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BriarProject Messaging 1.0 Released
by grarpamp 15 May '18

15 May '18

Briar 1.0 for Android has been released. Briar is a secure messaging app that uses peer-to-peer connections between mobile phones to implement decentralised messaging, forums and blogs. It operates over Tor, Bluetooth and wifi. https://briarproject.org/ https://code.briarproject.org/akwizgran/briar

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TPC: Totally Protected Comms vs. The Perfect Crime
by Steve Kinney 15 May '18

15 May '18

I'm spamming teh list with a duplicate of a reply to a previous post because I think this is cute. It's been bouncing around in my head for ages and I think its time may have come. On 05/12/2018 02:49 AM, grarpamp wrote: > Look to new messaging, fill, PETS and other venues, whatever, etc.. > search for papers, fidn tbe bibs, see what's out there, or what you > might create. Here's a silly notion: First you need a network of servers that can store and forward large amounts of data in the form of text, and distribute it across enough nodes to make the stored data deletion-resistant and reasonably accessible to a large number of users. NNTP will do nicely. Then you need privately owned devices capable of downloading gigabytes of data daily, and applying a decryption test to millions of messages as they flow by. Today's low end PCs will do nicely. Those gigabytes of text? Symmetrically encrypted messages from the whole Alice, Bob, etc. alphabet soup of users, employing keys obtained by whatever means from their intended message recipients. Everyone participating in this network would download the whole stream, testing the encrypted subject line of each discrete message with their personal keys, looking for the flag that says "this one's for you." Those messages would be decrypted instead of discarded, and presented in a local inbox. The rest would just zoom on past. Sending a message? Encrypt it and its subject line with your recipients' keys, and send it on its way. If your recipient downloads the stream before your message expires, success. 3rd party observers? Out in the cold, unless they penetrate individual users' machines or otherwise compromise endpoints, one user at a time. This protocol presents as an application of the most time honored and reliable principle of engineering practice: Brute force and total ignorance. With a side of COTS: We already have all the parts, this could be done with shell scripts. The only counter attacks I immediately see include flooding past the breaking point with purely random bits, which may require mitigation via short cycle message expiration or some kind of registration or proof of work process for users; or interruption of traffic by a global (or local) active adversary. Call the protocol and associated tools TPC: An acronym for Totally Protected Communication or, for those in the know, The Perfect Crytocrime. Bonus: Quantum cryptanalysis can't touch that, far as we know. :o)

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Internet Party - Moment of Truth: Dotcom, Assange, Greenwald, Snowden
by grarpamp 15 May '18

15 May '18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbps1EwAW-0

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Interview: Frank Herbert - Saviors and Political Animals
by Steve Kinney 15 May '18

15 May '18

I made a video from a found audio file, as little hobby project: Frank Herbert - Saviors and Political Animals This interview is a pre-Internet artifact recorded in 1984, and makes no reference to cryptography. But IMO it's dead center on topic for CPunks, because self identifying Libertarians and Anarchists need all the help they can get. Frank's ecological models of power dynamics in human affairs provides a stout dose of scientific and engineering sense that may cure any of several loads of ideological nonsense. "All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted." - Frank Herbert Frank Herbert was a true polymath, accepted without credentials as a participating member of the academic Ecology community (a demanding multidiscipliplinary science), as well as being an avid historian and radical political theorist. The mp3 I found included a lot with David Lynch, director of the original Dune movie, and about the film itself. So I cut the interview down to just Frank's historical and political exposition, and added a few appropriate quotes and pictures. Here's it. Bring popcorn and/or paper & pencil. https://archive.org/details/FrankHerbertSaviorsAndPoltiicalAnimals :o)

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Re: [tor-relays] Strange BGP activity with my node
by grarpamp 14 May '18

