February 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Loony-tune lies and conspiracy theories are a cancer on this list
by professor rat 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/mitch-mcconnell-just-hit-the-panic-bu… This isn't a matter of left or right - its a matter of right and wrong. Toxic waste like Harkness and Batshit have been wrong for too long. Help me - and help yourself - by driving this vermin off from this list. Surf Nazi's should all die.

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Crypto-anarchy rising
by professor rat 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

I usually refer to the present internet as ' anarchic ' and ubiquitous anarchist networking as a desirable goal so long as the ' anarchy ' is trad anarchist and not Lunar Right aryan rants. Its victory is certainly going to bring problems with it as a huge change affecting almost everyone. However, they are a second-order issue and we have increasingly strong AI to help us through this phase transition. ' Democracy' and ' democrat' were political swear-words for centuries - now it the turn of ' anarchy' and ' anarchist ' - no biggie. The idea of cypherpunks selling encryption is as risible as Las Vegas selling gambling. Encryption sells itself - why all c-punks should have some skin-in-the-crypto-currencies game. So our victory is assured and there's no doubt about that. The only question is 'when?' Why I promote Cypherpunk 2027 - six years at full warp!

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Crypto-anarchy is also used by hostile nation-states, criminals, and terrorist actors
by professor rat 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20210103-new-nails-in-the-crypto-anarchism-co… Another Batshit crazy cop-type provides a few laughs.

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What advantage does Signal protocol have over basic public key encryption?
by David Barrett 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

Hi all, I'm the CEO a company called Expensify, developing a new open source chat application at https://Expensify.cash. I was pretty prolific on the p2p-hackers mailing list back in the day, but this is my first post to Cypherpunk, so... hi! I'm writing because I've read a bunch of overviews of *how* the protocol is designed, but I haven't really seen good sources explaining (in a dumbed-down enough manner for me to follow) *why* it was designed that way. In general, I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind the Signal protocol in terms of what real world attacks each of its features defends against, because on the surface it seems _really_ complicated in order to protect against only a very narrow range of attacks. However, I imagine every bit of that complexity has a purpose, and thus I figured this was the right place to try to get to the bottom of that purpose. If you have some other link that you think does a great job breaking it down, I'm all ears! Until then, here are some questions I'd love your help with: 1) This is perhaps an obvious question (I've got to start somewhere, after all), but what is the downside of the simplest possible solution, which I think would be for all participants to publish a public key to some common key server, and then for each participant in the chat to simply re-encrypt the message N-1 times -- once for each participant in the chat (minus themselves) using each recipient's public key? 2) I would think the most significant problem with this ultra-simple design is just performance: asymmetric encryption is just too expensive in practice to use for every single message, especially given the O(n) cost of re-encrypting for every single recipient. Accordingly, the vast majority of the complexity of the Signal protocol is really just a performance optimization exercise to securely create (and rotate) a shared symmetric key that enables high-performance encryption/decryption. Is that right? Said another way, if asymmetric encryption had adequate performance for a given use case, would that obviate most of the advantage of the Signal protocol? 3) The other problem with the ultra-simple design would be a lack of forward secrecy: if anyone's private key were compromised, all historical messages sent to them could be decrypted (assuming the attacker had stored them). But even with the Signal protocol, if someone's local device were compromised (the most likely way for an attacker to get the private key), they're screwed anyway, in two different ways: a. The act of compromising the private key would likely ALSO compromise nearly all past communications. So all that hard work to rotate historical keys is kind of pointless if the messages themselves are compromised on device. b. If the private key itself (which is *only* stored on the device) were compromised *without* also revealing the messages stored on that same device (though how this would happen I'm struggling to understand), then an attacker could still decrypt all past communications if they had a perfect record going back to the start. 4) So in summary, is it safe to say that the primary real-world advantages of the Signal protocol over the super-basic solution are: a. achieve high performance encryption using frequently rotated symmetric keys, and b. prevent an attacker who has compromised the device AND has a partial record of communications from decrypting messages that are no longer stored on that device. Is that the gist of it? Again, these are real high level questions, so I appreciate your patience with me! -david Founder and CEO of Expensify

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What advantage does Signal protocol have over basic public key encryption?
by professor rat 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

Black-box solutions Vs P2P people power is a boring old conundrum. https://cryptome.org/jdb/ap.htm By "classical" thinking, "Assassination Politics" would have to be the best, tightest-security, more protected organization that has ever existed on the face of this planet. Just about EVERY powerful person would want to kill anybody who had anything to do with such a system. The codes would have to be unbreakable, the remailers would have to be certain, but most importantly, each and every participant would have to be perfectly anonymous to even have a prayer of pulling it off. Especially the operators of such a system. Especially them

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ZENAAN HARKNESS sought in FELONY CONSPIRACY INVESTIGATION
by professor rat 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

