The DMZ

12:00 PM

@Jis12yearsold. 100% agree. I don't understand how there are celebrities who exist without doing anything other than being celebrities. Why do they get viewers, funding, gifts, sponsorship? People are messed up if those are their heroes

Anonymous

@RoryAlsop Well, it all comes down to the para-social relationships thing. I think a lot of people that follow celebrities (sadly) are damaged. They likely don't have much confidence, self-esteem or are working through a lot of tough issues.

Anonymous

I think celebrities in general knowingly take advantage of that. By the sorts of things they promote, engage in, etc. It is a really toxic and harmful cycle.

Rory Alsop

@Jis12yearsold. but will paying for these celebrities to have overprivileged lifestyles help that? I think it mostly does the opposite (occasional exceptions aside)

Anonymous

It's all well and good to say: "well don't donate" but when you form what you believe is a bond with someone, it's hard to break out of that...

Anonymous

@RoryAlsop No, it doesn't. Exactly!

Rory Alsop

12:01 PM

@Jis12yearsold. yep - it is an abuse of power

Anonymous

You're exactly right.

Anonymous

It doesn't solve the true problem.

Anonymous

But sadly, a lot of people involved in these kinda' relationships with celebrities don't have the mental willpower or emotional intelligence to find another way out. And they see it that the only people supporting them in life are their idols.

Anonymous

The very ones who are also squeezing money from them in any way possible...

Rory Alsop

Even in the infosec world I avoid "celebrities" - the infosec rock star types (other than those of us who are actual rock stars in a musical sense, obviously)

Anonymous

12:03 PM

As I said, it is a totally viscous cycle. And I should add most of the fault does not lay on the donators.

Rory Alsop

@Jis12yearsold. agreed

probably mostly the media, closely followed by the celebrities

Anonymous

@RoryAlsop Yes, me too. I hold much higher standards for people in this industry so when I see themselves promoting themselves in an A-lister style way it gives me one opinion only...

Anonymous

Greedy.

Anonymous

I have the same view on those "infosec celebrities" who make outrageously overpriced & terrible courses for platforms like INE.

Anonymous

They have a name so they get offered these contracts and sponsors whatever for huge sums of money. And they know people will buy it PURELY because of their name being known.

Anonymous

12:05 PM

I think it's wrong and shameful. Especially when most of them are on a 6 figure salary.

Anonymous

They literally do not need anymore money. But instead of setting up campaigns for good causes, they set up campaigns in which their fans fill their pockets even more.

Anonymous

It's vile.

Anonymous

So to add some positivity to this: I'd like to give a round of applause to LiveOverflow for always remaining consistent in what he's willing to accept as a form of payment for all the high quality content he's made.

Anonymous

He's never made a bullshit course. HE's never allowed wild donations to go to his pockets. He's never taken these nasty sponsorships which pray on the weak and make him hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Anonymous

And there are other well known infosec "celebrities" like that! but he springs to mind.

Rory Alsop

12:07 PM

@Jis12yearsold. yep - seems like a good one

Anonymous

Yeah! Super nice guy too. Was actually meant to meet him when I went to Berlin but I think he got caught up so didn't in the end.

Anonymous

I won't name and shame his counterparts who do partake in some of the actions I listed above :)

nobody

@Jis12yearsold. Just to be clear, I absolutely abhor the sort of celebrities you are talking about. In case you thought from my previous messages that I'm defending them

Anonymous

But if you spend about 10 minutes on Twitter I am sure you can find a few of these people with ease...

Anonymous

@nobody Not at all :)

nobody

12:10 PM

Thing is I'm out of touch with the world. The only infosec celebrities I know about are schneier and jann horn

Anonymous

Yes, I urge you to support people who've contributed masses amount of good, security research to the world and not people who shitpost on Twitter and have 200,000 followers because of it.

A. Hersean

For me the bear is an infosec celebrity.

2

Anonymous

^

Anonymous

+1 forever and always.

nobody

Ofcourse

Anonymous

12:11 PM

The Bear IS an infosec celebrity.

Anonymous

A mighty fine one at that.

A. Hersean

There's also DJB and Moxie.

Journeyman Geek

The bear is hard working. :D

Anonymous

Well, I would have agreed with Moxie until as of about a month ago @A.Hersean

nobody

And Matt Green

Anonymous

12:12 PM

His new plans for Signal are dangerous, arrogant, reckless and honestly, shameful.

nobody

Hey it seems like the cryptographers are the good guys mostly

Anonymous

Most of them, absolutely.

A. Hersean

@Jis12yearsold. Yeah... However I wait to have more unbiased information on this before forming an opinion.

nobody

Followed by the good binex people

Anonymous

@A.Hersean What information released so far is biased?

Anonymous

12:13 PM

Moxie said he was never involved with MobileCoin, he was previously CTO.

Anonymous

Moxie says he has no ties with MobileCoin at all, he was a technical advisor.

A. Hersean

The business model of Signal relying on donations is shaky. Seeking another form of revenue is legitimate.

Anonymous

They sold the coins as far back as 2017. They didn't upload the server source code for over a year.

Anonymous

What is biased about that? That is shady at best... And outright dangerous at worst.

nobody

@A.Hersean Well, you have a point

But they could have been a little less shady about it

Anonymous

12:14 PM

@A.Hersean I agree. But they've been seeking this form of revenue since 2017 yet never declared it...

