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[serval-project-dev] Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against Large-Scale Communications Blackouts
by Eugen Leitl 23 Jul '13

23 Jul '13

----- Forwarded message from "8f6e58ee(a)gmail.com" <8f6e58ee(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 09:50:05 +0200 From: "8f6e58ee(a)gmail.com" <8f6e58ee(a)gmail.com> To: serval-project-developers <serval-project-developers(a)googlegroups.com> Subject: [serval-project-dev] Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against Large-Scale Communications Blackouts Reply-To: serval-project-developers(a)googlegroups.com Abstract: Large-scale communications blackouts, such as those carried out by Egypt and Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2012 and 2013, have motivated a series of projects that aim to enable citizens to communicate even in the face of such heavy-handed censorship efforts. A common theme across these proposals has been the use of wire- less mesh networks. We argue that such networks are poorly equipped to serve as a meaningful countermea- sure against large-scale blackouts due to their intrin- sically poor scaling properties. We further argue that projects in this space must consider user safety as first design priority and thus far have failed to preserve user anonymity and to rely only on innocuous hardware. >From these two insights, we frame a definition of dissent networks to capture the essential requirements for blackout circumvention solutions http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~yahel/papers/Building_Dissent_Networks-Toward… -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Serval Project Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to serval-project-developers+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to serval-project-developers(a)googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/serval-project-developers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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remotely rooting SIM cards
by Eugen Leitl 22 Jul '13

22 Jul '13

https://srlabs.de/rooting-sim-cards/ Rooting SIM cards SIM cards are the de facto trust anchor of mobile devices worldwide. The cards protect the mobile identity of subscribers, associate devices with phone numbers, and increasingly store payment credentials, for example in NFC-enabled phones with mobile wallets. With over seven billion cards in active use, SIMs may well be the most widely used security token in the world. Through over-the-air (OTA) updates deployed via SMS, the cards are even extensible through custom Java software. While this extensibility is rarely used so far, its existence already poses a critical hacking risk. Cracking SIM update keys. OTA commands, such as software updates, are cryptographically-secured SMS messages, which are delivered directly to the SIM. While the option exists to use state-of-the-art AES or the somewhat outdated 3DES algorithm for OTA, many (if not most) SIM cards still rely on the 70s-era DES cipher. DES keys were shown to be crackable within days using FPGA clusters, but they can also be recovered much faster by leveraging rainbow tables similar to those that made GSM’s A5/1 cipher breakable by anyone. To derive a DES OTA key, an attacker starts by sending a binary SMS to a target device. The SIM does not execute the improperly signed OTA command, but does in many cases respond to the attacker with an error code carrying a cryptographic signature, once again sent over binary SMS. A rainbow table resolves this plaintext-signature tuple to a 56-bit DES key within two minutes on a standard computer. Deploying SIM malware. The cracked DES key enables an attacker to send properly signed binary SMS, which download Java applets onto the SIM. Applets are allowed to send SMS, change voicemail numbers, and query the phone location, among many other predefined functions. These capabilities alone provide plenty of potential for abuse. In principle, the Java virtual machine should assure that each Java applet only accesses the predefined interfaces. The Java sandbox implementations of at least two major SIM card vendors, however, are not secure: A Java applet can break out of its realm and access the rest of the card. This allows for remote cloning of possibly millions of SIM cards including their mobile identity (IMSI, Ki) as well as payment credentials stored on the card. Defenses. The risk of remote SIM exploitation can be mitigated on three layers: Better SIM cards. Cards need to use state-of-art cryptography with sufficiently long keys, should not disclose signed plaintexts to attackers, and must implement secure Java virtual machines. While some cards already come close to this objective, the years needed to replace vulnerable legacy cards warrant supplementary defenses. Handset SMS firewall. One additional protection layer could be anchored in handsets: Each user should be allowed to decide which sources of binary SMS to trust and which others to discard. An SMS firewall on the phone would also address other abuse scenarios including “silent SMS.” In-network SMS filtering. Remote attackers rely on mobile networks to deliver binary SMS to and from victim phones. Such SMS should only be allowed from a few known sources, but most networks have not implemented such filtering yet. “Home routing” is furthermore needed to increase the protection coverage to customers when roaming. This would also provide long-requested protection from remote tracking. This research will be presented at BlackHat on Jul 31st and at the OHM hacking camp on Aug 3rd 2013 Questions? – sim(a)srlabs.de

