Lavabit is supposed to be a zero knowledge mail provider.
If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. It is perfectly possible to make a email system where the provider knows very little, but you need to change the basic email protocols to do that. Even PGP isn't sufficient, since it doesn't protect key portions of the mail (To:, From:, Subject:, message length, etc) from observation.
If you receive normal email through SMTP, the provider must be able to read the email as it arrives. Similarly, if you offer a web interface to access, the provider must be able to read your email when you access it through the web interface, because the provider can always provide JavaScript that leaks any keys involved back to the server.
Clearly the operator of Lavabit received a national security letter or warrant which he objected to.
Now since Lavabit is based on normal mail protocols, the operator has the ability to see all the data when it comes in, and obviously with a warrant or NSL, the provider can be compelled to provide the information to the feds. But I suspect that the request was not just something mild ("This sleazebag's mail account") but something broader, given the reaction was to close down the service completely.
In any case, this is also a great reminder of why the cloud, especially US cloud providers, can't be trusted. Companies who care about security are going to have to abandon the cloud and go back to insourcing their infrastructure.
The Atlantic article is BAD. Not only is it a summary with no additional information (and information removed), but uses a bad and unrelated photograph!
Read the original article on Medium, and I strongly suggest that a Slashdot editor change the article link.
Although circumstantial, this implies one of two possibilities. Either Google is voluntarily looking for "suspicious" searches and reporting them to law enforcement, or law enforcement (using a warrant, a wiretap, a NSL, or similar) is either forcing Google to look for such suspicious searches or simply wiretapping Google.
The problem is the credible fear of a lifecycle attack is sufficient to require that such hardware be avoided. There is a reasonable fear that the chinese might try something using Lenovo kit, therefore the classified networks need to avoid it. Its the same reason why Huawei networking hardware is avoided in some circles.
Of course, with the NSA now clearly off the leash, US IT equipment is now in the same position. Microsoft clearly backdoored Skype to enable easy wiretapping, the NSA is reportedly hacking foreign networks to introduce monitoring (who knows, perhaps it was the NSA responsible for the Athens Affair?), and with any US Cloud service provider subject to PRISM-style requirements, US IT infrastructure is now in the same boat that the Chinese have been struggling with for years now.
Strongbox technically is very strong, without a doubt. But, being TOR based, it will be hard to use. Worse, a potential leaker not only must use their own computer (ideally a throwaway computer), but they can never have VISITED the Strongbox information page from work, because otherwise any leak to the New Yorker will be suspicious.
And Strongbox's information page drives Ghostery crazy! Not a good sign for a privacy tool.
Probably more important is general Operational Security, including burner phones and/or burner computers.
Julia Angwin has an excellent additional point: Physical mail (dropped in a random post-box with a bogus return address) is perhaps the best way for anonymous one-way communication. The USPS will record address information when asked by law enforcement, but (currently) doesn't record this on all mail. Thus there is no history and, even if there was, this can only be traced to the processing post office. Perhaps the best use of the mail is simply to send the reporter a burner phone preprogrammed so that the reporter can call your burner.
Yes, send your unwanted bitcoins here: 1FuckBTCqwBQexxs9jiuWTiZeoKfSo9Vyi
Overall, a general problem with BitCoin mining is that it is a classic "Red Queen's Race". The fixed rate of bitcoin addition means you can only get ahead at the cost of someone else. Which means, IF bitcoin succeeded, mining is effectively non-profit as the rather low barrier to entry (even ASIC rigs are only $2K) and no monopoly power means that the profit from mining gets, well, stripped out.
iMessage keeps messages secret from the carrier, but it can't keep the messages secret from the feds.
Apple has to be able to know the user's private key to allow them to log in new devices, at least when the user logs into Apple using their Apple password. And therefore, with a warrant, so can the police.
Now Apple could use a technique where your password is hashed one way to create your iMessage key, and hashed a different way to be sent to Apple for logging in. But this doen't seem likely, as a login to iCloud (using a user's apple Password) on the web interface sends the password to Apple where its hashed on their end for login validation. So unless the iPhone/Mac iCloud login uses a different technique, Apple must (at a minimum) be able to access the user's iMessage key when the user logs into Apple.
