Give Huawei A Chance re: Spark 5G

Posted on by tom

According to the NZ Herald Spark has been warned of an impending Huawei ban by the GCSB!

Personally I'd like to see the evidence. They have delivered wireless in NZ and Australia for nearly 15 years.

Also, I'd rather our country reject them due to technical reasons rather than just racism/protectionism (if thats what it is).

If the equipment would pose a risk, what is it please? I'd love to know, I like that kind of detail. I heard it was more about vulns than backdoors.

Look, while I'm 100% open to the idea that Huawei routers and network equipment is crappy, vulnerable and has flaws, and can be remotely exploited etc, but I feel this move by , is jumping the gun. To be fair I can understand sensitive networks running "allied country routers" but we missed a good chance to learn what makes a good router. We don't make routers here in New Zealand, so I guess it must be due to our yankee spy friends and Cisco et al.

Basically its protectionism for US companies. Then again, cellphones definitely give you cancer and make you infertile as a man, so perhaps slowing down a little is a good thing? Recently I found out that America either lied when it said they found backdoors in their routers, or the NSA never provided the evidence to prove it.

Brislen added that the national security concerns surrounding Huawei look like "smoke and mirrors", with no hard evidence in public that scenarios such as data exfiltration to China or national-scale "off switches" are feasible. Source: The Register

Here's another story from The Register about how they loose a jury trial about a robot "trade secret" that wasn't even secret nor innovatory.

China has flaws and it's government sucks. But that's no reason to be racist or mean to Chinese companies. This is the perfect time for Telecom and Huawei both to offer to:

  • offer ablated chips for micro-photographic inspection
  • offer binary disassembly code for inspection
  • possibly even offer the source code up to inspectors
  • generally prove there are no back doors in the router

In my quest to end unreasonable government secrecy, I feel Huawei needs a fair trial. Because it would put to the test our ability to understand what network security actually means. rather than just ban it because it's from China, let's ban it for technical reasons and use those to hone our skills of analytics to apply to the other routers from Europe and USA or even a Linux one.

In Other Communist Related News

Recently a report came to light that says at least 10,000 were killed at Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989

Tiananmen-Massacre

China is one of the most evil countries in the world = Tiananmen Massacre

"Students linked arms but were mown down including soldiers. APCs then ran over bodies time and time again to make 'pie' and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains," said Mr Donald.

"Four wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted," he added.

Here is the top 100 NZ Government pages on Google about Huawei... a snapshot in time before it all goes to custard...

How to detect if a keylogger has been installed on your machine

Posted on by tom

A keystroke logger is the worst kind of malicious software (malware) you could possibly hope to be infected with. Why? Because it could be recording each key you type and sending it to a central server, which would include your messages and username passwords!

This is why in some cases a password manager can make your machine more secure: because you are typing your passwords less, if somehow you could an infection it would have less impact.

That point is debatable however, since one needs to be root to install one it's a good reason to have a guest account enabled on your computer if you ever plan to let a bad-ass criminal use it for 5 minutes while your making a cup of tea or similar.

How To Not Get Virus Infection

  • Before double-clicking, check you trust the source of the executable
    • Check the domain name, the person who sent etc
  • Provide to guest users a regular low-privilege user account
    • If a stranger needs to use your machine when you are not around, this will prevent them most badness if it's not an admin account
    • Saved my ass at least once, I know this much
    • Helpfully, this also logs all your web sessions out

How To Detect Keystroke Logger Installation

It's actually quite difficult. I'm going to look into it and update this blog later when I find out more. If you want to take a snapshot of all your system kexts try running Syntella (macOS only presently) then you can search through the report with a text editor to try to find anything that is amiss.

If you're on windows you could try checking this link:

answers.microsoft.com/...how-to-detect-if-a-keylogger-is-installed/... 

 

 

Social Welfare for Kiwi Infotech

Posted on by tom

Security is always a "nice to have" feature but how does a busy business owner get it done?

It's virtually impossible for one person to do this type of military strength hacking job. The time and effort required is highly non-linear and almost impossible to predict.