14 May '18

On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 2:19 PM, charlie <contact(a)charlieluna.com> wrote: > in the current state of society with certain governmental agencies > performing things the way they are, i don't trust any ISP anymore or > government agency anymore. the apology from that ISP, in my opinion, smells > like the worst pile of crap ever. i don't buy it. > > i wish there was a way for us to run a TOR network without having to be on > an ISP's network. !gnitsop pot potS That being said... There are many ways... - Start laying fiber / wifi to your neighbors, guerrilla networking, create your own new global internets with your own new rules - CJDNS, I2P, GNUnet, Tor, messaging ... all the various anonymous encrypted overlays... they are their own "non ISP networks"... run your own services on them, they're likely better than nothing. - Do you really need to be giving Alexa Top 100 access to your life and asshole... especially anymore now that decentralized models and software are rolling out... As far as this BGP event, as someone noted earlier, commercial [subscription based] "security" services deploy many potential means for themselves and their customers, including acting within their routing infrastructures, to blackhole / filter / snoop traffic destined to external risks deemed. No different than adblock, "hosts" files, etc. So long as it's not default deny, packets can still get out, somewhere, to the equivalent of bridges / vpn's / proxies as need be. Their explanation is within plausible ops legitimacy. As is questioning trust in aforesaid entities... you certainly can't do an inspection on either of them, yet you still give them your dollars. That's quite funny. Again, more interesting would be looking for and analysing attacks against the tor nodes (and those of other networks) as a whole. Unfortunately no one's researched that yet here. Perhaps because Tor [izens] keeps shouting "sniffing bad", thus programming out one of the tech needed to do that. And other attacks, such as potential bgp steering, sybils, the network paths, etc, are also less discussed [1]. Or because coordination is hard. Oh well... Demons lurk where Sun never peeks. At least tor doesn't use dns to bootstrap and run, that would be a whole other layer of attack surface. [1] For example, after years of mentions, there's still no voluntary meetup PKI WoT cross certification / inspection / identification, statistical / checklist, jurisdiction / AS / location, whatever else, based node analysis and selection project to which users could potentially subscribe their clients to. All networks to date still use effectively random free-for-all node selection. That's reasonable in some threat models, but without the research and attempted construction and deployment of alternate selection models operating voluntarily in parallel... it's quite possibly a lurkers paradise. > On 05/14/2018 10:39 AM, Trevor Ellermann wrote: > > Thanks for the responses. To follow up this is how the offending ISP > responded to our inquiries. I do not believe any further follow up is > necessary. > > *snip* > Thank you for getting in touch. > > I am afraid an engineer made an error in the BGP configuration of one of our > devices earlier this afternoon, which resulted in a number a host routes > being inadvertently announced to certain of our upstream providers. > > The route itself existed as part of a set of prefixes internally routed to > null on our network. This particular IP hosts a TOR relay node, and while > that is perfectly legitimate we have a business requirement to block access > to these internally: > > https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/383D6E34D9BEA92E97092B134A70… > > The route should never have been announced outside our own AS. > Unfortunately due to human error it was advertised earlier today (May 9th) > from approx. 11:04 to 11:10 UTC. I can assure you this was an unintentional > error, we had no desire to interrupt or affect communications outside our > AS. The mistake was quickly spotted by our own NOC team and reverted. > > I hope you can accept our sincere apologies for this issue, we have taken > steps to ensure that any similar mistake will not have such impact in > future. > *snip* > > On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 11:54 AM, grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Trevor Ellermann <trevor(a)ellermann.net> >> wrote: >> > I just a notification from my data center that someone is trying to >> > hijack >> > the IP of my exit node. Seems like the sort of thing someone might do >> > when >> > trying to attack Tor. I'm in a very remote area with limited access but >> > any >> > suggestions on actions I should take? >> >> Make sure your box and keys aren't compromised. >> If that's ok, best they can do if the announcements are >> listened to is camp on the ip for a while using their own keys, >> (there might be some identification attacks made possible with >> such a transient reroute,) circuits would fail till the consensus >> updated to them, but there could be some duplicate ip split horizon >> issues involved due to filtering. >> If they hacked the boxes there's hardly need to expend noisy >> reroutes when they can do most attacks using the box itself. >> >> Hop on the route servers or your other favorite interfaces >> to the net and analyze who all is announcing /32's trying to >> cover any other tor nodes. >> >> Sane isp's will filter such things without prior coordination. It's fairly >> rare, >> and for them to bother giving customers courtesy reports. Though >> depending on nature of ticket / relationship with GBLX, you might want >> to reply saying you've never worked with Asavie and don't approve >> of the action regarding your IP. >> >> You can also search AS200005 to see what kind of heat >> they catch from other operators / internet analysis tools. >> >> > ==================================================================== >> > Possible Prefix Hijack (Code: 10) >> > ==================================================================== >> > Your prefix: 204.17.32.0/19: >> > Prefix Description: GBLX-US-BGP >> > Update time: 2018-05-09 12:11 (UTC) >> > Detected by #peers: 1 >> > Detected prefix: 204.17.56.42/32 >> > Announced by: AS200005 (Asavie Technologies Limited) >> > Upstream AS: AS200005 (Asavie Technologies Limited) >> > ASpath: 200005 >> > >> > >> > >> > https://torstatus.blutmagie.de/router_detail.php?FP=383d6e34d9bea92e97092b1… >> _______________________________________________ >> tor-relays mailing list >> tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org >> https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays > > > > > _______________________________________________ > tor-relays mailing list > tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays > > > > _______________________________________________ > tor-relays mailing list > tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays >

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Google's Evil / Cozy Warmonger / Project Maven Triggers Mass Resignations
by grarpamp 14 May '18

14 May '18

https://gizmodo.com/google-employees-resign-in-protest-against-pentagon-con… It's been nearly three months since many Google employees -- and the public -- learned about the company's decision to provide artificial intelligence to a controversial military pilot program known as Project Maven, which aims to speed up analysis of drone footage by automatically classifying images of objects and people. Now, about a dozen Google employees are resigning in protest over the company's continued involvement in Maven. The resigning employees' frustrations range from particular ethical concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in drone warfare to broader worries about Google's political decisions -- and the erosion of user trust that could result from these actions. Many of them have written accounts of their decisions to leave the company, and their stories have been gathered and shared in an internal document, the contents of which multiple sources have described to Gizmodo.

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Deep-sea Debris Database
by grarpamp 14 May '18

14 May '18

http://www.godac.jamstec.go.jp/catalog/dsdebris/e/index.html

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War On Cash: Austrailia Bans Now In Full Effect, Your Shithole Is Next
by grarpamp 14 May '18

14 May '18

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/05/australia-bans-cash-for-all-purchases-ov… https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/08/australia-federal-bu… https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8j4i88/australia_bans_cash_for_al… https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8j2y1a/australia_bans_cash_for_… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17043340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17047178 https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/springsummer-2018/curse-war-cash And cryptocurrency demand jumps on the news. "The government says it's "encouraging the transition to a [censorable, controllable, enslaved] digital society" and cracking down on tax evasion [to fund more murder, slavery, fatcats, more shit the people don't want, etc]." Also, that banks remain in the loop. Consider that next year 10K will buy less and so on. Eventually a loaf of bread will cost $10,000... and then ... youre done. So, no more paying for things in Australia with more than $7500 USD? Brutal. Pretty soon it won't be legal to even pay your rent with cash. The government will enforce the measure by allocating roughly $300 million for what it calls the Black Economy Standing Taskforce. The goal is to drum up about $3 billion in new tax revenue over the next four years. One of the biggest targets for the new task force will be the illicit tobacco trade. Australia has the highest tax on cigarettes in the world, with an average pack costing about $40. But there's a huge black market for cigarettes, which comes from both stolen goods and smuggling from outside the country. Taxes aren't paid on cigarettes until the point of sale, so theft from tobacco warehouses is unusually common in Australia. anyone with their eyes open can see where this is going. We should expect governments to move away from cash over the next decade, just as currency anarchists continue to insist that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are the real future. Researchers in the 1970s predicted that a widespread debit card system would be the perfect surveillance tool. And they weren't exactly wrong. What they didn't predict was what happens when a completely digital economy gets hacked. Equifax's recent loss of so much personal data on virtually half of all Americans ... just a prelude to many more snafus to come. You can not control power with laws. Do this thought experiment with me: Imagine you had a control panel where you could just make anyone do whatever you want. That is what power is, the ability to make other people do what you want. Now, how is a law going to help against your power? It can't. Even if you allowed