And its far more likely that Apple (and therefore the police with a search warrant) can get the user's iMessage key whenever they want.
Rather than having a phone that's designed to spill everything I do to Google, I get a phone designed to spill everything I do to both Google AND Facebook. Geez, loverly.
It's all a simple matter of area: With an electric vehicle my entire transportation energy usage can pretty much be covered with a small rooftop solar system. To do it with biofuels would require acres of space.
The problem is simple: Photosynthesis is just vastly less efficient than photo voltaic solar
a: An FFL7 (which is what Defense Distributed got), once they complete some additional tax paperwork, allows them to make and sell semiautomatic rifles like any other manufacturer. And there are lots of small manufacturers these days. Heck, there is one in Napa, CA, if you want a fine, vintage 2013 AR-15 with "Made in Napa, CA" printed on the side.
b: Plastic AR lower receivers are old news. There is a lot of panic buying of AR rifle components thanks to Dianne Feinstein's salesmanship, but the plastic lowers are readily available.
Distributed Defense's sales, if any, are going to be those wanting to support their R&D, as there is no way they can compete with the existing aluminum lowers, let alone existing plastic ones, on price or quality for a given price.
c: There are a lot of businesses which legally help you make your own gun. EG, you buy an 80% lower (a not completed lower receiver) which the ATF does not consider to be a gun and then you finish it yourself by renting some milling machine time and doing it yourself. Until its finished by the purchaser, its a paperweight, not a gun.
A circa 2006 computer is in the only ~5x-10x faster than a Raspberry Pi, and has a power cost on the order of 100-200W/hr. So a 2006-era computer, even free, costs ~$90/yr just in power if its left on.
Similarly, for a non-profit trying to be uber-cheap, why not just go with ChromeBooks? If you are in a position where you can have a network (e.g. like an office environment), they are cheap, and the office and so-on that are needed for productivity.
Such procedures only work for cold storage of Bitcoin: wallets where you have no access to them. Basically, the equivalent of a bank vault for gold: its there, its sitting, but you can't actually do anything with it. Worse, unlike a bank vault, you can't transfer the bitcoins while they are in this vault.
Therefore, the hedge fund's only strategy for these wallets is to buy BitCoins and sit on them. And do nothing. Which, if you believe in BitCoin, makes sense (the design is hyper-deflationary, so the only rational thing to do with BitCoins is to hold BitCoins), but thats hardly what you'd call a hedge-fund strategy.
So how can you call it a hedge fund when all it can do is buy & hold?
Whats the point? You're shoving many extra tons (between person and life support), and you have to put it on an orbit that brings it back home, and for a payload that can do little more than look out the window and go "ohh, pretty" while being irradiated for years outside of the protection of the Earth's magnetic field.
Even if the mission goes 100% to plan, the cancer risk alone is probably a death sentence for the two passengers.
Open access is ensuring that everyone can read your papers. All the other CC ones are about derivative work rights, which is orthogonal to open access.
In fact, its rather silly to even think of: Quoting papers is fair use, but modifying scientific papers? You don't want third parties modifying the papers: they can easily screw things up as the paper is only part of the process, there is also the data and analysis behind it.
So of the choices given, CC-BY-NC-ND is the only one that should be in that list.
The big reason that MegaUpload got into huge trouble is they structured things to create an incentive for piracy: those who uploaded "popular" files would earn $$$, and the "takedown" implemented by MegaUpload was deliberately defective: only taking down single URLs when, behind the scene, they kept the files available with different URLs. Thus the old MegaUpload deliberately created a structure to encourage and benefit from piracy.
If the new Mega drops this incentive structure, and their encryption eliminates the deduplication, they should be in much more solid shape.
We (David Moore, Vern Paxson, Stefan Savage, Colleen Shannon, Stuart Staniford, and myself) did the analysis of how it spread, including showing how it infected all the vulnerable systems in 10 minutes, and detailing flaws in the random number generator.
The 1080p Netflix service is only available when the ISP allows Netflix to deploy CDN (Content Delivery Network) nodes in the ISP's network.
Now true this is unfair to those ISPs who don't allow Netflix to deploy CDN nodes, but in general, CDNs save both the content provider and the ISP money: instead of traffic traversing the ISP's Internet connections, its served locally from the CDN nodes. So it acts to save the ISP money, not cost them. If 1080p videos are twice as large, but things are cached in the local network 75% of the time, the ISP sees substantial savings.
