- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

wikipedia article deleted by feminazis - also disapperars from archive.org-NSA
by Punk 04 Jul '19

04 Jul '19

if you google "Nicolás Morás" you still get a hit for https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Mor%C3%A1s the google search is archived here http://archive.is/szFbE (though archive.is yet another piece of shit since the snapshots get overwritten) the wikipedia page https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Mor%C3%A1s has been deleted by feminazi scum. The page was something like 7 years old. NOW, it get as a LOT MORE interesting. Turns out that archive.org has only ONE snapshot for a page that's ~7 years old. http://web.archive.org/web/20190604153028/https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic… so if you look at archive.org you won't get the history of the wikipedia page showing that the page was pretty old and 'legitimate' - pretty convenient huh.

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Yacy vs Google Search Authority Fake Terror
by grarpamp 04 Jul '19

04 Jul '19

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/02/google-tweaked-algorithm… https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.%20com/de//insidesear… A senior search engineer at Google revealed that the company had to tweak its algorithm to combat misinformation after mass shootings. The Guardian reports: "In these last few years, there's been a tragic increase in shootings," Pandu Nayak, who joined the company 14 years ago to work on its search engine, said. "And it turns out that during these shootings, in the fog of events that are unfolding, a lot of misinformation can arise in various ways. "And so to address that we have developed algorithms that recognize that a bad event is taking place and that we should increase our notions of 'authority', increase the weight of 'authority' in our ranking so that we surface high quality content rather than misinformation in this critical time here." Authority, by Google's definition, means pages that comply with the company's search quality evaluator guidelines, a 166-page document (PDF) that the company distributes to its 16,000 search quality raters. Those employees are responsible for checking tweaks to Google's algorithm to ensure that they give the best results, rating search results on two scales: one that marks whether the searcher's needs are met (if the search is for "Google Jobs," for instance, a maps result showing the location of Google's head office "fails to meet" needs, while the company's career's page "fully meets"), and a second that marks the page's quality, defined over 80 pages of the guidelines with "very high quality MC" (main content), "very high level of E-A-T" (expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) and "very positive reputation."

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Re: [Cryptography] graph theory and sybil attack
by grarpamp 04 Jul '19

04 Jul '19

> The sibyl attack is a graph theory problem, not a cryptography problem, and its application is in distributed systems. > But distributed systems are a cryptography problem, so, if the moderators permit, I would like to ask about this problem here: > Yacy is an open source distributed search engine for publishing, but the hard problem is the sibyl attack, the problem that Google refers to a a link farm – a bunch of fake sites that link to each other to give each other fake reputation. Not clear how Yacy addresses the sibyl attack, and I suspect that if usage of Yacy increases, it will be subject to such attacks. > Similarly, systems for giving people reputation for supplying goods are subject to sibyl attack with fake customers. Big problem with Dark Web sites that attempt to do an ebay on Tor. Distributed systems tend to be subject to sibyl attacks. > Resolving the sibyl attack is a problem of partitioning the graph to see if a group of nodes well connected to each other are, considered as a single node, well connected to rest of the network. > ... How much is search willing to spend on Proof Of Search? Via Proof of * by search nodes, or by Proof of cryptocurrency micropayment for good search result. Or even PKI to various levels of truth? Or is that all the fad talk these days? Of course that involves talk of cryptocurrency, which was first announced yet now banned here, which involves applied cryptographic protocols and networks, which is weird.

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Civil discussion on the deletion of the Nicolás Morás article from Wikipedia (Spanish language)
by Shawn K. Quinn 03 Jul '19

