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The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work
by Riad S. Wahby 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

Phillip Rogaway (Professor of CS at UC Davis) has released in the form of an essay his keynote talk from Asiacrypt. Very interesting reflection on the politics of crypto, historically and at present. -- "The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work" Phil Rogaway http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral-fn.pdf Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension. The Snowden revelations motivate a reassessment of the political and moral positioning of cryptography. They lead one to ask if our inability to effectively address mass surveillance constitutes a failure of our field. I believe that it does. I call for a community-wide effort to develop more effective means to resist mass surveillance. I plea for a reinvention of our disciplinary culture to attend not only to puzzles and math, but, also, to the societal implications of our work. -- -=rsw

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Vuvuzuela Messaging App
by grarpamp 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

https://github.com/davidlazar/vuvuzela Vuvuzela is a messaging system that hides metadata using noise. The Github README has more information and a link to the paper. The issue tracker highlights some of the remaining challenges.

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Re: [Cryptography] Sadly predictable: Terrorism used as excuse to attack encryption
by grarpamp 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 1:07 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1(a)pipeline.com> wrote: > With enough fear, anything comes to look threatening: a gaming console, a toilet, a smartphone. Will destroying them make us more or less powerful? It makes "us" look like cowards, because you're not addressing the source of the fear, you're taking the *apparrent* easy route, while still leaving the source to reign. It takes courage to conquer your fears. Grow some.

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PSA: fas.org is now https://www.fas.org/
by coderman 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

we thought it would never happen, perhaps outlasting cryptome.org for TLS resistance, and yet, behold! https://www.fas.org/ best regards, [ don't tell them about COMODO HACKAR ;P ... ]

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Cryptome.biz (RU) not affiliated with Cryptome.org.
by John Young 03 Dec '15

03 Dec '15

Cryptome.biz, a Russian virtual currency site registered 25 November 2015, is not affiliated with Cryptome.org. https://cryptome.biz http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/registry-data.jsp?domain=cryptome.biz

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DuckDuckGo
by Ryan Carboni 02 Dec '15

02 Dec '15

Nevermind. I just got an ad for an NSA career on DuckDuckGo when searching for "NSA budget."

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Re: Paris Attacks Blamed on Strong Cryptography and Edward Snowden
by John Young 02 Dec '15

02 Dec '15

Wheedling about crypto and Snowden diverts from CIA Director's full speech and broader critique. CIA version omits Q&A. <https://t.co/d6tAq2PiZi>http://csis.org/files/attachments/151116_GSF_OpeningSession.pdf To be sure, commentators must promote their products to flatter their consumers as do spies, officials and armaments (crypto) producers. Officials buy the armaments to gain votes and post-service directorships, word artists blow wind to fan the flames. "This Is War!" Perfect for all consumers except the slaughtered, a few of which get ritual mourning (most ignored, unreported, unsacrelized, unheroricized, unencrypted). Hard to tell the difference between opportunistic warmongerers or anti-warmongerers, so ying and yang in complicity. At 10:03 AM 11/17/2015, you wrote: >1. ><https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_attacks_b.html>https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/paris_attacks_b.html >2. >https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blam… > ><<As Paris reels from terrorist attacks that >have claimed at least 128 lives, fierce blame >for the carnage is being directed toward >American whistleblower Edward Snowden and the >spread of strong encryption catalyzed by his >actions. Now the Paris attacks are being used an excuse to demand back doors>> > > ><<how can âofficialsâ and their media >stenographers persist in trying to convince >people of such a blatant, easily disproven >falsehood: namely, that Terrorists learned to >hide their communications from Snowdenâs >revelations? They do it because of how many >benefits there are from swindling people to >believe this. To begin with, U.S officials are >eager here to demonize far more than just Snowden >They want to demonize encryption generally as >well as any companies that offer it. Indeed, as >these media accounts show, theyâve been trying >for two decades to equate the use of encryption > anything that keeps them out of peopleâs >private onlinee communications with aiding and abetting The Terrorists>> > ><<Above all, thereâs the desperation to >prevent people from asking how and why ISIS was >able to spring up seemingly out of nowhere and >be so powerful, able to blow up a Russian >passenger plane, a market in Beirut, and the >streets of Paris in a single week. Thatâs the >one question Western officials are most >desperate not to be asked, so directing >peopleâs ire to Edward Snowden and strong >encryption is beneficial in the extreme>> > > ><<Thereâs the related question of how ISIS has >become so well-armed and powerful. There are >many causes, but a leading one is the role >played by the U.S. and its âallies in the >regionâ (i.e., Gulf tyrannies) in arming them>>

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Cryprocontracts hackathon 1-5 Dec online peepshow style
by ksenia serova 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

There was a lot of digital ink spilled over the topic of smartcontracts. If anyone is interested to have a look at them contracts (in Solidity) being built and deployed to the chain live - there is an online smartcontracts hackathon here http://hack.ether.camp/ for the next 5 days. People usually use npm packages to compile and web3 package to send a contract to the chain via http rpc or lpc socket. In this case it is a bit of a smartcontract peepshow -each team IDE is open for viewers. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it, and what challenges people are actually experiencing etc. The registration stays open towards the end, if anyone wants to give it a go.

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DuckDuckGo
by Jason McVetta 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:56 PM, rysiek <rysiek(a)hackerspace.pl> wrote: > > DuckDuckGo to the rescue. DuckDuckGo is an obvious honeypot. Why does anyone use it?

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Re: DuckDuckGo
by Ryan Carboni 01 Dec '15

01 Dec '15

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_search_engine There exists distributed search engines if you are truly paranoid. Duckduckgo's search model is different yes, but right now Bing is paying me $5 a month in Amazon gift cards to use their search engine, and Google's algorithm is amazing.

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