The only reason a major ISP would not want a Netflix node is that they are worried about Netflix competing with their (non Internet) TV services.
Overall, the Fox "article" is clear propaganda, written by and interviewing those who either, through ignorance or will, misunderstanding how CDNs operate.
I know I'm going to get -1 troll, but lets be honest here:
If NASA is about science, we need to leave the men on Earth. The science in NASA comes from the satellites in orbit, the probes through space, and the robotic landers. All the manned space flight does these days is suck up huge amounts of money, kill people, and produce scientific results that could either have been done by robots much more cheaply or are predicated on answering questions related to "what happens if you stick people in a 0-G environment for a long time..."
What could we learn about an asteroid from sending a person there that we wouldn't learn from sending a modern robot there? What could we learn from the moon or mars today that we couldn't learn from a robot?
For now, we should leave the manned space flight for rich tourists, and instead continue to develop our launchers and our robots.
The 3GS (which, unlike a cheap unlocked Android phone actually runs the latest version of the OS) can be had for $250 or less.
Of course, Apple (and, to be honest, the developers) are probably happier with the iPhone 4 level of specification, which is available for $0 on contract, so the same price-to-the-consumer as many Android phones.
The # of phones shipped is very impressive. We are now in a smart-phone market where there is just iOS and Android: everyone else is in the noise.
But the # of phones is orthoginal to which a developer would want to target. How many purchases per phone are made on Android vs iOS? Whats the competition? How easy is the development model? How homogenious is the installed base?
All these question are the ones the developers are actually asking, and market share really doesn't come into play very much.
Slashdot Mirror
Lavabit is supposed to be a zero knowledge mail provider.
If you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. It is perfectly possible to make a email system where the provider knows very little, but you need to change the basic email protocols to do that. Even PGP isn't sufficient, since it doesn't protect key portions of the mail (To:, From:, Subject:, message length, etc) from observation.
If you receive normal email through SMTP, the provider must be able to read the email as it arrives. Similarly, if you offer a web interface to access, the provider must be able to read your email when you access it through the web interface, because the provider can always provide JavaScript that leaks any keys involved back to the server.
Clearly the operator of Lavabit received a national security letter or warrant which he objected to.
Now since Lavabit is based on normal mail protocols, the operator has the ability to see all the data when it comes in, and obviously with a warrant or NSL, the provider can be compelled to provide the information to the feds. But I suspect that the request was not just something mild ("This sleazebag's mail account") but something broader, given the reaction was to close down the service completely.
In any case, this is also a great reminder of why the cloud, especially US cloud providers, can't be trusted. Companies who care about security are going to have to abandon the cloud and go back to insourcing their infrastructure.
Which is being pointed out by others on twitter: Some random neighbor called in "these people are suspicious".
No comment yet reported from the local PD which sent the investigators.
The Atlantic article is BAD. Not only is it a summary with no additional information (and information removed), but uses a bad and unrelated photograph!
Read the original article on Medium, and I strongly suggest that a Slashdot editor change the article link.
Although circumstantial, this implies one of two possibilities. Either Google is voluntarily looking for "suspicious" searches and reporting them to law enforcement, or law enforcement (using a warrant, a wiretap, a NSL, or similar) is either forcing Google to look for such suspicious searches or simply wiretapping Google.
The problem is the credible fear of a lifecycle attack is sufficient to require that such hardware be avoided. There is a reasonable fear that the chinese might try something using Lenovo kit, therefore the classified networks need to avoid it. Its the same reason why Huawei networking hardware is avoided in some circles.
Of course, with the NSA now clearly off the leash, US IT equipment is now in the same position. Microsoft clearly backdoored Skype to enable easy wiretapping, the NSA is reportedly hacking foreign networks to introduce monitoring (who knows, perhaps it was the NSA responsible for the Athens Affair?), and with any US Cloud service provider subject to PRISM-style requirements, US IT infrastructure is now in the same boat that the Chinese have been struggling with for years now.