It would be cool if the government would tell you if your website was insecure. But they'd prefer to keep the back door in case they need it later. Just kidding CERT has very useful advisories over at cert.govt.nz/it-specialists/advisories/ But they can only do so much.

Bug Bounty Programs != Complete Solution

At first, only the super large software companies like Google and Facebook can afford bug bounty programs, but today 93 companies are listed at bugcrowd.com/programs

Not all companies with websites need super strong security like this. National state level quality network operations. But the citizens of the country would likely hope their government has a plan to protect it's own computers, and also a plan to protect those of important Infosec industries such as banking, finance, healthcare, legal aren't leaking huge quantities of data everywhere.

But it's not a complete solution - its an extreme solution for a super technical area actually - and perhaps not the first solution for medium sized business dabbling in hardening their networks.

False intrusion detection positives are a mega waste of time.

Bruce puts it nicely over at his page on the subject:

Here's an outsourcing idea: get rid of your fleet of delivery trucks, toss your packages out into the street, and offer a reward to anyone who successfully delivers a package. Sound like a good idea, or a recipe for disaster?

The reality is that it comes down to branding: if the brand would be harmed by being the victim of a really big hack or data breach, then it puts more effort in. This works pretty well for infosec products. And for the times when it doesn't, I'm not suggesting forcing anyone to start a bug bounty program.

People would still eat pizza at a joint which has a haxored network, but they might not want to visit a doctor or use a lawyer whos network was wide open, with a file servers leaking everywhere etc.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to have a kind of social welfare for hackers government ministry, which pays kiwi researchers for their efforts pertaining to New Zealand headquartered companies directly, without needing the approval of the target company, who's head is likely in the sand anyhow.

Create an extra information stream for CERT. Banks, lawyers, doctors instant fines for leakage events. I'm looking at ACC, remember they had multiple screwups involving a CMS that could fire out emails in bulk, operated by staff!

Remember NOVAPAY? It's probably riddle with bugs, and ya'll know what that means. No incentive to find the but.

Or perhaps an approved proxy one could "hack all the NZ things" through but still be contactable by the authorities. Recording the traffic to disk temporarily would enable maximal value and help the researcher prove if they succeeded or not to claim the bounty reward.

Sometimes I just want to be sure my own bank is safe. Personally.

When the network admin sees the penetration test coming from a New Zealand based IP address - on a government subnet even - they'd visit the IP address and see a message to say it's all legit. Usually when you are being hacked you can't contact the other side like that. This would be different.

Crowd-sourced security outfit Synack use this method. It's required because sometimes there is a dispute about payout of the bounty to the successful researcher - how do you prove such a thing?

Also I hear in the US researchers found a remote-execution jailbreak for iOS and instead of collecting Apples $200,000, they opted for a way bigger million plus payout motherboard.vice.com/.../somebody-just-won-1-million-bounty-for-hacking-the-iphone

Unauthorised Use of a Computer System

I'd like to be able to scan and probe the entire country to find vulnerable machines, as a pre-sales market research information gathering exercise. To build a list of companies at risk to contact and sell my security services to.

But some parts of that probe maybe deemed unauthorised access - if done here in NZ.  It would need to be carried out in another country, and then it would not be investigated further, if I understand the "prosecutorial budget" allocation methods we use here, it would be deemed too hard to bother looking into, unless coming fro a five eyes country, they might find it hard to get at you.

You left your headlights on

For sure, having every doorknob in your house jiggled would be un-nerving to watch, even if its somewhat equivalent to that friendly neighbour telling you your car headlights are still on so you don't flatten your battery: trying to help. But then visiting the probe IP and reading the message would allay fears and maybe boost confidence even. Free network virus check. 🙂

The reason for high standards of evidence in criminal courts and the use of the presumption of innocence, is that it is better to have criminals roaming free due to lack of evidence, than to have innocent people locked up in jail wrongly - just because they looked at your computer the wrong way. You'd need a lot of jails and the economy would suffer. Sound like any country in 2007? Tame Iti is an artistic genius not a terrorist.

