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[WAR] Does Russia want war?
by Zenaan Harkness 21 Aug '16

21 Aug '16

For some folks, perhaps an "average North American citizen", this article might possibly be important. To me it is stating the obvious, but it just might allay some fears for some folk out there... ** 5 questions for Peter Lavelle: Does Russia want war? (http://theduran.com/5-questions-peter-lavelle-russia-want-war/) ------------------------------------------------------------ By Peter Lavelle on Aug 18, 2016 11:27 am Russian soldiers dressed in Red Army World War II uniforms prepare to parade in Red Square in front of a backdrop of St. Basil Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. Thousands of Russian soldiers and military cadets marched across Red Square to mark the 72nd anniversary of a historic World War II parade. The show honored the participants of the Nov. 7, 1941 parade who headed directly to the front lines to defend Moscow from the Nazi forces. The parade Thursday involved about 6,000 people, many of them dressed in World War II-era uniforms. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) Question: The first and most important question: does Russia want a war against the west, against the U.S.? Answer: Most emphatically no! During the Cold War the primary adversaries went to great lengths to understand the other side’s position – to put themselves in the other guy’s shoes. Today this is not happening. This is why the current situation is so unstable and dangerous. Washington is not interested in resolving conflicts; in fact, it only inflames them, i.e. Syria, Ukraine and the South China Sea. More broadly, Americans refuse to recognize that Russia has its own national security interests – its own “red lines.” The Kremlin has resigned itself to having to deal with an interlocutor that is deaf and dumb. Russia is preparing for the worst. Q.: How to do you respond to the claim that Russia is determined to undermine NATO, western alliances, and return to the Middle East as a major player? Is Putin’s Russia determined to restore the power and influence of the Soviet Union? A.: We have to remember the Cold War was never properly ended. Mikhail Gorbachev naively believed Washington would keep its word (a gentlemen’s agreement given verbally – not in writing) NATO would not move eastward with the dissolution of the Warsaw Part. Russia was lied to. NATO did expand eastward and does pose a security threat to Russia. The Kremlin reflects on this every single day as it is endlessly accused of behaving “aggressively.” Does Russia want to see NATO collapsed or reformed in a way that identifies 21^st century security realities? Of course it does. This is acting like a rational nation-state actor. When it comes to the Middle East, it is clear what is happening. Washington has shown itself to be erratic, incredibly violent, and unreliable. Too much of America’s foreign policy behavior is influenced by its unholy alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia – countries that are only security liabilities for the U.S., its alliance partners in the Middle East and further afield. The illegal regime change in Iraq and the other wars of choice in the region have all ended in disastrous failures. Russia doesn’t want to see the same to happen in Syria. Doing so has made Russia an enemy of the west. Washington’s plans to overthrow the secular regime in Damascus are nothing less than insanity. On the issue of re-building the Soviet Union or Russian Empire: this is fantasy. Russia was a net loser in the Soviet Union. There are many Russians who do miss the Soviet Union, but not for its empire. They miss certainty and stability – the all-encompassing welfare state. The vast majority of Russians never give Estonia a thought. Even if a majority of Estonians voted to join Russia, I bet the vast majority of Russians would say no. Russian designs on the Baltic States are a western media illusion. Q.: Why does the west’s media portray Russia as an enemy if you say Russia has no interest in a conflict? A.: What Russia is, does and says is really not at issue – Russia is merely a bit player in a much greater drama. Washington’s obsession with Russia is about how America sees its place in the world – and that place is at the center. It must have sway everywhere and all the time. Once this hegemonic practice faces resistance all resources are marshaled to assault this “threat.” Because Russia has the resources and will to resist it is automatically labeled an enemy. All the more so as Russia conducts its foreign policy based on its defined interests – this course infuriates Washington’s foreign policy establishment, particularly when the U.S. goes from one policy failure to another. Someone has to be blamed! Just read some of the statements coming from Defense Secretary Ash Carter and State Secretary John Kerry – “if Russia agrees,” if the Russians only cooperated” etc. Translation: Russia doesn’t do what it is told. Viewed from Moscow, Washington acts like an addicted and violent adolescent who can’t accept being told “no.” Q.: What are the chances the simmering conflict in Ukraine will escalate? Is this where a hot conflict could start? What about Syria? A.: I have mentioned elsewhere Ukraine could be used as a kind of “October Surprise” in the American presidential campaign – start a war in Ukraine and then blame Russia. The Kiev regime has already signaled it is more than willing to play its part. The recent incident in Crimea is a message to me the American public is being prepared to be inflamed to justify a NATO intervention. This will result in utter failure. Crimea is now part of Russia. The Kremlin will have no choice but to use ALL means available to it to protect Russian sovereignty. An attack on Crimea will ignite a conflict that could escalate into a general war – including the use of nuclear weapons. Regarding Syria: we already know a Clinton presidency will target Syria for regime change starting the first day of the new administration. Any attack on Syria will also be designed to undermine and end Russia’s legal intervention there. Again, this is very risky. It needs to be remembered Washington only attacks countries that cannot defend themselves. Syria with Russian and Iranian support is something completely different. Syria has the will and means to resist. And I have no doubt Syria and its allies are preparing for such an eventuality. Q.: You say it is Washington that desires a conflict with Russia, so what can Russia do? A.: Russia will keep doing what it has been doing – preparing for a conflict. There is no evidence Washington is interested in negotiations to resolve conflicts. It won’t force its client state Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements, thus maintaining conditions for a greater conflict with Russia. The U.S. and its NATO allies continue to aid and protect terrorist groups in Syria. Washington is far more interested in removing Assad from power – and the Islamic State is a useful tool toward that end. One thing I am convinced of: if the west continues on the path of direct military conflict, it will eventually happen. Confronted to with an overwhelming existential threat Russia will resist and will be determined not to be defeated. It is up to Washington – it must decide whether it wants to pursue another war of choice. Peter Lavelle is host of RT’s political debate program CrossTalk. His views may or may not reflect those of his employer. The post 5 questions for Peter Lavelle: Does Russia want war? (http://theduran.com/5-questions-peter-lavelle-russia-want-war/) appeared first on The Duran (http://theduran.com) .

