Fwd: [cryptography] The Compromised Internet
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: coderman <coderman@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:41 PM Subject: Re: [cryptography] The Compromised Internet To: Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
... There is no weather in LEO but space weather.
this reminds of the telcos who all say "redundant fault tolerant paths" are possible through the same right-of-way. you're optimizing against natural / random failures, and completely and totally vulnerable to active interference. do i have to spell it out?
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:42:40PM -0700, coderman wrote: This was an off-list exchange actually, but what the hell.
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
... There is no weather in LEO but space weather.
this reminds of the telcos who all say "redundant fault tolerant paths" are possible through the same right-of-way.
LEO is a volume, not a surface. You can have as many flocks up there as you like, if you can afford it.
you're optimizing against natural / random failures, and completely
I'm optimizing against people who walk up, and dismantle your wireless mesh, or down the Internet in your country. It's really hard to jam the sky, especially in VIS range.
and totally vulnerable to active interference.
Yes, you can fry them with ground laser or fill up orbit with tungsten pellets. However, such things are quite frowned upon, especially the latter option.
do i have to spell it out?
Surprise me.
2013/9/26 Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org>
It's really hard to jam the sky, especially in VIS range.
"Huh. Guys, what's that on our radio scanner? Someone calls us?" Hard to jam, easy to trace. Even regular Dutch police forces have triangulation tactics to find pirate radio stations. This is where I'm more enthusiastic about near-optical connections. A laser, invisible spectrum ofc, and a small black surface (iow:detector) are all it takes. It will still be visible (at night) with special hardware. Street lanterns (depending on the type) might make them invisible at night too. Bandwidth is wonderful, and there's plenty of spectrum to duplicate bandwidth too. Quite like fiber, except for the ideal transmission. And that highlights the problems. You have to keep the laser pointed, that means not diffracted by thermic differences or blocked by dust and other particles (like, you know, leaves). This might be less trouble than it'd seem at first, and even better it can be automated by a lens system. A just graduated ship's lieutenant laughed at me for suggesting laser communication as the future. "No spying, very high speed, very wide bandwidth!" and he effectively answered "Line of sight, irreliable, no need for speed and just use satellite". A yagi pointed skywards should be hidable inside the house, so I guess he's somewhat right.
On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 12:20 AM, Lodewijk andré de la porte <l@odewijk.nl> wrote:
...> Hard to jam, easy to trace. Even regular Dutch police forces have triangulation tactics to find pirate radio stations.
in some geographic locations, certain transmissions are a prelude to hellfire neutralization.
This is where I'm more enthusiastic about near-optical connections.
i'm trying to re-kindle the flame, really...
... You have to keep the laser pointed, that means not diffracted by thermic differences or blocked by dust and other particles (like, you know, leaves).
nope. direct line of un-obstructed sight kills the mood. really: give it up. FSO, LEO, it's all moot. go mesh, go multi-path, go SDR! if you're still not convinced, i've got a red team who can change your mind! ;P
On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 09:20:43AM +0200, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
2013/9/26 Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org>
It's really hard to jam the sky, especially in VIS range.
"Huh. Guys, what's that on our radio scanner? Someone calls us?"
They want to pick up a parabolic dish, a LoS laser or a phased array tracking a point source overhead, all sending at maybe 5-10 W power? Sure, if your sky is thick with mapping drones. Sounds like a fifth world problem.
Hard to jam, easy to trace. Even regular Dutch police forces have triangulation tactics to find pirate radio stations.
Isotropic radiators with high power are easy to spot. Dynamic tight beams need at least a passing point of alignment to get a position fix on the ground station. NSA sigint used that microwave LoS interception, but this wouldn't scale for millions of users and very brief low-power bursts during random alignment events.
This is where I'm more enthusiastic about near-optical connections. A laser, invisible spectrum ofc, and a small black surface (iow:detector) are all it takes. It will still be visible (at night) with special hardware. Street lanterns (depending on the type) might make them invisible at night too. Bandwidth is wonderful, and there's plenty of spectrum to duplicate bandwidth too. Quite like fiber, except for the ideal transmission.
Or maybe you just buy http://www.ubnt.com/airfiber or the lower-grade gear for LoS.
And that highlights the problems. You have to keep the laser pointed, that means not diffracted by thermic differences or blocked by dust and other particles (like, you know, leaves). This might be less trouble than it'd seem at first, and even better it can be automated by a lens system.
A just graduated ship's lieutenant laughed at me for suggesting laser communication as the future. "No spying, very high speed, very wide bandwidth!" and he effectively answered "Line of sight, irreliable, no need for speed and just use satellite".
