HN user

midas007

618 karma

I wanted to see what HN was like starting fresh with no karma in 2013.

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github.com 12y ago

LibreSSL Portable (not part of OpenBSD) is bringing LibreSSL to other platforms

midas007
1pts0
github.com 12y ago

LibreSSL Portable (not affiliated with LibreSSL/OpenBSD)

midas007
1pts0
cdn.rawgit.com 12y ago

Show HN: tarsnap estimated cost calculator

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5pts0
github.com 12y ago

LibreSSL nearly able to build on OS X

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6pts0
www.openssl.org 12y ago

OpenSSL welcomes a new developer - Steve Marquess

midas007
2pts0
gist.github.com 12y ago

Script to fetch LibreSSL straight from CVS

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1pts0
twitter.com 12y ago

Gem install will soon be significantly faster, thanks to tenderlove 💙💚💜

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github.com 12y ago

Sidekiq 3.0.0 released

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3pts0
www.foreignpolicy.com 12y ago

How Emperor Alexander Militarized American Cyberspace

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veridicalsystems.com 12y ago

Steve Marquess of OpenSSL on how FIPS validation supports NSA backdoors

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www.theguardian.com 12y ago

Costco throwing away a million jars of peanut butter

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1pts0
twitter.com 12y ago

"@rabite, who is in solitary confinement ... isn't allowed to have books"

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3pts0
arstechnica.com 12y ago

California anti-game-violence legislator arrested on bribery charges

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1pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

HN PSA : Check your ruby gem signatures

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1pts0
github.com 12y ago

Unicorn Time – Popcorn Time lives on

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4pts1
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask NH: Do we need Popcorn Time or Flattr for music with friends?

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1pts0
sumire-uesaka-parallax-view.tumblr.com 12y ago

Insanely awesome japanese video game, youtube rock video

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1pts0
twitter.com 12y ago

WhatsApp encryption fail

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2pts1
github.com 12y ago

Def self.❨╯°□°❩╯︵┻━┻

midas007
2pts0
github.com 12y ago

Ruby gem i18n_data updated

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1pts1
github.com 12y ago

Sign your Ruby gems: gem install waxseal -P HighSecurity

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20pts5
rubygems.org 12y ago

Rails 4.0.4 released

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4pts0
christophermanning.org 12y ago

Voronoi Diagram with Force Directed Nodes and Delaunay Links

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2pts0
github.com 12y ago

Acts_as_enterprisey - slow down Rails apps randomly to justify consulting fees

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2pts2
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

How to use GPG to sign arbitrary text (like web contact emails)

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1pts0
groups.google.com 12y ago

Rails 4.0.2 multiple vulnerabilities (4.0.3 released)

midas007
1pts0
cnswww.cns.cwru.edu 12y ago

GNU Readline 6.3 released

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1pts0
github.com 12y ago

HN is using SPDY. Woot.

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1pts1
gist.github.com 12y ago

Pleasant neckbeard installer for docker on Ubuntu LTS server 12.04.4 amd64

midas007
1pts0
gist.github.com 12y ago

Ubuntu LTS 12.04.4 stable installs linux-image-generic-lts-saucy by default

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1pts1
You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

That's the whole point of OTP as an imaginary construction!

It's a way to take any block cipher and turn it into a stream cipher with the power of XOR.

(I'm only going to ask this nicely once: cease and desist stalking and harassment.)

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Don't need your "help," don't care.

"It's unreasonable to debate with an unreasonable person."

Bye.

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Absolutely not, that would NOT SCALE.

Again, you're making accusations, shifting the conversation without providing evidence. Talking with you is pointless.

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Unsafe for what, how? You're making all sorts of claims and now an accusation without backing them up with a shred of evidence.

XTS is only useful for FDE, everything else should look for simpler constructions.

Maybe you need to read:

http://cactus.eas.asu.edu/partha/Teaching/539-CommonFiles/Cr...

Would really appreciated if you would know you're talking about and provide evidence before saying "it's wrong" or "it's bad advice."

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Yes it does, and it's still CTR.

Further, every solution is going to have other machinery solving specific concerns.

You don't call XTS something else because you've used scrypt or PBKDF2 as the PBKDF.

Work is work.

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

That's trivial to add on, outside of CTR.

You have a system of keys derived from a master key. Too many bytes encrypted with one key? Use a new key for subsequent writes.

(And for god's sake use a PBKDF to derive a master key from a password, don't memcpy() it directly.)

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Indistinguishable from a PRF A good block cipher satisfied this property, otherwise it's not a PRF and insecure.

Hair-splitting, really. Actual OTP is an imaginary construction that requires an endless supply of truly random bits that have to be securely stored or somehow recreated during decryption. It shifts the hard part to that fn, and just XORs the result with the pt or ct block.

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Fixed.

That's beyond the scope of which mode, but it's important. However the less code one has, the fewer places there are for things to hide.

