- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Assange's Persecution
by Jacob Appelbaum 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

Hello, On 7/7/21, David Barrett <dbarrett(a)expensify.com> wrote: > It wasn't dropped: > > https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48253343 > You are mistaken. It is as understandable as it is deniable spreading of FUD: "the case" has been closed and reopened more times than most people realize. Your article is dated 13 May 2019. As of Tue 19 Nov 2019 the Guardian reported that the case was indeed dropped yet again: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/nov/19/sweden-drops-julian-assange-i… Note that "the case" being reopened wasn't for all of the original accusations as some had expired due to statue of limitations. As of the summer of 2020, it is my understanding that the statute of limitations for all of the Swedish accusations has passed. In any case, the prosecutor said that memory had faded, and so ended the case. The "Swedish case" as such is officially closed. The Swedish and UK authorities are still resisting freedom of information requests about the case. I highly recommend following the litigation by investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi: https://twitter.com/smaurizi/ - she has uncovered some very interesting documents relating to Julian's situation in the UK, Sweden, and the United States. An example from three years ago of some of what she has uncovered: https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2018/02/13/news/few_documents_many_mysteri… It may be unclear to some readers that Julian sought and received asylum, a basic and fundamental human right. Later, the UN found in his favor against the UK several times in an adversarial judicial process. The UK lost, part of losing was the finding of their behavior as persecution and yet, they continue to persecute him. He is now being held in a maximum security prison without even the pretext of being convicted of a crime, merely the possible extradition which was even denied on humanitarian grounds. It is an outrageous injustice that he is not free. > They did temporarily while he was hiding in the embassy (again, he was > hiding from Sweden, not the US -- Obama didn't try to arrest him, Sweden > did, and Assange ran), but now that he's out of hiding, it's reopened. > You describe his residence at the Ecuadorian Embassy as "hiding" when in fact his residence, like his grant of asylum, was well known. He was then subjected to illegal surveillance for his stay in the embassy which is currently being litigated about in Spain. In addition to the UN rulings in Julian's favor https://justice4assange.com/UN-Working-Group-Decision.html there is also the Inter-American court https://justice4assange.com/IMG/pdf/Inter-American_Court_Advisory_Opinion_O… ruling in Julian's favor. Furthermore, what you're saying about the Obama admin and about the US government generally over the last decade is highly misleading and essentially false. I'll tell you about my own situation to give others a sense of how incorrect you are about your broad assertions. I was first detained in 2010 regarding WikiLeaks and threatened by the US military on US soil as a natural born US citizen. I was flagged, detained, held incommunicado, questioned about my politics, manhandled, groped, and threatened on a regular, systematic basis. I left the United States of America after the unending harassment continued well into 2013, so I went to continue my journalistic work in Europe. All of that was done under the Obama administration and it always centered around Julian. I have met many Obama and Trump admin bureaucrats or elected politicians in Europe during the last decade working as a journalist and I have challenged as many of them about the WikiLeaks issue as often as was possible. A couple of years ago ( https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wikileaks-the-us-is-indeed-investigating-assan… ), my lawyers were contacted by the prosecutors from the Alexandria, Virginia office of the Department of Justice leading the prosecution against Julian. This is the same kind of overly