Febbraio 2022

UKRAINE – Background on the Russian Invasion

INTRODUCTION

The Russian invasion poses thorny questions for anarchists. How do we oppose Russian military aggression without simply playing into the agenda of the United States and other governments? How do we continue to oppose Ukrainian capitalists and fascists without helping the Russian government to craft a narrative to justify direct or indirect intervention? How do we prioritize both the lives and the freedom of ordinary people in Ukraine and the neighboring countries?
And what if war is not the only danger here? How do we avoid reducing our movements to subsidiaries of statist forces without winding up irrelevant in a time of escalating conflict? How do we continue to organize against all forms of oppression even in the midst of war, without adopting the same logic as state militaries?
If anarchists are going to work alongside statist groups – as has already occurred in Rojava and elsewhere – that makes it all the more important to articulate a critique of state power and to develop a nuanced framework by which to evaluate the results of such experiments.

Continua a leggere UKRAINE – Background on the Russian Invasion

L’ultimo capitolo di “La penultima verità”

La penultima verità,
di Philip K. Dick,
capitolo 29

All’una di quel pomeriggio Carol Tigh effettuò con successo l’operazione di trapianto del pancreas sul corpo ancora congelato di Maury Souza; poi, grazie alle risorse mediche più sofisticate del formicaio, ripristinò la circolazione sanguigna, il battito cardiaco e la respirazione del vecchio. Il suo cuore cominciò a pompare sangue da solo, e subito, con cautela e abilità, gli stimolatori artificiali delle funzioni vennero rimossi uno dopo l’altro.

Continua a leggere L’ultimo capitolo di “La penultima verità”

Manfred

Andrea Pazienza - Tavola da "Pompeo"

«Ma io so fare ciò che più aborro» è una frase che mi colpì molto quando lessi il Pompeo di Pazienza, e che mi torna in mente abbastanza spesso. Mi son sempre chiesto «Ma chi sarà questo Manfred?», e oggi ho scoperto che è il Manfred di Byron, da cui Carmelo Bene trasse per questo spettacolo una riduzione in italiano che riporto sotto perché la trovo bella.

Continua a leggere Manfred

Progetto di opere future (P.P. Pasolini)

PROGETTO DI OPERE FUTURE
(Novembre-Dicembre 1963 – da Poesia in forma di rosa, 1964)
(Con un piccolo commento mio alla fine)

Anche oggi, nella malinconica fisicità
in cui la nazione è occupata a formare un Governo,
e il Centro-Sinistra ai fragili linguisti fa

fremere gli organi normativi-l’inverno
imbeve di oscura luce le cose lontane
e accende appena, mauve e verde, le vicine, in un esterno

perduto nel fondo delle età italiane …
con le terre azzurre di Piero sgorganti da indicibili
azzurrini di Linguadoca … se non da siciliane

azzurrità di Origini … che qui, nelle rozze appendici
degli squisiti Centri, sono verdi e mauve,
per fango e cielo, limoni e rose … occhi di Federici

con metà cuore in cerchi di mandorli rupestri dove
cade luce d’Arabia, l’altra metà in qualche avvallamento
imperlato di nebbia: con Alpi lontane, follemente nuove..

Continua a leggere Progetto di opere future (P.P. Pasolini)

Sabotiamo la guerra innescando l’Internazionale

Editoriale del numero 4 della rivista BEZMOTIVNY, uscito a febbraio 2022 e dedicato alla crisi ucraina.

Quando i lettori avranno tra le mani queste righe la crisi in Ucraina potrebbe aver raggiunto il parossismo ed essersi scatenata nella sua drammatica precipitazione. O forse no. Alcuni passaggi potrebbero essere stati superati o smentiti dai fatti, o ancora in attesa di verifica. Non siamo preoccupati per un’eventuale inattualità di quanto stiamo scrivendo, giacché queste parole non possono che essere inattuali. Di fronte alla guerra l’anarchismo ha sempre mantenuto la stessa posizione che fu di Bakunin sin dai tempi del conflitto francoprussiano e della Comune. Conviene dunque partire dalle ovvietà.

Continua a leggere Sabotiamo la guerra innescando l’Internazionale

Tentativo di censura contro notav.info

Forse alcuni avranno notato che nei giorni scorsi il portale notav.info è stato offline per alcune ore ed ha avuto qualche rallentamento.

