@BenoitEsnard They shouldnt let me have a phone...

@HamZa I envy your optimism.

@BenoitEsnard I've cracked hashes, but never as part of a challenge. The concept is the same, though, assuming the only rule is "get the input that creates this digest".

freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/unique-ccs2017.pdf

The general idea is that website fingerprinting attacks cannot scale in the real internet, but when the classifiers are limited to analyzing a smaller set of samples (e.g. hidden services), the attack becomes more practical. It seems that the result of this paper is that it is practical to identify which connections are to hidden services, but not currently practical to identify them using WF attacks (at least with current classifiers).

Er, wrong link. I meant lorre.uni.lu/~andriy/papers/…

@forest hahaha

:P

Oh god! Why I am so stupid who didn't even read the blog linked by @AviD and just throwed useless comments.

Don't worry, we all do that! :P

:)

not reading AviD's comments?

@TomK. Not reading every link.

:(

@Tomk. security.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3072/…

I dunno about you, but I've been given answers that provide a link to "more information" that actually answers my question, despite skimming it and not realizing its value (not necessarily here on SE, but online in general).

nah..

well

dunno if people posted links like this. I certainly posted links like this, but more in a "here's all what you need and I'm too lazy to write a proper answer"-way

@TomK. 😂

@TomK. oh yes, it pretty much was exactly that. If I was less lazy, I would have found one of the few other questions where it was already asked and answered years ago...

no worries @daya, my answer was not clear. We've all done that! Thanks @forest for clarifying.

@AviD if you are referring to the meta post, I think that is one of the rare case where it's actually totally okay to do this

I mean.. it's a help page on the very site you are asking about

on a totally unrelated note: if I'm pinging an IP and get an answer from another IP telling me that the host is unreachable, what does that tell me?

routing is effed up

usually

or its your gateway responding, and cant create a route to the target IP (maybe its down, maybe no connectivity, etc)

yup it's exactly that

it's a router that says the host is not up

I'm happy not to live in China right now. :(

@BenoitEsnard I think that's specific to various Muslim communities, but I totally understand. Many governments are horrible, and China's is certainly not exempt.

@TomK. Happens to me sometimes when the server for a small website I run (which is behind NAT) is down, but the gateway router is up.

yeah, I was confused because I didn't realize the answering IP was a router

at first I thought it was another host

Has there been any resolution to this meta question on providing value to white/black hats from '11, or is it still best summarized as "I'm not so sure"?

Well, some of my questions sounds very white-hat: security.stackexchange.com/users/76718/…

I guess people just need to find white-hat questions

I also think people attack more seriously than they are defending

Some attackers are not at all serious and very lazy. :P

trends.google.com/trends/…

@forest I don't really see a problem here tbh

(Yeah, this is obviously biaised, but I think the point still stands :P )

ah, just looked at your link

(I READ ALL THE LINKS, OKAY?!?)

It's dangerous to go alone...

The temptation to scam this guy begging for DRM is incredible.

There's nothing wrong with gaining knowledge through being scammed

Very true. I suppose if anything, it'll teach him not to pay random people on Stack Exchange for someone to add crappy DRM to their programs!

There might eventually be something wrong with scamming people though. :P

Meh, I've done worse.

There's a difference between going out of your way to scam a well-meaning or intelligent person, and scamming some idiot begger. After all, if they're putting DRM in their app, they're trying to scam people themselves!

@forest I have no doubt about it. :D

lol

Would infosec exist without people trying to do bad things?

You're 17. I assume you're just sleeping in all the time?

Are you very sedentary?

And do you use incandescent lights, or white LED lights for lighting?

Perhaps you should consider getting white LEDs then (or white fluorescent, but those can be expensive). If the light you are getting is not natural, you need to make sure it has white in it or it can cause tiredness (since your brain's circadian rhythm only takes into account azure light, not the yellow light most bulbs emit).

It's something that helped me a lot.

Yeah, or a sleep specialist (depending on how severe it is).

But I'd wager that the answer will be about adjusting your schedule or habits.

Not that that's a bad thing if it helps with tiredness, of course.

Insomnia? Welcome to the club.

Insomnia just means difficulty sleeping at night. It's not a diagnosis by itself.

Have you tried sleeping pills?

Some pills do create a deep slippery slope (Ambien particularly, since you become dependent, have amnesia while it is active, and can hallucinate on it. And did I mention the amnesia? I forget), but some like melatonin, which is very mild, do not.

If you feel rested when you wake up, you're probably getting pretty good sleep.

Even when you first wake up?

Then you're probably right that you're not getting a good sleep. That could be anything from apnea (e.g. if you're overweight) to crappy bed springs.

