The DAO, everyone's favorite flaming tire in a shitpit, is reportedly empty again after members of a so-called robin hood group emptied it in an emergency move after yet another attack was launched on the platform. Copious amounts of jenkem were passed around the r/ethereum subreddit to huff as users agreed the latest batch was some of the most potent to date, perhaps due to the added corn content.
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Antminer Flaw Allows Machine Takeover
An Australian security researcher has discovered a flaw in Antminer Bitcoin miners that can be leveraged with CGMiner to obtain complete control of the victim's mining resources. Tim Noise stated that the majority of devices are configured from the factory with a web interface without a password set, which can then be silently adjusted to redirect the mining proceeds to the attackers wallet. Further lulz were had when it was noted that the OpenWRT software is running most operations, including CGMiner as root user. The flaw was tested on the ubiquitous Antminer S5, and Noise is currently testing the proof of concept on the S7 series of devices to see if it can be duplicated. He has posted his version of the exploit code, dubbed "Queen Ant" on shithub. BitMain did not comment on the announcement.
Activity On ChangeTip Today
The 7 remaining ChangeTip users1 cheered themselves on Twitter today as they moved a whopping 0.2 Bitcoin across their ailing network. Since the acquisition of their staff by AirnBNB, ChangeTip the product apparently no longer has sufficient staff to spam social media or further develop the service in any meaningful way. A request to the BitGive charity to comment on the donation was unanswered, and the request to twitter user @CharlesCNorton (WOT:nonperson) was blocked. (archived)
estimated ↩
Further Violence In United States Over The Weekend
Incidents of violence involving police continued over the weekend in the United States. In St Paul Minnesota 21 police officers were injured and 102 arrests were made after violence broke out at a protest on Interstate 94 in the city (archived). The most severe injury disclosed was a broke vertebra imparted by a cinder block dropped on the officer's head.
Meanwhile Tyler Gebhard (WOT:nonperson) invaded the home of a police officer in Lakeshire, an upscale suburb in south west St Louis County, Missouri. The home invasion was reportedly prompted by a heated Facebook argument between the two. After breaching the officer's home with a 50 pound concrete planter, Gebhard was relieved of his anger and mortality through the officer's application of hot lead.
Peace in our time.
WAPO: Major US Socialist Party To Deploy Electoral Nuclear Option In Desperation
According to the Washington Post the Major Socialist Party in the United States1 is set to deploy a nuclear option in the campaign out of desperation. This nuclear option is a pathway for marijuana legalization in the United States.2 This comes as the Libertarian party ticket of two term governors Gary Johnson and William Weld is positioned to play spoiler not to Donald Trump-Clinton (WOT:nonperson), but to Hillary Rodham-Clinton. Traditionally the Libertarian party has been positioned to spoil minor socialist tickets while the Green Party3 spoiled major socialist tickets.
In this year's electoral circus where the Libertarian slate is polling with greater support than the typical gap between major party candidates, the Major socialist party has been forced to fire the marijuana legalization glass cannon.4 Of course there could be other motivations for the move, like the reality that United States farmers desperately need a crop that isn't edible. Sorry for your laws.
Meaning the one that is poised to nominate Hillary "Clitler" Rodham-Clinton (WOT:nonperson)for the presidency. ↩
Also known as what people thought they were for voting for when voting for Barack Obama (WOT:nonperson). ↩
Became defunct in 2000 when it helped spoil Al Gore's (WOT:nonperson) chance at beating George W. Bush (WOT:nonperson). ↩
This a a glass cannon because you can only legalize marijuana once. Otherwise marijuana is already legal. Just as delivering gay marriage means they can't deliver it again. This is in contrast to their tent poles like fighting poverty which are incapable of having a defined "mission accomplished" style ending. ↩
"Pokemon Go" Ushers In New Phase Of Smartphone Surveillance
This past week's release of the smartphone gamified reality app "Pokemon Go" heralds the beginning of a new phase of the smartphone surveillance era. Billed as an "augmented reality" game the app uses in game incentives to direct users to physically visit locations that they would not otherwise. The app has already lead to a teenager discovering a dead body in a location she would have not otherwise visited.
In addition to directing users to physical locations the app encourages users to enable their smartphone's camera so that they may see pokemon "appear" in the real world. This active scanning of the real world by app users presents far greater potential for image collection than the typical social media app which relies on the user's vanity to get them to use their smartphone's camera.