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Re: [DIYbio] Science research papers require viewing Adverts, no-thanks to Science/AAAS
by Eugen Leitl 22 Jul '13

22 Jul '13

----- Forwarded message from James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 11:06:08 -0600 From: James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> To: science-liberation-front(a)googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [DIYbio] Science research papers require viewing Adverts, no-thanks to Science/AAAS Reply-To: science-liberation-front(a)googlegroups.com I think there is some potential and nuance here that we should explore in depth. Wouldn't free papers with clearly labeled ads be a substantially better alternative to exclusively for-pay research articles? I mean, nobody would boycott a scientific journal which paid for its publication by accepting responsible ads, would they? Although I strongly approve of measures to automatically hide ads for those who wish to do sp (and I advocate to protect such systems frequently, occasionally at some inconvenience and risk to my ability to continue research and development work with corporations funded by ads) there are times when viewing ads unquestionably provides useful data about existing and potential sponsorship. That information is sometimes very valuable to researchers seeking supplemental funding for their work, as well as understanding the economic attributes of suppliers, re-sellers, large influencers and conglomerates affecting their research landscape. On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Bryan Bishop <kanzure(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Jonathan Cline <jncline(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >> I would like to register my distaste for seeing advertisements within >> research publications aka journal articles. Science/AAAS (Sciencemag.org) >> is one major offender noticed so far. >> >> Taxpayers pay for research. >> Journals are charging $$$ for access to that research. >> Some journals are now inserting Advertisements directly into the research >> papers. >> >> This is a very distasteful practice. Frankly it is insulting. I would >> purposely avoid purchasing products from advertisers who choose to attach >> advertisements directly to published journal articles. > > > Today I updated pdfparanoia to remove AAAS/sciencemag ads from papers. Call > it "AdBlock for Science" if you will... > > https://github.com/kanzure/pdfparanoia/commit/cc7d14d173be9b4a79adb97fba092… > > Samples: > http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/paperbot/To%20Favor%20Survival%20Under%20Fo… > http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/paperbot/Large-Pore%20Apertures%20in%20a%20… > http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/paperbot/Reconstituting%20Organ-Level%20Lun… > http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/paperbot/Laser%20Scribing%20of%20High-Perfo… > http://www.era-mx.org/biblio/Ostrom,%202009.pdf > > I would also appreciate other samples if anyone has them. So far only papers > since 2012 have these ads. But this is a disgusting trend. > > - Bryan > http://heybryan.org/ > 1 512 203 0507 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "science-liberation-front" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to science-liberation-front+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "science-liberation-front" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to science-liberation-front+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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MOAR perl for make benefit SnR! + don't feed trolls
by Samuel Carlisle 22 Jul '13

