SecureDrop is an open-source whistleblower support system, originally written by Aaron Swartz and now run by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. The first instance of this system was named StrongBox and is being run by the New Yorker. To further add to the naming confusion, Aaron Swartz called the system DeadDrop when he wrote the code.
from Schneier's blog
You can find http://deaddrop.github.io/" target="_blank">the website here and if you have something important to submit and do not want to go through Wikileaks, I think this is the best alternative.
The security audit was done by Schneier himself, who is pretty popular in the cryptography community, the work was started by Aaron Swartz who is also extremly popular, especially since his suicide last year.
I just learned that TrueCrypt, the multi-OS solution to encrypt your personal data in a "very easy way" is coded and maintained by ... no one knows. Like bitcoin, the main creators are anonymous. http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads2" target="_blank">The source code is available here but no info about the coders can be found.
It seems like folks are getting a bit worried as TrueCrypt is wildly used, and money is being raised to conduct a security audit on them. http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/new-effort-to-fully-audit-truecrypt-raises-over-16000-in-a-few-short-weeks/" target="_blank">More info here.
Now I'm wondering, why is it that those huge cryptographic applications, that are polished and well maintained, are created by anonymous persons? Do they fear they would get pressure from governments? Mafia? Who knows...
It's official, http://www.baidu.com" target="_blank">Baidu, the chinese google, now accepts bitcoins.
"As a cutting-edge IT guy and a professional webmaster, what else can showcase our difference? The answer is that we have Bitcoin!
Bitcoin, as a new electronic and digital currency, is being accepted internationally. It's also used in daily lives. You can use Bitcoin buy a cup of coffee, or easily convert it to cash. But in China, Bitcoin is still a fairly new thing. Today, we have a good news: from today, we are starting to officially accept Bitcoin as a payment method. You can use Bitcoin to buy all Baidu Jiasule services. Baidu Jiasule as an innovator in the Internet industry, is now the first cloud service provider to accept Bitcoin and give everyone a better payment method and experience."
Read more on https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=310962.0" target="_blank">the bitcointalk about it.
The bitcoin who has been remarkably stable these past weeks, even after the silk road shutdown, has increased a bit more since the announcement.
a great video I bookmarked about ECC.
Silk Road and its owner have just http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/02/crime-silkroad-raid-idUSL1N0HS12C20131002" target="_blank">got caught by the FBI. If you didn't know, silk road (an illegal drug market) was hosted on the Tor network as an onion website, which was suppose to grant him total anonymity. Apparently the catch was made from a stupid human mistake :
1) Located the first reference to "silk road" on the internet. You can find this yourself on Google: "silk road" site:shroomery.org Date range: Jan 1,2011 - Jan 31,2011 *
2) The same username, "altoid", showed up on a bitcointalk days later.
3) Later in 2011 "altoid" made a post on bitcointalk with his email address, containing his real name, in it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=47811.msg568744#msg5... If you search the name on Google it doesn't show up, but if you look at the user's page you can see it in his posts.
But some are skeptical, and many seems to think it could have been http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/04/tor-attacks-nsa-users-online-anonymity" target="_blank">the NSA getting into the Tor Network. What do you think?
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_Factoring_Challenge" target="_blank">RSA Factoring Challenge has had one of its entry factored : RSA-210. More info here.
The RSA Factoring Challenge was a challenge put forward by RSA Laboratories on March 18, 1991 to encourage research into computational number theory and the practical difficulty of factoring large integers and cracking RSA keys used in cryptography. They published a list of semiprimes (numbers with exactly two prime factors) known as the RSA numbers, with a cash prize for the successful factorization of some of them. The smallest of them, a 100 decimal digit number called RSA-100 was factored by April 1, 1991, but many of the bigger numbers have still not been factored and are expected to remain unfactored for quite some time.
