- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: [Cryptography] RSA Crypto is officially insecure due to NIST
by grarpamp 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 5:49 PM, Tom A. <thomasasta(a)googlemail.com> wrote: > All can do that, its open source. > And you tested the apps over Tor? Neither of these are sufficient, on mere statement of such. Both must be proven, relavantly.

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Re: [Cryptography] Regulations of Tempest protections of buildings
by grarpamp 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 11:48 AM, mok-kong shen <mok-kong.shen(a)t-online.de> wrote: > > I wrote previously in a follow-up to a thread that I vaguely remember to > have read > that in US a permission is needed for Farady shielding of rooms, whereupon a > few > readers doubted its correctness. I have just succeeded to again find the > source: > > A. Stanoyevitch, Discrete Structures with Contemporary Applications. CRC > Press, > 2011. On p.301 there is: > > Buildings can be fitted using a special insulation procedure that > protects > against tempest devices, but any company or individual in the US who > has > this insulation must first obtain a license from the federal > Government. I'd think that, unless intended not to for whatever reasons both legit and unbenownst, which is prefectly fine, a poster should reference first, a link to such publication. and that such publication should include links to any applicable laws or promulgated regulations in forwardance of their claims. Otherwise they might seem shady bunk and intentional chilling effect upon freemarket development of tempest applications.

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Re: [Cryptography] Regulations of Tempest protections of buildings
by grarpamp 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 2:37 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear(a)sonic.net> wrote: >> Buildings can be fitted using a special insulation procedure that >> protects >> against tempest devices, but any company or individual in the US >> who has >> this insulation must first obtain a license from the federal >> Government. >> -- MKShen > Huh. I know [of places] in the bay area that have meeting > rooms with such shielding, and at least one public library. > I assume there are at least hundreds more. As there are many who might wish to utilize, and even create more of, such publicly accessible spaces will you please... a) List the full name, street address, and location within, such as room number, that houses such a space. b) The specifications to which such space was built, and subsequently that it currently maintains adherence to. Otherwise this is useless commentary. Thanks. > The idea that you'd need someone's permission to build something that > doesn't attack anybody else or violate anyone else's rights is just > plain weird. True. > Especially when you need it for just plain business purposes. "Oh, > look, our competitor is driving around with cars that scoop up traffic > from wireless networks, and we already know that WEP is just plain > broken. Not having done this already is pretty irresponsible and could > get us sued by our shareholders....." Indeed. > Or even, "Look, radio > interference from lightning etc makes the power supplies in our server > room wear out faster and in extreme cases could put other hardware at > risk. We can save money on our hardware budget by shielding them...." > > I mean, seriously. Just plain ordinary business purposes. Yep. There is an open market for all these various capabilities indeed.

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Re: [Cryptography] RSA Crypto is officially insecure due to NIST
by grarpamp 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 4:00 AM, Tom A. via cryptography <cryptography(a)metzdowd.com> wrote: > GoldBug.sf.net seems to be the only Messenger & Email Client using NTRU or > McEliece in an open source implementation, both are considered as quantum > resistant. > ( https://twitter.com/GoldBugIM/status/848443919792844805 ) WARNING "Thomas Asta" is a well known anonymous shill for the shitware known as "goldbug". You need to seriously search, research, evaulate, and audit "goldbug", both on a code and "ethics" level, before giving it any credence whatsoever. *Be warned*, at least as to ethics and code development and community practices not limited to binary reproduceability. Ref: the cypherpunks list on this over many years. With all due respect, it could be great software, however historical evidence shows that you absolutely *must* prove that out before even considering using it. Nor should anyone ever forget that that rationale applies to all and every of the most "trusted", "audited", "well known", "used market share", and "vouched for" apps out there.

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bitcoin fun - self destruction?
by juan 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-unlimited-miners-may-be-prepar… "...Andresen elaborated on what the most effective way to attack the original Bitcoin chain would be..." etc

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Activists? Really? FSF TimBernersLee DRM W3C, Cryptocurrency "Community"
by grarpamp 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

Here's a two week deadline to make a difference on worthless invasive control closed and profiteering shit going into your browser... http://defectivebydesign.org/blog/fourteen_days_dialup_and_save_web_drm http://boingboing.net/2017/03/30/ring-ring-drmphone.html Now let's see what the entirety of "community" of hundred thousand+ so called Activist Crypto Coin Punks and users have risen up to do when given an amazingly generous nine(9) months worth of time... http://www.coindesk.com/sec-winklevoss-bitcoin-trust-public-comment/ http://www.coindesk.com/winklevoss-bitcoin-trust-departs-nasdaq/ http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-etf-anticipation-winklevoss-trust-deadline/ https://www.virtualcurrencyreport.com/2016/10/etf-corner-sec-requests-comme… https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/batsbzx/2016/34-79084.pdf https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro/batsbzx/2016/34-78653.pdf https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-batsbzx-2016-30/batsbzx201630.shtml ... a measly 68 comments, with many well written by anti's. Pathetic. To win a war you actually have to *wage a fucking war* !!!