22 Jul '13

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 As one of what I hope is a large new generation / wave of cypherpunks...first off, thanks so much for putting the list back up. I look forward to being able to connect back with the original movement, to share perspectives and to tap into the collective knowledge and wisdom that you have accumulated in your community. I really hope there is a lot of exchange and that you can gently guide and support fledgling initiatives like Cryptoparty (of which I am a part) and that we can collaborate to extend the great work that was started by hackers in this community. re: disruptive cruft... the kids nowadays know, instinctively, "never feed trolls" http://memeblender.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/troll-face-meme-do-not-fe… I'd take it as a compliment that someone is on a payroll to try and disrupt your comms ;) In hope of seeing through the noise to the signal, I look forward to reading and contributing to what is discussed here. ~samthetechie Karel Bílek <kb at karelbilek.com> wrote: > Aaaaaand now is the time to unsubscribe from this mailing list. > > On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 8:58 PM, Lorenz Szabo <lorenzszabo at > rocketmail.com> wrote: >> The Muslim Problem Oof. Easy to appreciate Karel's notion here. It would appear someone kept the dogwhistles warm wihle the list was on hiatus. I propose we instead ponder just how short a perl script it would take to automatically transform random selections from a library of early 20th-century anti-miscegenation and anti-suffrage "literature" into the newest us-vs-them flavor of the month drivel. - -=rsw - -- Samuel Carlisle BEng (Hons) Dunelm MIET pgp: 0x54828CAA fingerprint: 9E01 D8A4 CFEB ED72 B0D2 70D7 1D57 A297 5482 8CAA twitter: @samthetechie -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJR7E3PAAoJEB1XopdUgoyqCDYH/jE3JzD19A0hlg8Ar+bRDhmp O1q9hXuw3ABB7dXFFETSZ/44+Scf2TeRD3nPBTq+A2pkb9t4agQbmLqPX5szIdv7 WqMpRcZlB9xPtvWCGaN4Zo98WIEatLwSbewTjYNA9JB1H4LU8plS5N11vKZIeKhV h91/6wtSh0XOH3OXxZoCufOLl9jC/ezxHrpHDQ0h8Wk0kfAJTtOnHyZcLZG5f6Xl OndCcDeC2/ymMjQL5D0eGRCOvmqZQNqJ1eB6ONwtV92Djya024XxlkI84iqLbe1s ZiSxjy2fgS7j1OI1MGpURhNlsbRhRBLE61ezci0YIMRIyLOcQz4YDM51frVV+F8= =A0Ep -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[liberationtech] today's Spiegel edition
by Eugen Leitl 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

----- Forwarded message from Jacob Appelbaum <jacob(a)appelbaum.net> ----- Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 10:52:43 +0000 From: Jacob Appelbaum <jacob(a)appelbaum.net> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: [liberationtech] today's Spiegel edition Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> A new Spiegel edition is out and it is awesome. It contains leaked documents that show that the BND, BfV, NSA and CIA worked together to do domestic spying in Germany. It also covers more information about XKEYSCORE. The PDF of the article has been leaked too: https://twitter.com/derPUPE/status/358891530267815936 For those that don't read German, I suggest reading anyway - the leaked NSA document is in English and very telling. Quote of the day: (S//REL TO USA, FVEY) The German government modified its interpretation of the G-10 Privacy Law, protecting the communications of German citizens, to afford the BND more flexibility in sharing protected information with foreign partners. Once again, privacy by policy fails. It is long past time for privacy by design through strong cryptography and unmistakably clear legislation. With such changes, a "re-interpretation" would cause those crypto systems to fail and this would be part of the way we would alert people that they are under attack. All the best, Jacob -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [cryptography] [liberationtech] Random number generator, failure in Rasperri Pis?
by Eugen Leitl 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

----- Forwarded message from Jeffrey Walton <noloader(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 16:09:05 -0400 From: Jeffrey Walton <noloader(a)gmail.com> To: Peter Bowen <pzbowen(a)gmail.com> Cc: cryptography(a)randombit.net Subject: Re: [cryptography] [liberationtech] Random number generator, failure in Rasperri Pis? Reply-To: noloader(a)gmail.com On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Peter Bowen <pzbowen(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Yaron Sheffer <yaronf(a)porticor.com> wrote: >> A few months ago I posted a query to the Amazon Web Services (the >> largest public cloud, running on Xen) forum on whether they're using libvirt >> for this purpose, and it was never answered. Does anybody around here have a >> clue? > > Amazon EC2 does not support virtio-rng today. Finding good sources of > entropy in a virtual machine is always hard, so solutions like > virtio-rng and Intel's RDRAND instruction can be very useful. Also see: When Good Randomness Goes Bad: Virtual Machine Reset Vulnerabilities and Hedging Deployed Cryptography, http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~rist/papers/sslhedge.pdf When Virtual is Harder than Real: Security Challenges in Virtual Machine Based Computing Environments, https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/hotos05/final_papers/full_papers/garfin… Jeff _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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The Muslim Problem
by Lorenz Szabo 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