03 Jul '19

This is a new thread for civil discussion about the deletion of the Nicolás Morás article from Spanish-language Wikipedia. I will start this by including an automatically translated version of the discussion page (the online translator I'm using has a 5000 character limit so this took a couple of go-rounds). I originally wasn't going to do this. I did omit a portion that appears to be from a known sockpuppet ("CPP") and which was left on the page in strikethrough. If you don't care for all this skip to the end and/or search for the other string of three dashes on a line by itself I have used to delineate the translated portion. ("Remove yourself" is apparently how "delete" was translated and "keep yourself" is how "keep" or "don't delete" was translated at least some of the time. Other acronyms appear to be specific to the Spanish-language version of Wikipedia and did not translate.) --- The following discussion is an archived deletion query. Please, do not modify it. The following comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (the article discussion or in a restoration consultation). No further edits should be made on this page. The result was Delete. Aleposta (discussion) 00:39 13 Jun 2019 (UTC) Nicolás Morás Nicolás Morás (edit | discussion | history | links | monitor | records) Search sources: «Nicolás Morás» - news · books · academic · images SRA for one month, in addition to other questions as a primary source and promotion of the biography. Defended Esteban (discussion) 22:08 30 May 2019 (UTC) Attention! If you came here because someone asked you or you followed a link from a forum or social network, please keep in mind that this is not a vote but a discussion to establish a consensus among the Wikipedia editors on whether a page is appropriate for this encyclopedia. Wikipedia has policies to help us decide, and decisions are made based on the strength of the arguments presented, not a number of votes. However, if you want to participate in the process and express your opinions, you are welcome. Remember to presume good faith of others and sign your comments on this page adding ~~~~ at the end. Note: Comments on possible special purpose accounts can be tagged with {{sust: Cpu | username}} Keep yourself Stay - I think the article as it is meets all the requirements to stay. The content is encyclopedically relevant. The knowledge of the biography is due to his career as a journalist and political activist and not to factors other than his abilities, sensationalism or heart programs. It is not about self-promotion, it is a notable public person for more than a single event, which is clear from the diverse and solid sources. I do not observe unsupported content or use of wikipedia as a primary source. In addition, other solid sources can be found on the web coinciding with those already listed. The current wording is accurate, precise and neutral. It complies with everything established for Wikipedia: Encyclopedic relevance and Wikipedia: Biographies of living people. --LefontQ (discussion) 14:18 31 May 2019 (UTC) delete Beers I have visited some of the links. In my opinion it is more of an agitator than a communicator. Within the media noise you get your voice to be heard slightly more. However, I do not observe that his figure is recognized as relevant to a certain ideological line both in Argentina and internationally. Apart from various interviews or press releases of opinion articles there is nothing else. Therefore, I am inclined to delete the entry .-- Nachobacter (discussion) 17:47 31 May 2019 (UTC) stay Stay Stay I already gave my arguments on the article discussion page. If necessary, I can copy and paste them here. Happy days Martin Xicarts (discussion) 13:51 2 Jun 2019 (UTC) delete Bórrese The character is irrelevant. The article seems to seek to promote it. None of the sources is reliable, or are blogs or promotional pages or are not independent sources of the biography, for example, links to YouTube videos created by him or related people to promote their ideas. References to the Indymedia forum, Webzine blog or social networks have no value for Wikipedia. The only sources that could be independent lead us to links that do not exist or can not be accessed (for example, I wanted to enter the link to Infobae, which is a known medium and which is accessed without payment and I am told that can access because they ask me to pay and "it is possible that the attackers are trying to steal your information (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards)" which I suspect are links to malicious sites. I did not even name the biographer, that is, they are misleading, other sources refer to unreliable sites, such as this Kontrainfo reference (and since we are, we should add Wikipedia to that list of sinister sites "supported by the Open Society Foundation" and that it is a great donor of those who sustain our work.) This source is reliable but the only thing about it is that it appears on the list of signatories, this reference could be used to an article about the group "Libertad & Equidad" but not for his biography since he does not tell us anything about its relevance. I want to say that anyone can sign something. I also tried to enter the references that put to HispanTV but it appeared to me that «It was not possible to find the IP address of the server». In short, many references but most misleading, not found, unreliable or not named. Unknown character in my country that probably seeks to promote. Career without encyclopedic relevance. Does not comply with the established in Wikipedia: Encyclopedic relevance. --Jalu (discussion) 18:06 2 June 2019 (UTC) Care Attention! I do not want to fall into sensationalism, but why the remark that the Open Society Foundation is a "great donor" of Wikipedia? I think it has no relevance in this debate if the article in question speaks well or badly of Open Society, nor should it be understood that it is better not to speak badly of said foundation just because it provides donations to the page. It's the only thing that stands out from your comment, the rest seems to me to be in line with the debate. Martin Xicarts (discussion) 13:39 3 June 2019 (UTC) Comment Commentary This character still lacks a greater media notoriety ... That makes more merits to deserve to be in Wikipedia. Greetings. Marco M (posts) 00:08 4 jun 2019 (UTC) Comment Comment for the librarian who is going to close the query. LefontQ (disc. · Contr.) Is a CPP created to exclusively edit articles related to Nicolás Morás. From 2016 until the start date of this consultation. He had bleached his diff discussion so he would not see the different ads he received for promotional since he created the article. All his interventions in the TAB were to defend this article, and avoid its deletion, for example diff. Godivaciones (disc. · Contr.), On the other hand, is an account created after starting this query, CPP whose sole purpose seems to be that this article is not deleted. He has dedicated himself to proselytizing, de-legitimizing this consultation, inviting him to support: Enrique Cordero Chamarasca Vitor Waka Waka Marcomogollon Arkangel414 Verent Muago OneEuropeanHeart Sowairan It is very striking that, in all these invitations, he has forgotten to tell Hades7 (disc. · Contr.), Who had been opining about the lack of relevance of this biography, diff and who is the one who placed the template without relevance , diff. --Jalu (discussion) 17:43 6 Jun 2019 (UTC) delete Bereuse by not remembering me when proselytizing, intolerable. Just kidding. But well ... it smells like spam and the character does not stand out for its tremendous importance. Maybe later, with accounts less involved, going to the point, sneaking less trash and with a more sincere interest ... He has a lot of life ahead of Nicolás Morás, there is no hurry to create an article. strakhov (discussion) 09:05 7 Jun 2019 (UTC) delete Bórrese Besides the accounts involved, the article is irrelevant and is obviously promotional .