HIPAA is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and is United States legislation that provides data privacy and security provisions for safeguarding medical information.

PCI Compliance is the payment card industry code to ensure payment processors use best practices.

CERT and The NZ Police should provide revenge-porn victims their file hashes

Posted on by tom

They often say the internet has no delete button.

It's a very useful analogy to explain to new users of the internet the gravity of certain areas of their personal computer and information security: maybe think twice before uploading semi-sensitive information, and three times for anything more secret. Once it's on the internet it can be hard to delete.

How to delete files from the internet:

One way could be to create a "hash" of the file you want gone from the internet, and then you know what you don't want to know, without knowing it! Amazing. Example time:

Assume the file is named horrific-revenge-porn.jpg

The following hash (random encrypted strings derived from the picture of an idiot) can be used instead of the actual offensive / suppressed original file data - makes sense if you are trying to delete the file not to hold it! It can be given to administrators to guarantee a system does not have a copy of the file:

Horrific revenge porn

Horrific revenge porn

sha256: c8b3c2a03380f577fa9d6b67ee15e40a9f8f9a076073ea56e5b5adb2e9ffe32c
md5: 79768d44c2aca6ed68d8157130265c05
crc32: b5513fdf
bytes: 50323

For the very most extreme cases, involving criminal contraband information such as the unfortunately case of the kiwi man from Hastings sentenced to 4 years for secretly filming his female Airbnb guests, CERT and The NZ Police should offer to provide file hashes to the victims of criminal data breaches like revenge porn and so forth.

This would enable the following desirable privacy benefits:

  • ensure the banned files are not held on owned computer systems
  • securely provide the means for others to also do so
  • nothing about the files contents can be said from looking at the random letters*
  • a registry of illegal files would help large ISPs to keep their disks clean
  • an infinitely large file - even a 50 GB file - is reduced to a short piece of text
  • its not encryption - it's an irreversible scrambling of any file to a set sized chunk of gibberish

For example, lets say this picture above is some revenge-porn you made once but was posted by your evil ex-partner or stalker, and now you'd like it gone from the nets; in theory if you put the file hashes into a government registry, one day ISPs can do seasonal scans and wipe files matching.

China likely does this to laser target and delete entire sections of internet from it's citizens. They probably have scanners running 24/7 to find old shots from the Tiannamen Square Masacre - and perhaps even this new shot - this time the guy is flat as a pancake after being literally "rolled" by a tank:

China Rogue State

China Rogue State

SHA256 is the current state of the art. You can get SHA512 also but its twice the length.

MD5 was huge for a very long time. Popular for verifying big .iso files after downloading.

CRC32 is not a hash, but its a checksum maintained by your computer in the disk that can also be used in a similar way. It will detect a single bit change, but unlike a true secure hash, you can pad the altered file to get the same CRC32 for a different file easily (if you add a bit, then delete a bit also, it is just each byte added together essentially).

Collisions

While it's theoretically possible for two different input files to create the same hash - a hash collision - if you use two or more different hash types like above or even just also including the filesize in bytes: 50,323 bytes in this case, you eliminate the false positive potential.

Also, any large ISP isn't going to want to automatically delete files based on just one parameter. For use by a sovereign national police force I'd recommend using all four: bytes, crc32, md5, sha256 plus a category eg: kid-porn, espionage, credentials, financial, medical/health, military, government, personal privacy, government, education, entertainment (here we hit a snag: the copyright industry).

The way a hash completely changes with tiny little single bit alterations to the input file, to get a hash collision is going to require a wildly different filesize, say 50 Kb versus 50 Tb!

The commands to get this on my mac were:

shasum -a 256 [bad-file.jpg]
md5 [bad-file.jpg]
crc32 [bad-file.jpg]
ls -la [bad-file.jpg]

What's nice is that you can double check your hash using a different program, openssl:

openssl sha -sha256 [bad-file.jpg]

Now you can quickly compare huge files without transferring them; and detect tiny alterations to big files.

