January 2020 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Secure Phones, Telco, Spies, Baseband, SDR (re: Tower Fix Wont Curb Surveillance)
by grarpamp 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

> "WIRED: One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance. > > One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance > '''The telecom and tech industries could overcome these challenges if they > decided to prioritize a fix. That's a big if. Nasser points to a solution > that would function a lot like HTTPS web encryption, allowing phones to > quickly check cell tower "certificates" to prove their legitimacy before > establishing a secure connection. Last year, Hussain and colleagues from > Purdue and the University of Iowa developed and proposed such an > authentication scheme for the bootstrapping process in 5G." > "As long as phones will connect to anything advertising itself as a > tower, it’s kind of free-for-all," Nasser says. "This problem is > big low-hanging fruit, and there are many ways things could get better > I think." Authenticating to the tower doesn't get users one single bit closer to the trustable p2p e2e crypto required for actual security. Even if the entire ISO IETF IEEE EFF CCC stood and said "this new tower encryption is solid"... How soon people forget... The corrupt telcos gave everyone's ass away to govcorp, without even a corrupt fisa calea or criminal/civil warrant, many took a nice fee schedule for all that too. And the nsa and every other country just taps and dumps the unencrypted telco nodes / backhauls... into their own utah's. And telco employees get paid and moled out for hookers and blow. And 5G (4/3/2 too) is such fucked up spec and implementation they'll be press release self partying about their fake fixing of all the other intentional ecosystem firmware and signaling backdoors and bugs for the next 50 years. Not to mention telcos just swiss cheese privacy policy and NDA commercial contract your ass away like every other bigcorp RingFaceBoogleLexaDMV... Bypass that... Get a PSK, or voice confirmed TOFU, or use the software out there to do the key exchange over SMS... with all your call contacts. Plug that into phone app that sits on the audio bus or uses cell data IP, and ratchets out per session keys. With 4G and 5G making cell data reasonably cheap, and a somewhat more secure phone below, or better tethered to wifi hotspot or just plain wifi, things begin to become potentially usable for some everyday non critical use in 'smaller/cheaper/mobile than laptop' form factor. Thousands of people already do this. > A few years ago, I read that a disused, old cell phone (with no active > subscription) would activate in the presence of one of these Stingray > devices. Stingray is MITM. GSM a5 encryption long since hacked. A recent hack documented phone exploitability over baseband SMS. Baseband is untrustable adversary CPU, if the phones block design leaves baseband powered up to battery even if asleep, and if such baseband has access to the phones hardware control bus (main cpu power bus, etc)... turning on an "off" phone is certainly possible. You'd have to see if there's any news exploits of that being done. Or just probe around your phone pinouts and see what blocks are eating all the microamps when it's "off". Librem and Pinephone supposedly do some data bus isolation (serial) of baseband from the main CPU/RAM, instead of lame IOMMU or direct shared access, but you'd have to check about their power bus. Librem is a bit more chunky so it would be easier to verify. Unlike librem, pinephone switches are still internal, so you have to disassemble it, or wire in external extensions, to use them in real life. > But if the power consumption of such a phone could be > monitored continuously, that might implement a cheap, easy "Stingray > detector". Every tower base has an id, there are phone apps that read and track the power by id and notify on anomaly. Obviously such id's are spoofable and cooperateable. You can do a lot more with SDR, OpenBTS, be your own stingray. Beyond that is characterizing, discriminating, locating RF itself, much more time and $$$.

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"All Lives Matter" sign literally sends CSU leftists into violent screeching meltdowns - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

