February 2017 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

Charlie Shrem: Back in da Biz!
by grarpamp 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Disrupting Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUCJQLpy8ms [AMA] with Charlie Shrem and Jason Granger about Mainstreet Fund - the 1st tokenized asset on the Ethereum blockchain that pays out cash flow distributions from the companies in the portfolio. https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/5rok7s/ama_join_us_friday_feb_3… Jason Granger and Charlie Shrem discuss Intellisys, crowdfunding, and blockchain securities on BU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TUyH31-qgI ImNOTYourLawyer 2-3-2017 Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_sUEZ8fU5c Episode 753: Blockchain Gang http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/02/10/514577243/episode-753-blockcha…

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Re: Trump Says, 'Look What's Happening In Sweden.' Sweden Asks, 'Wait, What?'
by John Newman 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

> On Feb 20, 2017, at 11:25 PM, James A. Donald <jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: > > Attached are Sweden's rape statistics. > > Which you are not going to hear or see on the Counterfeit News Network, but you will get alerted to by Trump. > <Clipboard01.gif> I realize nuance and, you know, reading and thinking about something, don't come naturally to your or your ilk, but i'll go ahead and repost the following link: http://www.factcheck.org/2017/02/trump-exaggerates-swedish-crime/ Henrik Selin, head of the Department for Intercultural Dialogue at the Swedish Institute, told us the surge of asylum seekers in 2015 has created challenges for Sweden, but he said reports from right-leaning media about a surge of immigrant crime have been “highly exaggerated.” “So many things are being claimed,” Selin said. “If you look at the facts, there is nothing to support the claim that the crime rate took off after the 160,000 came in 2015.” Crime has generally been trending down for the last decade, but there was a small uptick last year, he said. While it’s true that immigrants have been over-represented among those committing crimes — particularly in some suburban communities heavily populated by immigrants, he said — the issue of crime and immigration is complex. Upon closer examination, Selin said, researchers have found that the crime is more closely associated with factors like joblessness, poverty and exclusion from society. “It is not clear that immigrants are susceptible to committing such crimes,” he said. Nor is it at all true, Selin said, that there are so-called no-go zones where police are afraid to patrol, or where locals have instituted sharia law, as Horowitz claimed. Selin’s refutation was echoed by Felipe Estrada Dörner, a criminology professor at Stockholm University, interviewed by the Washington Post. But that is not to say there are not some “challenges in the short term … that we need to deal with,” Selin said. Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminology professor at Stockholm University, said that claims about surging violence due to immigration are “lies.” “But really good lies always have a little bit of truth in them,” Sarnecki told us in an email. “So also in this case.” Sarnecki noted that Sweden has a “very broad legal definition of rape” and that “Swedish women are aware of their rights and have a high propensity to report sexual assaults, and we calculate crimes in a different manner than comparable countries.”

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Java and Python have unpatched firewall-crossing FTP SNAFU
by Cecilia Tanaka 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Hey, guys! Did you know something about this vulnerability, please? Ugh! :P # Java and Python have unpatched firewall-crossing FTP SNAFU https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/21/java_python_ftp_code_vulnerable/?m… Thanks in advance! <3 Ceci PS: - Yep, I am late with millions of private and public answers, I know. Sorry, I am having a mix of bad hair day + bad news day + bad wi-fi day + bad notebook day + God, I do hate the Brazilian Summer! day. Believe me, you do *not* want to talk with me in this moment. At least, not without muuuuch ice-cream! ;) ------- "Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live." - Mae Jemison