Non si è trattato di problemi tecnici o di un attacco di qualche buontempone, ma è stato un tentativo di censura a tutti gli effetti. Il sito è stato provvisoriamente bloccato da parte del provider dei server per via di un articolo che tratta degli affari di Area spa. Vi suona familiare il nome di questa azienda? […]

Facciamo appello a tutti quei siti, blog e giornali che pensano che questo tentativo di censura sia inaccettabile perché diffondano a loro volta l’articolo “incriminato”, che riproduciamo qua sotto, al fine di dimostrare che tentare di limitare la diffusione di informazioni di pubblico interesse non può che provocare l’effetto opposto.

Da notav.info

Continua a leggere Tentativo di censura contro notav.info

CTemplar, “the only really secure end-to-end encrypted webmail”, can’t be trusted (as any other)

It’s silly.
CTemplar is a recent player in “secure end-to-end encrypted webmail” field.
They claim: «Our mission is to provide an anonymous E2EE (End to End Encrypted) email. No one except you and your recipient can read the contents of your emails, not even us» (archived).
They also claim: «In November of 2018, Professor Kobeissi revealed that if JavaScript is required for encryption, it can also be used to hack users who use end-to-end encrypted email services. How Did We Solve This With Checksums? The checksums, released on GitHub after every update, allows our users to quickly compare the code served to their browser, with the code hosted on GitHub within 15-30 seconds. Usually, comparing code can take hours or days. With checksums, you can do it in seconds» (archived – you can read Kobeissi findings here).
They give instructions about how to “quickly compare the code served to their [the users’] browser, with the code hosted on GitHub within 15-30 seconds” here (archived).
But the fact is: all users should spend “15-30 seconds” (I spent at least one minute when trying) every time they access any URL serving CTemplar webmail service on https://mail.ctemplar.com/, in order to maybe feel certain (and currently not to be certain: see below) that the Javascript code running in their browsers is actually the same as that published on github – which is evidently totally impractical for anyone.
And the fact is: when I tried, the login page to their webmail service (archived) was not the same as the login page they published on github (archived): it sourced some more Javascript code at the end.

CTemplar login page source

And the fact is: would have it been the same, I still could not have been certain the Javascript code running in my browser was the same as that published on github, since for example the browser-compatibility.js file (among many other files the index.html sourced) had two integrity checksums.

CTemplar login page source (2)

The checksum of the browser-compatibility.js file published on github actually matched the first one specified in the integrity attribute for browser-compatibility.js on the page I got from the server, but I actually could have received the other, unknown and different browser-compatibility.js that is not published on github and that matches the second checksum (the problem here is that SRI allows to specify more than one checksum for a given file).
What does this all mean?
This means and confirms that Services offering end-to-end encryption through web sites can’t be trusted.

Artaud a caso

Ieri venerdì 15 marzo, nell’insediarsi del mio dolore, la dialettica è entrata in me come derisione della mia carne viva che soffre, ma non capisce.

Della morfina su una gamba di legno, fatta, la morfina, con la cancrena delle ossa della gamba morta, poi spillata, ecco cosa fu la santa trinità.

Non basta agitare fluidi per spiegare la coscienza che non è uno spirito di corpo, ma il volume del timbro di un corpo sul punto di farsi largo con le braccia per essere, contro lo spirito che lo computerà.

Gli spiriti maligni non sono stati mentali, ma esseri che non hanno mai voluto sop-portarsi.

Antonin Artaud, Al paese dei Tarahumara e altri scritti

Services offering end-to-end encryption through web sites can’t be trusted

A false sense of security is worse than no security at all

[Last modified on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, 14:54: added a paragraph summarizing the problem at the beginning of the first imaginary reply]

Whatsapp, Telegram, Element/Matrix, Protonmail, Tutanota are just the most known and widely used services, among many, offering end-to-end encryption not only through their apps, but also through their web sites.

– Can users of these web sites be confident that the people behind these web sites’ servers can’t read their “end-to-end encrypted” contents?

