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Personal Location Logging Apps (with Notary options)
by grarpamp 14 Feb '16

14 Feb '16

http://www.spotmarksthetax.com/ In order of increasing power consumption, Spot takes three kinds of location fixes: a Venue Fix, a Tracking Fix, and a Fingerprint Fix. Venue fixes have an entry time and a duration. For example, say you were visiting a client’s office for an hour long meeting. Spot would take a fix about 5-15 minutes into the meeting and a second fix roughly 5-15 minutes after you’ve left the office to declare a venue fix of your location, time and duration, perhaps for 67 minutes and 13 seconds. A Venue fix exploits Apple’s location database of both cell towers and Wi-Fi access points. While these are not as precise as GPS measurements, in practice, they are quite good. We believe that these fixes alone are sufficient to handle most tax residency issues. Consuming a bit more power are the optional Tracking fixes. These fixes are calculated when the phone switches cell phone towers. While they typically have an accuracy radius of about a kilometer, they are also, in practice, quite accurate in showing the progress of your day. Finally, a Fingerprint fix, which is taken by running the app and pressing the fingerprint icon in the upper left corner, uses the GPS to record your position with the highest resolution possible. When you need to prove that you have crossed that state line before midnight, the Fingerprint fix is what you want to use. Since its accuracy radius can be as large as 65 meters, more than half a football field long, make sure you are significantly past the state line when you take the fix.

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Brit spies can legally hack PCs and phones, say Brit spies' overseers
by Georgi Guninski 14 Feb '16

14 Feb '16

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/12/uk_rules_gchq_hacking_legal/ Brit spies can legally hack PCs and phones, say Brit spies' overseers

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USA ENCRYPT Act
by grarpamp 14 Feb '16

14 Feb '16

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/02/house-bill-would-kill-state-loca… https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/4537ug/us_house_encrypt_act_would…

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Austria to make Right To Pay In Cash
by grarpamp 14 Feb '16

14 Feb '16

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/02/12/1547203/austrian-minister-calls-for-… Extend to BTC.

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The Iran-Contra White House Emails
by Michael Best 13 Feb '16

13 Feb '16

Since it's coming up in some of my historical research, and definitely relevant with all of the HRC email stuff in the news right now, I thought I'd check and see if anyone here happens to know what agency has custody of the 3,000 White House emails that were released to the NSArchive after their lawsuit. About 250 were published by NSArchive, but the rest haven't been made available yet. If anyone happens to know what agency has them, let me know. I'd love to get my hands on them. My initial check with NARA shows only the million restricted emails held by the GHWBush Presidential Library, but I'll check with the archivists at NARA II next week. Let me know if you have any leads! -Mike

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Small codebase as a prerequisite for security
by Sean Lynch 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

I laughed out loud when I read on the Invisible Things Labs' Blog that Xen is "only" a "few hundreds of thousands of lines of code."[1] Sure, this is small compared to most modern monolithic desktop OSes, but it's not particularly small compared to a stripped down Linux kernel build, and it's absolutely gigantic compared to a modern microkernel. The Nova Microhypervisor and seL4 are each about 9000 SLOC. But when I shared this disbelief with a couple of friends who at least have a passing understanding of computer security, each of them just shrugged. And of course both Nova and seL4 have had a lot of trouble gaining any kind of foothold in the market. Am I completely off base in thinking that it should be self-evident that one should start building any secure system by minimizing the size of their trusted computing base? Or is the issue that applications are still the source of most vulnerabilities, so it's premature to try to make the kernel super secure? Or that there are too many ways to violate isolation in a microkernel by compromising shared server processes? I ask because I am wondering if I should "learn to stop worrying and love the bomb" and (re-)embrace Xen and/or Linux, or if I should continue pursuing some approach along the lines of seL4/Nova/Genode for building secure systems? [1] http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-is-qubes-os-different-fr…

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Fwd: [Cryptography] Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet)
by grarpamp 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Henry Baker <hbaker1(a)pipeline.com> Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2016 12:59:38 -0800 Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet) To: Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> Cc: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com At 08:49 PM 2/9/2016, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: >Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet) > >A) Assume that the NSA has such a machine. I think that someone at NSA invented Bitcoin to supercharge the development of fast encryption/decryption chips. New forms of QC-resistant XXXcoins will be developed for similar reasons. How to leverage NSA's research $$$$$$$$$$$'s. It seems to have worked! Recall that "miners" get paid in Bitcoin, but chip developers get paid in real $$$. Algorithm/SW developers don't need to get paid at all, because they do it for the love of computer science, society and world peace. _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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Re: [Cryptography] Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet)
by grarpamp 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