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“Secure” Cloudflare-protected Trump website defaced by hacker claiming to be from Iraq
by Razer 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/secure-trump-website-defaced-by-ha… Meanwhile, Trump's multiple security faux-pas triggers call for House investigation Representative Ted Lieu, a congressman from Los Angeles County, California, led fourteen other House Democrats on Friday in urging the House Government Oversight Committee to investigate "troubling reports" of President Donald Trump's apparently poor security practices and the potential danger to national security posed by them—including his continued use of an unsecured Android device to post to Twitter, discussion of sensitive information (including nuclear strategy) in the restaurant at his Mar-A-Lago resort, and leaving classified material unlocked while visitors were in the Oval Office. In a letter to Oversight Committee chairman Jason Chaffetz and ranking Democratic member Elijah Cummings, the fifteen representatives wrote: > Referring to the complex problem of cybersecurity, President Trump recently said in an interview, "I’m not sure you have the kind of security that you need." We fully agree—which is why we are writing to request that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hold a hearing into troubling reports that the President is jeopardizing national security by egregiously failing to implement commonsense security measures across the board, from using an insecure, consumer-grade Android smartphone to discussing nuclear strategy openly in a dining room at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. Cybersecurity experts universally agree that an ordinary Android smartphone, which the President is reportedly using despite repeated warnings from the Secret Service, can be easily hacked. Lieu and the other signatories of the letter expressed concern that Trump's Android device, "most likely the Samsung Galaxy S3," is particularly vulnerable to attack, and that someone could alter the information the President viewed on it—which could "have a huge impact on his beliefs and actions." They also feared that someone could gain control of his Twitter account, "causing disastrous consequences for global stability," or use it as a listening device to pick up sensitive conversations. Also cited by the letter were photos from a recent White House visit by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich that showed a key still in the lock of a bag for classified material on Trump's desk. The photo was called out by Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico in this Twitter post: Additionally, Lieu and the other representatives expressed concern over the continued use of outside e-mail accounts hosted by the Republican National Committee, and compliance with federal records law. "Reports indicate that a political e-mail system used by senior White House staff was hacked in December by a Russian intelligence agency, yet again raising the prospect of the White House being monitored or influenced by unfriendly powers," Lieu and the others wrote. Federal law requires that all e-mails for official business on an outside e-mail system be forwarded or copied into a government e-mail system within 20 days. The letter calls for the Oversight Committee to look into whether the President is using an unsecured device, whether Trump and the White House staff have been properly briefed and trained on both information security and operational security, and if "the President and the Office of the President [can] ensure that there are no missing e-mails, communications, and technological exchanges—in other words, can they confirm they are not actively being monitored?" With links: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/trumps-apparent-string-of-secur…

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Swedish police featured in Fox News segment tell their story, and there IS NO "Crime Wave"
by Razer 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

AAMOF they were never even asked about Muslims at all: > ”I don’t understand why we are a part of the segment. The interview > was about something completely different to what Fox News and Horowitz > were talking about” http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter/swedish-police-featured-in-fox-news-se… ”We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible.” Trumps comments about Sweden during his rally in Melbourne, Florida, raised many questions, especially among Swedes who were quick to point out that nothing terror-related had happened in the country. The president later took to Twitter to clarify his statements, saying that he was referring to a segment on ”Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News. The segment featured the xenophobic filmmaker Ami Horowitz, maker of an alarmistic movie about Sweden. The movie, titled ”Stockholm Syndrome”, blames immigration as a direct cause of violence and rioting. Two Swedish police officers were interviewed in the film. Anders Göranzon and Jacob Ekström answered questions about how weapons are becoming more accessible. Horowitz also asked the officers about how crime has spread through cities. But the police officers now say that their answers were taken out of context, and are very critical of how their comments were portrayed on Fox News ”Tucker Carlson Tonight”. ”I don’t understand why we are a part of the segment. The interview was about something completely different to what Fox News and Horowitz were talking about”, says Anders Göranzon. Why were you interviewed? ”It was supposed to be about crime in high risk areas. Areas with high crime rates. There wasn’t any focus on migration or immigration”. How did you react to the news segment? ”We don’t stand behind it. It shocked us. He has edited the answers. We were answering completely different questions in the interview. This is bad journalism.” Anders Göranzon continues: ”It feels like hell. The real questions should be shown along with our answers. We don’t own the rights to the film, but the end result is that we don’t want to talk to journalists after this. We can’t trust each other.” Have you done anything to stop the news segment? ”We just saw it. What can we do? One thing is talking to you. The excerpt they showed doesn’t say anything, we answered a different question. We don’t stand behind what he says. He is a madman.” DN has tried to reach Mr. Ami Horowitz for a comment. On Sunday he published a statement on Facebook in regard to the reception of his report from Sweden: ”I think every media outlet across the globe covering my interview with Tucker Carlson and attacking the President is missing the point. Sweden is under assault because of the open door policy to Islamic immigration”.