Please tell us your military indentification code number. .." Dear Batshit-crazy We are busy right now. Please call your bum-buddy, Jacob Appelbaum at the pentagon and he should be able to help you wank. Yrs etc - pr

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ZENAAN HARKNESS sought in FELONY CONSPIRACY INVESTIGATION
by professor rat 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

Call au white-supremacists terror hotline at FREECALL 1800 123 400 Tell them I sent youse. Reminder ARSE-KISSERS to the Military spell " Burma " as " Myanmar " to show how much they love the taste of Military ARSEHOLES. One language fits all - anarchy means anarchy and " we mean it MA-AAAN! " https://anarchistnews.org/content/eduardo-vivancos-has-died

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Cryptocurrency: OWS2 - The Great GameStop Short Squeeze, Trading Censorship, Free Speech, Markets
by grarpamp 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/you-can-not-purchase-additional-shares-ro… Protestors... "Fuck Suits, Buy Bitcoin" "We like this stock" "Screw you, Bought more" "Free GME" "people > profit" "RobinHood Lied" "DO NOT SELL, HOLD THE LINE!!!" ... Wall Street, banksters, brokers, cronies, hedges, big tech, all aka pathetic protectionist manipulative extortionist racketeers... incl Google and others Censoring Free Speech... just censored and closed out smart nimble small investors, Leftist Congress et al is pissed, lawsuits and investigations are flying, same situation applies to active crypto etfs via bank based brokerages too, accreditation, etc... all banned by them against you. https://www.vice.com/en/article/7k9mw9/robinhood-gamestop-class-action-laws… https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/28/gamestop-robinhood-aoc-ted-cruz-tlaib-kha… https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-bad-robinhood-r… https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/01/26/2238203/gamestop-jumps-after-hours… https://phzoe.com/2021/01/27/white-house-youtube-dislike-manipulation/ "They're blocking the ability to trade to protect Wall St. hedge funds, stealing millions of dollars from their users to protect people who've used the stock market as a casino for decades," https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/stock-settlement-wh… RH re GSE... from "to protect our customers from risk" to "to protect ourselves from risk" https://twitter.com/uhabash/status/1354813360844357640 https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1354582143981166592 "Robinhood and others weren't even allowing cash purchases. If you don't allow people to buy things with cash, that's not a "risk management" decision for your brokerage; that's an attempt to achieve a specific outcome against the will of your customers. In this case, that specific outcome being to kill this campaign against the shortsellers of GameStop, AMC, and others. They caused huge material losses to their customers who were long GME and others" "What is manipulation is these brokerages limiting a segment of investors from increasing the price further, resulting in the price being artificially held lower (to save some hedge funds that shorted it)." "Literally Robinhood just told the world that you can play until someone bigger than you doesn't like the game anymore. Brand suicide." "You gotta fuck up pretty hard to get AOC and Cruz to agree on something." "Today, we decided to remove the server and its owner from Discord for continuing to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings." "CNBC anchors paid by Hedge funds to run the forum down kept saying where are the fundamentals which justify the price of Gamestop. The fundamentals at play are not those of Gamestop, the fundamentals at play are how much money Citadel has and is willing to lose backing this short . The fundamental analysis was done that Citadel would not lose more than 2 billion or resort to calling in favors from the Biden administration (whose campaign they donated to generously). Bsed on this fundamentals analysis a decision was made to squeeze this over shorted stock and bring back sanity to the market. However it seems the fundamentals analysis was wrong. Citadel is willing to lose upto 10 billion dollars and call in CNBC, Discord,Reddit , SEC, NASDAQ and all the other people they have on their payroll to break this short squeeze and set it in stone once and for all - only big guys can make money in the stock market. (And Pelosi . Dont forget Pelosi's TSLA calls)" "Best entertainment for the buck since Covid, and all thanks to "free" govt stimmies, thx Mnuchin and Powell, ur my heroes." "Musk (A) enjoys memes, and (B) dislikes short sellers." "We don't have billionaires to bail us out when we mess up our portfolio risk and a position goes against us. We can't go on TV and make attempts to manipulate millions to take our side of the trade. If we mess up as bad as they did, we're wiped out, have to start from scratch and are back to giving handjobs behind the dumpster at Wendy's. Seriously. Motherfuck these people. I sincerely hope they suffer. We want to see the loss porn." ""This is unacceptable. We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp's decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit. As a member of the Financial Services Cmte, I'd support a hearing if necessary," AOC tweeted." "The firm bragged they shorted more shares than exist and others rightfully called them out on it and sank their hedgefund. Tough shit." Fuck em all... Adopt and use crypto... Gamers FTW! "hey mom i can't come up for dinner, i'm bankrupting a 10 figure hedge fund with the boys." "we are just taking back our fair share." .72, d1c, citron, melvin... rekt. sdny 21-cv-777 https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=47099 https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=47097 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax-Brillian_Corporation https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=47075 Pelosi and Ag next... Stay tuned... lol. Book value $5. Trads beware... 2020 bubble longs gonna get liq to cover. "it is now RACIST to fight against domination and immoral trade practices by hedge fonds, banks, billion-dollar bailouts by the taxpayers to the ultra-rich." See also re OWS... Google Trends - "racism" You're being lied to by a 7 person cabal, divide and conquer, oldest game in the book.