political, outrageous threat that many people have faced since 2010, and in 2021, it is still continuing! They made an offer of immunity from prosecution, similar to the others they've offered over the last ten years to nearly everyone near Julian. They did offer me so-called "full immunity" rather than the normal "qualified immunity" offer they seem to normally toss on the table which was noteworthy. Ultimately such an offer is not very compelling to anyone who cares about anything other than themselves. The DoJ made it clear that in exchange for testimony against my journalistic colleague Julian, I could return home from exile and live a "happy" life. They also expressed that they knew I'd like to return to the country of my birth, and tried to pull on my emotional strings. They characterized the offer as the "easy way" and implied that the "hard way" was inevitable: They threatened to extradite me from Europe without immunity from prosecution if I refused their "easy way" offer. I refused their offer and informed them that I would rather die on foreign soil than allow them to get their hands on me. They have attempted to follow up on the "hard way" but lucky for the world, the European authorities actually care about national and international law, by comparison to the UK and the US. The US DoJ attempts to pressure me into testifying have so far been thwarted and I am not alone in my political grand jury resistance. Manning and Hammond also successfully resisted, and I am extremely inspired by their political actions. It's really striking at first that the UK declined to send him to America on humanitarian grounds. It seems like a brutal condemnation of American justice: even the British object! The problem is that they're part of the entire ruse as has been remarked in the recent book by former UK minister Alan Duncan. The UK is simply dragging out his situation as long as is possible. Mexico has now offered Julian asylum https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/mexico-julian-assange-asylum-us-b1… to settle the matter, and we can be fairly certain of the course that will be chosen by the UK: whatever drags out the situation longer, whatever makes Julian's situation more intolerable. I suggest all readers who are interested in the details visit https://justice4assange.com/ and consider picking up the book "The Trial of Julian Assange" by Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, when it is released: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697240/the-trial-of-julian-assange… This interview with Nils Melzer is worth reading even though it misses the developments of 2021: https://www.exberliner.com/features/julian-assange-trial-2020/nils-melzer-a… This is and has always been a political persecution by governments against regular people working to uncover truths about our world. To attempt or to force alleged sources or journalists to testify against Julian for matters concerning journalistic work is an outrageous attack on press freedom. This is a fact that nearly all major news paper editors in the US and the world agree with when consulted - the attack on Julian and on WikiLeaks is an attack on the free press of the entire world, the United States included. The politically motivated surveillance, targeting, harassment, and threats are a bipartisan issue in the US among authoritarian-leaning warmongers. Obama's DoJ did not *charge* Julian, and rather they built the groundwork of the case with the obviously unconstitutional charges that the Trump administration brought to the UK. Without Obama's DoJ going after my twitter https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/technology/twitter-ordered-to-yield-data… account, would Trump's DoJ had the same list of people to target? Doubtful! It's a rare case of bipartisan agreement that should make everyone sick, except for the few who wish to be on the side of the would-be executioner. The Biden administration should cease spying on, harassing, arresting, jailing, and exiling people *associated* with WikiLeaks. The Biden administration should drop the case against Julian Assange and the case against WikiLeaks. A luta continua, Jacob Appelbaum

