- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

FBI Sacrifices Innocents Again While Trying To Catch News Instead of Crooks
by grarpamp 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-held-back-ransomware-decryption-key-f… https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/07/13/revil-disappears-kasey… America's Federal Bureau of Investigation "refrained for almost three weeks from helping to unlock the computers of hundreds of businesses and institutions hobbled by a major ransomware attack this summer," reports the Washington Post, "even though the bureau had secretly obtained the digital key needed to do so, according to several current and former U.S. officials." The key was obtained through access to the servers of the Russia-based criminal gang behind the July attack. Deploying it immediately could have helped the victims, including schools and hospitals, avoid what analysts estimate was millions of dollars in recovery costs. But the FBI held on to the key, with the agreement of other agencies, in part because it was planning to carry out an operation to disrupt the hackers, a group known as REvil, and the bureau did not want to tip them off. Also, a government assessment found the harm was not as severe as initially feared. The planned takedown never occurred because in mid-July REvil's platform went offline — without U.S. government intervention — and the hackers disappeared before the FBI had a chance to execute its plan, according to the current and former officials... The FBI finally shared the key with Kaseya, the IT company whose software was infected with malware, on July 21 — 19 days after it was hit. Kaseya asked New Zealand-based security firm Emsisoft to create a fresh decryption tool, which Kaseya released the following day. By then, it was too late for some victims... On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, testifying before Congress, indicated the delay stemmed in part from working jointly with allies and other agencies. "We make the decisions as a group, not unilaterally," he said, noting that he had to constrain his remarks because the investigation was ongoing... He also suggested that "testing and validating" the decryption key contributed to the delay. "There's a lot of engineering that's required to develop a tool" that can be used by victims, he said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. Emsisoft, however, was able to act quickly. It extracted the key from what the FBI provided Kaseya, created a new decryptor and tested it — all within 10 minutes, according to Fabian Wosar, Emsisoft chief technology officer. The process was speedy because the firm was familiar with REvil's ransomware. "If we had to go from scratch," Wosar said, "it would have taken about four hours."

2 1

Tony Guoga be like Douglas Lucas
by professor rat 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

Dead men talking https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cypherpunk-announces-agreement-miningstore-1…

1 0

AMERICAN JEWISH ANARCHIST WOMEN, 1920-1950
by professor rat 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

https://anarchistnews.org/comment/38419#comment-38419 Those who espouse anarchism have long argued for complete and total freedom, whether it is from the State, from religion, in the workplace or in personal relationships.

2 1

Wikileaks is CIA - a still hot smoking gun
by professor rat 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=infowars+wikileaks+cia+&&view=detail&m… WIkileaks John Young- Vatican Super Spy Agency #1 YouTube · 3,000+ views · 14/12/2010 · by dynoplasm1

2 1

North face of cryptography
by professor rat 25 Oct '21

25 Oct '21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPS_6lCUERE Cryptography: the hardest slab in the world?

2 1

[notes] opentimestamps.org python client
by Karl 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

- opentimestamps.org simply uploads its payload to an op return transaction - the python client looks nice; it can connect to either a local node or a remote server - it has a bunch of political boilerplate around hashing content. this boilerplate could be removed and it could be used a simple op_return client to notarise small data for public lookup the file hashing boilerplate entrypoint is in opentimestamps-client/otsclient/cmds.py lines 155-182 (off 616718cfdc5c235ea71374d6910235d77ec47fc0 ). It loops over each file, hashes, adds a nonce, and merkles the hashes. The resulting merkle tip could be replaced with any short content (likely of identical length) to notarise this content. I am not a cryptographer. I might propose either the first n/2 bytes of 2 different modern hashes preceded 1-4 bytes of topic-specific identifier, a common hash such as sha256, or something that can be searched for elsewhere, such as a cleartext commit hash, an infohash, or a url in a content-indexed network. Scrubbing the blockchain for similar strings could help find existing uses to join a larger community.

3 8

Singapore is a Nazbol Hellhole
by professor rat 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Kuan_Yew On 23 November 1958, the party constitution was amended to implement a cadre system. The rights to vote in party elections and run for office were revoked from ordinary party members, whom now had to seek approval from the CEC to be a cadre and regain these privileges. The criteria to be a cadre was set intentionally high for even the lowest tier of membership, automatically disqualifying students and illiterate persons. Lee was influenced by the Vatican system where the pope pre-selects its cardinals, while party chairman Toh Chin Chye credited communist organisations for the idea.

1 0

Snowman offbase again
by professor rat 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

https://decrypt.co/84277/snowden-slams-sam-altman-worldcoin-eyeball-scan-fo… Ed Snowball clearly wouldn't know anarchism from a hole in the ground. And also Zero-Knowledge-Proofs either, from the sound of this - his latest bullshit. SHINEBOX!

1 0

Dolfuss-Pinochet Cities for Lunatics
by professor rat 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

https://decrypt.co/84125/the-bizarre-rise-of-the-bitcoin-citadel the Bitcoiner dream, really: to be fortified, heavily armed and plentifully stocked; off grid and unresponsive to emails; at a total remove from the rest of civil society. It’s good for them, and even better for the rest of us.

1 0

Every great opportunity is also a potentially huge crisis!
by professor rat 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

https://cointelegraph.com/news/we-haven-t-even-begun-to-tap-into-the-potent… AU-THEN-TI-CATE!

1 0