A yagi pointed skywards should be hidable inside the house, so I guess he's somewhat right.
Phased arrays which are flat or half domes are compact and don't look like anything from air. If you're clever, you can integrate these into a PV panel.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/26/2013 03:20 AM, Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:
A yagi pointed skywards should be hidable inside the house, so I guess he's somewhat right.
Possibly a dish, too. A good place to start research: http://www.arrl.org/limited-space-and-indoor-antenna - -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] Developer, Project Byzantium: http://project-byzantium.org/ PGP: 0x807B17C1 / 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1 WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault." --Harry Dresden -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlJJz1AACgkQO9j/K4B7F8EFUACgwYhWbTFgMhdnt6ZNggsy+Kzm EeoAoOtvRbGslYgZR374gR+S0idkPwOc =Xwr0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
... I'm optimizing against people who walk up, and dismantle your wireless mesh, or down the Internet in your country.
down the Internet; the mesh lives on. down the mesh? hope you've got capacity for a truck roll to tens of millions!
... It's really hard to jam the sky, especially in VIS range.
not true. :/
On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 12:54 AM, coderman <coderman@gmail.com> wrote:
... It's really hard to jam the sky, especially in VIS range.
not true. :/
neutralizing space comms is like cutting transnational fiber: it's the telecommunications equivalent of "Global Thermonuclear War" - no "sane" actor will do it first. just because no one has done it yet, does not mean that it isn't easy! since unlike nuclear weapons, the technology for both of the above is readily available in the hands of the populace. knowledge and motivation are the only deterrents. mesh is much more robust in every aspect... presuming you can scale (there's always a catch...)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/26/2013 04:15 AM, coderman wrote:
mesh is much more robust in every aspect... presuming you can scale (there's always a catch...)
There are ways to make it more scalable but I don't think perfectly so. The question is, are 21st century people more willing to use a "send it and it'll get there" method ala the Net as it is now, or a "post it and we'll get it there if we have to teach carrier pigeons to use a tarot deck and a vuvuzula, though it might take a while" method (in other words, FidoNET-like). The latter gets the job done but whether or not people are willing to be patient in light of that kind of latency is a different question entirely. For what it's worth, Byzantium's working on a store-and-forward-like architecture (mobile clients to sort-of stationary mesh nodes with semi-persistent storage) for all of its apps (not just the microblog - thanks again, Richo!). As for the forward bit, we're working on a sufficiently generic implementation of the latter technique (which could use everything from amateur radio (as problematic as that might be) to sneakernet) to eventually synchronize all reachable nodes' content. Ways and means. - -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] Developer, Project Byzantium: http://project-byzantium.org/ PGP: 0x807B17C1 / 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1 WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault." --Harry Dresden -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlJJ2L8ACgkQO9j/K4B7F8HI4ACfSi+c4DIz8EvLGchfHSd9oBky KUUAnioGhI7zy9ZTobLnS4WOCxTl/4i9 =r2M9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 12:54:31AM -0700, coderman wrote:
On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:51 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
... I'm optimizing against people who walk up, and dismantle your wireless mesh, or down the Internet in your country.
down the Internet; the mesh lives on.
If the VPN bridges go down, you're back to mice and pumpkins. There are obvious values in urban-area public meshes, and long distance WLAN, but it's no way to deliver messages globally, even as simple as texting equivalent. The buck does definitely stop when surf is lapping at your toes. What is exactly is wrong with frequent fliers carrying smartphones with http://sourceforge.net/projects/bytewalla/ or similar? http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:541972/FULLTEXT01.pdf
down the mesh? hope you've got capacity for a truck roll to tens of millions!
... It's really hard to jam the sky, especially in VIS range.
not true. :/
You need to track a given small, rapidly moving patch of sky in realtime, whether by parabol dish, amateur astronomic instrument, or phased array flat plate or half-dome. The bird is serving hundreds or thousands people ground-side as it passes by. If you really want to jam all these at the same time you'll need a nuke. Taking out the bird from the ground turns a game of cat and mouse, if you're dumping phonesats by the satbusload -- these are short-lived, anyway, and need to be constantly replenished. Orbital denial against small cross-section targets in a really low orbit which can be replenished cheaply will make every country with space access very mad at you, which is dangerous to your health. None of the approaches are mutually exclusive. Use meshes, link them up via VPN tunnels across Internet, use DTN with avian carriers, or phonesats.
participants (4)
-
coderman -
Eugen Leitl -
Lodewijk andré de la porte -
The Doctor