Syntella macOS Forensics Tool

Posted on by tom

DownloadSyntella.app.dmg

Syntella (Download) is an open-source macOS forensics tool that creates a text file report that tells you about exactly whats running on your system, open connections, services, network connectivity, disks, USB, global ping time network checks. It takes about 5 minutes to run and gives you a text file with a timestamp that you can "diff" against earlier files to see changes easily.

It's designed for advanced mac users to check there system is safe, and for regular users peruse and give to an expert for help with. View the example report.

It is licensed as open source via the Apache 2.0 license, source code (click Syntella.sh to see what it's doing behind the scenes).

I capture a copy of all the reports via encrypted link to tomachi.co

In exchange for your use of the software I am collecting it's output presently, this can be disabled for a fee.

At this time I do not have automatic deletion of reports setup, but they are at difficult to guess web URLs only reported in the app and not linked from any places online. If the app becomes popular I'll begin deleting reports on a daily rotation to ensure privacy but still give time to download.

Privacy Sensitive Categories Collected:

The labels but not the contents of:

Wifi names, machine name, hardware serials (no software is checked at all), Mac addresses, processes, programs, ports, servers, services, disk free, network connections, open files, router tables, users logged in, tunnels, mounted volume names,

We don't capture any user files or filenames, unless they are open. So consider which websites you were visited just before running it. Netstat will still show closed connections for at least 2 minutes after closing, due to the the CLOSEWAIT and TIMEWAIT states of TCP/IP.

This app collects a bunch of

Run from compiled Application (easy)

Download the app .dmg tomachi.co/syntella-uploads/Syntella.app.dmg

Run from source code (advanced)

Since this is security software, it's open source. You can read it and see everything it does. But you will need to also install:

  • homebrew
  • git
  • curl
  • nmap

This shell script will run a range of diagnostic tools against your machine. To install it enter at the terminal:

git clone https://github.com/tomachinz/syntella/ ~/syntella

Then to run it use:

~/syntella/syntella.sh

Or just double click the syntella.sh file icon.

To receive updates type:

cd ~/syntella/

git pull

 

 

 

How to use Ping to test your network latency

Posted on by tom

If bandwidth is the quantity of your connection, then latency must be a measure of the quality of it. Latency is the time it takes for the smallest amount of information to go back and forth between you and a host. If you see packet loss on your trip to your ISP then your line is the issue.

People often talk about the internet connection speed - the bandwidth as measured in megabits - but for certain realtime applications like telephony, gaming, and remote shells - the data quality is more important. Dropped packets in telephony and audio streams leads to static and lost sound.

After installing Fibre Optic at my new place I compare a ping to Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8), and we see packet loss disappear, and the average time drop from a whopping and hard to believe 57 seconds down to just 31 milliseconds, with a minimum of 28 ms.

An example of a good ping time

13inch:~ tom$ ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=59 time=32.911 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=31.874 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=30.760 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=29.730 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=31.490 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=5 ttl=59 time=29.063 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6 ttl=59 time=32.466 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=7 ttl=59 time=31.149 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=8 ttl=59 time=32.787 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=9 ttl=59 time=40.585 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=10 ttl=59 time=32.434 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=11 ttl=59 time=29.902 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=12 ttl=59 time=29.264 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=13 ttl=59 time=31.894 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=14 ttl=59 time=32.299 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=15 ttl=59 time=30.051 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=16 ttl=59 time=32.315 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=17 ttl=59 time=28.942 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=18 ttl=59 time=31.891 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=19 ttl=59 time=30.485 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=20 ttl=59 time=29.383 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
21 packets transmitted, 21 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 28.942/31.508/40.585/2.402 ms
13inch:~ tom$

Official worst internet connection ever.

Since I was on dialup at my mums place in Coromandel.

Laptop connected to my Wifi router which is getting its net itself via Wifi tethering from my iPhone 5S which is barely able to make a call or send txt let alone the internet!