Strongbox technically is very strong, without a doubt. But, being TOR based, it will be hard to use. Worse, a potential leaker not only must use their own computer (ideally a throwaway computer), but they can never have VISITED the Strongbox information page from work, because otherwise any leak to the New Yorker will be suspicious.
And Strongbox's information page drives Ghostery crazy! Not a good sign for a privacy tool.
Probably more important is general Operational Security, including burner phones and/or burner computers.
Julia Angwin has an excellent additional point: Physical mail (dropped in a random post-box with a bogus return address) is perhaps the best way for anonymous one-way communication. The USPS will record address information when asked by law enforcement, but (currently) doesn't record this on all mail. Thus there is no history and, even if there was, this can only be traced to the processing post office. Perhaps the best use of the mail is simply to send the reporter a burner phone preprogrammed so that the reporter can call your burner.
Yes, send your unwanted bitcoins here: 1FuckBTCqwBQexxs9jiuWTiZeoKfSo9Vyi
Overall, a general problem with BitCoin mining is that it is a classic "Red Queen's Race". The fixed rate of bitcoin addition means you can only get ahead at the cost of someone else. Which means, IF bitcoin succeeded, mining is effectively non-profit as the rather low barrier to entry (even ASIC rigs are only $2K) and no monopoly power means that the profit from mining gets, well, stripped out.
Its someone stupid enough to think a Senator opens his own mail. (Shamelessly stolen from Twitter)
Oh, and thanks to @SteveBellovin for the suggestion on how Apple could (but does not seem) to do things in a secure manner.
iMessage keeps messages secret from the carrier, but it can't keep the messages secret from the feds.
Apple has to be able to know the user's private key to allow them to log in new devices, at least when the user logs into Apple using their Apple password. And therefore, with a warrant, so can the police.
Now Apple could use a technique where your password is hashed one way to create your iMessage key, and hashed a different way to be sent to Apple for logging in. But this doen't seem likely, as a login to iCloud (using a user's apple Password) on the web interface sends the password to Apple where its hashed on their end for login validation. So unless the iPhone/Mac iCloud login uses a different technique, Apple must (at a minimum) be able to access the user's iMessage key when the user logs into Apple.
And its far more likely that Apple (and therefore the police with a search warrant) can get the user's iMessage key whenever they want.
Rather than having a phone that's designed to spill everything I do to Google, I get a phone designed to spill everything I do to both Google AND Facebook. Geez, loverly.
It's all a simple matter of area: With an electric vehicle my entire transportation energy usage can pretty much be covered with a small rooftop solar system. To do it with biofuels would require acres of space.
The problem is simple: Photosynthesis is just vastly less efficient than photo voltaic solar
a: An FFL7 (which is what Defense Distributed got), once they complete some additional tax paperwork, allows them to make and sell semiautomatic rifles like any other manufacturer. And there are lots of small manufacturers these days. Heck, there is one in Napa, CA, if you want a fine, vintage 2013 AR-15 with "Made in Napa, CA" printed on the side.
b: Plastic AR lower receivers are old news. There is a lot of panic buying of AR rifle components thanks to Dianne Feinstein's salesmanship, but the plastic lowers are readily available.
You can even get a 5-pack for $400!.
Distributed Defense's sales, if any, are going to be those wanting to support their R&D, as there is no way they can compete with the existing aluminum lowers, let alone existing plastic ones, on price or quality for a given price.
c: There are a lot of businesses which legally help you make your own gun. EG, you buy an 80% lower (a not completed lower receiver) which the ATF does not consider to be a gun and then you finish it yourself by renting some milling machine time and doing it yourself. Until its finished by the purchaser, its a paperweight, not a gun.
d: Some guy has even managed to do a home-made polymer lower using molding techniques.
A circa 2006 computer is in the only ~5x-10x faster than a Raspberry Pi, and has a power cost on the order of 100-200W/hr. So a 2006-era computer, even free, costs ~$90/yr just in power if its left on.
Similarly, for a non-profit trying to be uber-cheap, why not just go with ChromeBooks? If you are in a position where you can have a network (e.g. like an office environment), they are cheap, and the office and so-on that are needed for productivity.
Such procedures only work for cold storage of Bitcoin: wallets where you have no access to them. Basically, the equivalent of a bank vault for gold: its there, its sitting, but you can't actually do anything with it. Worse, unlike a bank vault, you can't transfer the bitcoins while they are in this vault.