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Mirimir Hakced 8ch.net
by HotwheelsGTA 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

_______________ ,-^ ,-^| ,-^ ,-^ | ,-^------------.-^ | | | | | | 6 | | | | | vi | | | | ,-^ | | ,-^ `--------------+,-^ vichan - teh imageboard engine -- preliminary website, until someone comes up with something better * vichan github project page * new support board * irc support channel (#vichan-devel @ irc.6irc.net) * historical support board Announcement vichan engine is not dead yet. We still support the code, but the old cruft has accumulated beyond repair. If you are looking for a modern imageboard engine that works, this is your best choice at the current time. Recently, there has been a wake of new imageboard projects. That's a good thing, but in our opinion, we should unite and not divide. The imageboards are going to look differently a few years from now. It's the time to shape that future. If you own an imageboard, you know that your community may demand some changes, or maybe stability. If you write code, you listen to those demands. There are many approaches to that, as every community is a different one, yet they all share some common goals. I am proud, that our code launched some kind of evolution, after a long stagnation from Kusaba times. Our job is now mostly complete, now that we have somewhat hit the limits. But what did impose us those limits, what should we do to go beyond them? Is the job really complete? Everyone has different ideas about that. If we try to solve only our ideas, we may hit a similar problem a few years from now. How about, if we all collect together and talk about those possible problems? It's always easier to think about it, when the project is in a project shape, than when it's near its finalization. We've launched an IRC channel, that should be a think-tank to everyone having fresh ideas about imageboards. The channel is mostly open, yet we should all try to stay on-topic. We already have some people doing code, owning big imageboards. If you think you have a worthy addition, or just want to sit and watch how we shape the future, we invite you there: #metachan on Rizon The engines are tools. The tools are not communities. But the communities do depend on tools to exist. What is the tool your community needs? And what will your community need in a few years from now? ~czaks

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CIA: Russia "is trying to evade this problem with the help of humor."
by Zenaan Harkness 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

This is a very, very serious allegation by the CIA - Russia is attempting to use humour to pass off their responsibility for the CIAs hacks attributed to Russians. No seriously, the CIA is asserting the Russia using humour (on April fools day no less) to laugh about the CIA's "Russian hacking accusations", is wrong, and that "People in the United States, of course, will not laugh." The CIA ... keeping a straight face at all times! Welp, here's those insidious Russians, at it again with their incredibly divise and utterly sinful, ahhh ... humour: Lavrov Wins April Fools' Day With Amazing Russian Foreign Ministry Prank http://russia-insider.com/en/lavrov-wins-april-fools-day-amazing-russian-fo… One for the history books ..

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Why I just left reddit.
by Mirimir 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

Here's what happened: 1) Someone posted in /r/privacy, with concerns about ISP monitoring. 2) I recommended using a VPN. 3) A bot flagged my post, because writing "VPN" is forbidden there. 4) I complained on /r/VPNs, pointing out that this is absurd. 5) A moderator criticized me, saying that I shill for IVPN. 6) I replied to the criticism, disputing the accusation. 7) They banned me from /r/VPNs. So I left reddit, because /r/VPNs and /r/privacy are two main reasons for being there. It's sad, but so it goes.

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"PHP sucks" and contempt culture
by Zenaan Harkness 02 Apr '17