Oh man, 5:00.

Yeah then it seems asking a doctor would be good.

Probably obvious but I assume you tried coffee?

There are a lot of different kinds of coffee, all of which are quite distinct.

Many don't even taste like coffee. Though even if you hate them all, caffeinated tea is a thing! Better for your body than energy drinks.

I mean I'm the kind of person who likes natural remedies (no, I'm not a homeopathy crackpot) like tea, relaxation techniques, even aromatherapy (unlike what some crazies say, it won't cure cancer, but it can certainly be relaxing!).

Is it particularly crappy?

Heh, that could very well be it.

:P

The ambient temperature and mattress quality can certainly affect sleep.

There are also some psychological ways to boost sleep, like not spending time in your room unless it is for the express purpose of sleeping, and not staying in bed unless you are going to sleep (or back to sleep), which trains your brain to associate the bedroom only with being tired.

Is it a spring bed (the kind you may be able to repair if one or two springs are bad)?

Because beds can be expensive. Though luckily a lot of them have return policies!

Because capitalism.

It doesn't benefit anyone else, but it results in profit, so they do it.

I just recently bought a new mattress

and I feel like I'm lying in heaven

You just know that jumper cost only £10 to make lol

@Joshua.J Just wondering, are you a hypochondriac?

Good. Then I can say that I made the mistake of stumbling upon this while researching insomnia as a kid! Don't fall into that same trap with self-diagnosis.

Now I know it's just that I have a bad sleep schedule lol

It's super rare but is a classic prion-based disease.

It's just really, really freaky.

An infectious (at least, sometimes) disease caused by misfolded proteins rather than viruses. A chain reaction is created when a single prion protein is created, which converts other proteins into prions. It's often genetic but sometimes you can get it if you eat brain (e.g. mad cow disease).

Proteins (chains of amino acids) fold in specific ways dictated by their sequence, and the shape they fold into determines their function. Some proteins have multiple stable final shapes, and in the case of prions, the stable shape results in other proteins of the same kind being forced into that shape, leading to the chain reaction.

If that made more sense.

lol

you do say "lol" a lot

yep

you are doing pretty well

We all do that.

(At least that's how it works on IRC)

the covering up part doesnt work at all though

(And yes, I had to stop myself from writing lol in that sentence)

@TomK. Be glad we aren't channers or it would be dominated with lel and kek!

@Joshua.J Ignore him. Avoid him if possible.

Just don't respond, I mean.

Oh, then he's probably just insecure about his own stupidity.

What is his position?

Is it something that "dude, you're just an X" would work on to shut him up?

Yep, that screams of insecurity (no pun intended).

You disagreed with him so he's desperately trying to find others who agree.

Well tell him that actual cryptographers think he's full of shit. :P

Are we actual cryptographers now?

@BenoitEsnard No, but over on The Side Channel (Crypto.SE's chat room), there are actual cryptographers. That's where Joshua brought this conversation up first.

@forest agreed to that

Oh, I'm not in that channel. I guess I'm not a cryptographer then. :'(

I know people like this @Joshua.J, they can't handle their own incompetence

As I said in there, the fact that he worked for the government is telling.

Their own insecurity is often why people join the IC (no, I'm not kidding).

just stay on top with knowledge and well.. competence

People love to feel like James Bond, so it takes either a misanthropic psychopath or someone really insecure about themselves to work with the IC.

that's not true @forest

I work in the public administration

That's not the IC though, that's just government.

the problem is, that people are not forced/encouraged to stay on top of the current technology

@Joshua.J Ask him if he knows what Bell LaPadula is. If he does not, then chances are he was one of the expendables who weren't important enough to be told anything that wasn't already public. If he does know what it is, then he'd know that he isn't allowed to know anything interesting!

@Joshua.J it is kinda good to have people like him around, because now you can easily divide your colleagues into competent and incompetent ones

the ones that trust and believe him (hopefully few) and the ones that don't (hopefully many)

Well, if it ever comes up again, at least.

Also you could threaten to bring it up with your manager (not HR, they could see you as a liability and get you fired for bringing up a complaint about someone else).

You're handling it better than I would.

@Joshua.J I understand you, I have colleagues like this. But you can gain nothing from escalating things with this guy directly

tell him to drop it in a perfectly nice and honest way

if he doesn't, take it to your manager

Learn computer forensics and find a way to make him lose his job! :P

Not that I advocate planting any fake evidence of anything, of course...

That's the best move imo.

The Great Bear has returned!

His last answer here was over a year ago

Good morning

First point of order, star everything with a 17 in it

That's one of the reasons I wish the chat had an API