Therefore, the hedge fund's only strategy for these wallets is to buy BitCoins and sit on them. And do nothing. Which, if you believe in BitCoin, makes sense (the design is hyper-deflationary, so the only rational thing to do with BitCoins is to hold BitCoins), but thats hardly what you'd call a hedge-fund strategy.
So how can you call it a hedge fund when all it can do is buy & hold?
Whats the point? You're shoving many extra tons (between person and life support), and you have to put it on an orbit that brings it back home, and for a payload that can do little more than look out the window and go "ohh, pretty" while being irradiated for years outside of the protection of the Earth's magnetic field.
Even if the mission goes 100% to plan, the cancer risk alone is probably a death sentence for the two passengers.
Open access is ensuring that everyone can read your papers. All the other CC ones are about derivative work rights, which is orthogonal to open access.
In fact, its rather silly to even think of: Quoting papers is fair use, but modifying scientific papers? You don't want third parties modifying the papers: they can easily screw things up as the paper is only part of the process, there is also the data and analysis behind it.
So of the choices given, CC-BY-NC-ND is the only one that should be in that list.
The big reason that MegaUpload got into huge trouble is they structured things to create an incentive for piracy: those who uploaded "popular" files would earn $$$, and the "takedown" implemented by MegaUpload was deliberately defective: only taking down single URLs when, behind the scene, they kept the files available with different URLs. Thus the old MegaUpload deliberately created a structure to encourage and benefit from piracy.
If the new Mega drops this incentive structure, and their encryption eliminates the deduplication, they should be in much more solid shape.
I didn't know. So here's a Non paywalled copy.
We (David Moore, Vern Paxson, Stefan Savage, Colleen Shannon, Stuart Staniford, and myself) did the analysis of how it spread, including showing how it infected all the vulnerable systems in 10 minutes, and detailing flaws in the random number generator.
Our article eventually appeared in IEEE Security & Privacy.
The 1080p Netflix service is only available when the ISP allows Netflix to deploy CDN (Content Delivery Network) nodes in the ISP's network.
Now true this is unfair to those ISPs who don't allow Netflix to deploy CDN nodes, but in general, CDNs save both the content provider and the ISP money: instead of traffic traversing the ISP's Internet connections, its served locally from the CDN nodes. So it acts to save the ISP money, not cost them. If 1080p videos are twice as large, but things are cached in the local network 75% of the time, the ISP sees substantial savings.
The only reason a major ISP would not want a Netflix node is that they are worried about Netflix competing with their (non Internet) TV services.
Overall, the Fox "article" is clear propaganda, written by and interviewing those who either, through ignorance or will, misunderstanding how CDNs operate.
I know I'm going to get -1 troll, but lets be honest here:
If NASA is about science, we need to leave the men on Earth. The science in NASA comes from the satellites in orbit, the probes through space, and the robotic landers. All the manned space flight does these days is suck up huge amounts of money, kill people, and produce scientific results that could either have been done by robots much more cheaply or are predicated on answering questions related to "what happens if you stick people in a 0-G environment for a long time..."
What could we learn about an asteroid from sending a person there that we wouldn't learn from sending a modern robot there? What could we learn from the moon or mars today that we couldn't learn from a robot?
For now, we should leave the manned space flight for rich tourists, and instead continue to develop our launchers and our robots.
Well, actually, apple can come close.
The 3GS (which, unlike a cheap unlocked Android phone actually runs the latest version of the OS) can be had for $250 or less.
Of course, Apple (and, to be honest, the developers) are probably happier with the iPhone 4 level of specification, which is available for $0 on contract, so the same price-to-the-consumer as many Android phones.
The # of phones shipped is very impressive. We are now in a smart-phone market where there is just iOS and Android: everyone else is in the noise.
But the # of phones is orthoginal to which a developer would want to target. How many purchases per phone are made on Android vs iOS? Whats the competition? How easy is the development model? How homogenious is the installed base?
All these question are the ones the developers are actually asking, and market share really doesn't come into play very much.
Lets see, if you live in the UK and have a TV you have to pay it, and if you don't its a criminal offense.
Sounds like a tax to me