-- Fixertool (discussion) 03:22 10 Jun 2019 (UTC) Keep yourself Stay really I do not see that the article has any self-promotion dyes, at any time I appreciate it. Regarding relevance, which is apparently the main problem here, I see that most of the sources used belong to media without any affiliation with the subject. When searching the web I find a lot of information about Morás, so I assume that media notoriety has. Likewise, its association with media such as Hispan TV and Telesur confirm my idea of its relevance. Therefore, I think that the article should be maintained, also appreciating the improvements that have been made in recent days.Darthvader2 (discussion) 05:03 11 Jun 2019 (UTC) Keep yourself Stay - As other users said, I do not see self-promotion in the article (although certain paragraphs should be rewritten). There are sources and references in different parts of the article and I do not think that it seeks to generate controversy; in fact, it has a section where the "controversies" are mentioned. I do not see the difference between this article and that of, for example, Baby Etchecopar or Javier Milei, who also have controversies. Now, if we go with respect to relevance, I do not see why they consider that it does not have; the fact of being a journalist from the Argentine south does not make it less important than those of the Federal Capital. In fact, if we follow the line of relevance, in Wikipedia there are articles by less relevant people such as Charlotte Caniggia https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Caniggia or Barbara Vélez https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/ B% C3% A1rbara_V% C3% A9lez that are not just very relevant people, but "children of" other celebrities. In short, none of the arguments that are used to delete the article seems valid: 1. the article does not seem self-promoting because it also talks about disputes. 2. I do not think it is very relevant, since Wikipedia has articles from less relevant people (like the ones I mentioned above), added to the fact that I believe that the person is discredited a little because it is not Capital. 3. I DO NOT see that it breaks rules, since it contains sources and references. For all this, I vow to keep the article. DMAC89 (discussion) 18:08 June 11 2019 (UTC) -DMAC89 (discussion • contributions) has made few or no edition in other articles. Comment Comment Darthvader2 what improvements? DMAC89 can I ask you how did you get to this query? because I'm surprised to read that "you vote to keep this article", I'm surprised to see that you have 108 contributions in the main space of Wikipedia and since 2015 that you do not edit. How did you appear 4 years later and you entered directly to this opinion to give your opinion? You do not even know how to make an internal link to Charlotte Caniggia or Baby Etchecopar or Javier Milei. Also, what do the articles by Baby Etchecopar or Javier Milei have to do with it? How is the person being discredited because he or she is not a Capital? Who said that being a journalist from the Argentine south is less important than the ones from the Federal Capital? and, fundamentally, how do you know that it is from the south if the article does not say it? --Jalu (discussion) 18:23 11 Jun 2019 (UTC) I was observing the debate about maintaining or not maintaining this article, although some find errors in the links area for example, I will also deny link 10 because it is found to be in a private browsing. Perform a research on Nicolás Morás and showed results of interviews conducted on his personal opinion on the political situation of the country, and publication in independent newspapers and regional scope. Also watch a total of 37 videos of him offering interviews and debates on television and universities. Being an audiovisual source, it bases the validity of this article. Some users have commented on the topic of what is a more self-referential article perhaps it would be good if the article is re-edited and detected those links that will really have to be deleted because they do not have direct access. He is an independent journalist who is venturing into activities of his profession, every young journalist begins working with independent journalism and is something that should not be underestimated. That is why I share with DMAC89 his perspective of point two where he explains that anyone has an article in a wikipedia and that these characters are not very relevant. I observed that it is part of the "Civic Freedom and Equity Movement" this is proven in the work with respectable characters in the area of culture and thinkers. - The previous unsigned comment is the work of Florencia Cayuela (disc. • contribs). 23:11 11 Jun 2019 (UTC) -Florencia Cayuela (discussion • contributions) has made few or no edition in other articles. Keep greetings, I do not intend to argue, but I want to reason my vote: I find it reasonable that the publication of the article may lead to the conclusion that it is self-promotional because of the way it was initially published and the way in which some users have intervened. However on the other hand the way in which it is judged so that it is discarded, so fervently in some cases, could also lead to think that there is this type of motivations but in the other sense. Even more after seeing the surprising argumentation in relation to the OSF of Mr. Soros that although it was noticed as irrelevant by another user immediately, but I think it has enough relevance that without any blush it is said that the donations of the OSF have some impact in the publication, discarding or deletion of an article in the Wikipedia according to the interests of this foundation according to the donations made to Wikipedia "because it is a great donor of those who support our work." Let's put the case upside down. Let's say that Mr. Morás makes a significant contribution to the Wikipedia cause. Would this be a determining factor to be considered relevant and articles related to it would be relevant? Skinny favor to our "free" encyclopedia. This calls me a lot of attention, because those who argued that the article was rejected rejected not only refute (which I applaud) but they went directly to suspect (which I do not applaud) the opinion of the other participants because of its recent incorporation or lack of activity, when it was enough to counteract them (as some have done) and when Wikipedia has as a principle the presumption of good faith and it would not be desirable for some editor or librarian to begin to point out the detractors of this page due to suspicions of act pro NGO, without some evidence. So we find an ad hominem argument that can come back as a boomerang on anyone. In this query the vehemence of the accusations, some argument lazy, etc. Everything can be used as a pretext to erase or incorporate the article, if we start pointing at each other. Undoubtedly throughout Latin America there are less relevant characters and situations that have overcome deletion queries or that have not even gone through this filter. And the only doubt that this article sends to consultation, tells me that it was not subject to quick deletion for something. In my opinion Mr. Morás has some relevance, not the greatest, nor the best, but some notoriety has reached with his journalistic work revealing financing schemes to politicians of various tendencies, reading about this was that I found about him. I invite you to leave arguments ad hominem aside and polish Wikipedia, including this article. A hug for everyone. Paramaconic (discussion) -Paramaconic (discussion • contributions) has made few or no edition in other articles. Comment