Tag: Internet

Note on Internet Privacy (Updated)and a note on DNSCrypt

I noticed the brouaha on Google’s privacy policy. I am afraid that social networks capture much more private information than search engines (even if they integrate my browser history, my social network, my emails, my search engine keywords) – I am still okay. All they are going to do is sell me better ads (maybe than just flood me with ads hoping to get a click). Of course Microsoft should take it one step forward and capture data from my desktop as well for better ads, that would really complete the curve. In any case , with the Patriot Act, most information is available to the Government anyway.

But it does make sense to have an easier to understand privacy policy, and one of my disappointments is the complete lack of visual appeal in such notices. Make things simple as possible, but no simpler, as Al-E said.

 

Privacy activists forget that ads run on models built on AGGREGATED data, and most models are scored automatically. Unless you do something really weird and fake like, chances are the data pertaining to you gets automatically collected, algorithmic-ally aggregated, then modeled and scored, and a corresponding ad to your score, or segment is shown to you. Probably no human eyes see raw data (but big G can clarify that)

 

( I also noticed Google gets a lot of free advice from bloggers. hey, if you were really good at giving advice to Google- they WILL hire you !)

on to another tool based (than legalese based approach to privacy)

I noticed tools like DNSCrypt increase internet security, so that all my integrated data goes straight to people I am okay with having it (ad sellers not governments!)

Unfortunately it is Mac Only, and I will wait for Windows or X based tools for a better review. I noticed some lag in updating these tools , so I can only guess that the boys of Baltimore have been there, so it is best used for home users alone.

 

Maybe they can find a chrome extension for DNS dummies.

http://www.opendns.com/technology/dnscrypt/

Why DNSCrypt is so significant

In the same way the SSL turns HTTP web traffic into HTTPS encrypted Web traffic, DNSCrypt turns regular DNS traffic into encrypted DNS traffic that is secure from eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.  It doesn’t require any changes to domain names or how they work, it simply provides a method for securely encrypting communication between our customers and our DNS servers in our data centers.  We know that claims alone don’t work in the security world, however, so we’ve opened up the source to our DNSCrypt code base and it’s available onGitHub.

DNSCrypt has the potential to be the most impactful advancement in Internet security since SSL, significantly improving every single Internet user’s online security and privacy.

and

http://dnscurve.org/crypto.html

The DNSCurve project adds link-level public-key protection to DNS packets. This page discusses the cryptographic tools used in DNSCurve.

Elliptic-curve cryptography

DNSCurve uses elliptic-curve cryptography, not RSA.

RSA is somewhat older than elliptic-curve cryptography: RSA was introduced in 1977, while elliptic-curve cryptography was introduced in 1985. However, RSA has shown many more weaknesses than elliptic-curve cryptography. RSA’s effective security level was dramatically reduced by the linear sieve in the late 1970s, by the quadratic sieve and ECM in the 1980s, and by the number-field sieve in the 1990s. For comparison, a few attacks have been developed against some rare elliptic curves having special algebraic structures, and the amount of computer power available to attackers has predictably increased, but typical elliptic curves require just as much computer power to break today as they required twenty years ago.

IEEE P1363 standardized elliptic-curve cryptography in the late 1990s, including a stringent list of security criteria for elliptic curves. NIST used the IEEE P1363 criteria to select fifteen specific elliptic curves at five different security levels. In 2005, NSA issued a new “Suite B” standard, recommending the NIST elliptic curves (at two specific security levels) for all public-key cryptography and withdrawing previous recommendations of RSA.

Some specific types of elliptic-curve cryptography are patented, but DNSCurve does not use any of those types of elliptic-curve cryptography.

 

Using Opera Unite to defeat SOPA?

Lets assume that the big bad world of American electoral politics forces some kind of modified SOPA to be passed, and the big American companies have to abide by that law (just as they do share data  for National Security under Patriot Act but quitely).

I belive Opera Unite is the way forward to sharing content on the Internet.