Yeah, yeah, posted by an Austrian... ### The Muslim Problem Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who has done extensive research into a little-known problem in the Muslim world: the disastrous results of Muslim inbreeding brought about by the marriage of first-cousins. This practice, which has been prohibited in the Judeo-Christian tradition since the days of Moses, was sanctioned by Muhammad and has been going on now for 50 generations (1,400 years) in the Muslim world. This practice of inbreeding will never go away in the Muslim world, since Muhammad is the ultimate example and authority on all matters, including marriage. The massive inbreeding in Muslim culture may well have done virtually irreversible damage to the Muslim gene pool, including xtensive damage to its intelligence, sanity, and health. According to Sennels, close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred. In Pakistan, the numbers approach 70%. Even in England, more than half of Pakistani immigrants are married to their first cousins, and in Denmark the number of inbred Pakistani immigrants is around 40%. The numbers are equally devastating in other important Muslim countries: 67% in Saudi Arabia, 64% in Jordan, and Kuwait, 63% in Sudan, 60% in Iraq, and 54% in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar . According to the BBC, this Pakistani, Muslim-inspired inbreeding is thought to explain the probability that a British Pakistani family is more than 13 times as likely to have children with recessive genetic disorders. While Pakistanis are responsible for three percent of the births in the UK, they account for 33% of children with genetic birth defects. The risk of what are called autosomal recessive disorders such as cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy is 18 times higher an the risk of death due to malformations is 10 times higher. Other negative consequences of inbreeding include a 100 percent increase in the risk of stillbirths and a 50% increase in the possibility that a child will die during labor. Lowered intellectual capacity is another devastating consequence of Muslim marriage patterns. According to Sennels, research shows that children of consanguineous marriages lose 10-16 points off their IQ and that social abilities develop much slower in inbred babies. The risk of having an IQ lower than 70, the official demarcation for being classified as "retarded," increases by an astonishing 400 percent among children of cousin marriages. (Similar effects were seen in the Pharaonic dynasties in ancient Egypt and in the British royal family, where inbreeding was the norm for a significant period of time.) In Denmark, non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the intelligence test required for entrance into the Danish army. Sennels says that "the ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world." He points out that the Arab world translates just 330 books every year, about 20% of what Greece alone does. In the last 1,200 years of Islam, just 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic, about what Spain does in a single year. Seven out of 10 Turks have never even read a book. Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to succeed in the West. "A lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces critical thinking, surely makes it harder for many Muslims to have success in our high-tech knowledge societies.." Only nine Muslims have every won the Nobel Prize, and five of those were for the "Peace Prize." According to Nature magazine, Muslim countries produce just 10 percent of the world average when it comes to scientific research (measured by articles per million inhabitants). In Denmark, Sennels' native country, Muslim children are grossly over represented among children with special needs. One-third of the budget for Danish schools is consumed by special education, and anywhere from 51% to 70% of retarded children with physical handicaps in Copenhagen have an immigrant background. Learning ability is severely affected as well. Studies indicated that 64% of school children with Arabic parents are still illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The immigrant drop-out rate in Danish high schools is twice that of the native-born. Mental illness is also a product. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of schizophrenic illness. The increased risk of insanity may explain why more than 40% of the patients in Denmark's biggest ward for clinically insane criminals have an immigrant back-ground. The U.S. is not immune. According to Sennels, "One study based on 300,000 Americans shows that the majority of Muslims in the USA have a lower income, are less educated, and have worse jobs than the population as a whole." Sennels concludes: There is no doubt that the wide spread tradition of first cousin marriages among Muslims has harmed the gene pool among Muslims. Because Muslims' religious beliefs prohibit marrying non-Muslims and thus prevents them from adding fresh genetic material to their population, the genetic damage done to their gene pool since their prophet allowed first cousin marriages 1,400 years ago are most likely massive. (This has produced) overwhelming direct and indirect human and societal consequences. Bottom line: Islam is not simply a benign and morally equivalent alternative to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Sennels points out, the first and biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. Simple Christian compassion for Muslims and a common-sense desire to protect Western civilization from the ravages of Islam dictate a vigorous opposition to the spread of this dark and dangerous religion. These stark realities must be taken into account when we establish public polices dealing with immigration from Muslim countries and the building of mosques in the U.S. Let's hope America wakes up before a blind naivete about the reality of Islam destroys what remains of our Judeo-Christian culture and our domestic tranquility. Sent with Writer. ___ Lorenz Szabo Vienna, Austria Phone: +43 676 4167143 (T-Mobile Austria; iChat/Viber) Skype: lorenzszabo