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Building a new Tor that can resist next-generation state surveillance
by grarpamp 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

Tor is an imperfect privacy platform. Ars meets the researchers trying to replace it. ince Edward Snowden stepped into the limelight from a hotel room in Hong Kong three years ago, use of the Tor anonymity network has grown massively. Journalists and activists have embraced the anonymity the network provides as a way to evade the mass surveillance under which we all now live, while citizens in countries with restrictive Internet censorship, like Turkey or Saudi Arabia, have turned to Tor in order to circumvent national firewalls. Law enforcement has been less enthusiastic, worrying that online anonymity also enables criminal activity. Tor's growth in users has not gone unnoticed, and today the network first dubbed "The Onion Router" is under constant strain from those wishing to identify anonymous Web users. The NSA and GCHQ have been studying Tor for a decade, looking for ways to penetrate online anonymity, at least according to these Snowden docs. In 2014, the US government paid Carnegie Mellon University to run a series of poisoned Tor relays to de-anonymise Tor users. A 2015 research paper outlined an attack effective, under certain circumstances, at decloaking Tor hidden services (now rebranded as "onion services"). Most recently, 110 poisoned Tor hidden service directories were discovered probing .onion sites for vulnerabilities, most likely in an attempt to de-anonymise both the servers and their visitors. Enlarge / Who can forget the now-famous "Tor stinks" slide that was part of the Snowden trove of leaked docs. Cracks are beginning to show; a 2013 analysis by researchers at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), who helped develop Tor in the first place, concluded that "80 percent of all types of users may be de-anonymised by a relatively moderate Tor-relay adversary within six months." Despite this conclusion, the lead author of that research, Aaron Johnson of the NRL, tells Ars he would not describe Tor as broken—the issue is rather that it was never designed to be secure against the world’s most powerful adversaries in the first place. "It may be that people's threat models have changed, and it's no longer appropriate for what they might have used it for years ago," he explains. "Tor hasn't changed, it's the world that's changed." [continues with analysis and new tech examples for many pages...] Also, https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10156083409206509/

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Parallel wardialing
by grarpamp 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/YX-256-pool-gsm-sim-card_60571655761… Such Hotness ;)

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How to Run a Rogue Government Twitter Account With an Anonymous Email Address and a Burner Phone
by Razer 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

> > One of the first things Donald Trump did when he took office was > temporarily gag several federal agencies, forbidding them from tweeting. > > In response, self-described government workers created a wave of rogue > Twitter accounts that share real facts (not to be confused with > “alternative facts,” otherwise known as “lies”) about climate change > and science. As a rule, the people running these accounts chose to > remain anonymous, fearing retaliation — but, depending on how they > created and use their accounts, they are not necessarily anonymous to > Twitter itself, or to anyone Twitter shares data with. > > Anonymous speech is firmly protected by the First Amendment and the > Supreme Court, and its history in the U.S. dates to the Federalist > Papers, written in 1787 and 1788 under the pseudonym Publius by three > of the founding fathers. > > But the technical ability for people to remain anonymous on today’s > internet, where every scrap of data is meticulously tracked, is an > entirely different issue. The FBI, a domestic intelligence agency that > claims the power to spy on anyone based on suspicions that don’t come > close to probable cause, has a long, dark history of violating the > rights of Americans. And now it reports directly to President Trump, > who is a petty, revenge-obsessed authoritarian with utter disrespect > for the courts and the rule of law. > > In this environment, how easy is it to create and maintain a Twitter > account while preserving your anonymity — even from Twitter and any > law enforcement agency that may request its records? I tried to find > out, and documented all my steps. There are different ways to > accomplish this. If you plan on following these steps you should make > sure you understand the purpose of them, in case you need to > improvise. I also can’t guarantee that these techniques will protect > your anonymity — there are countless ways that things can go wrong, > many of them social rather than technical. But I hope you’ll at least > have a fighting chance at keeping your real identity private. > > For this exercise, I decided to pick a highly controversial political > topic: Facts. I believe that what we know about reality is based on > evidence that can be objectively observed. Thus, I created the > completely anonymous (until publishing this article, of course) > Twitter account @FactsNotAlt. > > Here’s how I did it. > > https://theintercept.com/2017/02/20/how-to-run-a-rogue-government-twitter-a…

