- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Quo vadis Amazons?
by professor rat 03 Feb '21

03 Feb '21

https://decrypt.co/56396/will-amazons-new-ceo-embrace-crypto "... no one gets as many eyeballs—and wants to facilitate seamless payments—as much as Amazon.

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USA 2020 Elections: Thread
by professor rat 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

Look if anarchists liberated the Capitol that would all be fine and dandy - but they were not anarchists. They were Loony-tune liars and conspiracy theorists. Bit like our own Batshit Crazy and Zendy Harkness. Anyway at least a good precedent has been set for shooting them in the throat and killing them.

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Yesterday was USA Freedom Day, hope it was freeing at least a little [ot] [karl story]
by Karl 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

Yesterday I posted a small celebration of freedom day, and a link to a USA human trafficking hotline, where "human trafficking" is synonymous with "coercive slavery" and "hotline" is synonymous with "rescue organisation". Here is a little bit of my story. I used to be a software developer and an activist, and I was coercively brainwashed and enslaved to prevent activism. I am a straight male in my 30s. I contacted that hotline maybe 7 years ago. I was scared of freedom and didn't contact them again for many years. I did give the contact information to somebody else I knew, and this person's life improved afterwards. They got a job and an apartment, somehow. Additionally, a new rescue group was started in that city a few years later, which previously didn't have one. I don't know whether I influenced those things happening or not. Last year I contacted that hotline again. I just said I needed a therapist, that was all. When they asked questions, instead of disconnecting, I related my emotional experiences, like "I know it is wrong to try to be free," and they had nice, comforting replies to give, that took me out of the control reality: "I don't think that is wrong. I think it shows you are brave and strong." I had never heard anybody say anything like that before. I did this via text messaging. I tried calling their voice line sometimes, but the automated menu and hold times were scary and confusing for me. I imagined that if I were borrowing a phone from a stranger to contact them, like most people without resources would have to, that long hold times could make it very hard to get in touch. I ended up mostly using text messaging, which is easier for me anyway. It was hard to follow things through. They were available to recontact me and check in, and help me make phone calls. They did most of the phone calling for me. Calling people is hard for me, especially regarding this topic. We connected me with an organisation in my area for domestic violence, at a pace I was in control of. These people gave me an advocate, who consistently says they are available to help me. They didn't seem to need me to say I had experienced violence or anything, they were just the local resource. I had to do a lot of the reaching out myself, often repeatedly. But it does seem the resources are very real. They don't seem to understand a lot of the issues; heck, neither do I. I have not really followed up further. I kept telling the people I wanted to try to do things on my own, which is much slower and harder. Maybe I said that a little too much, maybe not, I don't know. Most of the therapists we found related that they were unavailable. I ended up accidentally contacting a non-recommended therapist and having therapy with them for a bit. Still, it was nice to have a therapist that I found on my own with rescue services, rather than one assigned me who never seemed willing to talk about anything. I am still looking for a therapist who lets me video-record myself during therapy, to help me preserve evidence of what happened to me as I obsessively convince myself that it never did. That is one of my next goals for when I find avenues through my strange alternate states that let me contact these people again. Hope you are well. Thank you for blockchains. The permanence of confirmed information on their chains is obviously something I strongly appreciate. I hope others can make use of this some day, too.

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Happy USA Freedom Day; do you have a list of global organizations to refer people to?
by Karl 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

Hi friendly UNODC, Today is Freedom Day in the USA, the day slavery was formally abolished in my country. I was wondering if you have any resources for helping victims of human trafficking for people who are in other countries. The NGO database site seems to be down: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/ngos/NGO-Database.html Is there maybe a PDF that people are using until the database is repaired? Additionally, I have software engineering and system administration skills and know others who do too, if you can organise volunteer help repairing your database at all. Thank you, Karl Semich

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VICE: Darknet Drug Markets Continued Their March to Dominance in 2020
by jim bell 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

VICE: Darknet Drug Markets Continued Their March to Dominance in 2020. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ae74/darknet-drug-markets-continued-their…

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facestab legal requests
by coderman 02 Feb '21

02 Feb '21

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 got a fun email from facestab, which i was locked out of years ago as discussed before on this list. presumably "accompanied by an order that prohibited us from disclosing information" has now been long enough ago they've got to come clean. awaiting further information... don't use facestab ;) best regards, - --- Return-Path: <records(a)records.facebook.com> X-Original-To: coderman(a)protonmail.com Delivered-To: coderman(a)protonmail.com Received: from 69-171-232-181.mail-mxout.facebook.com (69-171-232-181.mail-mxout.facebook.com [69.171.232.181]) (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits) key-exchange X25519 server-signature RSA-PSS (4096 bits) server-digest SHA256) (No client certificate requested) by mailin013.protonmail.ch (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 114143000273 for <coderman(a)protonmail.com>; Sat, 30 Jan 2021 08:01:23 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: mailin013.protonmail.ch; dmarc=pass (p=reject dis=none) header.from=records.facebook.com Authentication-Results: mailin013.protonmail.ch; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=records(a)records.facebook.com Authentication-Results: mailin013.protonmail.ch; dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=records.facebook.com header.i=(a)records.facebook.com header.b="0cpyTq2Q" Dkim-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=records.facebook.com; s=s1024-2014-q3; t=1611993667; bh=hrStWmzOBW+c5IOd71X/MqDlXFLvnJdXdBXAvHRpnaI=; h=Date:To:Subject:From:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=0cpyTq2QWHvryHueJdDRcDUDKYDZ6Mdodla240FKtx/lOWieS+1SeGhD+cmUpQuTU kU++GFbj4BKXVe0Jpfp90JQ8E6zQqY6VCb/NyKp6Kfhzgzv4XU6TYvnJ+8Hnb0R5WG Tbxs2fd4Q+UKvMjzo2wJNIyIM0P0Q3yMgeEGUBf8= X-Facebook: from zuckmail ([MTI3LjAuMC4x]) by localhost.localdomain with local (ZuckMail); Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:01:07 -0800 To: coderman(a)protonmail.com Subject: [Facebook Case #5795081] X-Mailer: ZuckMail [version 1.00] From: Records <records(a)records.facebook.com> - --- Hello, This notice is to inform you that we received legal process from law enforcement seeking information about your account, and produced data as required by law. The legal process was accompanied by an order that prohibited us from disclosing information about the case until a specific time had expired and we were legally required to produce the records specified in the demand. If you would like additional information about the legal process, please let us know as soon as possible by responding to this email. Thank you, Law Enforcement Response Team - --- NOTICE: This email (including any attachments) may contain information that is private, confidential, or protected by attorney-client or other privilege. Unless you are the intended recipient, you may not use, copy, or retransmit the email or its contents. For information please visit: https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/ and http://help.instagram.com/494561080557017/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iNUEAREKAH0WIQRBwSuMMH1+IZiqV4FlqEfnwrk4DAUCYBWlPF8UgAAAAAAuAChp c3N1ZXItZnByQG5vdGF0aW9ucy5vcGVucGdwLmZpZnRoaG9yc2VtYW4ubmV0NDFD MTJCOEMzMDdEN0UyMTk4QUE1NzgxNjVBODQ3RTdDMkI5MzgwQwAKCRBlqEfnwrk4 DHqqAP0WdL4IWH6R06qLijvWqmH9UYKA+cMKKutoB7UBOBfKZwEAgvPsb3s0TEra TUflNSsSa/ZHfAwQRO1CBC1kRZboyeM= =k57C -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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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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