Comment The reasoning of "your vote" is very interesting. Thank you. --Jalu (discussion) 01:10 Jun 12 2019 (UTC) delete Be A person with the name of who appears as vice president of the Foundation chaired by Mr. Moras], just offered me $ 25 to vote that the article is maintained. He even gave me "ideas" to use as arguments. The contact started on the Freelancer site and I have captures and links to the project. I do not know the sources of funding but the project had several applicants. It can be seen in Freelancer. The system will not let me publish the links I have the captures of the conversation but I do not know if it corresponds to publish them. Gachif83 (discussion) 01:37 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) gachif83 delete Be a journalist who has only done his work, there is no level of relevance beyond doing his job. --Chico512 13:32 Jun 12 2019 (UTC) remove yourself. What beautiful and ethical speeches from the users who come here to defend the indefensible. Self-promotion, lack of neutrality, accounts with a particular purpose, references sought with a magnifying glass, what else do we want? It would be good if they really edited something acceptable in an encyclopaedia and that they did not ride on the podium of political speeches. And to know thoroughly what is Wikipedia, so they would know that the free word is nothing but a bad translation that we drag from remote times. It is free because you do not have to pay a dime to consult it, copy it, etc. But the freedom of opinion within the texts of the articles does not exist here, it is very much against the neutrality that we demand. Lourdes, messages here 13:43 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) Comment Comment Are these types of campaigns a variant of what experts call astroturfing? Hmmmmmmm how delicious. I love the smell of rottenness in the mornings. Also in the afternoon. strakhov (discussion) 15:42 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) remove yourself. It has no relevance. Also, I see that there is a certain distortion. The references do not say what the article says. For example: Liberty and Equity is not a "movement," as the entradilla states, but a "platform," as the biography defines (ref 37). - Silviaanac (discussion) 17:47 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) Comment Comment To keep in mind I think that is called CPP. Lourdes, messages here 17:55 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) Information Information: to the librarian who closes, if you have any doubt about the handling of the query and you want some tangible proof of what the gachif83 said, I will offer it to you by mail. A well-weighted greet. strakhov (discussion) 19:31 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) Keep yourself Stay Good afternoon, in my opinion thanks to the editions that have been made in the last month, the article no longer has any statement as a primary source. I do not see that it has a lack of neutrality or that it is of a promotional nature. About the sources, I agree that they are quite, however, mostly medium and large media and the links I reviewed work well. I think Morás's journalistic activity is a relevant article in Wikipedia terms and therefore it should be kept on the platform. This without rejecting the idea of improving it, which would be a separate question. Angela.O (discussion) Care Attention! for the librarian to close this query. This is the first contribution of Herlinda21 (disc. · Contr.) On Wikipedia. Comment comment Hello, Herlinda21. Welcome to Wikipedia. There is an old Chinese proverb that prays So much swimming to die on the shore. It is possible that it is not Chinese. strakhov (discussion) 21:00 Jun 12 2019 (UTC) Comment Comment It means something like so much effort ... in the end ... not at all. I think I did not swing too much if I told you that this biography is going to be deleted. The masks have fallen. Some people would like to stop, well, that, swim. Because the article will be deleted, but the number in the deletion query will be engraved in indelible ink. And the image that leaves a certain person is bad, bad bad. strakhov (discussion) 21:21 Jun 12 2019 (UTC) delete Bórrese The relevance of the biography is not enough to have your own article in the wikipedia, besides that I consider it promotional. It is concerned that there were CPP puppet accounts for their manipulation. Maleiva (discussion) 22:47 Jun 12 2019 (UTC) stay Stay Stay I can not comment on the relevance of an article referring to a political activist. We can not ignore that questioning the relevance of these social actors is not innocent. It is a dialelo that we should write "relevant" articles based only on what the mass media reports. The shortage of articles and that these are neutral are anathema to this free encyclopedia. Our task is to offer users information about people that even in our opinion may seem irrelevant. We all know that correcting political articles is a difficult, sensitive task in which the quality of information is especially tested. This information may be relevant for some users who are in favor or even against this alleged character. If the alleged character is irrelevant, no one will enter this article or anyone will read it. For this reason I am opposed to deletion. In my opinion, article should be totally restructured and summarized. The format should not suggest political propaganda as it is currently. The article should provide sufficient and neutral information to understand who this activist is and what he thinks. HANNAN Orange color.jpg23: 47 12 Jun 2019 (UTC) comment Comment Hello HANNAN: what a pleasure to say hello to you after all these years! Since 2015 you did not edit anything at all. Nothing at all. Well, actually many years ago, since 2012 you are not really active. The return of old Wikipedians is always good. Welcome again! A joy that you have taken advantage of this CdB to reencounter with the community! - Fixertool (discussion) 00:07 June 13 2019 (UTC) Comment Comment I have my doubts. On the one hand, the character, in itself, seems relevant to me (even if he is a controversialist rather than an intellectual); However, I am worried about this wave of users who came to defend this article, because more than a spontaneous reaction, it seems to be a recruitment other than Wikipedia. I do not have much evidence, but in places like Workana and Freelancer (I see that it was mentioned before) they have been calling people to answer in erasure queries. Therefore, I am inclined to think that the article is self-promotional. --Luis Alvaz (discussion) 23:55 Jun 12 2019 (UTC) The previous discussion is kept as a record of the debate. Please, do not modify it. This page should not be edited anymore. --- What I gather from this discussion (given the half-assed and partially mangled English typical of automatic translation in the late 2010s), is that the article appears to have been deleted because it appeared to be more self-promotional than encyclopedic. I don't think feminism or other political ideology entered into it (what Jalu appears to be saying in what was translated as "the character is irrelevant"). That someone would assume radical feminism is behind such a decision is something I find rather sad. As nominally off-topic as this may be, I wouldn't mind discussing this further here. However, I would ask that in this thread, we have no personal attacks and use neutral terms to refer to the parties involved, in particular avoiding the use of slurs such as one perpetuated by a certain conservative US talk show host. Let's keep the debate in this thread rubbish-free and focus on the facts and the issues, not personal attacks. -- Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn(a)rushpost.com> http://www.rantroulette.com http://www.skqrecordquest.com

