June 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Bruce Schneier and Tom Rowley still need killing.
by professor rat 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

Do I have to do everything myself? https://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks@minder.net/msg31515.html Juan Fucking Christie

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John McAfee: Crypto Libertarian Privacy and Love Evangelist, Dead at 75
by professor rat 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

>From each according to their gullibility - to each according to their greed https://twitter.com/vmyths/status/1540510441310494723?cxt=HHwWhoC9sbOF_-AqA… The McAfee uninstall problem

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xNY.io - Bank.org, PBC
by Gunnar Larson 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

Quality finance is a human right. For all, everywhere.

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Engadget: Google warns internet service providers helped distribute Hermit spyware
by jim bell 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

Engadget: Google warns internet service providers helped distribute Hermit spyware. https://www.engadget.com/google-hermit-spyware-204549595.html?src=rss Google is warning of a sophisticated new spyware campaign that has seen malicious actors steal sensitive data from Android and iOS users in Italy and Kazakhstan. On Thursday, the company’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) shared its findings on RCS Labs, a commercial spyware vendor based out of Italy. On June 16th, security researchers at Lookout linked the firm to Hermit, a spyware program believed to have been first deployed in 2019 by Italian authorities as part of an anti-corruption operation. Lookout describes RCS Labs as an NSO Group-like entity. The firm markets itself as a “lawful intercept” business and claims it only works with government agencies. However, commercial spyware vendors have come under intense scrutiny in recent years, largely thanks to governments using the Pegasus spyware to target activists and journalists. According to Google, Hermit can infect both Android and iOS devices. In some instances, the company’s researchers observed malicious actors work with their target’s internet service provider to disable their data connection. They would then send the target an SMS message with a prompt to download the linked software to restore their internet connection. If that wasn’t an option, the bad actors attempted to disguise the spyware as a legitimate messaging app like WhatsApp or Instagram. What makes Hermit particularly dangerous is that it can gain additional capabilities by downloading modules from a command and control server. Some of the addons Lookout observed allowed the program to steal data from the target’s calendar and address book apps, as well as take pictures with their phone’s camera. One module even gave the spyware the capability to root an Android device. Google believes Hermit never made its way to the Play or App stores. However, the company found evidence that bad actors were able to distribute the spyware on iOS by enrolling in Apple’s Developer Enterprise Program. Apple told The Verge that it has since blocked any accounts or certificates associated with the threat. Meanwhile, Google has notified affected users and rolled out an update to Google Play Protect.

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TechCrunch: Google is notifying Android users targeted by Hermit government-grade spyware
by jim bell 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

TechCrunch: Google is notifying Android users targeted by Hermit government-grade spyware. https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/23/hermit-zero-day-android-spyware/ Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch Security researchers at Lookout recently tied a previously unattributed Android mobile spyware, dubbed Hermit, to Italian software house RCS Lab. Now, Google threat researchers have confirmed much of Lookout’s findings and are notifying Android users whose devices were compromised by the spyware. Hermit is a commercial spyware known to be used by governments, with victims in Kazakhstan and Italy, according to Lookout and Google. Lookout says it’s also seen the spyware deployed in northern Syria. The spyware uses various modules, which it downloads from its command and control servers as they are needed, to collect call logs, record ambient audio, redirect phone calls and collect photos, messages, emails and the device’s precise location from a victim’s device. Lookout said in its analysis that Hermit, which works on all Android versions, also tries to root an infected Android device, granting the spyware even deeper access to the victim’s data. Lookout said that targeted victims are sent a malicious link by text message and tricked into downloading and installing the malicious app — which masquerades as a legitimate branded telco or messaging app — from outside of the app store. According to a new blog post published Thursday and shared with TechCrunch ahead of its publication, Google said it found evidence that in some cases the government actors in control of the spyware worked with the target’s internet provider to cut their mobile data connectivity, likely as a lure to trick the target into downloading an telco-themed app under the guise of restoring connectivity.

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News anarchist books
by professor rat 27 Jun '22

27 Jun '22

War and Peace (ISBN 978-1849354684, 625pp, £21.61, AK) is one of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s best books but perhaps the least well known in the English-speaking world. This translation aims to open up both our understanding of Proudhon’s mature works as well as a window on mid-nineteenth century international relations and the history of international thought. The Modern Crisis (ISBN 978-1849354462, 196pp, £12.20, AK) by Murray Bookchin reissues four key essays by the influential and forward thinking social ecologist dealing with an oncoming ecological and social disaster that has only gotten closer since his death. FROM https://anarchistnews.org/content/upcoming-titles-anarchism

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Towards a comprehensive approach to counter hate speech
by Gunnar Larson 26 Jun '22

26 Jun '22

Gay. https://unric.org/en/towards-a-comprehensive-approach-to-counter-hate-speec…

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Cryptocurrency: Schneier Bleats, Kasparov Correctly Slams Democracy Threat To Freedom
by grarpamp 26 Jun '22

26 Jun '22

Schneier the unrepentant statist bleats for regulation, bashes entire cryptocurrency space, doesn't even HODL... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/06/on-the-dangers-of-cryptocurr… Kasparov brings truth... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3V4neeDVtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWAwK2fHArc CryptoLiberty's Win Knows No Regulators

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Goldman Sachs, Harvard team up with Al Gore’s investment firm | Business and Economy News | Al Jazeera
by Gunnar Larson 26 Jun '22

26 Jun '22

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/10/27/goldman-sachs-and-others-team-…

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[ot][spam][crazy] notes/daydreams can maddness do convolution
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many 25 Jun '22

25 Jun '22

i was reading looking at this wonky algorithm i found online and pursued a little in discord it's biggest bottleneck is a call to conv1d(). the author cuda-accelerated it by hand; they are new to cuda. thinking about conv1d via this mithral/maddness stuff, dunno. in a matrix, one combines columns of A with rows of B or something like that. so, the algorithm organizes a bunch of columns and rows, and I think it just precalculates their dotproducts, and then does something equivalent to interpolating the precalculations to do future stuff. if that's true, there's likely a basic analogy with conv1d if i can move the concepts through my mind. if it's not true, those concepts will still do some of the process work for whatever the case actually is. not sure what happened to the multiplication step of the interpolation, if that's what it is, but it seems it has been sorted out. with convolution of 1d data, basically there a bunch of dot products taken between sequences that change in length. [ 1 2 3 4 ... 49 ] convolved with a kernel with indices [ 1 2 3 ... 7 ] i think it produces many dot products, all of length 7, along the length of the data. given the conv1d is performed inside a trained model, the data can indeed be collected from the training. basically, the kernel is roughly a matrix, with all the rows the same. i'm guessing you could reuse the mithral/maddness approach with convolution by turning the convolution kernel into a matrix, and extracting all the sequential chunks of the data to process. it's a naive approach, since the data is so repetitive. but it woudl work well enough to consider. to consider it better, one might think of how each data item is multiplied by every item in the kernel, and summed with its neighbor item. it's interesting to me that in the research they found they could lookup faster than multiply. maybe relates to how near the data is. i've probably often worked with fragmented memory.

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