more open CPUs (e.g. POWER8/9) which are already > > comparable to much of Intel's higher end server chips. > > Power8 is an intermediate generation now on phaseout, where > Power9 seems more part of a fuller openpower initiative that might > stand up to Intel / AMD. The entire early 9 production output was > being vacuumed up by military / big data / compute, and retail is > taking a while to evolve. It's good stuff however power is still an > expensive platform for non enterprise end users to just buy > casually, and to pay electric on, but the openness might win. > Power9 scaleout SO is rather less than scaleup SU versions. > > If you want me to switch and get in the game early, perhaps > with review coinmining and shell ftw, you know what to do... ;) > BTC:1CQYSaF8Cqx5ZSgaKG9LE8UrEJAkWqFpLa > > https://wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation > https://wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12351319 > https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/06/inside-future-google > -rackspace-power9-system/ > https://blog.rackspace.com/the-latest-zaius-barreleye-g2-ope > n-compute-openpower-server > https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/09/19/power9-rollout-begin > s-summit-sierra/ > https://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/07/15/open-sourced-bios- > helps-power8-compete-x86/ > http://www.theplatform.net/2015/03/23/inside-the-rackspace- > openpower-megaserver/ > https://www.servethehome.com/?s=openpower > https://www.anandtech.com/SearchResults?q=openpower > http://www.storagereview.com/search/node/openpower > https://hn.algolia.com/?query=power9&sort=byDate&prefix&page > =0&dateRange=all&type=story > > https://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ > https://raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956257 > http://tyan.com/campaign/OpenPOWER/ > > https://github.com/open-power > https://github.com/openbmc > > https://wiki.freebsd.org/POWER8 > https://www.freebsdnews.com/2015/03/04/freebsd-power8-its-alive-2/ > https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=279189 > https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-01-2015-03.h > tml#FreeBSD-on-POWER8 > https://reviews.freebsd.org/search/query/oIdoWWKTe71p/ > > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.8-More-POWER9 > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Power-Ch > anges-Linux-4.12 > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Talos-2-Teaser > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2- > POWER9-Pre-Order > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2- > FSF-RYF-Possible > > http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom > https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/only-a-short-time-left- > to-pre-order-the-talos-ii-pre-orders-end-september-15th > > Minimum to boot and scale cost users roughly $3300 incl 2x cpu, ps, 32gb. >

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