It almost makes the app's requirement to turn on the smartphone's location services, one that will likely snare low intelligence "criminals", seem mundane.
Pokemon Go was preceeded by an alternate reality game called Ingress also developed by Pokemon Go creator Niantic. Ingress however lacked tie ins to any popular media franchises1 which would have delivered a ready made user base in the manner Pokemon Go has. Peace in our time!
Deepening the rabbit hole is Nintendo's long refusal to allow media properties they have a stake in to run on devices that aren't also sold by Nintendo. ↩
Derp Summit At Bretton Woods Begins Today
A large number of derps from obeastly regulatory bodies, hamplanetary legislative bodies, and mayogendered figures declaring themselves to be from the blockchain industry are meeting at Bretton Woods. According to CoinDesk the aim of this meeting at Bretton Woods is to produce a "white paper" for presentation at a "payments industry" conference this October. Attendees are reported to include:
the US Federal Trade Commission; US Department of Commerce; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as well as US Representatives Mick Mulvaney (WOT:nonperson) and David Schweikert (WOT:nonperson) and members of educational groups including Coin Center and MIT Media Lab
The amount of detail offered by CoinDesk further suggests that Barry Silbert (WOT:nonperson) or representatives of zher ventures will be in attendance.
Brettons Woods is a resort in Carroll, New Hampshire that offers skiing and conferences that attempt to pervert the meaning of money. A July 1944 conference at Bretton Woods set the stage for the purely fiat currency which would come to fruition over the next several decades. The setting chosen for this gathering suggests those in attendance intend to subvert the actual future of Bitcoin regulation.
Given the short hours long life of the "Kimberly Process for Bitcoin" meme, expect the mayogendered forces of shitgnomery to begin pushing a "Bretton Woods of Blockchain" meme. The delay between this conference in July to the paper's presentation in October suggests that the meme will have at least three months to live, if only in their own heads. The conference begins today and continues through Wednesday. Sorry for your laws.
Meh Of The Week: Coinbase Can't Serve Canada
Coinbase has announced that it will no longer be servicing Canadian customers after August 1, 2016. Canadian fiat interface Vogogo abruptly decided to shut down it's service, leaving Coinbase no way to hawk it's imitation Bitcoin to users located there. Current users have been given a deadline of July 29th to convert their Canadian dollars to Bitcoin, or withdraw to a bank account. Users who fail to do so will be subject to account suspension, leaving remaining users in the scheme forced to pay exorbitant fees to recover their finds. Coinbase notably supported the failed XTCoin and ClassicCoin coup attempts which both failed like their Canadian fiat interface Vogogo. Sorry for your loss.
Phuctor Finds RSA Collision In SSH Key Dump
Today the Phuctor discovered two SSH keys sharing a common factor while working on a dump of SSH public keys discovered during a scan of the IPv4 address space. The shared factor is:
10783613970442413934143578906158089830375140508817221044708965087575877867311152108386754333184784039689570945854780881166021712179361227812154341718049279
The keys (Key A and Key B) correspond with IP addresses assigned to the internet service provider "Frontier Communications" which may translate to shitty DSL modems. Phuctor has factored interesting keys before, but this compromised pair is notable for the size of the factor discovered through Phuctor's relentless search for common denominators. Phuctor has broken 249 RSA moduli as of the time of this publication. Beyond the common factor both keys share the RSA exponent 35, previously noted to be suspicious.
Frontier Communications previously was best known for being the venture that runs wired telecommunications services in territories that Verizon decides it doesn't want any more.
Bitcoin Foundation Chair On Bitcoin's Second Halving
Today, Saturday, July 9th 2016, the Bitcoin block reward subsidy has been halved from 25 BTC per block, to 12.5 per block. This is the second block reward halving event to have occurred during the time of our most serene republic. The first reward halving was nearly four years ago on November 28th, 2012, which reduced the subsidy from 50 BTC to 25 BTC per block. The Bitcoin protocol schedules these reductions automatically: every 210,000 blocks.
At the time of this writing, we are currently at block 420,011. The total number of bitcoins in circulation is 15,750,050, or about 75% of the total 21 Million coins to be mined.
Today, we diligently watch the blockchain and celebrate in our chamber, #trilema. Join in, or follow along by reading the congressional transcript.
Starting with block 630,000, the next reward subsidy will become 6.25 BTC per block. See you then!
Viva Bitcoin y La Serenissima
mod6 (WOT:mod6) is a co-chair of the Bitcoin Foundation