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

Pretty hilariously wrong, and you know it.

Supposed OTP constructions are defined as

e(i) == E(...) ^ m(i)

m(i) == D(...) ^ e(i)

where E(...) = D(...)

and where ... doesnt contain any of the following

e(j) for any j

m(k) for any k

j and k in same domain as i

Then, take a look at CTR...

CTR is E(i) = blockcipher(key, nonce . i) and D(i) = E(i)

e(i) == blockcipher(key, nonce . i) ^ m(i)

m(i) == blockcipher(key, nonce . i) ^ e(i)

(i == counter, since it's the same in this example where counter and blocks start at the same number)

Therefore CTR is an OTP.

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

? What's wrong with CTR? CTR is basically an OTP. Being OTP, encryption and decryption are basically the same construction (thank you XOR).

    cipherblockdata = blockcipher(key, nonce . block #) ^ plainblockdata
    plainblockdata = blockcipher(key, nonce . block #) ^ cipherblockdata
If MAC is needed, that can happen after encrypting, before decrypting. (Needed if bytes traverse network, but maybe not for local disk or file encryption unless.)

Edit fixed my maths:

You Don't Want XTS 12 years ago

TL;DR For random-seek block encryption, don't use XTS, use CTR.

It's simple. I like simple maths and code, it's less to screw up and less for implementations to screw up. For example, I don't trust EC or GCM, even if some people thinks they're the new hotness, because complexity creates more opportunities for obfuscation and puts the code further out of reach of the already few eyeballs actually (or not) looking at it.

Maybe 'cpervica explain why

"and the 'sploit can be mitigated before bringing it online to the outside world"

You should read more carefully.

Also, keeping people waiting without an ETA for a down service because you're learning isn't going to result in happy customers.

Furthermore, whomever is running these boxes needs to deploy NIDS and HIDS and properly secure their boxes, because clearly they don't understand what an attack surface is.

Mountain View (for obvious reasons I guess): Google Express.

But really, what difference is there over just extracting the functionality of local courier into a stand-alone global service with an web presence, API, support, backoffice fleet management/dispatching and so forth? All FedEx and UPS have to do to compete with this is send drivers into stores.

Nope. It is what it is: capital-intensive research that is hard and it takes a long time to come up with a molecule that will stop an infection without killing or disabling the patient. That can't be done last minute like in the movies.

FYI: One of the last-ditch antibiotics (I forget the name) has a side-effect of permanently damaging hearing. I have to basically yell at 95 yo grandmother for her to hear me. :)

That's part of it, but this is something governments have to take leadership on right now. That will only happen with direct pressure. Waiting until it's the leading cause of death will be too late, because of drug development pipeline timeframes.

It doesn't have to be that way, and waiting around for "someone else to handle it" will likely lead to a Tragedy of the Commons.

Call your representatives [US: 0,1] or regional government representative (I just called my senator, and on hold for house rep now), tell them we need an emergency crash program to develop new, tightly-regulated antibiotics so that infection doesn't become the leading cause of deaths in 2025. Because it takes years and billions to develop new antibiotics, this is something companies will not pursue on their own initiative. If not, it'll be a return to the 19th century. Good luck with that.

[0] http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

[1] http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...

Exactly. But because of the difficulty, time and capital requirements, this is something that can't be left to the market economics. It will be too late by the time we need them because of the years it takes to develop a single new drug. This is a "going to the moon" type thing that needs to happen if we intend to survive. Because that's what's at stake.

On a personal note, my mom is still under the weather, having stuck to three different courses of antibiotics for a simple nasal infection.

It's frightening when this becomes the norm, not the exception because we're basically running out of options by natural selection moving faster than research.

We need a crash program to develop antibiotics before it's too late.

TL;DR: If owned, start from a fresh base system.

I think you meant "someone gets privileged code execution," which is a sensible assumption. Even still, app-permission (less than privileged) code execution can still do damage like host malware, IRC dumpsites/bot control, diodes, tor relays, vandalize web properties, etc.

The only way to know that a system is no longer owned for certain is to reimage it to a known good state. Doing anything less is tons of work, and unlikely to catch everything (rootkits, backdoors, hidden services, replaced system files, etc.). Even when running HIDS, HIDS cant be trusted because rootkits can hide things from it because it's running from the system with a possibly infected kernel. So, it turns out reimaging is less work and more trustworthy if the box is rebuilt and the 'sploit can be mitigated before bringing it online to the outside world (build and patch offline to avoid getting re-owned).

Popularity stats/maths is easy to explain:

it's like a differential equation, dsuccess/dt ~ success

Just the same as new stories on HN, where a single upvote makes it much more likely to take off.

The reason is that (almost) no one wants to take the risk of being "first": whether at an empty restaurant, liking, kickstarter, comments, etc. But then as more people pile on, it increases faster.

So Thomas, it's not a tautology... it's human behavior. :-)