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Miami Herald 2012: Details of Donald Trump's Mafia Connections
by Razer 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

DT's Palm Beach Homies <http://www.madcowprod.com/2016/03/09/donald-trump-palm-beach-homies/> aren't the ONLY #scumbums he hangs with. This is why US Libertarians LUVS THEM A TRUMP. He's proof that if they make it to the top of the feudal shitpile, crapitalism works for them, and them alone. High court reveals secret deal of Trump developer’s crimes Investors in a failed $200 million condo-hotel deal in Fort Lauderdale weren’ttold of a key developer’s criminal history. The courts kept it a secret. By Michael Sallah Dozens of explosive records released by the U.S. Supreme Court show a developer of the failed Trump tower in Fort Lauderdale helped put away dangerous Mafia soldiers — while prosecutors struck a secret deal to conceal his charges in a major scam with mob members. As he was awaiting sentencing in the $40 million stock swindle, Felix Sater and others were convincing investors to pour millions into the Trump resort, which later collapsed amid allegations of widespread fraud. The documents provide a rare glimpse of the deal reached by New York federal prosecutors that’s now being criticized by Trump deal investors who say they had a right to know Sater’s background before investing in the botched venture. More than 100 people lost millions in the once celebrated high-rise that’s now a chained-off, empty building on Fort Lauderdale’s popular beachfront strip. “The damage done to victims is incalculable,” said attorneys in a request to the court that they be allowed to unveil Sater’s criminal past in a civil racketeering case. The court, now in recess, could take up the petition when it returns later this year in what’s become a heated battle over the rights of judges to strip someone’s criminal case from public view. Sater, who owns a $4.8 million condo on Fisher Island, could not be reached for comment. Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, declined to be interviewed. The release of the records follows a bitter court fight over the delicate issue of protecting a key government witness versus disclosure to people who have a right to know. Although dozens of the newly released records are redacted — including Sater’s name — lawyers argue the court hid his racketeering conviction while he and others defrauded people of hundreds of millions in real estate deals — including projects bearing Trump’s name in South Florida and Phoenix. Sater, 46, is accused in a civil case of helping to hide millions from the failed Fort Lauderdale tower — and paying $1.5 million to a former mob associate for his role in the deal. When a former finance chief of the project team questioned his cut of the profits in 2007, he was told by Sater to “shut up or risk being killed if I caused trouble,” the chief said in an affidavit. Bayrock, the company where Sater was a top executive, has denied the allegations. Investors in the Trump International Hotel & Tower north of Las Olas Boulevard argue they were deprived of knowing Sater’s criminal past when they plunked down millions on the spectacular project — then Florida’s largest condo-hotel deal. At the time of the groundbreaking, Sater had not yet been sentenced in the securities scam in which he pleaded guilty to joining crime syndicate members in ripping off scores of people across the country. Five years earlier, he had another bad brush with the law: stabbing a man with a shattered glass during a bar fight, drawing a prison sentence. Joe Altschul, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer representing 75 condo buyers, blasted the court for agreeing to conceal Sater’s racketeering conviction. “Each of these purchasers had a right to know who they were dealing with,” he said. “It’s bad enough that they prop up Donald Trump as the developer, but then you find out it’s not Trump but a convicted felon who had already been charged in financial shenanigans.” Altschul said investors are now pushing for more details to uncover the demise of the $200 million project that missed construction deadlines and eventually went broke — months after Donald Trump stripped his name off the marquee in 2009. Altschul said two other Trump projects led by Sater and the developers failed in Phoenix and New York, costing millions. “That’s not a good percentage,” he said. Lawyers in the petition before the Supreme Court went a step further, saying the court in Brooklyn “illegally” sealed the case, and never ordered Sater to make restitution in the $40 million stock fraud. “[Sater’s] victims were deprived of their rights,” the brief states. “The courts must know that he has been emboldened to continue his frauds.” When reached on Tuesday, Richard Lerner, the lawyer who filed the petition, declined comment. The brief also claims the Sater case is among many under seal in the Eastern District of New York, “creating a covert dual justice system accountable to no one, without public notice.” But the judge who oversaw the Sater case from a decade ago defended the actions of the court, saying he needed to protect the safety of witnesses. Judge Leo Glasser blasted the lawyers for breaching the court rules, saying they overstepped their bounds in divulging Sater’s record and other highly sensitive information in a civil lawsuit — which has since been sealed. The judge said the lawyers had “knowingly and intentionally flouted” his order by “unilaterally deciding” to insert Sater’s pre-sentence report — a leaked document— into the suit. Paul Cassell, a former federal judge who has brought the case to the attention of Congress, said Glasser is just as responsible for the controversy. By sealing the case and not ordering Sater to pay back his victims in the stock fraud case, “the [court] illegally gave away millions to a criminal,” said Cassell, who joined an appeal of the case last year. Tom Julin, a First Amendment lawyer from Miami, said judicial circuits, including the one that takes in Florida, bans the practice of stripping court dockets from public view. “It’s the worst thing a judge can do,” he said. “In a day and age when economic crimes can affect massive amounts of people there’s a real danger in super sealing these kinds of judicial proceedings.” http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article1941682.html