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open prayer of gratitude to John F. Kennedy
by Zenaan Harkness 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

For those who missed the memo, John F. Kennedy, senior ("Sr."), passed from this world just this weekend. He lived to see a steadfast and wonderful team achieve the birth of this great cleansing of evil from this world. May he rest in peace. The consequence of JFK Sr.'s passing is that (and customarily so) junior no longer has the suffix "Junior" or Jr., and so now carries his father's name non-suffixed, John F. Kennedy. For those who are really "behind the eight ball" so to speak, this will all become clear in the coming 5 weeks - hold on to your seats my friends. Now we wish to express our abundant gratitude to the Kennedies, the Trumps, Mike Pompeo, the Flynns, and Diana the Princess of Wales, whom for those who really have no freaking idea what's going on, is also alive and married. I'll leave it right there for now, sometimes the truth is a shock to those of fragile constitution. Let's just say God wins, and the next few weeks is going to be literally biblical. If you are yet to do so, and you are still alive, now is a VERY good time to tidy up your back yard, meaning your life, tidy up the most important things to you personally, and tidy up your relationship with your creator - perhaps ask forgiveness for anything that might niggle you .. So hop to, fellow Soul, you have a second chance right now, and many in this world are beginning to emanate love, healing and other higher vibrations. Run with it frens :) And finally, to our dear JFK, of the (previously) "junior" variety, also know when he was young as "John John": Our good friend, hear this: don't put too much attention on any (!) of the negative comments you read on Telegram or elsewhere that you are so graciously attempting to communicate with us all and lessen the shock to come (e.g. Gab, instagram, etc). Telegram has the disadvantage that it's primary owner is evidently compromised in some way, just not nearly as badly as Tw.tter and F.ceBook. Telegram presently has the advantages that it exists, and is evidently a reasonably well implemented platform (excepting the censorship) - the latency is low (which is great), and it does not crash too often, and even syncs between your Android device and Desktop. I (and presumably others) have solid plans, but the work involved to achieve a fully distributed alternative takes time, and it's not happening in the next few weeks. Also, platform hopping has been an experience disclosing some of the fundamental problems with existing implementations. Also also, the attacks by Google and Apple to completely remove e.g. Parler (notwithstanding that was a honeypot so good riddence), and soon likely also Telegram, means that folks are getting used to platform hopping, and so it's not such a big deal to migrate every few weeks to a new platform, even if it is irritating. We work with what we gots... In good news, "we", the frog army, the anons, the digital supersoldiers or what have you, are collectively holding the line, and more and more folks are really enjoying this journey now - the sword of SABMYK is forging as the plague of frogs descends on the wicked ones and educates the sleepy sheeple; so we can be grateful for this much. Incredibly grateful over here. So John John, from afar we see and know your heart is true and strong. Thank you. And may the Lord continue to protect and uplift you and those you love and care for. May the negative comments and impatience of others be water off a duck's back to you, and may Telegram's repeated deletions of (all) your posts be of no consequence to you and to our mission. Thank you and may God bless you and those working with you. P.S. Please let big Mike know that I am frankly stunned, shocked, and so very proud of him - the tightrope he must have walked at times is in this hindsight of time, evident, and must have been quite a challenging walk - may he be at peace personally, and find strength in Christ.

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bantering with punk was Re: What advantage does Signal protocol have over basic public key encryption?
by Karl 01 Feb '21

