Matrix, Auction, BLS, Networking, Tor

1. Nice talk @ FOSDEM: Making & Breaking Matrix's E2E encryption (@ YouTube). All familiar stuff, unfortunately some things are still very broken with Matrix / Element, which basically kills UX for normal users.

2. Deep discussions about "limited capacity" service pricing. How's that supposed to be done? Auction, tokens, credits? Fixed pricing? What if the service runs out of capacity? Regional pricing, how small regions, and so on. Excellent discussion. It was obvious that tech nerds with modern tech twist and complex auction fetish were discussion. But interesting views in terms of economy. Should the cash flow be front loaded? Should there be lower prices if you pay early and so on.

3. Reminded my self about BLS digital signatures (@ Wikipedia) for one token project. But the project is still under development, so no further comments.  IETF draft: BLS Signatures (@ ietf.org).

4. Since when ASUS routers have used MKV files for configuration storage? The file seems to be obfuscated badly, it's basically unreadable. But still compresses well, which gives me impression of badly implemented file obfuscation. If it would be encrypted it wouldn't compress at all. Yet it's clearly not text, and doesn't contain any strings except intentionally confusing HDR2? - Troll, next time someone asks for server / disk image, I'll send them PNG. I just add PNG header and extension the the disk image, to troll them. ;) Have you seen this 50 GB PNG image already. You asked for image. Duh!

5. Did I complain about Matrix? Lol, some of the features are really hard to explain to users. Like what happens if you send message, edit message and then delete it. Well, the delete deletes the original message, but the edited message didn't get deleted. Some users might find this highly confusing. I first post 1 then I edit it to 2 and then delete it. As example Hydrogen still shows 2.

6. Basically all messaging apps and platforms are broken or really broken. The only good way to securely communicate, is to encrypt messages in secure environment and then send encrypted messages, and finally get rid of the keys. Then you're in control of the encryption and keys. Otherwise someone else is doing that and well, it's bad more or less bad but bad anyway.

7. Lot's of standard networking stuff. Firewalls, routing, tunneling, IP network masks, ASN masks, configuring keys and accesses, jump hosts, some undisclosed alternate authentication methods and all the usual stuff. Negative and positive tests and double checking everything for correctness. Logging all necessary information, but not in excess way, etc. Also configured NAT64-based PLAT and 464XLAT / CLAT daemon + TAYGA, so network can be run as IPv6-only, still maintaining outbound connectivity to IPv4 only services. kw: infosec, admin, security, configuration management, IPv6 transition mechanisms (@ Wikipedia)

8. Matrix / Element It would be so nice to allow setting "local room name", because bunch of people create rooms with silly names like General, Off-topic, Info, Home, Admin and so on. kw: feature request, Matrix, Element

9. Watched Operation Mincemeat movie. Even if the story is very familiar, it was fun to watch the movie. Power of disinformation and misinformation. Keep feeding it!

10. Firefox temporary containers add-on is still broken and buggy. Because there can be multiple tabs with same container ID, but those are still technically different container. And as example cookies / cache isn't being shared between the container(s).

11. One Big Server (@ specbranch.com) - Fully matches with my calculations and experiences, very nice summary.

12. Wondered Tor Relay attacks, it's interesting how relay can go 50+ hours without any problems, and under 50% load, and then suddenly there's log entry which says that failed 37500+ circuits on last 60 seconds. Which triggers general overload. Well well. It's quite obvious that this is some kind of attack and not normal. Then Tor recommends to lower the bandwidth of the relay to resolve the issue. I think that's wrong resolution to the problem. kw: Tor, anonymity, servers, hosting, denial of service (DoS)

2023-09-24