On 2/11/16, Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 2:12 PM, John Levine <johnl(a)iecc.com> wrote: >>>A,B) Anyone with a QC could use it to break the keys of the wallets >>>holding $500 million. >> >> Which is under 5% of the NSA's annual budget. Also keep in mind that >> bitcoins are extremely illiquid. The largest bitcoin transaction I >> can find where the buyer got something of identifiable value was a >> $500K villa in Bali. (The so-called $147M transaction doesn't count >> since there's no evidence of goods or services on either side of it.) >> Fencing a thousand villas seems pretty hard. >> >> If I wanted to use my NSA connections or my quantum computer to enrich >> myself, this doesn't strike me as a particularly good way to go. > > I was asserting that the funds would be diverted for personal > purposes, not to fund the agency. > > $500 million might be chump change to the agency but Hanssen defected > for a lot less. There is only one purpose for an entity to crack any currency and that's to kill it. Because any cracked wallets would instantly make worldwide headlines and the currency would go to zero within a day. Depending on the speed of the adversary, you might be able to migrate crypto fast enough to save some wallets but the losers will be throwing realworld pitchforks, that will roll all the way up the legal politik chain until the pressure is unbearable. The entity isn't going to be able to recoup its costs in a zero market. Even cracking supposedly dead wallets is risk of zero without proof of deadness, granny might still have her mitts on them and be watching every day. Since an entity full of people is unlikely to be able to keep a secret kill secret, they'd be better off accelerating mining, selling in a stable market. Perhaps that's what's happening now... ;) http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ If an entity has a crack it probably can't use it, and the same scenario applies if a rogue within it appropriates it for their own purposes. And for any independant loner who discovers it. They only have odds at a few wallets before they hit the wrong one and news breaks. And for them it will be all about the lulz. Either way, digital currencies will come and go, and are here to stay. Unless Bitcoin solves its serious scalability and anonymity issues, people will probably be slowly trading out of it into something else within the next 5-10 years anyway. If that something else is significantly better and stronger, you might see some cracking then in attempt to cash out. BTC from 1250 to sub 200 didn't seem to trigger any.

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[Fwd: Multiple Internets]
by Ted Smith 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

In an effort to re-seed discussion about cypherpunk topics I'll be reposting old threads from the cypherpunks list in a rough "this day in cpunks" effort. In this mail, John Young analyzes the subclasses of "the internet" as a user might see. Optional discussion questions: * How has this dichotomy survived the intervening half-decade? * Taxonomies sometimes afford conception of novel categories; the original periodic table was mostly empty, not-filled with elements yet to be discovered. What internets can we conceive of that do not presently exist? -------- Forwarded Message -------- > From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net > Subject: Multiple Internets > Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:01:38 -0500 > Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 > > > i say again: > > twitter is ruining the internets... > > I agree, but I think it's highlighting an underlying issue that we've > been letting the wrong sort of people on the internet for a long time. > I tend to think that if this type of people ends up sticking to the > world of twitter and facebook and co, then we can safely caution them > off and just ignore them at large, so for that purpose it works well > > ------ > > Multiple, discrete internets are coming into play, perhaps have always > existed. > > First, the known internets, utilizing ubiquitious access logging which > under guise of administration allows universal spying: > > 1. The internet run by operators of the overall background system > which most users know little about or care. > > 2 The open policing apparatus of the overall system run by governments > and their contractors and cooperating non-profits. > > 3. The commercial internet providing services or products for pay. > > 4. The non-profit, open-source, volunteer internet providing services > or products at no cost or for donations. > > 5. The closed sub-internets, mil-gov classified, SCADA, restricted > and special purpose networks used by operators and administrators of > backbones, nodes, satellite, cable, wired and wireless systems, > > Second, the unknown internets, with or without evident access logging: > > 6. The covert policing and spying internet which watches, logs, > mucks around, runs stings, causes accidents and shut-downs, cuts > cables, runs surprise tests and attacks, and keeps alive the demand > for covert oversight of all the known others. > > 7. The covert internets which hide among all the others, or try to > subject to discovery by 6. > > 8. The evanescent internets which are set up, used and disappear > quickly, openly or covertly, subject to 6. > > 9. The wayward and waylaid internets which cannot be identified: > rogues, experiments, mistakes, erratic systems, unexpected > glitches and consequences, acts of nature, forgotten protocols, > inept code, destructive code, lost access techniques, death > of the perpetrators. > > 10. Internets of combinations, hybrids, deceptions, ploys and > warfare among 1-9. -- Sent from Ubuntu

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Fwd: [Cryptography] Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet)
by grarpamp 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2016 23:49:40 -0500 Subject: [Cryptography] Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet) To: "cryptography(a)metzdowd.com" <cryptography(a)metzdowd.com> Proof that the NSA does not have a quantum computer capable of attacking public key crypto (yet) A) Assume that the NSA has such a machine. >From A it follows that the machine can be used to forge bitcoin transfers. B) Large areas of the bitcoin mining pool have never been spent. A,B) Anyone with a QC could use it to break the keys of the wallets holding $500 million. C) This has not happened. D) The NSA has awful internal security, (see Snowden). NSA resources are known to have been diverted for LOVINT. It is unlikely NSA employees are more honest than those of federal law enforcement whose investigator ripped off the Silk Road operator for at least half a million. The third in command at the CIA was recently prosecuted and copped a plea for participating in the 'Duke' Cunningham bribery ring poker and prostitutes parties at the Watergate. Oh and Secret Service... need I go on. C,D) it follows that the NSA is not capable of breaking bitcoin Therefore NSA does not have a quantum computer (yet). _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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