Cloudflare Shitgnomes Hyping "Randomness Beacons"

Notorious USG surveillance firm Cloudflare is hyping a network of "randomness beacons" and encouraging folks to use the output of these beacons in places where numbers generated under the watch of others do not belong (archived). The pernicious shitgnomes caution against using the public output of their beacons for private keys in order to imply their "private" entropy offerings are suitable for private keys. They are not. The proposition that a known NSA and CIA surveillance partner offers any private thing is incredible in its insanity.

Hygienic random numbers suitable for battlefield use come from auditable processes and instruments in the hands of the user whose life depends on them.

Argentine Fuckup Leads To Power Outages In Argentina, Uruguay, And Parts Of Other South American Countries

Argentina's EDESA fucked up their transmission interlink bringing power from Paraguay's Yacyretá dam leading to a casacade of failures that caused nationwide outages in Argentina and Uruguay with partial outages in most neighboring countries (archived, archived). The outage began 7:02 local time (UTC -3) and Uruguay's national electric utility UTE had restored power to most of the country within a few hours. Service restoration in Argentina has been slower, except in Tierra del Fuego which avoided the outage with its own generation facilities and separation from the rest of Argentina's electric grid.

Paraguay, where the Yacyretá dam is located, is a massive exporter of hydroelectric generated power to the region with most of its output being bought by Brazil. Uruguay exports electricity to Argentina. Argentina is a major net importer of electricity, buying substantial amounts of power from its neighbors.

Yubikey FIPS Products Suffer Reduced Randomness

Yubico has published an advisory warning that their Yubikey FIPS products offer reduced randomness under a wide variety of conditions. While Yubikey is offering a replacement program, this does nothing to alleviate the damage rendered to those who fired their devices in anger. No Such lAbs has produced a dedicated, auditable random number generator which has strangely seen no competition in the market.

Two Tankers Allegedly Torpedoed In Gulf Of Oman

Today brings news that two oil tankers with connection to Japan were allegedly attacked by torpedoes while Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is visiting his counterparts in Iran (archived). Iranian naval vessels were the first to respond to distress calls and rescued the two ships' 44 crew members.

US National Security Advisor John Bolton has been attempting to incite an armed conflict between Iran and USG aligned forces in the region since his Venezuela coup spectacularly failed. The USG has previously leveraged the accidental loss of the USS Maine to incite a war against Spain as well as a shootout between the destroyer USS Maddox and radar ghosts inside North Vietnamese territorial waters to escalate hostilities against Vietnam.

Earlier this week Houthi "rebels" in Yemen attacked an airport inside Saudi Arabia with a cruise missile (archived). The Houthi "rebels" control a substantial portion of Yemen including the capital of Sana'a, which they have held in spite of a hostile Saudi government run war attempting to exterminate them.

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid Signs Order To Extradite Julian Assange To United States

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid has signed an order requesting Julian Assange's extradition to the United States for Julian's attempts to do journalism in violation of the US Espionage Act (archived). The extradition order will be weighed in the UK's courts Friday. Sweden withdrew their competing extradition claim earlier this month.

Vim And Neovim Vulnerable To Code Execution Through "Modelines" In Hostile Text Files

A defect in the Vim and Neovim text editors has been found which allows the execution of commands when hostile text files are opened though an opening provided by "modelines" functionality intented to specify custom editor options (archived). One again there is no substitute for hygiene to keep the vermin away.

Ongoing Ebola Outbreak Crosses Border Into Uganda

An Ebola outbreak that has been slowly burning its way through the Congo has gone international with a death across the border in Uganda (archived). The self declared "experts" have been insisting for more than a year that they are positioned to "contain" the outbreak through ring vaccination and other measures. These measures have had limited success for reasons related to the local culture.

A related hemorrhagic fever affecting porcine populations managed to escape the dark continent and is inflicting grave damage on China's swine herd (archived). Prices of pork and other meats on the international market have spiked in response as containment efforts don't seem to be doing much containment at all.

The international "experts" are pointedly not calling for strict biological controls on anything leaving Africa.

ROWHAMMER Being Used To Read From Vulnerable RAM

The ROWHAMMER vulnerability in DRAM which allows running processes to fuck with memory allocated to other processes is being developed into reliable side channel leaks reading from memory (archived). The importance of computing hygiene continues to be supported by the unforgiving march of time.

The full text of the academic paper is presented below: Continue reading

Bakery Wins 11 Million USD Verdict Against Oberlin College For Institutional Hysterics

The Pantsuitist social warfare training camp doing business as Oberlin College was slapped with an 11 million USD verdict after one of their exercises gravely damaged the business of a local bakery (archived). The drama started when three Oberlin reparations agents of color were detained, arrested, and plead guilty to theft from Gibson's Bakery which has been operating since 1885. In response to student protests, the activist institution ceased business relations with the bakery and actively engaged in an activist campaign declaring the bakery a racist business. Oberlin tried to justify their institutional actions against the bakery by proposing the doctrine that "first time offenders", meaning persons engaging in theft up to the occasion they are caught doing so, ought not be turned over to police for prosecution.

During the trial Oberlin retained a professional witness and attempted to assert the value of the business they destroyed was a mere 35,000 USD, less than the tutition for charged for a single semester at Oberlin. To their credit, Gibson's attorneys and accountans defended the intangible assets of the business including nearly a century and a half in operation while suggesting a very reasonable 5.8 million USD figure for the damages inflicted by Oberlin's attack projected over 30 years.