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Re: [cryptography] [liberationtech] Random number generator failure in Rasperri Pis?
by Eugen Leitl 21 Jul '13

21 Jul '13

----- Forwarded message from Russell Leidich <pkejjy(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 16:17:32 +0000 From: Russell Leidich <pkejjy(a)gmail.com> To: cryptography(a)randombit.net Subject: Re: [cryptography] [liberationtech] Random number generator failure in Rasperri Pis? I agree, in theory. But: 1. How many register reads would one need in order to show Birthday compliance? (It's not the usual "root of the state space", because a single collision isn't convincing.) These reads tend to be slow, because the circuit designers generally need to guardband their entropy accrual to meet some particular minimum. In particular, we're looking for "good" evidence of a Poisson distribution, so we're up against a "lot" of reads relative to what Birthday attacks would suggest. If we don't have enough bits in memory to map the whole entropy register state space with acceptable access latency, then we have to do a realtime index-and-lookup of historical values, which is increasingly expensive over time. Even having generated said distribution successfully, the temperature and EMI background change with the wind. So wash, rinse, repeat. 2. More simply, we could generate a PRNG with a nice Poisson profile. While the initial read might be somewhat random in order to spoof a decent TRNG, subsequent reads would just iterate the PRNG, facilitating differential attacks. But this wouldn't be easy to detect if, say, I had 128 bits of state backing up a 32-bit fake TRNG register. 3. The hardware TRNG characterization process cannot be parallelized, because we need to determine the trustworthiness of the particular CPU in question. By contrast, an individual userspace TRNG (UTRNG) can be verified by simply comparing a hash of its executable code against expected public values. But we can't take the hash of a physical circuit. 4. Having verified that an individual UTRNG instance is identical to what's expected, the only remaining question is how fast it can generate entropy in the least entropic possible use case. That's not a trivial question to answer, but at least, parallel processing can accelerate this characterization. If it turns out to be a "good" TRNG, then at runtime, we can simply check the hash, rather than repeating the characterization because the physical environment is different. Again, I'm no quantum denialist. There's plenty of noise out there. But it's always nice to keep the trust radius to a manageable minimum. On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Dean, James <Jdean(a)lsuhsc.edu> wrote: > > Ø If my 64-bit hardware TRNG can only generate 1% of 64-bit numbers (probably because I hacked it), how are you going to discover that anytime soon? > > > > Test for more collisions than predicted by the birthday paradox. > > > _______________________________________________ > cryptography mailing list > cryptography(a)randombit.net > http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography > _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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domain change
by Riad S. Wahby 20 Jul '13

20 Jul '13

Friends, A few people expressed some discomfiture off-list with the @al-qaeda.net domain name. I'm not so attached that I'm willing to alienate posters, so I've registered cpunks.org and updated the configs to reflect this. Note that the way I have things configured, the mail server doesn't much care which domain you submit to: if you're so inclined, cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net should continue to work as a submission address, ditto cypherpunks(a)jfet.org (which it seems remained in use until somewhat recently). I promise the administrative noise level on the list should return to near-zero after this, assuming no one feels like flaming me about the change. -=rsw