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DIGITAL PRIVACY The Sinister, Unconstitutional Effort to Ban Secure Encryption Is Back
by jim bell 02 Jul '19

02 Jul '19

https://reason.com/2019/07/01/the-sinister-unconstitutional-effort-to-ban-s… It’s the ‘90s all over again, and the White House is in no mood to humor tech companies right now. DECLAN MCCULLAGH × The best way to read this report is that it represents the latest extrusion of the permanent cadre of law enforcement and national security bureaucrats who have never abandoned their efforts, underway for over 20 years, to allow U.S. government agencies to break or bypass encryption embedded in hardware and software products. The last time this extra-constitutional campaign against encryption kicked off was during the George W. Bush administration, in mid-2008, when FBI officials briefed Senate Intelligence committee members on what they called the "Going Dark" problem. This campaign continued without apparent interruption during the Barack Obama administration, when the FBI asked all field offices in 2009 for anecdotal information about cases in which "investigations have been negatively impacted" by encryption. By 2012, as I disclosed in an article at the time, the FBI had drafted a proposed law to force tech companies to build in backdoors and was asking the companies not to oppose it. That legislation was never publicly introduced. ×Details on the latest discussions are nonexistent, as Politico delicately acknowledged (they were "unable to determine what participating agency leaders said during the meeting"). But anti-crypto legislation has been introduced in the past. In 1997, after lobbying by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, one House of Representatives committee actually voted for mandatory backdoors. The committee's rewritten version of the bill, H.R. 695, said: "After January 31, 2000, it shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture for distribution, distribute, or import encryption products intended for sale or use in the United States, unless that product includes features or functions that provide an immediate access to plaintext capability" in response to a court order. The plaintext must be able to be acquired, the legislation said, "without the knowledge or cooperation of the person being investigated." Industry efforts killed this version, and it was not taken up by the full House of Representatives. But let's review for emphasis. Elected members of Congress actually wanted to imprison American citizens (and permanently take away related liberties like the right to own firearms, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit recently reminded us) for allowing other Americans to communicate privately. A lawyer, working as legislative counsel, actually agreed to undertake the task of drafting language. And a committee of the U.S. Congress actually voted for it. In a constitutional republic, this is properly seen as risible. Police may be granted the authority, through legal processes, and within reasonable limits, to search our possessions. But they are not guaranteed success. We are not required to speak only in languages that senior FBI officials prefer. We are not required to talk only in locations where police can readily eavesdrop. As John Gilmore, the libertarian co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, pointed out during the 1990s crypto wars, the patriots fighting the American Revolution were able to enjoy perfect privacy by rowing to the middle of Boston Harbor. (Encryption wasn't unknown to those revolutionaries either.) × Based on the Politico report, last week's meeting is the continuation of efforts by federal agencies that now qualify as multi-generational. It can be traced back to when the National Security Agency convinced IBM to use a shorter, easier-to-crack key length for the DES encryption algorithm in the 1970s, and continues through the National Security Agency's efforts, disclosed by Edward Snowden, to weaken encryption algorithms today. This is what detractors might call the "deep state," the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections, which outlasts individual politicians and department heads. In other words, this is no Trump administration-specific plan. But the danger is that it could become one. If there's a terrorist attack with mass casualties, and encryption is reported to have been involved, look for a renewed push for domestic restrictions on encryption without backdoors. Technology companies will complain, of course, but in a political environment where the executive branch has turned against Silicon Valley because of its increasing bias against conservatives—a White House summit on that topic is planned for July 11—would anyone expect the president to listen? × 29 Declan McCullagh is a Silicon Valley writer, entrepreneur, and a co-founder of Recent Media Inc. (Disclosures)