From-

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-unite-developer-primer-revisited/

Opera Unite features a Web server running inside the Opera browser, which allows you to do some amazing things. At the touch of a button, you can share images, documents, video, music, games, collaborative applications and all manner of other things with your friends and colleagues

I can share music, and files , and the web server is actually my own laptop. try beating 2 billion new web servers that sprout!! File system sharing is totally secure- you can create private, public, or password protected files, a messaging system that can be used for drop messages (called fridge), a secure messaging system and your own web server is ready to start at a click. the open web may just use opera instead of chromium, and US regulation would be solely to blame. even URL blocking is of limited appeal thanks to software like MafiaWire Extension

Throw in Ad block, embedded bit torrent sharing and some more  Tor level encryption within the browser and sorry Senator, but the internet belongs to the planet not to your lobbyist.

see-http://dev.opera.com/web

Indian Govt tries to censor Internet

Stupidity is contiguous  and Stupid Politicians are legion.

From-

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204542404577158342623999990.html?mod=WSJINDIA_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. are fighting back against increasing censorship demands from the Indian government and courts, arguing that they aren’t legally responsible for monitoring their websites and proactively removing user content that regulators deem objectionable.

The big threat for the companies at the moment is a lawsuit in a New Delhi trial court, which seeks to hold them and several other websites criminally liable for not censoring online content, including material that mocks or criticizes religious and political figures.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204542404577158342623999990.html#ixzz1jVPdAsNT

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One not so apparent reason for Indian Govt to censor Internet is that the internet and social media were used for massive anti-Govt and anti-corruption protests in 2011. The Govt found itself on the backfoot, newspapers and television in India are generally considered pliable and manipulable by Govt  of  India (thanks to ad spends).Judiciary in India is also not known to be 100% honest or resistant of political pressures.

The incumbent Congress govt needs more legal weapons in its arsenal given elections are approaching this year in many states, and the need for more arrows in legal quivers  in India against the Internet is an inevitable and unfortunate next step. Since this is a global phenomenon (read- SOPA debate in US) ,and the huge huge internet population in India- this is one interesting battle to watch.

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SOPA RIP

From http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/14/obama-administration-responds-we-people-petitions-sopa-and-online-piracy

  1.  Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small (AJ-yup)
  2. We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet.  (AJ-note this may include peer-to-peer browsers, browser extensions for re-routing and newer forms of encryption, or even relocation of internet routers in newer geographies )

We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders.

We should never let criminals hide behind a hollow embrace of legitimate American values

and

We should all be committed to working with all interested constituencies to develop new legal tools to protect global intellectual property rights without jeopardizing the openness of the Internet. Our hope is that you will bring enthusiasm and know-how to this important challenge

Authored by

Victoria Espinel is Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator at Office of Management and Budget

Aneesh Chopra is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology at the Office of Science and Technology Policy
Howard Schmidt is Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator for National Security Staff

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AJ-Why not sponser a hackathon, White House and create a monetary incentive for hackers to suggest secure ways? Atleast a secure dialogue between policy makers and policy  breakers could be a way forward. 

SOPA in its current form is dead. We live to fight another day.

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Quote-

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. John F K

Opera Unite- the future of cloud computing browsers

The boys (and ladies) at opera have been busy writing code , while the rest of the coders on the cloud were issuing press releases, attending meetings or just sky diving from the cloud. Judging by the language of apps and extensions, it seems that the  engineers de Vikings et Slavs were busy coding while the Anglo Saxons were busy preparing for IPOs.

I really like the complete anonymity offered by Opera and especially Opera Unite

1) The Adblock option blocks all ads (same as other extensions)

2) The lovely Opera Unite has incredible apps for peer to peer sharing. You can create your own spotify, host your own chat application, transfer files, remote manage your computer. C’est magnifique!

Some really awesome apps on Opera Unite

All these apps can make your own desktop into a remotely managed website- so SOPA is irrelevant even if passed without any protest or non violent protests

(SOPA- an acronym for STOP OBAMA or STOP A (?) , since OBAMA is the one the internet really supports , and he is dependent on that goodwill for fundraising or A is the acronym of a legendary media myth of an imaginary web based organization (imaginary as in iota)

QUOTE–

I think it would be a good idea.

 Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

Some Ways Anonymous Could Disrupt the Internet if SOPA is passed

This is a piece of science fiction. I wrote while reading Isaac Assimov’s advice to writers in GOLD, while on a beach in Anjuna.

1) Identify senators, lobbyists, senior executives of companies advocating for SOPA. Go for selective targeting of these people than massive Denial of Service Attacks.

This could also include election fund raising websites in the United States.

2) Create hacking tools with simple interfaces to probe commonly known software errors, to enable wider audience including the Occupy Movement students to participate in hacking. thus making hacking more democratic. What are the top 25 errors as per  http://cwe.mitre.org/cwss/

–http://www.decisionstats.com/top-25-most-dangerous-software-errors/ ?

 

Easy interface tools to check vulnerabilities would be the next generation to flooding tools like HOIC, LOIC – Massive DDOS atttacks make good press coverage but not so good technically

3) Disrupt digital payment mechanisms for selected targets (in step1) using tools developed in Step 2, and introduce random noise errors in payment transfers.

4) Help create a better secure internet by embedding Tor within Chromium with all tools for anonymity embedded for easy usage – a more secure peer to peer browser (like a mashup of Opera , tor and chromium).

or maybe embed bit torrents within a browser.

5) Disrupt media companies and cloud computing based companies like iTunes, Spotify or Google Music, just like virus, ant i viruses disrupted the desktop model of computing. After that offer solutions to the problems like companies of anti virus software did for decades.

6) Hacking websites is fine fun, but hacking internet databases and massively parallel data scrapers can help disrupt some of the status quo.

This applies to databases that offer data for sale, like credit bureaus etc. Making this kind of data public will eliminate data middlemen.

7) Use cross border, cross country regulatory arbitrage for better risk control of hacker attacks.

8) recruiting among universities using easy to use hacking tools to expand the pool of dedicated hacker armies.

9) using operations like those targeting child pornography to increase political acceptability of the hacker sub culture. Refrain from overtly negative and unimaginative bad Press Relations

10) If you cant convince  them to pass SOPA, confuse them 😉 Use bots for random clicks on ads to confuse internet commerce.

 

Does Facebook deserve a 100 billion Valuation

some  questions in my Mind as I struggle to bet my money and pension savings on Facebook IPO

1) Revenue Mix- What percentage of revenues for Facebook come from Banner ads versus gaming partners like Zynga. How dependent is Facebook on Gaming partners. (Zynga has Google as an investor). What mix of revenue is dependent on privacy regulation countries like Europe vs countries like USA.

2) Do 800 million users of Facebook mean 100 billion valuation ? Thats a valuation of $125 in customer life time in terms of NPV . Since ad revenue is itself a percentage of actual good and services sold- how much worth of goods and services do consumers have to buy per capita , to give $125 worth of ads to FB. Eg . companies spend 5% of product cost on Facebook ads, so does that mean each FB account will hope to buy 2500$ worth of Goods from the Internet and from Facebook (assuming they also buy from Amazon etc)

3) Corporate Governance- Unlike Google, Facebook has faced troubling questions of ethics from the day it has started. This includes charges of intellectual property theft, but also non transparent FB stock option pricing in secondary markets before IPO, private placement by Wall Street Bankers like GoldMan Saachs, major investments by Russian Internet media corporations. (read- http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/03/technology/facebook_goldman/index.htm)

4) Retention of key employees post IPO- Key Employees at Google are actually ex- Microsofties. Key FB staff are ex-Google people. Where will the key -FB people go when bored and rich after IPO.

5) Does the macro Economic Condition justify the premium and Private Equity multiple of Facebook?

Will FB be the next Google (in terms of investor retruns) or will it be like Groupon. I suspect the answer  is- it depends on market discounting these assumptions while factoring in sentiment (as well as unloading of stock from large number of FB stock holders on week1).

Baby You Are a Rich Man. but not 100 billion rich. yet. Maybe 80 billion isnt that bad.