The challenge is no longer active, this means no money for this brave Ryan P. And this doesn't mean RSA is less secure so no worries :)
For someone like me who has some money invested in bitcoins and other cryptocoins (especially litecoin), seeing Atlantis rising (a drug market using litecoin as the main currency) was a very good news. Sadly they had to shutdown months after not doing so much for the https://btc-e.com/exchange/ltc_usd" target="_blank">LTC value.
Here's Silk Road's head statement on the news :
Atlantis was good for Silk Road and the community at large and I am sad to see it go. Yes they were a bit cocky and aggressive, but they never crossed the line and did anything unethical, and they served their customers well. They reminded us in the Silk Road administration that to stay #1, we have to be constantly thinking of our users and how to serve them best and can not take for granted your loyalty.
There has been more than one occasion where I have wanted to quit as well. Without going into details, the stress of being DPR is sometimes overwhelming. What keeps me going is the understanding that what we are doing here is more important than my insignificant little life. I believe what we are doing will have rippling effects for generations to come and could be part of a monumental shift in how human beings organize and relate to one another.
I have gone through the mental exercise of spending a lifetime in prison and of dying for this cause. I have let the fear pass through me and with clarity commit myself fully to the mission and values outlined in the Silk Road charter. If you haven’t read it yet, please do. Here is the link:
“(link omitted)”
The bottom line is… Silk Road is here to stay so long as there is breath in my lungs, a spark in my mind, and fire in my heart. I know many of you in this community feel the same way and is an honor to stand beside you here.
Lastly, to anyone considering opening another market, you WILL face unexpected challenges one way or another, and if you don’t have the conviction to overcome them then your efforts will likely be in vain. And please open up a dialogue with me if you do open another site. Even competitors can talk from time to time on friendly terms :)
Atlantis admins, if you are reading this, I hope you stick around and contribute as you are able.
I have at the moment 5 classes which are all taught in french (I guess because there are not enough foreigners this year), but some of them use english for their slides.
Programmation
Nothing really new to me, some people coming from the same bachelor as I (mathematics) have difficulties getting to know Linux and programming as a whole for the first time. I'm used to coding so I'm pretty confident (I shouldn't relax too much though). We started on a fast-course on C, GCC, Emacs, SVN... and will move on later with Java.
It's taught by Emmanuel Fleury who is a very chill professor, good vibe, very easy to talk to. And the best part is that everything he talks about is online here so if you're interested in the course I'm taking you can have a look there.
PS: we're learning a bit of LaTeX AND will have to submit final reports in LaTeX. This is great as I have sought a good occasion to learn it for a while.
PS2: I'm using LearnXinYminutes.com to get back into C (haven't coded in C for more than 4 years). It's a great website and I recommend it to you if you want to learn something about any language and already have knowledge in programming.
Théorie de l'information
Taught by the head of the Cryptology Master, Gilles Zemor, the course seems like an introduction to some of the concepts around Cryptography. Our first classes were about Entropy (which I talked about a bit in the previous post) and easy notions of probability. Here are the professor's notes about the course.
Arithmétique
The only "real" Math course we have, and I'm a bit surprised since this is a "Mathematics" Master". It's essentially about rings, it's about stuff I already learned. Nothing really captivating at the moment.
Automates et Complexité
This is one of the most intriguing course, people coming from an IT bachelor seem to have no problem with it. I don't really understand the point of learning this but I like it, it's a lot like Regular Expressions and is about logic more than learning concepts by heart. As a programmer it just seems like funny games to me :) (it might get more difficult very quickly).
Note : it's taught by Anca Muscholl.
Réseaux
The only course I had to choose, but we didn't have much choice since they removed half of the available courses including the one I wanted to take (Probability). The course is taught by... it's a rapid introduction about network concept. I'm not really into it, it speaks too briefly about many things, some are interesting, some are not. I was supposed to have an application class but apparently our professor fell asleep on his way (he's narcoleptic).
Overall I was surprised by the absence of real "cryptology courses". But the professors told us they would come very quickly in the second semester, so nothing to worry about.