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SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack
by coderman 01 Jul '19

01 Jul '19

https://gist.github.com/rjhansen/67ab921ffb4084c865b3618d6955275f SKS Keyserver Network Under Attack This work is released under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/). Terminological Note "OpenPGP" refers to the OpenPGP protocol, in much the same way that HTML refers to the protocol that specifies how to write a web page. "GnuPG", "SequoiaPGP", "OpenPGP.js", and others are implementations of the OpenPGP protocol in the same way that Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium, and Microsoft Edge refer to software packages that process HTML data. Who am I? Robert J. Hansen <[rjh@sixdemonbag.org](mailto:rjh@sixdemonbag.org?subject=SKS%20Keyserver%20network%20attack)>. I maintain the GnuPG FAQ and unofficially hold the position of crisis communicator. This is not an official statement of the GnuPG project, but does come from someone with commit access to the GnuPG git repo. Executive Summary In the last week of June 2019 unknown actors deployed a certificate spamming attack against two high-profile contributors in the OpenPGP community (Robert J. Hansen and Daniel Kahn Gillmor, better known in the community as "rjh" and "dkg"). This attack exploited a defect in the OpenPGP protocol itself in order to "poison" rjh and dkg's OpenPGP certificates. Anyone who attempts to import a poisoned certificate into a vulnerable OpenPGP installation will very likely break their installation in hard-to-debug ways. Poisoned certificates are already on the SKS keyserver network. There is no reason to believe the attacker will stop at just poisoning two certificates. Further, given the ease of the attack and the highly publicized success of the attack, it is prudent to believe other certificates will soon be poisoned. This attack cannot be mitigated by the SKS keyserver network in any reasonable time period. It is unlikely to be mitigated by the OpenPGP Working Group in any reasonable time period. Future releases of OpenPGP software will likely have some sort of mitigation, but there is no time frame. The best mitigation that can be applied at present is simple: stop retrieving data from the SKS keyserver network. How Keyservers Work When Phil Zimmermann first developed PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy") in the early 1990s there was a clear chicken and egg problem. Public key cryptography could revolutionize communications but required individuals possess each other's public keys. Over time terminology has shifted: now public key cryptography is mostly called "asymmetric cryptography" and public keys are more often called "public certificates", but the chicken-and-egg problem remains. To communicate privately, each party must have a small piece of public data with which to bootstrap a private communication channel. Special software was written to facilitate the discovery and distribution of public certificates. Called "keyserver software", it can be thought of as analogous to a telephone directory. Users can search the keyserver by a variety of different criteria to discover public certificates which claim to belong to the desired user. The keyserver network does not attest to the accuracy of the information, however: that's left for each user to ascertain according to their own criteria. Once a user has verified a certificate really and truly belongs to the person in question, they can affix an affidavit to the certificate attesting that they have reason to believe the certificate really belongs to the user in question. For instance: John Hawley (john(a)example.org) and I (rjh(a)example.org) are good friends in real life. We have sat down face-to-face and confirmed certificates. I know with complete certainty a specific public certificate belongs to him; he knows with complete certainty a different one belongs to me. John also knows H. Peter Anvin (hpa(a)example.org) and has done the same with him. If I need to communicate privately with Peter, I can look him up in the keyserver. Whichever certificate bears an attestation by John, I can trust really belongs to Peter. Keyserver Design Goals In the early 1990s we were concerned repressive regimes would attempt to force keyserver operators to replace certificates with different ones of the government's choosing. (I speak from firsthand experience. I've been involved in the PGP community since 1992. I was there for these discussions.) We made a quick decision that keyservers would never, ever, ever, delete information. Keyservers could add information to existing certificates but could never, ever, ever, delete either a certificate or information about a certificate. To meet this goal, we started running an international network of keyservers. Keyservers around the world would regularly communicate with each other to compare directories. If a government forced a keyserver operator to delete or modify a certificate, that would be discovered in the comparison step. The maimed keyserver would update itself with the content in the good keyserver's directory. This was a simple and effective solution to the problem of government censorship. In the early 1990s this design seemed sound. It is not sound in 2019. We've known it has problems for well over a decade. Why Hasn't It Been Fixed? There are powerful technical and social factors inhibiting further keyserver development. - The software is Byzantine. The standard keyserver software is called SKS, for "Synchronizing Key Server". A bright fellow named Yaron Minsky devised a brilliant algorithm that could do reconciliations very quickly. It became the keystone of his Ph.D thesis, and he wrote SKS originally as a proof of concept of his idea. It's written in an unusual programming language called OCaml, and in a fairly idiosyncratic dialect of it at that. This is of course no problem for a proof of concept meant to support a Ph.D thesis, but for software that's deployed in the field it makes maintenance quite difficult. Not only do we need to be bright enough to understand an algorithm that's literally someone's Ph.D thesis, but we need expertise in obscure programming languages and strange programming customs. - The software is unmaintained. Due to the above, there is literally no one in the keyserver community who feels qualified to do a serious overhaul on the codebase. - Changing a design goal is not the same as fixing a bug. The design goal of the keyserver network is "baked into" essentially every part of the infrastructure. This isn't a case where there's a bug that's inhibiting the keyserver network from functioning correctly. Bugs are generally speaking fairly easy to fix once you know where the problem is. Changing design goals often requires an overhaul of such magnitude it may be better to just start over with a fresh sheet of paper. - There is no centralized authority in the keyserver network. The lack of centralized authority was a feature, not a bug. If there is no keyserver that controls the others, there is no single point of failure for a government to go after. On the other hand it also means that even after the software is overhauled and/or rewritten, each keyserver operator has to commit to making the upgrade and stomping out the difficulties that inevitably arise when new software is fielded. The confederated nature of the keyserver network makes changing the design goals even harder than it would normally be—and rest assured, it would normally be very hard! The Vulnerabilities The keyserver network is susceptible to a variety of attacks as a consequence of its write-only design. The keyserver network can be thought of as an extremely large, extremely reliable, extremely censorship-resistant distributed