491 packets transmitted, 137 packets received, 72.1% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 4911.674/57951.524/100173.596/21656.897 ms
13inch:pay2c.Xyz tom$

64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=177 ttl=54 time=52771.304 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=178 ttl=54 time=51795.556 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=179 ttl=54 time=50792.636 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=180 ttl=54 time=49790.734 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=181 ttl=54 time=48787.671 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=182 ttl=54 time=47787.012 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=183 ttl=54 time=46782.079 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=184 ttl=54 time=45778.752 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=185 ttl=54 time=44782.822 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=186 ttl=54 time=43778.280 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=187 ttl=54 time=42774.619 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=188 ttl=54 time=41773.082 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=189 ttl=54 time=40785.548 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=190 ttl=54 time=39820.873 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=191 ttl=54 time=38818.465 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=195 ttl=54 time=35601.609 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=196 ttl=54 time=35405.563 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=197 ttl=54 time=34595.935 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=198 ttl=54 time=34440.231 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=199 ttl=54 time=34118.466 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=200 ttl=54 time=37025.789 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=205 ttl=54 time=33701.815 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=232 ttl=54 time=14587.327 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 252
Request timeout for icmp_seq 253
Request timeout for icmp_seq 254
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=247 ttl=54 time=8570.665 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=248 ttl=54 time=7776.425 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=249 ttl=54 time=6920.444 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=250 ttl=54 time=6515.482 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=251 ttl=54 time=5631.024 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=252 ttl=54 time=5052.276 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=253 ttl=54 time=5014.476 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=254 ttl=54 time=5749.126 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=255 ttl=54 time=4911.674 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 264
Request timeout for icmp_seq 265
Request timeout for icmp_seq 266
Request timeout for icmp_seq 267
Request timeout for icmp_seq 268
Request timeout for icmp_seq 269
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=256 ttl=54 time=14185.624 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 271
Request timeout for icmp_seq 272
Request timeout for icmp_seq 273
Request timeout for icmp_seq 274
Request timeout for icmp_seq 275
Request timeout for icmp_seq 276
Request timeout for icmp_seq 277
Request timeout for icmp_seq 278
Request timeout for icmp_seq 279
Request timeout for icmp_seq 280
Request timeout for icmp_seq 281
Request timeout for icmp_seq 282
Request timeout for icmp_seq 283
Request timeout for icmp_seq 284
Request timeout for icmp_seq 285
Request timeout for icmp_seq 286
Request timeout for icmp_seq 287
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=257 ttl=54 time=31445.453 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 289
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=258 ttl=54 time=32457.728 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 291
Request timeout for icmp_seq 292
Request timeout for icmp_seq 293
Request timeout for icmp_seq 294
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=259 ttl=54 time=36411.157 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 296
Request timeout for icmp_seq 297
Request timeout for icmp_seq 298
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=260 ttl=54 time=39733.101 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 300
Request timeout for icmp_seq 301
Request timeout for icmp_seq 302
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=261 ttl=54 time=42477.703 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 304
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=262 ttl=54 time=43441.612 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=263 ttl=54 time=43432.266 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 307
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=264 ttl=54 time=45050.706 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 309
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=265 ttl=54 time=45137.945 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=266 ttl=54 time=45173.820 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=267 ttl=54 time=44506.264 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 313
Request timeout for icmp_seq 314
Request timeout for icmp_seq 315
Request timeout for icmp_seq 316
Request timeout for icmp_seq 317
Request timeout for icmp_seq 318
Request timeout for icmp_seq 319
Request timeout for icmp_seq 320
Request timeout for icmp_seq 321
Request timeout for icmp_seq 322
Request timeout for icmp_seq 323
Request timeout for icmp_seq 324
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=268 ttl=54 time=57362.380 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 326
Request timeout for icmp_seq 327
Request timeout for icmp_seq 328
Request timeout for icmp_seq 329
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=269 ttl=54 time=61603.631 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=270 ttl=54 time=61590.294 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 332
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=271 ttl=54 time=62326.436 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 334
Request timeout for icmp_seq 335
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=272 ttl=54 time=65071.367 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 337
Request timeout for icmp_seq 338
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=273 ttl=54 time=66941.069 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 340
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=274 ttl=54 time=67932.502 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 342
