Archive for the ‘crypto’ Category

Bitcoin scaling problems

Friday, June 14th, 2013

When bitcoin was first proposed, I argued that the proposed algorithm failed to scale.

Well, when getting started, scaling does not matter.  Now, however, a bitcoin wallet is starting to cost substantial bandwidth and processing power.  There are plans to address this, but I am underwhelmed by those plans. The proposed plans will make bitcoin more centralized, and will still have scaling issues.

Seems to me that we need an algorithm where no one computer needs to keep a copy of all transactions, or even a complete listing of who owns what coins, so as to maintain scaling all the way to operating all of the world’s transactions, and full decentralization both. (more…)

All your skypes belong to Microsoft

Friday, May 17th, 2013

All Your Skype Are Belong To Us

Microsoft is reading everything you write

Skype used to be the most secure instant messaging system and I have frequently recommended it on this basis. Microsoft, under Bill Gates, used to be the big company most willing to protect user’s privacy. Skype was recently purchased by Microsoft.

Heise Security then reproduced the events by sending two test HTTPS URLs, one containing login information and one pointing to a private cloud-based file-sharing service. A few hours after their Skype messages, they observed the following in the server log:

65.52.100.214 – – [30/Apr/2013:19:28:32 +0200]
“HEAD /…/login.html?user=tbtest&password=geheim HTTP/1.1”

… In visiting these pages, Microsoft made use of both the login information and the specially created URL for a private cloud-based file-sharing service.

(more…)

Bitcoin as a speculative bet

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

Charting bitcoin, it looks good, if you are inclined to gamble on charts.  The recent collapse from two hundred dollars tested support at the hundred dollar mark, found plenty of support around there.  By and large, it is a good idea to buy at major support levels, since a speculative property is a lot more likely to go up than to break through the support level.   If it did not penetrate the support level for very long during the panic, likely will not do so now.

But I am an intrinsic value investor.  What is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin? (more…)

Free reaction.la email addresses

Friday, November 2nd, 2012

For as long as comments remain open on this post, you can get a free someone@reaction.la email address, such that any mail sent to someone@reaction.la will be forwarded to the address requested in your comment.

I have discovered that yahoo does not like people registering email addresses by proxy, and google likes one true name to rule them all, insisting on it as part of the android operating system, among other places.  My intent is to obstruct such identity collecting activities by obscurity.  This redirect is not guaranteed to last forever, though it will last a long time, and is not secure against a serious adversary.  I will eventually delete the comments, so that people cannot discover the true email address by simply reading the comments unless they are quick off the mark.  Not all names are available.  There are already quite a lot of active someone@reaction.la email addresses.  I don’t intend to supply such obscurity to large numbers of people, because I am lazy, and because if I did, it would no longer be obscure, and  so am not going to put up an automatic system to support large numbers of addresses.

This, like voting for Cthulhu, is merely a gesture of protest, pointing in the direction of the need to change the world, rather than an actual attempt to change the world:  To actually change the world, use cypherpunks remailers and tor.

Google is evil

Sunday, May 8th, 2011

Firefox reports your IP and all nearby wifi systems to Google. Thunderbird reports your IP to Google. From the nearby wifi systems, Google can locate you relative to nearby wifi points.. From a multitude of browsers reporting in, it can locate wifi systems relative to each other. When it does ground level photo drives for Google Earth, it locates wifi systems relative to streets and houses. Knowing the location of some wifi systems relative to streets and houses, it can locate all wifi systems relative to streets and houses. So when you launch a search for a sexual preference, or a politically incorrect fact, Google can tell where you are sitting, what house you are in, when you search for unapproved knowledge. It keeps this information forever.

The intent is that when you search for a restaurant or some such, Google will know to provide information about local restaurants. But Google notoriously plays ball with governments. More sinister uses are also possible. And why does Google need to know the geographic location where your email is coming from?

To turn this off:

  • Mozilla Firefox
    • Type ‘about:config’ in the address bar
    • Click through the warning
    • Type ‘geo.’ in the search box. A list of items appears
    • Doubleclick on the geo.enabled item till it reads ‘False’
    • Rightclick on the ‘geo.wifi.uri’ item and select ‘Modify’
    • Modify the item from evil google to ‘http://localhost’
  • Mozilla Thunderbird
    • Select Tools/Options/Avanced/General/Config Editor
    • click through the warning
    • type ‘geo.’ in the search box. A list of items appears
    • Doubleclick on the geo.enabled item till it reads ‘False’

Google piously proclaims:

Your privacy is extremely important to us, and Firefox never shares your location without your permission.

This is of course a lie. Firefox never shares your location to advertisers without your permission – but it does continually send your location to Google without your permission.

If your privacy was actually important to Google, the browser would only send this information to Google when advertisers requested it and you gave them permission.

Lara Logan and the media rules

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

Caroline Glick analyzes the coverage:

Identity politics revolve around the narrative of victimization. For adherents to identity politics, the victim is not a person, but a member of a privileged victim group. That is, the status of victimhood is not determined by facts, but by membership in an identity group. Stories about victims are not dictated by facts. Victim stories are tailored to fit the victim. Facts, values and individual responsibility are all irrelevant.

In light of this, a person’s membership in specific victim groups is far more important than his behavior. And there is a clear pecking order of victimhood in identity politics.

Anti-American Third World national, religious and ethnic groups are at the top of the victim food chain. They out-victim everyone else.

After them come the Western victims: Racial minorities, women, homosexuals, children and animals.

Israelis, Jews, Americans, white males and rich people are the predetermined perpetrators. No matter how badly they are victimized, brave reporters will go to heroic lengths to ignore, underplay or explain away their suffering.

In cases when victim groups are attacked by victim groups – for instance when Iraqis were attacked by Saddam, or Palestinians are attacked by the PA, the media tend to ignore the story.

When members of Western victim groups are attacked by Third World victims, the story can be reported, but with as little mention of the identity of the victim-perpetrators as possible. So it was with coverage of Logan and the rest of the foreign reporters assaulted in Egypt. They were attacked by invisible attackers with no identities, no barbaric values, no moral responsibility, and no criminal culpability.

Diebold voting machines horribly wrong

Saturday, August 16th, 2008

xkcd gets it exactly right

One mode, and it is secure

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Ian Grigg correctly argues that any internet protocol that has an insecure mode can never be made secure, thus if security is introduced as after thought, will never be secure.

Https is exactly such a bolted on afterthought, and to use it one must pay money, and suffer substantial inconvenience. Further, it is a woefully inefficient protocol, so people always try to minimize their use of it to only what is truly necessary, which they are unlikely to ever do correctly. Further, those to whom one must pay money are themselves a point of failure, not a source of security.

Iang attempts, and fails, to make his website conform to the one mode principle. For a blog to implement “the one mode and it is secure” paradigm it must be accessed by https, and accessing it by http should generate an 301 redirect to the https site. The trouble is, that when one reaches the https site, the site has to have a certificate whose root is accepted by the big browsers, typically a Verisign certificate. Such certificates are a pain to get, and a pain to install. And so, no one ever does. Iang has not got a big name certificate in the appropriate name for his web site, so accessing his site correctly generates no end of alarming error dialogs.