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Gizmodo: Texas Power Companies Are Remotely Raising Temperatures on Residents' Smart Thermostats
by jim bell 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

Gizmodo: Texas Power Companies Are Remotely Raising Temperatures on Residents' Smart Thermostats. https://gizmodo.com/texas-power-companies-are-remotely-raising-temperatures…

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VaultHSM report: The way to confirm whether the Smart Card (J3H145) supports RFC-6979 ECDSA implementation
by coderman 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

https://hardenedvault.net/2021/07/07/vaulthsm_ecdsa-rfc6979.html VaultHSM report: The way to confirm whether the Smart Card (J3H145) supports RFC-6979 ECDSA implementation Vault Labs, HardenedVault Limited Background The original implementation of DSA-type signature algorithm (including ECDSA) needs a random number which belongs to the same mathematical object of the private key (an element of GF(p), in which p is a prime number). This random number should also have these three property below: 1. Randomness: It should be unable to calculate from the data being signed (called "payload" below) and the resulted signature. 2. Confidentiality: It should not be leaked outside the signing process. 3. Uniqueness: It should be different for different payloads. Otherwise, an attacker may calculate the private key from payloads and signatures. If the random number comes from a flawed RNG, its randomness and uniqueness will become difficult to guarantee, for the attacker may find the pattern of the flawed RNG by collecting enough payload-signature pairs, and then calculate the private key. The industry think “we can take bear of this” until [LadderLeak](https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/615) was being made public. The biggest problem here is: 1) Neither can’t keep the k-value secret nor “maliciously” repeat it 2) In worst-case, the attacker only cost 300k USD for P-224: It doesn’t make sense to ignore this issue especially in post-LadderLeak era. One of the methods to solve this problem is to derive the “random number” deterministically from the hash value of private key and payload with irreversible algorithm (such as hash or message authentication code algorithm): The participation of private key in the derivation process guarantees property 1 and 3, if only the private key is not leaked. This method has been standardized as [RFC 6979](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6979), and applied to the (EC)DSA implementation of libgcrypt by default. In addition, EdDSA does not use RNG anymore. The “random number” used internally is completely and deterministically derived from the hash value of private key and payload. GnuPG 2 makes use of libgcrypt, so its implementation of (EC)DSA should conform to RFC 6979, but GnuPG completely uses the implementation within libgcrypt only when using private key stored on disk; if the private key is stored in an OpenPGP Card, operations related to private key are done inside the card, unrelated to libgcrypt. If the RNG can not be guaranteed to be flawless, any (EC)DSA implementation not conforming to RFC 6979 may leak private keys via the issue mentioned above. Thus, we should use an (EC)DSA implementation provided by a smartcard only when it certainly conforms to RFC 6979. Testing process and result gpg has an option –faked-system-time to assign the timestamp of signature. (${TIMESTAMP} should not exceed the life time of the sub key to use) $ gpg -u ${SUBKEY_ID}! -bo payload.sig --faked-system-time ${TIMESTAMP} payload If an algorithm is completely deterministic (all of its input is user-controllable, and the output is uniquely determined by inputs) , the resulted signature should be identical when timestamp, payload and private key are all unchanged. Thus, if an (EC)DSA implementation outputs different signature even if timestamp, payload and private key are unchanged, such implementation could not conform to RFC 6979. The target to test is an [NXP JCOP3 J3H145](https://www.javacardos.com/store/products/10029) running [SmartPGP](https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/SmartPGP). Due to some limits, switching the type of private key slots may need a method similar to what is done by [this script](https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/SmartPGP/blob/master/bin/example-set-mi…. Private