Request timeout for icmp_seq 343
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=275 ttl=54 time=69433.195 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=276 ttl=54 time=69818.324 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=278 ttl=54 time=68618.593 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=279 ttl=54 time=68027.879 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=280 ttl=54 time=67154.395 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 349
Request timeout for icmp_seq 350
Request timeout for icmp_seq 351
Request timeout for icmp_seq 352
Request timeout for icmp_seq 353
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=281 ttl=54 time=74049.322 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 355
Request timeout for icmp_seq 356
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=282 ttl=54 time=76036.362 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 358
Request timeout for icmp_seq 359
Request timeout for icmp_seq 360
Request timeout for icmp_seq 361
Request timeout for icmp_seq 362
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=283 ttl=54 time=81122.351 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=284 ttl=54 time=80909.673 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 365
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=285 ttl=54 time=82186.723 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 367
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=286 ttl=54 time=82619.370 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 369
Request timeout for icmp_seq 370
Request timeout for icmp_seq 371
Request timeout for icmp_seq 372
Request timeout for icmp_seq 373
Request timeout for icmp_seq 374
Request timeout for icmp_seq 375
Request timeout for icmp_seq 376
Request timeout for icmp_seq 377
Request timeout for icmp_seq 378
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=287 ttl=54 time=93182.677 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 380
Request timeout for icmp_seq 381
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=317 ttl=54 time=65322.352 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 383
Request timeout for icmp_seq 384
Request timeout for icmp_seq 385
Request timeout for icmp_seq 386
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=318 ttl=54 time=69428.438 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=319 ttl=54 time=69204.778 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=320 ttl=54 time=68604.710 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=321 ttl=54 time=69250.154 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=322 ttl=54 time=69024.922 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=323 ttl=54 time=68852.795 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=324 ttl=54 time=68381.716 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=325 ttl=54 time=68460.245 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=326 ttl=54 time=67890.598 ms
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=327 ttl=54 time=72224.042 ms
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=348 ttl=54 time=56707.034 ms
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=351 ttl=54 time=56621.675 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=352 ttl=54 time=55620.525 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=353 ttl=54 time=54887.953 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=354 ttl=54 time=54205.236 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=355 ttl=54 time=53624.076 ms
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=357 ttl=54 time=65797.155 ms
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=389 ttl=54 time=59933.766 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=390 ttl=54 time=59740.642 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=391 ttl=54 time=59882.162 ms
Request timeout for icmp_seq 451
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=392 ttl=54 time=66705.322 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=393 ttl=54 time=66187.189 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=394 ttl=54 time=65313.387 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=395 ttl=54 time=65274.663 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=396 ttl=54 time=65201.259 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=397 ttl=54 time=65043.247 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=398 ttl=54 time=64591.833 ms
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64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=399 ttl=54 time=72608.465 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=400 ttl=54 time=71606.695 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=401 ttl=54 time=70603.331 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=402 ttl=54 time=69610.261 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=403 ttl=54 time=68606.763 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=404 ttl=54 time=67607.793 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=405 ttl=54 time=66610.263 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=406 ttl=54 time=66066.892 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=409 ttl=54 time=65526.582 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=410 ttl=54 time=64708.668 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=411 ttl=54 time=63938.379 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=412 ttl=54 time=62978.977 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=413 ttl=54 time=62329.996 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=414 ttl=54 time=61685.132 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=415 ttl=54 time=60885.822 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=416 ttl=54 time=60366.599 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=417 ttl=54 time=60080.570 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=418 ttl=54 time=59211.712 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=419 ttl=54 time=58520.336 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=420 ttl=54 time=57832.112 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
491 packets transmitted, 137 packets received, 72.1% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 4911.674/57951.524/100173.596/21656.897 ms
13inch:pay2c.Xyz tom$

SHA1 Collision detected on Github

Posted on by tom

About 9 days ago something incredibly unlikely happened... something so rare that

If you had five million programmers each generating one commit per second, your chances of generating a single accidental collision before the Sun turns into a red giant and engulfs the Earth is about 50%.