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Die Zeit interviews Appelbaum ioerror
by grarpamp 21 Aug '16

21 Aug '16

http://www.zeit.de/kultur/2016-08/jacob-appelbaum-rape-allegations-contradi… Inconsistencies have emerged in the allegations of rape and sexual assault against American Internet activist Jacob Appelbaum. Reporting by the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT shows there is considerable doubt about the veracity of the claims. Tracking mentions... https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor

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MotherJones: My Four Months As A Private Prison Guard
by grarpamp 21 Aug '16

21 Aug '16

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections… ...One of the other inmates on suicide watch, who's been silent until now, starts yelling through his food slot. "World war!" he shouts. "I got some niggas who need to tell the CIA something, since they already got their eye in the sky, the satellite orbiting in space processing global information." His voice has a demonic quality to it and he occasionally hits the plexiglass to punctuate his sentences. The CO sitting directly across from him twiddles his thumbs and gazes ahead blankly...

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Fwd: [Cryptography] UK report on "Bulk Powers Review" of GCHQ interception
by grarpamp 21 Aug '16

21 Aug '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com> Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 11:47:48 -0700 Subject: [Cryptography] UK report on "Bulk Powers Review" of GCHQ interception To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com, gnu(a)toad.com BBC news - Britain's spies should be allowed to continue harvesting large amounts of data from emails, the government's reviewer of terror legislation has said. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37130455 UK Government report: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/5… John _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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Fwd: [tor-talk] Did Australian Authorities hack (US) computers with Tor's help?
by grarpamp 21 Aug '16