keys with type brainpoolP512r1 and rsa2048 (as control group) are imported to the signing key slot in succession, paired with private keys stored on disk. Two signatures are generated against each one type of private key, with fixed timestamp. Generated signatures are examined with hash. The results are shown below: $ sha256sum payload* 94d89559a996659d5220e630d7af057db8cd7e5dd61d7959139a68fc72fa80c8 payload 54885e606a52f6e80af21766568ab840ee1b5e4a8c84898a6ee551c98f31f36e payload.ecdsa.c0.sig f36c492c25ec794a30e68d0c08687b6afc14b28ec19bbd4b52bc57930b1c3eaf payload.ecdsa.c1.sig b6e0a45b5da47171472f970fcf4decdb92ec8050fcd094f05ddf0a3af8d65e90 payload.ecdsa.d0.sig b6e0a45b5da47171472f970fcf4decdb92ec8050fcd094f05ddf0a3af8d65e90 payload.ecdsa.d1.sig 31b83302f6397a8ae9676b484507ee4585e65999e24e9d9e0f1e25a0a3149e4e payload.rsa.c0.sig 31b83302f6397a8ae9676b484507ee4585e65999e24e9d9e0f1e25a0a3149e4e payload.rsa.c1.sig fd31c92c884ae26cc5efbd58c6ebbb080ee3755ea3de6b6b3474bf3f9b713f76 payload.rsa.d0.sig fd31c92c884ae26cc5efbd58c6ebbb080ee3755ea3de6b6b3474bf3f9b713f76 payload.rsa.d1.sig payload is randomly generated data; Signature labeled with letter c are signed with keys in card; Signature labeled with letter d are signed with keys stored on disk. It can be seen that, with timestamp fixed, no matter rsa keys in card or on disk are used, identical signature are generated with the same timestamp, payload and private key, confirming the validity of this method of judgment from the side. Identical signatures could also be generated with the ecdsa private key on disk, but different signatures come out when using the ecdsa private key on card with the same timestamp, payload and private key, which means when using the ecdsa private key on disk, the ECDSA implementation used by gpg is deterministic, while the implementation on card is not. Prospect If the on-card (EC)DSA implementation is confirmed to be deterministic, whether it conforms to RFC 6979 should be further checked. The method may be to sign the same payload with same timestamp and same key, once on disk while once on card. If the implementation on card conforms to RFC 6979, the resulted signature in these two process should be identical. It is omitted in this article, though. Conclusion Because at present EdDSA has not been popularized among smart cards, we had better use (EC)DSA for signature only on smartcards whose implementation is confirmed to conform to RFC 6979, otherwise, the RSA algorithm should be used for signature, for it does not have the issue like what presents in indeterministic (EC)DSA algorithm. The conclusion above only applies to signature. If your smart card supports ECC, Using EC key pairs for encryption is okay. In such situation, the assymmetric part of the algorithm will be performed in the manner of [ECIES](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Encryption_Scheme), and comparing to RSA, it will be enhanced with the [probabilisity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_encryption) of DH, making chosen-plaintext attack much less effective. In systems with DH applied, probabilisity is a problem for signature algorithm, and if it is not handled well, private key may be leaked, but for encryption, probabilisity can provide extra advantage. Proposed approach for defense The long-term solution is waiting for the standardization of EdDSA in FIPS-186-5. One the practical side, the deterministic ECDSA implementation didn’t go well in open source project like OpenSSL: The current situation doesn’t leave us much options but go through the short-term solution: - Make sure all of your certificates are using >= P-256 or RSA( another problematic component) - Don’t miss the spots without internet connection Appendix In order to avoid the interference of testing process with local ~/.gnupg/ directory, it is suggested that a tmpfs dedicated for test be mounted here: $ killall gpg-agent $ su root # mount tmpfs ${YOUR_HOME}/.gnupg/ -t tmpfs -o nodev,nosuid,noexec,mode=0700 # chown ${YOUR_USERNAME}:${YOUR_GROUP} ${YOUR_HOME}/.gnupg/ After that, keys could be generated according to standard GnuPG usage and used for test. After test is complete, the tmpfs could be unmounted after its contents being shredded. $ killall gpg-agent $ find ~/.gnupg -type f -exec shred -v {} \; $ su root # umount ${YOUR_HOME}/.gnupg/