02 Apr '17

Well not PHP exactly, that's just an example of course - Aurynn Shaw does a fine job on the topic, worthy of any tech belittler, not just language superiority trips... Contempt Culture http://blog.aurynn.com/contempt-culture So when I started programming in 2001, it was du jour in the communities I participated in to be highly critical of other languages. Other languages sucked, the people using them were losers or stupid, if they would just use a real language, such as the one we used, everything would just be better. Right? This sort of culturally-encoded language was really prevalent around condemning PHP and Java. Developers in these languages were actively referred to as less competent than developers in the other, more blessed languages. And at the time, as a new developer, I internalised this pretty heavily. The language I was in was blessed, obviously, not because I was using it but because it was better designed than a language like PHP, less wordy and annoying than Java, more flexible than many other options. It didn’t matter that it was (and remains) difficult to read, it was that we were better for using it. I repeated this pattern for a really long time, and as I learned new languages and patterns I’d repeat the same behaviour in those new environments. I was almost certainly not that fun to be around, a microcosm of the broader unpleasantness in tech. At least, until I got called on it. “Have you thought about…” I’d been making critical comments about PHP the language, and PHP developers, nothing more than standard “PHP sucks” sort of language. The same thing I’d been doing, and supported in doing, for years. Getting called out was hard, and I was asked to consider who and what I was criticising. I was able to access a very specific version of the self-taught narrative, where I used “real” programming languages and had “real” passion and drive, the result of which was that I fit the early hacker archetypes and was permitted status - as long as I participated in gate keeping. My self-taught narrative is not other peoples’ self-taught narrative, and I was very firmly reminded of that. Other self-taught narratives, such as starting with Wordpress-based design backgrounds and moving from more simple themes to more complex themes where PHP knowledge is required, to plugin development is a completely valid narrative, but a path that is predominately for women. This was a bombshell. I’d been loudly criticising the language and, through that criticism, implying that people using the language weren’t as good me, weren’t good programmers. And suddenly I was thinking about all the myriad ways that someone with that background would feel othered by me, like they didn’t belong and weren’t welcome in the communities I was a part of. All of the ways in which I was actively participating in the exclusion of women from STEM. Intent is Not Magic1 Of course, I hadn’t intended to do any of these things, but as I came to realise, it doesn’t matter what I intended to do, what matters is that I did it and that it had real repercussions. I intended to make fun of a language, the repercussion is that people from minority backgrounds wouldn’t want to talk to me about the things they’d done in that language, they wouldn’t feel safe talking about their achievements and exploits. And why would they feel safe? If they say what they use, we as a culture laugh at their choice. We tell them they should know better, tell them that it’s a horrible tool. Tell them that they are wrong. We ignore the achievement and focus exclusively on how it was reached, on how much better we are because we had access to narratives that the broader culture had already deemed more real. Not better narratives or better tools, just more accepted, more permitted, more discriminatory. Contempt Currency I was taught to be contemptuous of the non-blessed narratives, and I was taught to pay for my continued access to the technical communities through perpetuating that contempt. I was taught to have an elevated sense of self-worth, driven by the elitism baked into the hacker ethos as I learned to program. By adopting the same patterns that other, more knowledgable people expressed I could feel more credible, more like a real part of the community, more like I belonged. I bought my sense of belonging, with contempt, and paid for it with contempt and exclusionary behaviour. And now, I realise how much of it is an anxiety response. What if I chose the wrong thing? What if other people judge me for my choices and assert that my hard-earned skills actually aren’t worth anything? What if people find out I’m a fraud? By perpetuating a culture of contempt as the means of acquiring credibility, I was able to avoid these difficult, introspective questions. We don’t have to look at how we’re harming other people who want in, don’t have to acknowledge the niggling little voice in the back of our head asking are you good enough. It wasn’t me that was wrong, it was them. Instead, I was taught to use emotional weaponry to silence and exclude others, resulting in the remaining voices being the most toxic and exclusionary, the most able to tolerate toxicity and exclusionary attitudes. This pattern is common in tech, from extremely high-profile projects like the Linux kernel to the ongoing os/language/editor “wars” to the vile reactionary attitudes towards the introduction of Codes of Conduct, to any developers making disparaging comments about other peoples’ ability to code, and the growing contempt around people whose first or primary language is JavaScript. And now This culture has ramifications. PHP communities, for example, have lacked access to the development of DevOps tooling, the use of PHP is widely derided as being insecure by default, are they are widely mocked for being an “objectively bad language.” Yet people make their livings working with PHP, deploying PHP, trying to secure PHP. Don’t they deserve the help that we received, the help of good practises and security-first development? These people who can’t improve their work because we won’t work with them and drive them away from our communities with mockery and spite. And then they engineer things on their own, because they still need these tools, and we have the gall to ask why they didn’t use these other tools. Tools that we mocked them for asking about, telling them to get a real language, to rewrite their entire app, to rebuild from scratch because their particular path was not blessed enough. Because we were the problematic elements. I’m Tired of This It’s 2015, and I saw a presenter at a Python conference make fun of Java. How would that feel to people trying to move from Java into something else? I wouldn’t feel welcome, and I’d have learned that the idea that the Python community is welcoming wasn’t true. I’m tired of calling people out again and again for dumping on PHP. I’m tired of people dumping on Windows, that most popular operating system, because it’s not what we choose to use, tired of the fact that we don’t make it easy to use our tools and teach them how to move, when they’re ready. Instead, we lecture and dismiss and heap scorn upon them. We don’t reinforce our communities with respect or a sense of achievement, but with shame and contempt and awfulness. We exclude people. I’ve excluded people. Directly, me. I have to own up to that and deal with it. We excluded people. Directly. All of us. Even if we didn’t intend to, it does not matter. We make fun of the things others care about, make them feel small, make them feel like their achievements didn’t matter. Make them feel like they’re not welcome. What can we Do? SHUT. UP. No, really, cut it out. If you need to make fun of a language, do it with your own language, inside your own community. JavaScript is really good at this, because they’re trying to help people write better code within JavaScript. Do it around friends only, and acknowledge that it’s extremely problematic that you’re doing it at all. Find some amazing project to celebrate in a language you’re contemptuous of. Go to meetups of what you despise. Say you don’t know anything, and see how welcoming they are to new people. See what they say, what they do, and ask if you’d be as welcoming to them when they come to your meetups. Work to change your community. Ask people who try to pay for their membership in contempt to stop, or to leave. Make it unacceptable to use these behaviours as a means of obtaining social wealth. The best advice we give programmers is to leave things better than how they started. We do it with code, why don’t we do it with communities? Why don’t we do it with people, colleagues, friends? Ask why it’s okay to do these things in your community, and leave things better than when you started. Intent is magic!↩ http://www.shakesville.com/2011/12/harmful-communication-part-one-intent.ht…

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