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War is Boring: Someone Just Built a Robot Sentry Gun
by BizDevCon (L0R3NZ 5Z4B0) 20 Jul '13

20 Jul '13

War is Boring: Someone Just Built a Robot Sentry Gun July 19, 2013 Robert Beckhusen NatSec writer at Medium. Contributor to Offiziere.ch It only shoots foam bullets, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried Here's how German engineering student Britt Liv Ulrike Michelsen turned a Nerf gun into a robot. First, she connected the toy's electric motor to a microcontroller and a laptop computer, upgraded the firing spring to make it shoot faster and more accurately then connected the toy to a servo-driven stand, which allows it to swivel back and forth. Finally, she added a webcam and the open-source program Project Sentry Gun to make the device automatically track and attack anything that moves. End result: an automated, foam-firing robot sentry gun. Michelson's toy itself is harmless, but the idea behind it does raise some provocative questions. How easy is it to automate a real gun? What are the legal and ethical issues? (Spoiler: there are many.) And could we soon see automated weapons in the home? For help, we asked Patrick Lin, a professor at California Polytechnic State University and a leading researcher on the ethics of robots, drones and unmanned machines. We also wanted to know what the Pentagon is doing with its own armed ground 'bots. "What seems to be newsworthy is that a Nerf gun is involved, and some people may be unnerved by the juxtaposition of childhood innocence and visions of Terminator-style AI," Lin says. "But a Nerf gun isn't usually lethal, though it could harm targets if they were hit in the eye, for instance. So a non-lethal home security robot could be permitted by law, depending on how harmful it is." A pepper-spraying home defense 'bot might go too far. A lethal autonomous sentry gun is out of the question, not the least of which is the inability to distinguish between an intruder and an innocent child. "Just like you can't rig a shotgun to shoot whatever opens your door," he adds. "The big problem here is that it would be an indiscriminate attack, even in states with 'Stand Your Ground or 'Castle' laws that permit lethal defense of the home." The capability exists -- though only for the military. Years ago, Samsung defense subsidiary Samsung Techwin developed a robotic machine gun, the SGR-A1, which is also equipped with infrared cameras. The 'bot's destination was reportedly the South Korean side of the Korean demilitarized zone, but these were never deployed or turned into full-auto mode. The Pentagon has its own projects. A weaponized robot called SWORDS was deployed to Iraq -- under Army control -- until funding was yanked. A follow-up program by the Marines, called MAARS, can roll around with a swappable weapons system, including both lethal bullets and non-lethal grenades and laser dazzlers. Its developer, defense contractor QinetiQ, describes the robot as "taking its place on the frontlines to keep warfighters at a safe distance from enemy fire while effectively executing security missions." MAARS hasn't been deployed and has not been made autonomous. The Pentagon is also very skeptical about taking its own personnel out of the decision-making process with it comes to lethal robots and drones. "The important point, though, is that the capability already exists today," Lin says. "If it were to be deployed, that would be an important and, to many, regrettable milestone in future warfare." But should we be worried about someone making a killbot at home and then automating to do something terrible? Sort of. Maybe. It's possible someone could do it. "It would seem so," Lin says. "But there are a lot of terrible things people can make that thankfully don't appear very much, such as privacy-infringing or bomb-carrying drones. We have laws that address most of those contingencies, and that seems to be enough to deter most rational people inclined to try them out." One thing to watch out for, he notes, is for an engineer or activist to develop a lethal sentry gun just to provoke a debate, create a backlash or force regulation. We've seen that happen with 3-D printed guns. But even criminals getting ahold of those are a big stretch. Lin says, "Luckily, criminals tend to be dumb -- not so much the Lex Luthor type." Subscribe to War is Boring: medium.com/feed/war-is-boring.

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