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Assange's Prosecution
by jim bell 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

https://youtu.be/ufRpvfeUkak

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Julian Assange needs killing ( My 20 sats )
by professor rat 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

20 quid for whoever shanks him in jail. The Jim Bell Project is now a fraud stop Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign against legitimate dissent stop Same old shit, working for the enemy stop over Fuck Assange - Fuck Wikileaks - Fuck all their lawyers - Fuck Putin - Fuck Tariq Ali - Fuck John Pilger - Fuck Ed Snowman - Fuck all the stupid celebs covered in this shit. No-coiner nitwits and certifiable eunuchs the lot of em'. The few WL Dead-enders still quaffing the Kool-Aid are either GRU agents or too stupid to be activists, let alone anarchists. Mange can rot in jail forever or be released where I can kill him myself. Que sera sera. I don't care. He's richly earned killing every year since 2009. With a bit of luck we'll burn the 30 odd million in shitcoins he got when he cashed in his crypto. We can bury him face down on top of Mongo - and good riddance to bad counter-revolutionary rubbish.

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oramfs - ORAM filesystem written in Rust
by coderman 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

https://github.com/kudelskisecurity/oramfs oramfs - ORAM filesystem written in Rust [Rust 1.49+](https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/12/31/Rust-1.49.0.html) [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/oramfs) [License: GPL v3](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0) Oramfs provides a fully encrypted and optionally authenticated Oblivious RAM filesystem. Not only does it preserve data confidentiality, but it also prevents remote attackers from observing data access patterns. oramfs features: - ORAM - encrypt files and hide read/write access patterns from remote storage. Enhanced privacy! - Resizable ORAM - extend your ORAM when more space is required! - Cloud storage agnostic - synchronize your files to any remote server that can be mounted as a local directory - Filesystem agnostic - ext4 is used by default. Manual mode lets you use the filesystem you like. - Supports multiple encryption ciphers - ChaCha8, AES-CTR, AES-GCM - Supports multiple ORAM schemes - [Path ORAM](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/280.pdf), etc. - Written in Rust - Avoids memory safety issues, great performance [DISCLAIMER] oramfs is a prototype and may not be ready for production. It may erase some of your data. Make sure to backup important data before using this software. Why use oramfs? On an encrypted filesystem, an ORAM prevents an attacker from knowing whether read or write operations are performed and which parts of the filesystem are accessed. This enhanced privacy comes with a loss of performance. To setup the ORAM, two inputs are required. A public directory and a private directory. The public directory can be seen as the server and the private directory as the client. The public directory can be any local directory, including remote data mounted as a local directory. Hence, hiding access patterns to a remote SSH directory or to a remote cloud storage is possible. Indeed, these remote storages simply need to be mounted as a local directory first, and then, that directory can be used as the public directory for oramfs . For example, [Rclone](https://github.com/rclone/rclone) supports mounting a variety of cloud storage providers as local directories. The private directory is the one that should be used to access files stored in the ORAM. Any operation performed on the private directory has an impact on the public directory. And if that public directory is a mounted remote storage, then it is safely and transparently synchronized to the remote server whenever an operation is performed on the private directory. Requirements - Rust - FUSE (libfuse-dev package on Debian-based systems, fuse package on Arch) Getting started Install Rust using [rustup](https://rustup.rs/) if it is not installed yet. In /etc/fuse.conf, make sure to enable the user_allow_other option. If not already installed, install the libfuse-dev (Debian-based systems) package using your package manager. For other systems, the package may be named differently. Then, build oramfs using cargo: cargo build --release To get maximum performance and take advantage of native CPU instructions (AES-NI), build in release mode and target the native CPU: RUSTFLAGS="-Ctarget-cpu=native" cargo build --release The oramfs binary will be created in the target/release directory. For convenience, add it to your PATH. Note that installing the binary can also be performed with cargo install --path .. It will be installed in ~/.cargo/bin by default. export PATH=$PATH:target/release Then, create or mount a public directory to be protected by the ORAM, and a private directory: mkdir public mkdir private Finally, run the executable and create an ORAM configuration called myoram: oramfs add myoram public/ private/ Follow the interactive instructions and complete the ORAM setup. Once the ORAM configuration is setup, the details are saved to ~/.config/oramfs/oramfs.yml. Now the ORAM can be mounted and unmounted