filesystem which anyone can write to. Imagine if Dropbox allowed any Tom, Dick, or Harry to not only put information in your public Dropbox folder, but made it impossible for you to delete it. How would everyone from spammers to child pornographers abuse this? Many of the same attacks are possible on the keyserver network. We have known about these vulnerabilities for well over a decade. Fixing the keyserver network is, however, problematic for the reasons listed above. In order to limit the scope of this document a detailed breakdown of only one such vulnerability will be presented (see below). The Certificate Spamming Attack Consider public certificates. In order to make them easier to use, they have a list of attestations: statements from other people, represented by their own public certificates, that this certificate really belongs to the individual in question. In my example from before, John Hawley attested to H. Peter Anvin's certificate. When I looked for H. Peter Anvin's certificate I checked all the certificates which claimed to belong to him and selected the one John attested as being really his. These attestations — what we call certificate signatures — can be made by anyone for any purpose. And once made, they never go away. Ever. Even when a certificate signature gets revoked the original remains on the certificate: all that happens is a second signature is affixed saying "don't trust the previous one I made". The OpenPGP specification puts no limitation on how many signatures can be attached to a certificate. The keyserver network handles certificates with up to about 150,000 signatures. GnuPG, on the other hand … doesn't. Any time GnuPG has to deal with such a spammed certificate, GnuPG grinds to a halt. It doesn't stop, per se, but it gets wedged for so long it is for all intents and purposes completely unusable. My public certificate as found on the keyserver network now has just short of 150,000 signatures on it. Further, pay attention to that phrase any time GnuPG has to deal with such a spammed certificate. If John were to ask GnuPG to verify my signature on H. Peter Anvin's certificate, GnuPG would attempt to comply and in the course of business would have to deal with my now-spammed certificate. The Consequences We've known for a decade this attack is possible. It's now here and it's devastating. There are a few major takeaways and all of them are bad. - If you fetch a poisoned certificate from the keyserver network, you will break your GnuPG installation. - Poisoned certificates cannot be deleted from the keyserver network. - The number of deliberately poisoned certificates, currently at only a few, will only rise over time. - We do not know whether the attackers are intent on poisoning other certificates. - We do not even know the scope of the damage. That last one requires some explanation. Any certificate may be poisoned at any time, and is unlikely to be discovered until it breaks an OpenPGP installation. The number one use of OpenPGP today is to verify downloaded packages for Linux-based operating systems, usually using a software tool called GnuPG. If someone were to poison a vendor's public certificate and upload it to the keyserver network, the next time a system administrator refreshed their keyring from the keyserver network the vendor's now-poisoned certificate would be downloaded. At that point upgrades become impossible because the authenticity of downloaded packages cannot be verified. Even downloading the vendor's certificate and re-importing it would be of no use, because GnuPG would choke trying to import the new certificate. It is not hard to imagine how motivated adversaries could employ this against a Linux-based computer network. Mitigations At present I (speaking only for myself) do not believe the global keyserver network is salvageable. High-risk users should stop using the keyserver network immediately. Users who are confident editing their GnuPG configuration files should follow the following process: - Open gpg.conf in a text editor. Ensure there is no line starting with keyserver. If there is, remove it. - Open dirmngr.conf in a text editor. Add the line keyserver hkps://keys.openpgp.org to the end of it. keys.openpgp.org is a new experimental keyserver which is not part of the keyserver network and has some features which make it resistant to this sort of attack. It is not a drop-in replacement: it has some limitations (for instance, its search functionality is sharply constrained). However, once you make this change you will be able to run gpg --refresh-keys with confidence. Repairs If you know which certificate is likely poisoned, try deleting it: this normally goes pretty quickly. If your OpenPGP installation becomes usable again, congratulations. Acquire a new unpoisoned copy of the certificate and import that. If you don't know which certificate is poisoned, your best bet is to get a list of all your certificate IDs, delete your keyrings completely, and rebuild from scratch using known-good copies of the public certificates. A Personal Postscript dkg wrote a [blog post](https://dkg.fifthhorseman.net/blog/openpgp-certificate-flooding.html) about this. He sums up my feelings pretty well, so I'm going to quote him liberally with only a trivial correction. > I've spent a significant amount of time over the years trying to push the ecosystem into a more responsible posture with respect to OpenPGP certificates, and have clearly not been as successful at it or as fast as I wanted to be. Complex ecosystems can take time to move. > > To have my own certificate directly spammed in this way felt surprisingly personal, as though someone was trying to attack or punish me, specifically. I can't know whether that's actually the case, of course, nor do I really want to. And the fact that Robert J. Hansen's certificate was also spammed makes me feel a little less like a singular or unique target, but I also don't feel particularly proud of feeling relieved that someone else is also being "punished" in addition to me. > > But this report wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention that I've felt disheartened and demotivated by this situation. I'm a stubborn person, and I'm trying to make the best of the situation by being constructive about at least documenting the places that are most severely broken by this. But I've also found myself tempted to walk away from this ecosystem entirely because of this incident. I don't want to be too dramatic about this, but whoever did this basically experimented on me (and Rob) directly, and it's a pretty shitty thing to do. > > If you're reading this, and you set this off, and you selected me specifically because of my role in the OpenPGP ecosystem, or because I wrote the abuse-resistant-keystore draft, or because I'm part of the Autocrypt project, then you should know that I care about making this stuff work for people. If you'd reached out to me to describe what you were planning to do, we could have done all of the above bug reporting and triage using demonstration certificates, and worked on it together. I would have happily helped. I still might! But because of the way this was done, I'm not feeling particularly happy right now. I hope that someone is, somewhere. To which I'd like to add: I have never in my adult life wished violence on any human being. I have witnessed too much of it and its barbaric effects, stood by the graves of too many people cut down too young. I do not hate you and I do not wish any harm to befall you. But if you get hit by a bus while crossing the street, I'll tell the driver everyone deserves a mulligan once in a while. You fool. You absolute, unmitigated, unadulterated, complete and utter, fool. Peace to everyone — including you, you son of a bitch. — Rob