01 Feb '21

>> > So, I think your understanding of so misleadingly called 'perfect >> > forward >> > secrecy' isn't right. >> >> I don't remember the protocol really well to hold up my end here, > > this isn't only about the signal protocol but about any protocol that > advertises 'perfect forward secrecy' and uses 'public key cryptography' of > the kind that's vulnerable to attacks using 'quantum computers'. Do you mean that it is incredibly misleading to advertise cryptographic safety when there is obviously an increasing degree of unpublished research that counters it? I'm not sure what you're saying here. Wouldn't it be fine to just add a note that those are cryptographic terms, and do not technically guarantee perfect privacy in the face of time travel? >> and i don't really trust that you're relating forthrightly to revisit it >> much. > > yeah well. I think I explained the basic problem twice. You don't need to > 'trust' me but do your own research. Yeesh you removed the quote and stated you had explained it already. I don't remember what we were talking about, but it was clear that if you had done research it yielded very different information than what I see. >> does signal use diffie-helman key exchange? > > yes it does. You're the one pimping it, you shoud know. Blargh, links help here. Okay, my best memory is that you were worried about a key exchange compromise in the face of a website on how dh is dangerous. I'll look it up right now. https://weakdh.org/ is only about SSL and specifically chosen prime numbers. These are implementation errors, not compromises of the protocol or the primtiive. I vaguely recall there is something more serious regarding dh exchange, dunno. What's relevant is that signal is far better than the plain text email we are communicating over right now. It is incredibly helpful to drink not enough water when you are very thirsty. >> does it do it in a >> way that website describes as known to be vulnerable? > > > ...see your first unfounded claim about 'perfect' secrecy. DH is > 'vulnerable' to 'advances in solving the discrete log problem' bla bla. Not only that, once you research personal teleportation devices door locks become very vulnerable, too. It's not hard to make a personal teleportation device. All you need is a bunch of enslaved makerspaces, economists, physicists, and inspirational coaches. Get them to organise themselves into groups based on their skills and passions and force them to focus on inventing personal teleportation for a decade straight. Have a daily check-in where everybody debates whether or not what they are currently doing is the most effective thing they could be doing, for personal teleportation. Also I have a commodity here whose value raises more than the interest rate on loans, every three years or so, so mathematically we should be able to steal all the money from the whole planet. It's growth is reducing, but too slowly to validate physics. >> > What I think is important to understand is that signal is a >> > centralized >> > service and the owners are not to be trusted, at all. Moxie morlonpoke >> >> That's the whole point of end-to-end encryption. > > > Not sure what you mean. So called end to end encryption only encrypts > messages. It doesn't magically solve 'traffic analysis' problems. Neither does decentralisation. I was responding to your mention of centralisation. It is weird that signal uses centralised servers. Maybe to reduce development load. It's always sketchy the compromises made by communities struggling to effect change. It's possible it's just communication issues. The point is that we need an ANONYMOUS BLOCKCHAIN-BASED MESSENGER TO REPLACE SIGNAL in these times of disruption, and signal would pay anybody to contribute the backend in a way they accept ;P >> > perfectly fits the profile of 'progressive' pentagon agent. So maybe >> > the >> >> The only people who believe these people are real agents, and not just >> people secretly drugged and abused by agents, are acting more as the >> agents than they are. > > > bullshit. Yeah? Which is more productive, arguing on a list where nobody replies to what you say or making software that increases privacy? >> > 'end to end encryption' works, but signal remains a US metadata spying >> > operation, 'endorsed' by the likes of the 'ceo' of twatter. Hard to get >> > a >> > bigger red flag than that by the way. >> >> Nah it's more like a bunch of people subjected to international spying >> operations figuring out the charades work that lets them escape a >> little bit. Also, free technology for others! > > > more bullshit. Yeesh! Signal can poison our souls with technology, and dangerously reveal everything we do to the people who want to hurt us (BECAUSE IT RUNS ON A PHONE, NOT BECAUSE OF ITS PROTOCOL), without being some intentional attempt by cryptographers to harm the universe. Before signal people were using NOTHING. NO ENCRYPTION AT ALL. Some of them were using encryption where a corporation and government could freely decryption EVERYTHING, and was lying about it. SOME of them. Caps intended with love and care and embarrassment. I don't deserve to write in caps. >> >> When they say "metadata that the signal servers have >> >> access to" or "does not prevent a company from retaining information" >> >> they are talking about much smaller bits of data than people usually >> >> talk about. >> > >> > .....I think it's rather clear what 'metadata' we're talking about. >> > Signal >> > knows who talks to who and when. >> >> It doesn't sound like it's clear to you. Metadata lives in bytes that >> travel over network protocols and are analysed by algorithms. Anyway, yeah, PGP doesn't encrypt the message subjects and recipients. I don't recall the protocol well, but the way the ratchet protocol works there was a lot more possibility for encrypting per-message metadata. >> Somebody has probably upgraded the concept now that deepfakes and such >> are normal. >> > > what are you talking about Well, I don't know the cryptographic terms, but you're possibly talking about information that can be extracted from messaging by algorithms, like traffic analysis, as comparable to metadata, like the subject on an email or the location tagged on a jpeg photo. Nowadays machine learning is _way_ better at profiling stuff than just traffic analysis. With deepfakes, there is a research war between making fake media, and identifying that media is fake. That's incredibly dangerous. Both groups will split off into private research and nobody will know what is going on, a handful of people believing they do. The research should be around reducing the reasons that people make deepfakes, not around identifying them. But since we can automatically identify whether a photo has very subtle attributes that only happen in reality, while people are actively researching preventing that, we can probably identify who a person is by what kind of things were bought at stores near them, and such, too, because people trying to be anonymous do not have datacenters full of gpus researching how to stay that way.

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