[liberationtech] DNSSEC to the rescue. Was: Snakeoil and suspicious encryption services

[Jérôme Pinguet]

On 22/07/2014 20:44, Tony Arcieri wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Guido Witmond <guido at witmond.nl
> <mailto:guido at witmond.nl>> wrote:
>
>     That way you could host all your javascript at the site. (but not
>     at the
>     CDN).
>
>
> If Subresource Integrity (SRI) were actually implemented by browsers,
> serving JS via a CDN would be fine (and could even be done safely over
> plaintext HTTP) because the parent page includes a digest of each
> subresource, forming a Merkle tree with its root at the parent page:
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/
>
> Of course, we're still left with the bootstrapping problem of getting
> an authentic parent page.
>
> -- 
> Tony Arcieri
Trust no one, the saying goes. According to Snowden & Co. that seems to
be true.

That would irremediably wipe out everything DNS/ICANN related and its
ludicrous conundrum "Trusted Community Representatives" root ceremony.
Should 7 billions potentially online human beings trust a bunch of
confidential internet übermenschen?

"A list of names and country of citizenship of the TCR candidates will
be published, but any details (e.g. references) submitted will be kept
confidential."

The answer is NO. The answer is Namecoin, too. :-)

Let us not be misled. Having one's private data being sold is for free.
I guess you don't need examples. Exchanging data securely on a network
built to infinitely reproduce data at almost no cost has a non
negligible cost. It requires a huge amount of work.

We could rely on a slightly wider bunch of people that we really trust.
Or on an even wider bunch that we slightly trust.

So, that's the GPG Web of Trust and the free software community, where
work is done because it benefits the workers, their employees, their
users/clients/believers/comrades and, as a side effect, the community at
large.

Or the blockchain, where work for distributed trust gets done because
there is a direct financial incentive.

If you know of any other distributed trust system, please, let me know. :-)

If the ideas behind the app are good or promising, coders will code,
reviewers will review, users will use, and a few people might even
certify your GPG key, with which you could sign the SHA256 checksum of
your code (JavaScript is text also, isn't it?). Of course it means using
GPG or a MonkeySphere add on to check the certifications, which in turn
needs...

Trust requires so much work, it can only be crowd sourced, or the user
data risks being freely available (as in free of charge).

The work might be done by miners running a blockchain (the project's own
blockchain, as in Twister) or by using THE blockchain. You can put a
hash of your script on a Bitcoin address (standard address is 20 bytes
and the latest OP_RETURN spec limit is 40 bytes). The add on to verify
hashes on blockchain remains to be written I'm afraid. FreeSpeechMe
would be a good start.

The blockchain also gives you timestamping, proof of publication, peer
discovery and anti-DOS measures. And micro-payments. And it's a good
basis for Distributed Hash Tables. You could waist a few bitcoins on
Proof-of-Burn to show the world that you really believe in your app!

But why stick to JavaScript and the browser after all? These are
endangered species. In the US, mobile apps made up 47% of Internet
traffic at the beginning of this year, overtaking the PC (45%). Mobile
browsers accounted for only 8% of the traffic. The rest of the world is
following at an even greater pace. Willy-nilly, crypto for the masses
will be on mobile app, or never will be.

Among the happy few GPG people, how many delay answering because they're
away from their laptop and couldn't be bothered to replicate the
complicated process of setting up GPG with APG/K9 mail, plus generating
a subkey for signing on a less secure device?

How many Android apps are written in JavaScript?

A signed native app on FreeDroid repo that runs on Replicant,
CyanogenMod (or Android if you like to live on the edge) could become
the encryption killer app. The (heavily centralized) Blackphone has sold
out, even though it's compatible with nothing.

IMHO, real liberation technologies can only be based on decentralized
trust systems.

cryptomars
--
"Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic
cop. A normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side.
This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop heart. Make the bastard
chase you. He will follow."
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