21 Aug '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chris <tmail299(a)errtech.com> Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2016 21:06:12 -0400 Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Did Australian Authorities hack (US) computers with Tor's help? To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org On 2016-08-20 06:54 PM, tortalk(a)arcor.de wrote: > Hi! > > I found two articles which may have something in common. 1. Some Tor > users (29.000) got deanonymized by authorities while up/downloading > childporn. 2. Someone claims that "Tor suddenly dump over 30 > megabloats of steaming faeces onto a file system on exit". > 1. Is it just a question of time when other deanonymisations will come > public? > https://motherboard.vice.com/read/australian-authorities-hacked-computers-i… > "Australian Authorities Hacked Computers in the US > Written by Joseph Cox Contributor > August 15, 2016 // 10:10 AM EST > ... > By the very virtue of the investigation, Australian authorities likely > would not have known where the computer they wanted to hack was > located; indeed, that was the exact problem that the Tor network > presented. > > Whether the Australian authorities hacked computers in other > countries remains unclear. > > It is unclear on what authority Australian law enforcement obtained a > warrant, or whether one was obtained at all to gather IP addresses > from Piccolo and others in the US. Task Force Argos declined to answer > any questions or comment for this story. > ... > Whether using a hacking tool to grab the real IP address of a Tor user > constitutes a search in a legal sense has recently become a > contentious issue in the US. Several judges have said that suspects do > not have a reasonable expectation of privacy around their IP address > when using the Tor network, meaning that it is not protected by the > Fourth Amendment, and a hack grabbing it would not require a warrant. > The Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as some courts, have > argued otherwise. The article seems to suggest that those taking proper security precautions would not have been impacted by this exploit. Users are warned that opening external files can compromise their security. In this case it was apparently a video file. If Tails has been designed properly this should not have been a problem for Tails users. I have not recently examined Tails, but from my understanding, in the past all traffic was routed through Tor. This would have included the video player. Most likely in that scenario if the exploit worked on Tails it would have only provided an IP address of a Tor exit node [which is not a privacy threat]. That was changed in a later version of Tails to drop traffic instead because it posed a security risk [maybe, I think most users would probably have been fine behind a NAT network assuming Tails is designed well]. This attack vector would not have worked in Tails for that reason. Now it also most likely would not have worked because the exploit almost certainly targets Microsoft's media player. The exploit (if you can call it that, given it's not designed to be privacy friendly and doesn't open up the media player or system to remote access, etc) is either a known problem that has never been fixed (not entirely sure it is an issue from a security perspective, though it is from a privacy perspective) or a new problem that should have been on the radar of any developer designing a secure privacy friendly operating system [which Microsoft Windows is not]. Microsoft Windows is a threat to your security. All proprietary software is a threat. Intel and AMD are a threat to your security. There is remote control functionality built into every Intel and AMD CPU since 2009 and 2013. It would naive to think that US companies AMD and Intel have not been ordered to insert a backdor. Intel and AMD will not release the code and have signed these components such that even if they were reversed engineered the user can't load a backdoor free version of the software. The answer to the problem is in crowd funding a new standard that has been in the works for years that modularizes critical components into a 'computer card'. By doing this it gives computer designers a less expensive way to design backdoor-free computing devices. It also lets us utilize non-Intel/AMD designed CPUs from Chinese companies. Now this is not to say China isn't a threat to users privacy and security. We know about backdoors in homegrown Chinese designed laptops. The difference is the backdoors were inserted in keyboard controller firmwares and were dependent on an OS level component to work. By modularizing the design it was possible to produce a laptop (the first ever) that we can be reasonably confident is NSA/Chinese/Russian/etc backdoor free. The keyboard and LCD controller is based off work for which we have the complete set of source code. The equivalent microcode/firmware for CPU related components are available. There is no BIOS and the bootloader and other critical driver related components we have the complete set of source code for. There are only five days left of the campaign. It is important that people contribute to it. The concept needs to succeed if we want to eventually have devices that we can be reasonably confident are secure from government(s) and other criminal elements. Here is that crowd funding campaign: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 * The people behind the project are more trustworthy than the people behind some other crowd supply campaigns. The FSF has worked with Luke (lead engineer) on ensuring the complete set of code is available. It's also the case that all code is available unlike past RYF laptops (for which there has been valid criticisms, particularly from a security stand point). Now this doesn't make this device secure in and of itself. There is a lot that has to happen. This is only going to result in a base that can be used build truly secure and privacy friendly devices. More work needs to be done at porting key software to ARM, increasing the user base to a point where fingerprinting is less effective, etc. There are significant hurdles to overcome. > " > 2. The author embedded a list of his findings in his article. > http://rixstep.com/2/2/20160817,00.shtml > "Tor 6.0.4 > ... > Why does Tor suddenly dump over 30 megabloats of steaming faeces onto > a file system on exit? > ... > Most of the junk left behind comes from an EFF extension, but this > extension has been used all along, and it serves no purpose to copy > the data out to yet another location. If this is caused by an error at > EFF, why hasn't this been corrected?" If I had to guess it's probably a bug causing some component (the plug-in) to crash. It's not abnormal for reports to be generated after a crash and written to disk. There are good reasons users whom are at serious risk should run Tails and not the Tor Browser Bundle. Tails is designed to ensure nothing gets recorded to disk (especially unencrypted). The only exception I'm aware of is related to storing data on Tor entry nodes to thwart certain types of attack (it's possible other exceptions exist). Other data can be saved to encrypted partitions. -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk

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Re: Revolt Against Tor Over Rape Claims, Process, Board, Etc
by Zenaan Harkness 21 Aug '16

21 Aug '16

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 07:27:48PM -0400, S wrote offlist: > Doesn't it prove that Tor is awesome when state level entities are > using Tor for their comms and hiding among the traffic. Not sure how > that is a bad thing as it shows how good the Tor network is at what it > does not the other way around. Everyone has their own agendas. Let to > each their own. Tor, as Juan has pointed out so many times, is developed on only so far as the USA govt can still maintain a GPA ability. This means that technically, for some things we can "hide amongst the traffic" but only if our own chosen speech is not objected to by the USA state. Or, unless our personal op-sec is really really good. And so Tor network as it stands today is one sided - in favour of the USA government, at least in respect of certain types of speech which are very important to a sane world. In other words, the rot/crap needs to be improved, and the "community cathartic experience" of the breakdown happening in Tor community and Tor Inc is a very good thing - because, it is only the really important free speech which matters in the long term (think survival of the species etc). Accepting fundamental compromises to our principles is not the punk way - at least, it's not my way. HTH ..

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Tor being forked.
by xxyyzz＠tuta.io 20 Aug '16

20 Aug '16

For those who have suggested it there's already plans and a roadmap for the fork of Tor. Two concurrent networks which are compatible with a singular browser would greatly diversify the ecosystem and give users more choice. At this point this is the only way forward imo. More info: https://rotorbrowser.com

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Global warming/climate change
by everythingisscience 20 Aug '16

20 Aug '16

> Tom: > not [cpunks] Cryptography isn't limited to computers. > not scientists Science isn't limited to approved funding and certification.

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Re: [tor-talk-owner@lists.torproject.org: Your message to tor-talk awaits moderator approval]
by Zenaan Harkness 19 Aug '16

19 Aug '16

On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 11:21:57AM -0400, John wrote: > >https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/confirm/tor-talk/9f11153f5ef43… > > This whole thing is hilarious... (And depressing!!) > > I wouldn't send the actual private mailman link to the whole list tho... Any lurker can now cancel your post. Well, either someone cancelled it, or it got cancelled by the moderators. Either way, it's a sign of the state of the "community". My other two emails (there were three next to each other) got cancelled/ banned as well and as far as I am concerned they were more benign, so evidently what I have to say is no longer welcome to be said on the tor-talk mailing list.

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"Smart" electrical outlets stealing passwords, 'helping the Russians' botnet the DNC
by Razer 19 Aug '16

19 Aug '16

ROTF! IMAGINE if the IoT didn't like Demoncrats! "An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: > There is an insecure IoT smart electrical socket on the market that leaks your Wi-Fi password, your email credentials (if configured), and is also poorly coded, allowing attackers to hijack the device via a simple command injection in the password field. Researchers say that because of the nature of the flaws, attackers can overwrite its firmware and add the device to a botnet, possibly using it for DDoS attacks, among other things. Bitdefender didn't reveal the device's manufacturer but said the vendor is working on a fix, which will be released in late Q3 2016. Problems with the device include a lack of encryption for device communications and the lack of any basic input sanitization for the password field "Up until now most IoT vulnerabilities could be exploited only in the proximity of the smart home they were serving, however, this flaw allows hackers to control devices over the internet and bypass the limitations of the network address translation," says Alexandru Balan, Chief Security Researcher at Bitdefender. "This is a serious vulnerability, we could see botnets made up of these power outlets." Links etc: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/08/18/2231244/smart-electrical-socket-le…

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