This was posted on the PGP-Basics mail­ing list by Robert J. Hansen:

Some researchers are claim­ing they’ve been able to make the Sheng­dong
Uni­ver­sity attack on SHA-1 a fac­tor of about 2000 times eas­ier. If
their research is cor­rect, that means SHA-1 is now attack­able by reg­u­lar
people.

These results are not unex­pected. We knew this day would come. For the
last cou­ple of years most crypto nerds have been strongly rec­om­mend­ing
peo­ple either migrate away from SHA-1 imme­di­ately, or at the very least
have a migra­tion plan put together.

If you have already migrated — then you may ignore this development.

If you have not — then it is increas­ingly urgent you do so.

Orig­i­nal URL:

http://eurocrypt2009rump.cr.yp.to/837a0a8086fa6ca714249409ddfae43d.pdf

@ter­ranaomi Or CSPAN.

Try­ing out PGP Whole Disk Encryp­tion on my Mac­Book Pro. So far it hasn’t eaten my hard drive.

I’ve found that cer­tain devel­op­ers are dis­tin­guish­able from small chil­dren pri­mar­ily in that small chil­dren are less likely to have email.

Every­one who walks into my life brings hap­pi­ness; some com­ing in and some going out.

Natasha Bishop

@sethdill This is one of the rea­sons I’m so much more pro­duc­tive since I started work­ing from home.

The num­ber of builds I’m respon­si­ble for just hit 333. :-/

From a com­ment refer­ring to the Gestapo harass­ing photographers:

That’s right; I don’t want to be too tech­ni­cal, but the focal length of the lens is directly cor­re­lated with hatred of Amer­ica. It goes some­thing like this:

You have a a cell phone cam­era, point and shoot, or 20mm wide angle lens: you are a red blooded Amer­i­can who wants to cel­e­brate our national her­itage by tak­ing pic­tures of pop­u­lar tourist locations.

A 50mm lens: you are also, by and large, a good Amer­i­can, but you have a dis­turb­ing inter­est in “under­stand­ing” the ter­ror­ists and why they attack us.

An 85mm lens: you loath your own coun­try and secretly admire the 9/11 hijack­ers for giv­ing us our come-up-ins. You are not a ter­ror­ist, but your cam­era should prob­a­bly be con­fis­cated and your pic­tures deleted, lest they find their way to al Jazeera mes­sage boards. Your mid­dle name may be Hussein.

A 200mm lens: you are an al Qaeda hench­man actively scout­ing for secu­rity vulnerabilities.

A 300mm lens: you ARE bin Laden!

And yes, every tri­pod is suit­able for launch­ing RPGs, but you need a ball head to attach heat seek­ing missiles.

Another Matt

My Ears Are Bleed­ing.

So I just com­pleted the 2.5 hour drive from D.C. to Char­lottesville for my speech at UVA tonight. Beau­ti­ful drive.

Along the way, I lis­tened to some left-wing talk radio, specif­i­cally Ed Schultz. And wow. The left’s blath­er­ing idiots really are just a mir­ror image of the right’s, aren’t they? Cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance, disin­gen­u­ous bull­shit­ting, dem­a­goguery, and hate­ful invec­tive all over the place. It was really some­thing to behold.

Appar­ently with­out the slight­est hint of irony, Schultz started by cast­ing off the tea party pro­test­ers as “un-American” and “unpa­tri­otic.” Yep. Bush has been out of office for all of three months, and the left has already adopted the “peo­ple who dis­agree with us hate Amer­ica” crap. He then char­ac­ter­ized tea partiers exer­cis­ing their right to free speech and protest as “try­ing to over­turn the results of an elec­tion.” Another page ripped from the right-wing play­book. Just sub­sti­tute “anti-war protests” for “tea parties.”

But Schultz wasn’t done. He then said the tea party move­ment is pri­mar­ily fueled by racism, and the par­ties are attended by peo­ple who can’t stand the fact that a black man was elected pres­i­dent. He said the whole protest was fueled by hate and “white power” supporters.

Then it got worse. Schultz actu­ally said that Fox News anchors were secretly hop­ing for shots to be fired, for gov­ern­ment offi­cials to be killed, and for an ensu­ing vio­lent over­throw of the gov­ern­ment. He strongly implied that tea party orga­niz­ers want Obama to be assas­si­nated. He equated Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s state­ment in sup­port of the 10^th Amend­ment this week as akin to sup­port for a bloody revolution.

This guy isn’t fringe, either. DCCC chair­man and Mary­land Rep. Chris Van Hollen was one of Schultz’s guests today. Schultz also has an evening show on MSNBC, where Obama press sec­re­tary Robert Gibbs will be his guest tonight.

Schultz’s bumper described him as the most-listened to lib­eral talk show host on the radio. God help us if that’s true. You have guys like Schultz gob­bling up lis­ten­ers on the left, and peo­ple like Han­nity, Rush, and Sav­age gob­bling them up on the right … and it’s we lib­er­tar­i­ans who get tarred as nut-jobs.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

It’s not just the Repub­li­cans who have reversed their positions.

The ulti­mate reap­ing of what one sows: right-wing edi­tion. Right-wing polemi­cists today are shriek­ing in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity sent to local police forces which warns of grow­ing “right-wing extrem­ist activ­ity.” The report (.pdf) iden­ti­fies attrib­utes of these right-wing extrem­ists, warn­ing that a grow­ing domes­tic threat of vio­lence and ter­ror­ism “may include groups and indi­vid­u­als that are ded­i­cated to a single-issue, such as oppo­si­tion to abor­tion or immi­gra­tion” and “groups that reject fed­eral author­ity in favor of state or local authority.”

[…]

But the polit­i­cal fac­tion screech­ing about the dan­gers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expand­ing the domes­tic Sur­veil­lance State and fed­eral police pow­ers in every area. DHS — and the still-creepy phrase “home­land secu­rity” — became George Bush’s call­ing card. The Repub­li­cans won the 2002 elec­tion by demo­niz­ing those who opposed its cre­ation. All of the enabling leg­is­la­tion under­ly­ing this Sur­veil­lance State — from the Patriot Act to the Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sions Act, from the var­i­ous FISA “reforms” to mas­sive increases in domes­tic “counter-Terrorism” pro­grams — are the spawns of the very right-wing move­ment that today is pet­ri­fied that this is all being directed at them.

When you cheer on a Sur­veil­lance State, you have no grounds to com­plain when it turns its eyes on you. If you cre­ate a mas­sive and wildly empow­ered domes­tic sur­veil­lance appa­ra­tus, it’s going to mon­i­tor and inves­ti­gate domes­tic polit­i­cal activ­ity. That’s its nature. [Glenn Green­wald]