No, they can’t.
Not because end-to-end encryption itself is not secure (it can be); just because the delivery model of web apps, and particularly of their client-side code (i.e. code that will be executed on the user’s device), is incompatible with security: on the server-side, the client-side code that will be executed on the user’s device can be changed at any time by anyone who has access to the server(s) with very little probability of anyone noticing (not the users, and less so a “targeted” user, and less so any “third parties”). It’s not a mistery: anyone with some knowledge of how a browser works knows this; and it’s not even much of a problem (arguably, but this is my opinion), when users trust their web app providers and don’t need to trust that their data are inaccessible to anyone, i.e. not even their web app providers and in general the people on its server(s) side; it is a problem, though, when users do need to be sure of this, and it’s even more a problem when they are told, by the service owners, that this is the case: that nobody, not even them, the service providers and the people on the server(s) side, can access users’ data, while that’s just not true with web apps.
First, let’s get rid of one possible misconception: HTTPS does not make your contents unreadable by the people behind these or any other web site’s servers, it just gives you and those people pretty good security against others who may try to read your contents on the path between your device and the web sites’ servers.
Then, to the point, let’s make an example. User John logs into web.whatsapp.com and starts typing for his friend Bob, believing Whatsapp claims that what he will send through Whatsapp servers will only be readable by Bob and nobody else, not even the people at Whatsapp, since it is always end-to-end encrypted. Jimmy, an admin at web.whatsapp.com, could have set the servers so that they included into the web “page” that John is using a little javascript key-logging function that sends what John is typing to Whatsapp servers, unencrypted; and Jimmy could have set it just for John, and just for a few hours.

– Is there something John can do, when using web sites offering end-to-end encryption, to be sure the people behind the servers actually won’t read what they are not meant to read?

In order to be sure of that, John should read the whole content his browser gets on each “page” (URL) access and understand what its client-side code actually does, which is totally impractical for anyone.

– Could Jimmy-the-admin get to know John’s password too?

If Jimmy worked for Element/Matrix, Protonmail or Tutanota, I’m sure he could, since all these service providers’ web sites have a login page with a password field; their login pages usually include javascript code that, on users’ login, hashes users’ passwords before sending these hashes to the provider’s servers; when this is the case, the people behind these web sites servers actually can’t get to know their users’ passwords, but at any time these people can omit the password-hashing javascript code from any (“targeted”, in case) user’s login page, or include the usual password-hashing javascript code with just a few changes making it do absolutely nothing; this way they can receive any user’s password in clear text.

– What can they do, once they get to know a user’s password, say John’s password?

Once they know John’s password, without doing any more “tricks”, they can decrypt John’s private key, that, if John has used one of these web sites even just once, has been stored on their servers (this is declaredly the case with Protonmail, see https://security.stackexchange.com/a/58552; page is archived here: https://archive.is/GQUf3; I’m almost certain it’s the case also with Element/Matrix, Tutanota and all the other providers offering end-to-end encryption through their web sites without requiring their users to pick a local file containing the private key each time it is needed); once they have decrypted John’s private key, they can save it unencrypted on their side and, since that very moment, they can read any encrypted content John received that is still on their servers; they can read any encrypted content John will receive; they can read any encrypted content John has sent that is still on their servers, if John encrypted it with his own public key as well as with his recipients’ ones (which is common practice); they can read any encrypted content John will send, if John will encrypt it with his own public key too ––– and, since that very moment, they can do all of this not only when John is using their web sites, but also when he’s using their applications, because any content John receives and sends, even when using their applications, always passes through their servers; last but not least, they can also send encrypted and-or signed contents on John’s behalf.
I’m also sure that even the people behind the servers at Whatsapp, Telegram, and any other provider whose web site’s login page uses a login method not requiring a password, can get to know, on each login (authentication) John does with their web sites, a “secret” of John’s allowing them to unlock his private key, since in any case they need to do it without requiring John to pick a file with his private key every time it is needed; and in any case, as I wrote above, they can read what he’s writing (and what other “targeted” John’s friends are writing, too) with a simple javascript keylogger.

– Do you think these security issues have been exploited yet?

I can’t be sure, of course, but there are many suspicious cases: see here and here, for example. In these cases, involving Telegram and Protonmail, it’s not clear and not explained whether Telegram and Protonmail provided authorities with just users’ metadata or even users’ data (conversations contents), but they surely could, in spite of what the already linked Wikipedia page is currently telling: it’s just not true, currently, that «Due to the encryption utilized, Proton Mail is unable to hand over the contents of encrypted emails under any circumstances», as it’s just currently not true in any other case of services offering end-to-end encryption through their web sites.