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Hard to believe but Donald Trump is actually making America great again!
by Razer 20 Feb '17

20 Feb '17

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it looks like Trump is actually making America great again. Just look at the progress made since the election: 1. Unprecedented levels of ongoing civic engagement. 2. Millions of Americans now know who their state and federal representatives are without having to google. 3. Millions of Americans are exercising more. They're holding signs and marching every week. 4. Alec Baldwin is great again. Everyone's forgotten he's kind of a jerk. 5. The Postal Service is enjoying the influx cash due to stamps purchased by millions of people for letter and postcard campaigns. 6. Likewise, the pharmaceutical industry is enjoying record growth in sales of anti-depressants. 7. Millions of Americans now know how to call their elected officials and know exactly what to say to be effective. 8. Footage of town hall meetings is now entertaining. 9. Tens of millions of people are now correctly spelling words like emoluments, narcissist, fascist, misogynist, holocaust and cognitive dissonance. 10. Everyone knows more about the rise of Hitler than they did last year. 11. Everyone knows more about legislation, branches of power and how checks and balances work. 12. Marginalized groups are experiencing a surge in white allies. 13. White people in record numbers have just learned that racism is not dead. (See #6) 14. White people in record numbers also finally understand that Obamacare IS the Affordable Care Act. 15. Stephen Colbert's "Late Night" finally gained the elusive #1 spot in late night talk shows, and Seth Meyers is finding his footing as today's Jon Stewart. 16. "Mike Pence" has donated millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood since Nov. 9th. 17. Trump has succeeded where thousands of history teachers failed - now everybody knows who Frederick Douglass was. 18. Melissa FREAKING McCarthy. 19. Travel ban protesters put $24 million into ACLU coffers in just 48 hours, enabling them to hire 200 more attorneys. Lawyers are now heroes. 20. As people seek veracity in their news sources, respected news outlets are happily reporting a substantial increase in subscriptions, a boon to a struggling industry vital to our democracy. 21. Live streaming court cases and congressional sessions are now as popular as the Kardashians. 22. Massive cleanup of facebook friend lists. 23. People are reading classic literature again. Sales of George Orwell's "1984" increased by 10,000% after the inauguration. (Yes, that is true. 10,000%. 9th grade Lit teachers all over the country are now rock stars.) 24. More than ever before, Americans are aware that education is important. Like, super important. 25. Now, more than anytime in history, everyone believes that anyone can be President. Seriously, anyone. H/t Susan Keller https://www.facebook.com/susan.keller.967/posts/10210623396172892 Or at the Daily Kossack http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/2/19/1635581/--I-can-t-believe-I-m-sayin…

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