Gifts muh wiggers! The gifts just keep on keepin on, and keep on givin. I'm the giving type yo! :D Let's see what today's America First gifts have in store :) Watch: Student Leftist Has Violent Meltdown Over "All Lives Matter" Sign https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-student-leftist-has-violent-meltd… https://summit.news/2019/11/21/video-student-leftist-has-a-hissy-fit-over-a… ... The man calmly stands next to the leftist with his handwritten sign, before she almost immediately snatches it from him and goes into a meltdown, screaming, “Get the fuck out of here!” ... [video] https://t.co/0Iew1sEGda The woman then assaults the man before continuing her tirade, claiming he harassed her. She then accuses him of ‘sacrificing’ her safety before yelling, “fuck you!” Another clip shows a foul-mouthed student harassing activist Brandon Straka before his camerawoman is called a “dumb ass white bitch.” ... "Nom nom, cookies." :D :D >From the based senator dept. comes a once-again based Lindsey Graham sharpening his tie and smiling widely, as he begins to play the game the Dems have been playing: Lindsay Graham Requests Full Transcripts Of Joe Biden's Calls With Ukrainian President https://www.zerohedge.com/political/lindsay-graham-requests-full-transcript… There's an old Aussie beer advertisement for four X beer ("XXXX" beer) which has a tune - prolly on the 'tube: I can feel some jail time, comin on. I can feel some jail time, comin on. Got the taste for it, just can't wait for it, I can feel some jail time, comin on! <snigger snigger muh gritty whiggers> The interesting stuff is almost daily now - things are speeding up, hotting up: In Bizarre Admission, ECB Warns Its Policies Threaten Financial Stability, Could Lead To A Crash https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bizarre-admission-ecb-warns-its-policies-… Caitlin Johnstone in her usual incisive and cutting stride: Bitter, Joyless Told-You-Sos: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/11/21/bitter-joyless-told-you-sos-notes-f… Unequivocal, knockout 9/11 firefighter interviews at ground zero (youtubes and all): "There exists a government within a government within the United States" -Osama bin Laden https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-11-18/there-exists-government-within-go… "I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself... That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. ... The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States." -Osama bin Laden statement, published by BBC ... Kanye speaking some truths many of us know/ intuit: Kanye: "Protect Your Kids From Being Indoctrinated By Hollywood & The Media" https://www.zerohedge.com/political/kanye-protect-your-kids-being-indoctrin… https://summit.news/2019/11/18/kanye-protect-your-kids-from-being-indoctrin… And some ideas on improving the situation for your child: How “Unschooling” Can Benefit your child and the world https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-06/how-unschooling-can-benefit-your-… https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/how-unschooling-can… MH17 just won't go away: MH17 Evidence-Tampering Exposed: Cover-Ups, Hiding Records, Witness Misreporting, & FBI Seizures https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-23/mh17-evidence-tampering-exposed-c… http://johnhelmer.net/mh-17-evidence-tampering-revealed-by-malaysia-fbi-att… And Portugal is still setting a stellar example of a "radical" drugs policy which actually works: Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it? https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/05/portugals-radical-drugs-policy… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

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Jim Bell questions the headline below.
by jim bell 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

China Is Perfectly Prepared to Fight the Last Virus https://news.yahoo.com/china-perfectly-prepared-fight-last-220036969.html As I said, I question this headline, but I suppose we will find out, huh?

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Opinion: Are universities morphing into Orwellian states?
by jim bell 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/are-universities-morphing-into-orwellian-… [partial quote follows] "Americans are experimenting with methods similar to China’s social credit system. By tracking student movements and regulating faculty to standards of political correctness, they risk socializing young people to the methods of high-tech authoritarian state control. Syracuse University, the University of North Carolina and others are installing wi-fi apps and Bluetooth devices to monitor class attendance and visits to libraries, recreation centers, dining halls and potentially every other campus location. These create profiles that faculty and administrators can use to reward good learning habits, flag mental health issues, and impel students to modify personal habits to norms of model student behavior." ---------------------------- I wonder if anyone criticized Orwell, saying something like, 'That kind of thing couldn't happen here'. (whereever 'here' happened to be for that person.) Probably quite frequently. Jim Bell

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Opinion: Are universities morphing into Orwellian states?
by jim bell 29 Jan '20

29 Jan '20

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/are-universities-morphing-into-orwellian-… [partial quote follows] "Americans are experimenting with methods similar to China’s social credit system. By tracking student movements and regulating faculty to standards of political correctness, they risk socializing young people to the methods of high-tech authoritarian state control. Syracuse University, the University of North Carolina and others are installing wi-fi apps and Bluetooth devices to monitor class attendance and visits to libraries, recreation centers, dining halls and potentially every other campus location. These create profiles that faculty and administrators can use to reward good learning habits, flag mental health issues, and impel students to modify personal habits to norms of model student behavior." [end of partial quote]

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The Daily Beast: Up Against the Coronavirus, China's Surveillance State Has Failed
by jim bell 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

The Daily Beast: Up Against the Coronavirus, China's Surveillance State Has Failed. https://www.thedailybeast.com/up-against-the-coronavirus-chinas-surveillanc…

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House Republicans Blast U.K.'s 'Dangerous' Huawei 5G Decision, Accuse Boris Johnson of Choosing China Over U.S.
by jim bell 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

https://www.newsweek.com/house-republicans-blast-uk-dangerous-huawei-5g-dec…

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Many happy Returns!
by Razer 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

January 28 2020 0953 pst, bash ping cpunks.org returns "64 bytes from antiproton.jfet.org (209.141.47.85)" https://web.jfet.org/ "Questions? Comments?" rsw(a)jfet.org Riad S. Wahby "I am a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Stanford, working with Dan Boneh and Keith Winstein. Broadly speaking, I work on designing and building secure hardware and software systems, tackling questions like "how can we build trustworthy chips?" and "how can we build operating systems that resist subversion by malicious hardware?" https://wahby.org/

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Assassination or Decapitation? U.S. Gets Kim Jong-un’s Attention – InsideSources
by jim bell 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

https://www.insidesources.com/assassination-or-decapitation-u-s-gets-kim-jo…

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Who's Spying Your Phone 2020, Pine Librem, via Braxman
by grarpamp 28 Jan '20

28 Jan '20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6-axLHh5V8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLWBaW4f38I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNItvMBIXyQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Collection_System_Network Pinephone switches not externally accessible.

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