[Update: I wrote a post showing how end-to-end encryption could safely be implemented into web browsers]

[Update: CTemplar have the same issues, but blows more smoke in our eyes]

[I wrote this post in the guise of a dialogue and using male imaginary characters for the sake of comprehensibility and readability]

[My advice to anyone who wants or needs to do instant messaging with affordable end-to-end encryption, that is privacy, is to use Briar, XMPP with OMEMO, or Signal; for affordable e-mail end-to-end encryption on the desktop I suggest using Claws mail with its PGP plugins relying on GnuPG; there may be other affordable desktop e-mail clients (you can see here, although I don’t trust that page suggestions – more on this below), but I have not tested them; for affordable e-mail end-to-end encryption on Android I suggest using K-9 Mail or FairEmail, although they both rely on OpenKeychain for encryption: OpenKeychain is a good project, but sadly it is no longer actively developed since 2018; again: there may be others, but I have not tested them and I don’t trust openpgp.org suggestions since they state that «No security audits have been done by us and, thus, we cannot provide any security guarantees» and also because, in regard to webmail “clients” like Protonmail, Tutanota, etc., they just state a mild «some people don’t consider these “end-to-end secure”» while they have all the means to understand, and could and should declare, that services offering end-to-end encryption through web sites pose a huge security threat to their users]

Abbozzo di un protocollo di instant messaging basato su server federati, sicuro e facile da usare

Un pezzetto di internet, per esempio

Dato che uno scambio di dati che sia davvero peer-to-peer (che avvenga cioè tra due dispositivi senza passare attraverso altri dispositivi) su internet non avviene praticamente mai (vedi la figura qui sopra), e dato che comunque anche il “peer-to-peer” come lo intendiamo comunemente è sempre meno praticabile (su connessioni mobile è un delirio, perché i provider di connessione mobile non permettono – se non pochissimi e comunque tramite sbattimenti burocratici non indifferenti da parte dellə utentə – di avere un indirizzo IP pubblico sulla internet), e dato che comunque un server di relay che stia tra i client viene comodo per registrarci sopra i messaggi crittati end-to-end quando un@ dellə utentə destinatariə di un messaggio è offline, e al tempo stesso, grazie alla crittografia end-to-end, può essere altrettanto sicuro di un’immaginaria connessione realmente peer-to-peer tra client, e dato che la crittografia end-to-end sarebbe comunque necessaria per la privacy dellə utentə anche con il “peer-to-peer” come comunemente inteso, mi chiedo se non sarebbe fattibile un protocollo di instant messaging basato su server federati, in cui la crittografia end-to-end non è opzionale, in cui però l’id univoco di ciascun utentə non è legato a un particolare server-dominio, in cui lə utentə scambiano dati tra loro passando attraverso i server federati e sono i server federati a fare “peer-to-peer” tra loro sincronizzando un database distribuito con una tabella che contiene l’id e la chiave pubblica di ciascun utente (mentre quella privata rimane sempre sui loro dispositivi), più l’indirizzo IP del server su cui ciascun utente è loggat@ (se è loggat@, altrimenti NULL), e un’altra tabella che contiene gli indirizzi IP dei server federati e il loro stato (tipo un numero da 0=offline a 9=“non mi sta usando nessun*”), così che se un server va giù per qualsiasi motivo lə utentə possono continuare a scambiare dati attraverso gli altri server senza interruzione di servizio e senza che, se poi quel server non torna più su, debban fare un nuovo account su un altro server e comunicarne il nuovo id a tuttə l’altrə, e così che il carico di utentə sia sempre abbastanza equamente distribuito tra i server. Ogni release di un client dovrebbe includere la lista dei server disponibili al momento della sua compilazione, così che il bootstrap di ogni sessione del client sia facile per l’utentə (poi il client scaricherebbe periodicamente la lista aggiornata dei server dal server cui è connesso). Per l’anonimato, i client dovrebbero potersi collegare ai server tramite Tor. Il sito di presentazione di questo protocollo, e tutti i vari siti coinvolti, dovrebbero mettere in chiaro che, lato server, non deve essere reso disponibile via web, e che, lato utente, non deve essere utilizzato via web, quand’anche qualche server desse questa possibilità.
Mi chiedo se non sarebbe fattibile.