December 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

NSO Group spyware used to hack at least nine US officials’ phones – report
by jim bell 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

https://news.yahoo.com/nso-group-spyware-used-hack-183658078.html Revelation comes just weeks after the Biden administration placed NSO on a US blacklist A logo adorns a wall on a branch of the Israeli NSO Group company, near...

1 0

[ot][spam][crazy][wrong] Making a Watertower That's Similar To a Bomb Design
by Karl 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

I'm imagining if we took a large round steel container, we could raise it high in the air and fill it with water, and if it were large enough, a community with water could have running pressurised water from the contents. This sounds like a cool idea! I found plans on a crypto-anarchist list, at https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2021-December/093065.html , in a thread entitled "build a bomb", for just such a round container. The rest of the title after "build a bomb", is "out of water". It's a joke, obviously. Sorry if I scared anybody. So let's build this "bomb" designed by Jim Bell! Specifications for how to make a water tower are not exactly easy to come by. Many communities need pressurised water to drink from. In his cryptoanarchist plans, Jim Bell describes a spherical steel container with a threaded opening (the "bomb" being "built" out of water).

3 4

Fuck Square / Block and fuck Bitcoin
by professor rat 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

Jack Dorsey is a one-man Jackass dialogue full of shilling and bs signifying nothing. " . . . Bitcoin maximalists predict that bitcoin will become a sort of universal unit of account; and this is not the kind of prediction that can be disproved, because it will come true if enough people believe it. But I can imagine another future in which units of account dramatically pluralize, instead of becoming universal. Emergent associative communities could measure value in their way, on their own terms. The more they took their endogenous terms seriously, the more they could use them to shape and stimulate endogenous commerce, thus enriching themselves with minimal dependence on global markets. That is much more interesting than a world in which everything is measured in dollars, bitcoins, Galactic Guilders or any such thing. . . " Gunnar Garbage, is what I think he meant. OR maybe Gramps garbage. Same crap.

3 2

Here's one really good way to fight ubiquitous surveillance
by professor rat 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

Get off the internet. I suppose any self-described punk could start or join a deadpool on surveillance freaks like the POTUS, head of CHEKA, Fedbook and the CCP. But their balls would have to descend a little first for that to ever happen.

5 6

Nasty stench at MIT
by professor rat 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

Oh Captain! Mercaptan! Larry, Frank and Seth might need to get out ahead of this businessinsider.com The FAA accidentally disclosed more than 2,000 flight records associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s… Domestic flight records associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s private jets Epstein’s actions have reverberated throughout the US scientific community over the past month after investigations revealed that he supported many top research universities and labs by offering their scientists significant financial support. His targets included several prominent physicists and physical scientists including George Church, Lawrence Krauss, Kip Thorne, Frank Wilczek, as well as the late physicists Murray Gell-Mann and Stephen Hawking. Although there is no indication that the scientists were involved in any dubious activity, Epstein’s connections – apparently intended in part to support his ideas about eugenics and cryogenics – have embarrassed scientists and their institutions. https://physicsworld.com/a/mit-media-lab-boss-quits-over-jeffrey-epstein-li…

2 1

Really stupid “smart contract” bug let hackers steal $31 million in digital coin – Ars Technica
by jim bell 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/12/hackers-drain-31-mil… Blockchain startup MonoX Finance said on Wednesday that a hacker stole $31 million by exploiting a bug in software the service uses to draft smart contracts. The company uses a decentralized finance protocol known as MonoX that lets users trade digital currency tokens without some of the requirements of traditional exchanges. “Project owners can list their tokens without the burden of capital requirements and focus on using funds for building the project instead of providing liquidity,” MonoX company representatives say here. “It works by grouping deposited tokens into a virtual pair with vCASH, to offer a single token pool design.” An accounting error built into the company’s software let an attacker inflate the price of the MONO token and to then use it to cash out all the other deposited tokens, MonoX Finance revealed in a post. The haul amounted to $31 million worth of tokens on the Ethereum or Polygon blockchains, both of which are supported by the MonoX protocol. Specifically, the hack used the same token as both the tokenIn and tokenOut, which are methods for exchanging the value of one token for another. MonoX updates prices after each swap by calculating new prices for both tokens. When the swap is completed, the price of tokenIn—that is, the token sent by the user—decreases and the price of tokenOut—or the token received by the user—increases.

2 1

Russia issues threat to GPS satellites - GPS World
by jim bell 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

https://www.gpsworld.com/russia-issues-threat-to-gps-satellites/

2 1

Russia issues threat to GPS satellites - GPS World
by professor rat 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

JULIAN " the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization " ASSANGE 2012 JULIAN "of course Russia understands this game and Putin understands this game for a long time now" ASSANGE 2013

1 0

[spam][crazy][wrong][ot] ramblings
by Karl 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