A few weeks ago, researchers announced SHAttered, the first collision of the SHA-1 hash function, at Github. Similar to how a Bitcoin is a series of zeroes in a long row discovered by gradually adding static noise to the signal, this collission is likely a big chunk of random characters and noise.

Amazingly this event now has it's own website, and Y2K style frenzied rush to swap out sha1 for sha256/512. Never fear though because as they say:

Today, many applications still rely on SHA-1, even though theoretical attacks have been known since 2005, and SHA-1 was officially deprecated by NIST in 2011. We hope our practical attack on SHA-1 will increase awareness and convince the industry to quickly move to safer alteratives, such as SHA-256.

Try This At Home?

This attack required over 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 SHA1 computations. This took the equivalent processing power as 6,500 years of single-CPU computations and 110 years of single-GPU computations. So give it a go yourself (hehe) the source code is available.

What about SHA256 any chances there of a collision?

The hash input space of SHA256, which to be honest is not something I think I understand because I thought all hash functions have infinite input space, is something like this many terabytes:

120,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

By my calculations, to get even a slim 0.0000001% chance of a collision with SHA256 you'd need to run through 4.8×10 to 29 of hash runs, or this many:

480,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

That's just for a 0.0000001% chance of collision.

 

Raven Arts Ltd

Posted on by tom

Raven was to be, and can still be, as described in the mission statement:

  1. Creative Mission Statement and Declaration
    • We propose to create in this agreement a private arts and democratic business society that is the body corporate set to manage the offices and non-exclusive sales teams for a cutting edge full service new media creative agency and production house in Auckland. Our directors and partners have coalesced their equipment and skills into a large production studio consisting of multiple photo and audio recording suites, integrated events and promotion capabilities, a technology marketplace, timeshare CBD offices in Wyndham street, an artistic internship scheme, and yearly high-technology conference.
    • We shall officially call it Raven Arts Limited, also known as Raven Arts NZ, ravenarts.nz, or just “The Raven”. Complaints and suggestions can go to [email protected]
    • The industry categories and types of work we expect to be doing are broad and can include but are not limited to:
      1. Audio, Video, Events, Games, Augmented Reality, Animation & CGI, Home Automation, Still Photography, Network Security, Business Mentoring, Artistic Consulting, Network Marketing, Equipment Hire & Sales, Talent, Website Design Build, Mobile App Dev, Interactive Installations, and generally speaking, stuff that is super awesome fun stuff.
      2. Excludes anything involving victimisation, violence, etc. We can do a documentary about violence, but we can’t use the fund to set-up forced labour camps along the Mekong.
    • Directors may use the space for what-ever purpose they wish within reason.
    • As well as being a group of creative capitalist professionals wanting to save costs and share an office, we are hoping to set something in motion to become a creative lead referral service and matching agency that links artists with businesses.
    • Participation in The Raven is always 100% voluntary. Incentives for positive action are championed over penalties for inaction generally, and this agreement contains very little restrictions and liability on you.
    • The Raven’s individual companies and sole traders, as well as The Raven’s own business ecosystems depend upon information about existing and potential clients, and our ability to accurately and fairly communicate the value of our sales propositions and previously done work articles and deliverables to them in order to satisfy demand and therefore source new and continued patronage. Since information is the lifeblood of so many parts of our sales and support pipelines, good information security practices but also importantly lead declaration and financial participation shall be incentivised by the automatic allocation of company shares the disclosure of information on security, declaration, quotes, invoice payment, deliverables, ethics and honesty.
    • Signing this agreement and declaration of intent in no way possible causes any increased liability than those in Schedule A namely your equal share of the costs of the first year of operation.

 

See the full text by clicking "Request Access" at memo.raven.funk.nz