Friday 11 July 2014

Crypto Graffiti? Promoted Comment

 The following was posted as a comment, but Medawar has promoted it to a post, in order to promote some discussion of the idea, its feasibility etc.

Medawar has no idea if what's proposed is feasible.
If it is, then it's like Iranian dissidents stamping the image of a murdered demonstrator on banknotes, and that was quite an effective form of peaceful protest!

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "America's Forgotten Anti-Gangstalking Law: USC 18 ...":

People being gang stalked should look into encoding their stories on the Bitcoin block chain.

The block chain is essentially a ledger which is distributed amongst all computers running bitcoin wallet software. When a person installs and runs this software it immediately starts downloading this (huge) file on to their machine.

The blockchain is a ledger containing records for every bitcoin transaction that has ever taken place. Once the file has been downloaded, the file is updated automatically and by the nature of the bitcoin protocol is the SAME on all computers.

Ordinary ASCII messages can be encoded into the addresses of bitcoin transactions. Once these messages are sent via a transaction, they can not be removed or altered. They will remain on the bitcoin network forever...as long as bitcoin exists.

There is a website called CryptoGraffiti which further explains this and offers a service to place messages.

Anonymous messages could be placed...

Purchase a 30 Giga hash miner for around $200. Go to bitcoinAddressdotorg and download its bitcoin address generator html page on to a machine that is not connected to the internet. Use this to create a new bitcoin address (public and private key). Import these into a wallet app.

Use a service like Elegius to anonymously send mined coins to this address. Once you have enough coins to send one message... Currently 0.00005500 bitcoins or about 35 cents per 20 bytes, then you send that amount to the ascii encoded address.

You can use the cryptograffiti service to build a list of message encoded addresses then import these into your wallet app. Once you've sent coins to all the addresses in order, then your message is "out there" and will always be associated with the address you sent it from.

To read these messages, someone would have to convert the addresses from a block chain explorer site from hex back into ascii.

I'm betting that sites like CryptoGraffiti will become more popular over time and will incorporate features to search the block chain for messages the same way we use google to search the internet. Assuming of course that bitcoin does not go the way of the Dodo :)

Even if the messages cant be easily read now, it IS an almost guaranteed way of ensuring your story will be available and uncorrupted from now on.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another very interesting link gives a lot info on the specific topic.

www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html

Anonymous said...

My Advice To A Young Scientist, or anyone else for that matter who suspects they are being gang stalked is you do not need to encrypt your story, hide it, or make it available to only a few.

Whatever the reason for the stalking, countering cloak and daggers with smoke and mirrors is not going to assist with the central problem.

Anonymous said...

I left the bitcoin comment a couple of weeks ago. Many thanks for putting this up. I anonymously posted variants of this comment on several blogs, so far, you're the first to actually put it up. One of my reasons for doing this was to try to determine if any TI blogs on the internet are legit.

I encourage anyone reading your post to try this as well, post the bitcoin idea (or the TAILS idea below) to TI blogs and see who actually puts it up.

Another idea worth spreading is the use of the TOR web browser in conjuction with some minimal computer operating system to combat hacking attempts and browse anonymously.

The TOR (The Onion Router) web browser routes and encrypts your IP traffic through different participating volunteer nodes. The data is re-encrypted at each 'hop'. Don't take my word for this, do your own research.

There's an OS called TAILS which comes pre loaded with the TOR browser. You download this OS and burn the .iso disc image to a DVD. When you want to use your computer, you then boot off the DVD. I recommend you physically unplug your hard drive and just store things to a USB flash stick.

The main advantage to this is that the DVD is read only. The ENTIRE OS is loaded from the DVD into computer memory on boot up. This makes it very difficult for a hacker to corrupt your machine.

TAILS is a variant of the linux operating system which has been pre configured with anonymity in mind. It even wipes the computer's memory before it shuts down. It also spoofs your MAC Address by default.

Another good minimal OS is callad Lucid Puppy Linux. It too loads completely from a DVD into memory on boot up. You can even make changes and save your configuration using an "open session" dvd and later make it read only. The only thing missing is TOR. It can be a little difficult to get running if your not a tech person.