at any time using this configuration. oramfs mount myoram To unmount the ORAM: oramfs umount myoram To enlarge the ORAM, make sure it is unmounted first, then double its size: oramfs enlarge myoram Then it can be mounted as usual and its size will be larger than before. How does it work? Instead of implementing a full filesystem, oramfs only provides a mounted file. Therefore, the user is expected to create a filesystem on top of that file using a loop device, the filesystem of their choice and finally mounting that filesystem. Note that such operations usually require root privileges and therefore oramfs requires those privileges for mounting. Sudo is called to achieve this, and therefore, oramfs can simply be run as a regular user. It will prompt for your password when sudo is called for mount-related operations. oramfs takes a public directory as input and exposes a single private file, which is a proxy for read and write operations so that they are privacy-preserving thanks to an ORAM scheme. The mounted private file can be used to setup a loop device using losetup. Then, any filesystem, such as ext4 can be created on top of that loop device. oramfs automates this process, but also lets users do it manually if they want to. +---------------------------------------------------+ | | | ext4 filesystem | <---+ or any other FS or your choice | | +---------------------------------------------------+ | | | Loop device (/dev/loop0) | <---+ created with losetup | | +---------------------------------------------------+ | | | ORAMFS (FUSE) | <---+ Input : *public* local directory | | Output : *private* single file, +-------------------+-----------------+-------------+ for use with loop device | | | | | Local directory | Cloud storage | SSHFS | <---+ Input directory can be anything | | | | that appears as a local directory, +-------------------+-----------------+-------------+ including mounted remote directories. Examples: SSH, FTP, anything supported by rclone or similar tools, any mounted FUSE filesystem, etc. Before using ORAMFS: $ tree . ├── private <---+ empty directory └── public <---+ this is the directory that the attacker can see ("public" directory) When ORAMFS is in use, every operation done in the "private" directory - or directly on the "oram" private file in the mountpoint directory - appears ORAMified in the "public" directory. In the standard use case, the user does not directly modify the "oram" private file, but instead uses a higher level abstraction (the filesystem in the "private" directory). The user typically mounts their public cloud storage to the "public" directory before running ORAMFS, so that the public files are transparently synchronized to the cloud in a privacy-preserving way. When ORAMFS is in use: $ tree . ├── private │ └── lost+found │ └── very_private_document.txt └── public └── node_0.oram └── node_1.oram └── node_2.oram └── ... $ tree /tmp/oramfs_myoram/ /tmp/oramfs_myoram/ └── oram Example with remote storage In this example, we go through the setup of an ORAM that transparently synchronizes data to a remote FTP server. Of course, one could use any other remote storage (SSH server, Google Drive, etc.). Anything that can be mounted as a local directory. We assume that an rclone remote has already been configured for an FTP server you have access to, using rclone config. The rclone config file should have an entry for that remote, similar to: [myftp] type = ftp host = 1.2.3.4 user = myusername pass = mypassword Let's mount the remote FTP server directory as local directory. We will use this directory as public directory of our ORAM: rclone mount --daemon --allow-other --dir-cache-time 1s --poll-interval 1s --vfs-cache-mode writes --vfs-write-back 200ms myftp:somedirectory/ public Create an ORAM called myoram: $ oramfs add myoram public/ private/ Please enter desired ORAM total size in bytes, or press enter to use default [default: 16000000 (16 MB)]: Adjusting ORAM size to closest valid value: 16711680 bytes Please enter path to client data directory to use, or press enter to use default [default: /home/foobar/.config/oramfs/myoram]: Please enter path to mointpoint directory to use, or press enter to use default [default: /tmp/oramfs_myoram]: Successfully added ORAM myoram. Mount the ORAM, write a file to it: $ oramfs mount myoram $ echo hello world > private/somefile When finished, unmount it: $ oramfs unmount myoram That's it! Files written/read to/from the private directory are encrypted and access patterns are hidden to the FTP server. For more details, make sure to read the Privacy section below. Configuration The main configuration file is located at ~/.config/oramfs/oramfs.yml. Existing ORAM profiles can be modified by simply editing that file. For example, the ORAM scheme could be changed from pathoram to fakeoram. For a description of all the options, see oramfs add --help. Note that changing these options probably require re-initializing the ORAM, and therefore, it's not possible to change those options without losing the data in an existing ORAM. Advanced Usage Show help with cargo run -- -h Foreground mode By default, oramfs runs in the background. Use --foreground to avoid that. Note that when oramfs runs in the foreground, it implies that manual mode is used. oramfs mount myoram --foreground Manual mode For maximum control, manual mode can be used (--manual). Mount ORAMFS using Path ORAM (with explicit parameters). The mounted ORAMFS appears as a file under the specified mountpoint directory. By default, it is in /tmp/oramfs_{ORAM_NAME}/oram. mkdir private mkdir public oramfs add myoram public/ private/ oramfs mount myoram --manual Since manual mode does not automatically mount a file system for you, you must do it yourself. To do so, create an ext4 filesystem on top of the ORAM. Note that mount automatically creates a loop device for us: mkfs.ext4 /tmp/oramfs_myoram/oram mount -o sync /tmp/oramfs_myoram/oram private/ echo "hello oram" > private/hello.txt Using another filesystem than ext4 oramfs supports any filesystem. To use something different from the default ext4, do the following. During initialization, pass the --manual flag, then manually create the filesystem of your choice on the oram file in the mountpoint directory. Here is an example with ext3: oramfs add myoram public/ private/ oramfs mount myoram --manual mkfs.ext3 /tmp/oramfs_myoram/oram oramfs umount myoram oramfs mount myoram When enlarging an ORAM using a different filesystem, pass the --manual flag. Then, manually resize and unmount the oram file: oramfs umount myoram oramfs enlarge myoram --manual resize2fs -f /tmp/oramfs_myoram/oram # or equivalent for your filesystem oramfs umount myoram oramfs mount myoram Mounting multiple ORAMs at the same time When mounting multiple ORAMs at the same time, make sure that the ORAMs use different, public directories, private directories, mountpoints and client data directories. ORAM initialization Important: the first time that an ORAM is mounted, the --init option is passed automatically. --init is a destructive operation and it will permanently destroy any data in an existing ORAM. In practice, there should be little need to manually pass --init. oramfs looks at the init property in the global oramfs config file to determine whether the ORAM was already initialized. Using other ORAM schemes than Path ORAM This prototype currently only implements [Path ORAM](https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/280.pdf), but it is built so that more schemes can be added in the future. To prove this, there is a second scheme named fakeoram built-in, but it should not be used in production because it is not a true ORAM. FakeORAM is a "Hello World" example ORAM scheme that could be useful for developers who want to add new ORAM schemes to oramfs. To use another scheme, such as fakeoram, update the configuration file and change the algorithm entry to fakeoram. Then simply mount and initialize the oram. Privacy The public directory can be safely mirrored to the cloud, without the cloud provider knowing which file is being accessed and whether read or write operations were performed. One scenario would be to mount a remote Google Drive directory as the public directory, and use that public directory as the public directory for the ORAMFS. Performance When native CPU instructions can be used, AES may be faster than ChaCha8. Changing the cipher can be achieved by passing the --cipher aes-ctr or --cipher aes-gcm flag on adding an ORAM, for example. One can also directly edit the configuration file and reinitialize the ORAM with the updated cipher. Note that this will destroy any data in the ORAM, so proceed with caution when initializing an ORAM. To achieve the best performance, make sure to build or run using cargo's --release flag and to pass the RUSTFLAGS="-Ctarget-cpu=native" environment variable. Benchmarks oramfs was compared to [UtahFS](https://github.com/cloudflare/utahfs). Oramfs was used with default values (AES-GCM, 16MB oram size). UtahFS was used with a local disk and the oram option was set to true. Note that performance is highly sensitive to the choice of n, z and b parameters in oramfs. In this benchmark, the defaults were used for 10MB. Then the ORAM was enlarged (n was doubled) for 25 MB. Read performance File size oramfs UtahFS Speedup 10 MB 1 sec 9 sec 9x 25 MB 3 sec 26.5 sec 8.8x Write performance File size oramfs UtahFS Speedup 10 MB 15 sec 30 sec 2x 25 MB 50 sec 95 sec 1.9x Usage on SSD or flash storage For each read or write operation, the ORAM scheme actually performs multiple operations under the scenes. Even for read operations, underlying write operations are performed. This can significantly reduce the lifespan of SSDs. Limitations and future work Note that oramfs is still a prototype and has the following known limitations. Memory zeroization Memory is currently not zeroized on exit/crash. An attacker may be able to extract private keys or passphrases from non-zeroized memory. Read caching If reads are cached, then the ORAM won't perform any work on cached reads. This is a privacy issue because it would mean that if all reads are cached, then we can be sure that any modification to the public directory must be a write operation. To avoid read caching, on Linux, always clear the kernel cache before reading a file from the ORAM: # sync; echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches Testing Run tests with cargo test --release Contributing Feel free to open an issue or pull request. Code should be formatted with rustfmt. To automatically format the whole project: cargo fmt No warnings should appear when running cargo build and cargo clippy. Additionally, all tests should pass (See Testing section).