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Social media services support account spoofing
by Ryan Carboni 01 Jul '19

01 Jul '19

Social media services support account spoofing, this simplifies the creation of government sockpuppets. Government sockpuppets can also assume the history of other accounts (this is a simple series of mysql commands, any codebase can accomplish this by copying entries and assigning them to a new ID), This is a substantial concern to privacy rights. I am being harassed when I attempt to form new friends over the internet. The US government has effectively controlled my entire life, and I condemn it entirely. I see no use for the DOJ Inspector General if this conduct is so widespread that in my particular case it is considered to be permissible. I think all social media websites that failed to engage in proper oversight of this "investigation" should have computer issues. Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

7 10

Motherboard no longer works
by Ryan Carboni 30 Jun '19

30 Jun '19

My desktop motherboard no longer works (after they borked two Windows installations, they decided to bork my Fedora installation). Regardless, I have performed a UEFI backup of the settings, so I believe that any evidence of tampering will be on the second ROM chip. I will keep you guys posted if the government will attempt to recover or cover up their ... I guess they would tell a judge it is tools? Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

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There can't be a deep state
by Ryan Carboni 29 Jun '19

29 Jun '19

Listened to a podcast once, where someone said, "I wish there was [a deep state]" There can't be a deep state. If there was, how could they botch something as salacious as MLK engaging in an orgy involving "natural and unnatural acts"? Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

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Fake Satoshi
by John Newman 29 Jun '19

29 Jun '19

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/self-proclaimed-bitcoin-…

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