Stop using Google and switch to search engines that protect your privacy like StartPage or DuckDuckGo.

Again I recommend you do your own research.

Medawar said...

Not putting up the comment on a TI blog does not necessarily mean that the blog is not legit.

The concept seems a bit strange at first sight, and many TI bloggers are wary of traps and tricks.

Medawar's own purpose in putting the thing up was to get some third party opinion, which seems to be, so far, that the trick is capable of working, but there's a question mark over ho much is actually achieved in putting information where it can't be erased, but the average person probably can't or won't read it.

Some TI Bloggers think the main issue is the credibility of their sources, which organized stalking sets out to rubbish.

Encrypting onto the bit coins doesn't address that issue, but it could still be a useful tool.

Medawar said...

The thing is, TIs are not all geeks, most of them are quite ordinary people without the knowledge skills and confidence to do what Anonymous suggests. In those case where cyber security and freedom of posting are issues, the advice is useful.

In particular, the operating systems that reload themselves completely for each session could be a defence against stalkers using sophisticated software to control the victim's computer, but this is not usually done to technically competent victims.

So, it's all edifying, but not necessarily of immediate use to every TI or stalking victim.

Stalkers interfering with a victim's computer are almost always committing a crime by doing so, what's really at issue there is the lack of impartial law enforcement and a general lack of law enforcement interest in the issue, never mind action.

Anonymous said...

I have technical skills and did have a plan to set up a server dedicated for TIs using TOR. However, one of the problems that we TIs face is that because of the constant harassment we are often unable to earn a proper income to support ourselves never mind spend the money and time necessary to implement a system like the one I wanted to and am skilled enough to set up.

Your suggestions have been quite good and I understand why you're suggesting the bitcoin idea although at this point it's probably more than most TIs can handle unless I can come up with a software that will enable them to do that. I've been researching this and will give it a shot.

I'm just not familiar enough with the specifics of this particular technology to do this yet.

Anonymous said...

To whoever posted the above link. Thank you I already have that link, it's excellent.

Medawar said...

The point, above, about not fighting cloak and dagger activities with smoke and mirrors is well made, and should be borne in mind by anyone interested in technical solutions to technical harassment.

However,if elements of cyber self defence are possible, and within the reach of a TI's technical skills, then there's nothing wrong with exchanging ideas on how to combat technical harassment.

A lot of stalker tricks are far less subtle than anonymous thinks, and they can interfere with internet connections by hacking the associated cable TV box, for example, making everything run slow, without needing any great technical skill: they just need to have been taught a cheap trick.

Organized stalking breaks down into a forum for learning and using cheap and nasty tricks, if you want to look at it that way.

Medawar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Regarding the comment about seeing if the TI blogs are legit.

If I had received this on my blog I would have posted in comments but not in it's own post.

I would have simply investigated the possibilities like I'm doing for this blogger.

A lot of us TIs know each other and know whose technically skilled or not. So that info gets passed between us.

The author here was simply interested in promoting a general discussion on this topic.

Medawar said...

The one case where encrypting messages into the bitcoins setup may be worthwhile, is where a person is being stalked to stop them publishing specific information.

However, the likelihood of a violent response to making it unerasable and public domain needs to be considered.

Medawar said...

It's no good making the computer hack proof, if the stalkers can trash the household's internet connection by simply hacking the cable TV control box where the internet and cable TV come over the same physical connection.

The computer can be unhackable, but this can still make it well nigh unusable. If all else fails, the stalkers will cut the wires or fibre optics, repeatedly, and will escape arrest for the same reasons that they escape arrest for the rest of their stalking activity.

Anonymous needs the stalkers to be playing by certain rules and perhaps some of them do, but there are stalkers out there too crude to be impeded by high programming arts.

Medawar said...

Tor is not the absolute solution to anonymity and security online: nothing is.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/31/tor-attack-revealed-user-identities-anonymised-onion-router

Russian state security also offers a bounty for identifying Tor users.

TIs are victims of crime. Stalkers are criminals. It's as well to be careful not to adopt measures which give the appearance of guilt or criminality, though anonymity is most emphatically not a crime.