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Cryptocurrency: The Miracle Cure for the Medical Firewall
by grarpamp 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

> Obviously we need doctors because they're our channel to extensive > scientific research and medical lab tests like mris, xrays, eegs, pet > scans. Those things are all behind huge financial walls. > if you want to get tested for rare and very dangerous pollutants Cryptocurrency solves all these legacy walls. Now you can crowdfund all such machines and research as desired. MRI machines don't cost much when spread across enough people. And once you buy one, you can keep it running 24x7 in your community for all who come asking, for little more than an at cost, token fee, or even charity. McAfee spoke about Docademic coin. > protect us from abuses by corporations, organised crime, and government. Dissolve ideas behind their force in denaturing fluid. A medical research experiment.

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[wrong] Mozilla DeepSpeech stuff was Re: How to isolate/figure out whispers in audio clip?
by Karl Semich 07 Jul '21

07 Jul '21

https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech DeepSpeech is an open source embedded (offline, on-device) speech-to-text engine which can run in real time on devices ranging from a Raspberry Pi 4 to high power GPU servers. DeepSpeech is an open-source Speech-To-Text engine, using a model trained by machine learning techniques based on `Baidu's Deep Speech research paper <https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.5567>`_. Project DeepSpeech uses Google's `TensorFlow <https://www.tensorflow.org/>`_ to make the implementation easier. Documentation for installation, usage, and training models are available on `deepspeech.readthedocs.io <https://deepspeech.readthedocs.io/?badge=latest>`_. For the latest release, including pre-trained models and checkpoints, `see the latest release on GitHub <https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech/releases/latest>`_. For contribution guidelines, see `CONTRIBUTING.rst <CONTRIBUTING.rst>`_. For contact and support information, see `SUPPORT.rst <SUPPORT.rst>`_.

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Cypherpunk revolution Vs the present military journalism system
by professor rat 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

Tired of listening to conservative morons like Semich, Gramps, Batshit and David drone on about their endless conformist brown-nosing to power? For Jim Bell, the more exciting question was: “How can we translate the freedom afforded by the Internet to ordinary life?” I think that blockchains will replace armies for national defense, because a blockchain-based assassination market will be created…" Zach. CryptoGo To launch attacks under favorable circumstances is not only every anarchist revolutionary’s right, but their plain duty. The killing of spies, policemen, commissars, the blowing up of police stations, the liberation of prisoners, the seizure of government funds for the needs of the uprising—such operations are already being carried out wherever insurrection is rife. Cypherpunks collapse governments. Subject: Everyone a remailer: Everyone a Mint: Everyone an assassin https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=100872510706876&w=2 Strong-crypto, digital money, anonymous networks, pseudonyms, zero- knowledge proofs, reputations, information-markets, netwar, collapse-of-governments. http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/cyphernomicon.txt Marc responded, “indeed, free and open source software seems non-negotiable here: no backdoors, no skeleton key. National security establishment would balk at this though?” Rohan responds, “yes, fuck them. I don’t think we should be taking policy advice about how to design our money for the people who think the Patriot Act was a good thing ..." https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/coindesk-podcast-network/us-digital-dolla… WHO wants to join the *LAST* revolution? The one to take down *ALL* the governments! Anarchism is not lack of orders …its lack of *ORDERS* TIMOTHY " An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion " C. MAY 1992 TIM " I guess now that the Pentagon is setting up a murder pool it can't be illegal for us to do it " MAY. 2003

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Washington Examiner: In a cancel culture, anonymity must be a civil right
by jim bell 06 Jul '21

06 Jul '21

Washington Examiner: In a cancel culture, anonymity must be a civil right. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/in-a-cancel-culture-a…

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