someone to enact a law that forbade you from killing people (obviously, you could use your total power to prevent that in the first place): If you can in fact stop anyone from trying to enforce this law on you (and in this thought experiment, you obviously can), then the law is completely inconsequential. This is so dangerous. Governments all across the globe are slowly taking away bits and pieces of the people’s rights under the guise of protecting society. How long before these oppressive governments begin burning books and limiting how much money any one citizen can possess. Our tax dollars are being used against us. We are paying our enemies to grow stronger and use that strength to oppress us! Not only that, once we're a cashless society, when the next crisis rolls around then the government can actually set negative interest rates in order to 'encourage' spending. If you can't have a stash under the bed then all of your money is at the whim of the governments and banks [and politicians, hackers, etc..... not you]. "The phrase “war on cash” suggests a parallel to the “war on drugs” and aptly so. In both wars, traditional civil liberties are shunted aside in the criminalization, surveillance, and prosecution of victimless private activities ... The war on cash might be more accurately labelled the “war on people who use cash.” What are suppressed by the above-listed tactics are not inanimate objects but people. Cash itself experiences no harms. People do. Coercive anti-cash policies abridge the freedom and reduce the welfare of peaceful individuals who prefer to use cash. ... The war on cash is being waged for the exclusive benefit of those who already wield an inordinate amount of power and control over the economy and the people that are struggling in it. And they want more. By slowly, quietly killing cash, they seek to seize the last remaining thing that offers people a small semblance of privacy, anonymity, and personal freedom in their increasingly controlled and surveyed lives."

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build it yourself laptop with design files on Github
by Zenaan Harkness 14 May '18

14 May '18

Linked from the comments to the LWN article below is this Allwinner A64 "build it yourself" laptop kit: https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY-Laptop/KITS/TERES-A64-WHITE/open-source… → Quad Core Allwinner A64 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor → LCD 11.6" 1366x768 pixels → 2GB DDR3L memory → 16GB eMMC flash memory → WiFi 150Mb, BLE 4.0 → Camera → HDMI → 2 x USB → Built-in stereo audio → 3.5mm audio jack (stereo out, microphone in) → Battery 9500mAh → Weight 980 gr And the price for this kit? EUR 240, about right for the specs. This is more than enough "for grandma". And note “This product is on high demand and there is long list of pending orders, we will not be able to ship immediately. We will proceed your order and ship in 2-3 weeks.” The build it yourself might be the better approach for small/ kickoff libre HW projects. One day we shall have full free/libre and open source CPU/SOC and related support chips for our laptops. Good luck, https://lwn.net/Articles/733837/ Building an ARM64 laptop [$] [Front] Posted Sep 15, 2017 23:19 UTC (Fri) by corbet Processors based on the 64-bit ARM architecture have been finding their way into various types of systems, including mobile handsets and servers. There is a distinct gap in the middle of the range, though: there are no ARM64 laptops. Bernhard Rosenkränzer and a group of colleagues set out to change that situation by building such a laptop from available components. He showed up at the 2017 Open Source Summit North America to present the result.

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Cryptocurrency: Consensus2018 May 14-16
by grarpamp 13 May '18

13 May '18

https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2018/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ExinEBxCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwB7XH7JUns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKl6efhokg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIVAluSL9SU

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