whooo! it's 16:15 on 2021-11-24 and i know that well because i just typed a spamlogtiny where i found the broadcast rpc call for libretchingandvomiting and ... then my xorg began misbehaving such that only the menu bar would respond to keyboard and mouse input, no matter what window was focused, and then i wrote a script to dump the memory of my chrome processes, and the visible email content didn't seem to be in the memory i dumped, and then my system ran out of space, and my body froze up and started spasming ... basically when my computer gets a corruption i start thinking aliens are hacking my brain and everything goes wrong. but then i rebooted the system! the email was apparently lost, _but_ i have part of a script started for dumping process ram, so that's progress for future situations. in my imaginary world where i can do free makery stuff, i use a field probe to read the ram directly from its refresh emissions using an sdr. but we are not in this imaginary world so i use /proc/[pid]/mem and /proc/[pid]/maps . it would be good to set the kernel settings that let me use /dev/mem, be super helpful. anyway ! libtotallygrossdestroyedwaste is still seeming fun to pursue. there's also a thing in an hour i'd kinda like to try going to. my new scared habits know to hit 'save draft' over and over and over again to make life make more sense. it's 16:55 and i'm hitting 'save draft'. 16:57 i hit 'save draft' again. and here i go again. i like hitting it. in electrumx, transaction_broadcast() expects a hexadecimal string passed, and it's called in response to 'blockchain.transaction.broadcast' yay! it's 16:58 and i'm hitting 'save draft'. it's 17:00 and ................ the rpc call source reads like it would return the transaction hash after broadcast. i'm hitting save draft! it's 1701 ! 1703. omigod i wrote a broadcast wrapper! it's a 1-line function and it's so hard. i know it won't work yet (because my error density is so high) but here it is: async def broadcast(self, txbytes) -> str: return await self.request(str, 'blockchain.transaction.broadcast', txbytes.hex()) woohoo ! saving draft. and code. ok ummmm i'll use the op_return code to test it. i'll use my mobile phone to send money to a private address. the hardest part will be making the private key because th eop return code uses a local node. maybe i'll just focus on that. it's 1718. hitting 'save draft'. what a nice, friendly button. now it's 1719. anyway i've made a possible opreturn output, pending bugs. the biggest concern around craftin ga transaction is estimating a fee. maybe i'll make a quick fee estimation wrapper. 1719. i better wrap other useful things too like getting utxos. and that will mean identifying an address by its 'hashx', an electrum-specific thing. 1726 how to get a hashx is at https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/blob/8d7370d897314d8542906aecc6a45cc94… def address_to_scripthash(addr: str) -> str: script = address_to_script(addr) return script_to_scripthash(script) or in electrumx in coin.py class Coin def address_to_hashX(cls, address): '''Return a hashX given a coin address.''' return cls.hashX_from_script(cls.pay_to_address_script(address)) 1728 1732. i guess i'll be going to my event to stay more stable. maybe switchin' gears.

2 10

Re: GovCorp conspiracy theory fails again
by Karl 03 Dec '21

03 Dec '21

forwarding whole email to the list since i think stefan said the privacy was an accident On 12/1/21, Karl <gmkarl(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Punk, Stefan. > > Stefan asked me for off-list cryptocurrency investment advice. > > On 12/1/21, Stefan Claas <spam.trap.mailing.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Hi Karl, >> >> Mixing would allow one to hide the origin, from where the transaction >> came >> from. >> But what I have seen so far is that the required amount to do so must >> be relatively >> high for the average user. > > like anything, threat modeling > >> My take on cryptocurrency. When Satoshi invented it and did with Hal the >> first transactions it was revolutionary and could have probably changed > > it seemed like just a cool thing for nerds. i was a minor and it let > me hold money without a bank account. > >> some things, but nowadays I do not like the enormous computing power >> required and the impact on the environment and no privacy options. >> >> So, if you are an early adopter you have luck and can make some bucks >> if you have the patience over the years and did know that, well then ok. >> >> But show me in 2021 a way that you, Punk, or me can make some bucks >> with it (privately) ... >> >> Regards >> Stefan > > I do not like responding privately. I don't know who is considered > part of the private group, and who isn't, and would much rather loop > in everybody else on the list, or at least some other recent > poster[s]. > > To confirm, I am probably an anti-capitalist (the friendly, peaceful > (and insane) kind). I also try to honestly answer questions and > requests, and have held cryptocurrency some. I imagine most > anti-capitalists as not doing that. > > - as far as I am aware most people are judging, cryptocurrencies are > still going up exponentially. Holding e.g. BTC or some other big > crypto, I would expect most people would still think this would x10 in > value within the decade or so, even though it will likely drop > significantly before it does that. the plan is clearly still for > cryptocurrency to completely replace fiat currency, but it's a tossup > whether BTC will be the cryptocurrency to do that. > > - some exchanges provide opportunities, this can be lucrative due to > low fees and how frequently prices can swing. a simple strategy is to > set up many buys at different low prices, and many sells at different > high prices, and replace them regularly when they fill. obviously the > percentage difference of the closest prices needs to be greater than > the exchange fee to profit. the percentage difference is 100 x > ((higher sell price) - (lower buy price)) / (higher sell price). here note: of course this would be doubled if there is both a buy and a sell fee to counter > you make more money the more volatile the currency is, the more it > swings randomly up and down. you still want situations that aren't > likely to crash without recovering, as then you can't sell high after > buying low and you lose what you put in. > > - new altcoins can spike very intensely before they crash. i hear > that buying up new coins has enough of a chance of one of the coins > spiking, that it is by far worthwhile to just invest a little bit in > all of them. > > - if you are a coder there is still a ton of room for automated market > making, which for some reason has not filled the digital economies > yet. same thing if you are into machine transformer models or data > processing pipelines. > >> >> >> >> On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 4:48 PM Karl <gmkarl(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> On 11/30/21, Stefan Claas <spam.trap.mailing.lists(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>> > Bitcoin usage, regarding privacy, could probably be enhanced if people >>> > focus >>> > on Bitcoin Mixer usage/development in combination with the Nym >>> > Network. >>> > >>> > But how to exchange then Bitcoin privately to fiat if needed ... >>> >>> Is mixing different for stablecoins like USDT? >>> >>> What do you think of cryptocurrency? I always worry that rational >>> voices critical of digital economies have reduced on this list. >> >

1 0