Anonymous

They're an open source project who didn't open source their code for a year, that's... Horrible. That alone is horrible. When you throw in the rest it screams of: "we don't care about the users now we went mainstream".

A. Hersean

The new way of earning money is shady, might be malicious, but it might just be poor knowledge of laws, poor communication and mistakes in the design along the way.

Anonymous

I don't think any of the published information so far is biased... I think it is indicative of their feelings towards the app.

Anonymous

I am all for them searching a new form of revenue. But as nobody said, they couldn't have done it in a more shady way if they tried.

Anonymous

That is the real crux of the issue here, not the feature itself.

Anonymous

12:17 PM

@A.Hersean Hmm, fair point I guess.

A. Hersean

What I find biased is all the shitstorm of over inflated info and speculation from crypto(currency)nerds that are angry their cryptocoin was not selected.

Anonymous

But "poor knowledge of laws" seems far-fetched given they are well aware that the only time a warrant cannot work is when you literally don't have access to the requested information.

Anonymous

Except their new coin design.. They do have access to the data...

Anonymous

So they SHOULD know that is a shitstorm waiting to happen.

Anonymous

BUt the other points I accepty.

Anonymous

12:18 PM

Not the knowledge of laws part...

A. Hersean

They tried to build a cryptocurrency with constraints that do not meet. They had to make compromises. A shitstorm is bound to happen whatever compromise they choose.

nobody

@A.Hersean I mean, its absolutely abhorrent they didn't choose unicoins

Anonymous

@A.Hersean But that doesn't really excuse the fact that they should be aware that making a system in which they have access to transaction data can only end with that system being intruded by all the three letter agencies in the world and three letter agencies alike.

Anonymous

Having ran Signal, they should know that. They should be aware of the way such agencies operate... It is common sense when you run a project like Signal.

nobody

Yes, I find absolutely no reason why the cryptocurrency had to be integrated into Signal

It could be doe as a separate project

Anonymous

12:23 PM

@nobody Yeah sadly a lot of binex people work for governments and sell exploits to places like israel. Or sell to zerodium who sell to governments like israel and the US.

Anonymous

@nobody Well, it's as @A.Hersean they are using it for the avenue of actually funding Signal, the messaging side.

nobody

@Jis12yearsold. Well, the one's that work for the spooks aren't celebrities

A. Hersean

@Jis12yearsold. Yeah, maybe. I didn't delve in the design of their cryptocoin, so I don't know. Maybe they thought that SGX enclaves would solve this issue.

Anonymous

@nobody Quite right. They're even worse than the celebrities.

nobody

@Jis12yearsold. No but you can fund signal even if the coins are a separate app

Anonymous

12:25 PM

@nobody Good point...

A. Hersean

@nobody Because when they began to think about it, it was the trend every messaging app was following.

Anonymous

@A.Hersean Also a good counter argument...

A. Hersean

Now, it looks like everybody abandoned this idea. I don't know why Signal continued.

Anonymous

Lucky for us, I don't think the situation is so dire we should stop using the messaging side...

Anonymous

Although, depending on their response I will be exclusively migrating to XMPP as far as a messaging system goes.

Anonymous

12:27 PM

One thing that I take away the most from all of this is, I really fear for the state of privacy in the next 15 years...

Anonymous

I mean, soon all that will be left is the tor project and xmr. That's just worrying.

A. Hersean

Barring the payment side, which I don't see how it could work in practice, the messaging part of Signal is well done.

Anonymous

@A.Hersean Oh agreed. It's fantastic!

nobody

@Jis12yearsold. 2030: "The tor project has decided to switch to using a blockchain for providing anonymity"

:P

Anonymous

@nobody LOL

Journeyman Geek

12:29 PM

@Jis12yearsold. despite forest's hate for it...

There's matrix

Anonymous

Forest hates Matrix?

Journeyman Geek

and they're trying to/working on a fully decentralised system for it

@Jis12yearsold. yup

Anonymous

DO you know why?

Anonymous

Or do you have a link where he explains why?

Journeyman Geek

Cause of people using IRC bridges

Anonymous

12:31 PM

Right.

Anonymous

So not that he thinks it is pseudo privacy or something?

Journeyman Geek

naw, just the idiots :D

Anonymous

I see, that's fair enough.

Anonymous

I am quite a big fan of Matrix, I must say.

Journeyman Geek

The homeserver/federation model isn't too bad

Anonymous

12:31 PM

Yeah!

Journeyman Geek

Its in active development - unlike IRC

Anonymous

Although, I will say. Matrix seems slightly redundant if you're already using XMPP...

Journeyman Geek

Possibly

Anonymous

I mean, there seems little reason to move from XMPP to Matrix. But Matrix can communicate with XMPP users so!

Journeyman Geek

BRIDGE ALL THE THINGS

Anonymous

12:32 PM

As I said, I quite like Matrix. I think it's pretty good.

Anonymous

I like the decentralization for sure.

Journeyman Geek

lol

Its a bit too robust

We have 3-4 homeservers people use, mostly on 1 and everything works perfectly for everyone else if one goes down

So we ended up setting up a monitoring system for the servers

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