Hacker News: philodeon

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

philodeon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 05:16:58 +0000

Henry de Valence is the person mentioned in that quote as having moved in next door to Appelbaum, as documented by djb:

https://eindhoven.cr.yp.to/false-statements-by-henry-de-vale...

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

philodeon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 05:08:35 +0000

No, the original claim was by me. And I gave you a plausible story. You just didn’t want to hear it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48820336

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

philodeon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 05:00:46 +0000

Quoting https://archive.fo/3QWJF#selection-801.0-805.168

“Als Appelbaum im September 2015 an der Technischen Universität Eindhoven ein Doktorandenprogramm beginnt, ist auch sie interessiert. Für Appelbaum ist die Universitätsstelle in Eindhoven auch eine existentielle Stütze, falls er, nach den Vorwürfen im März in Valencia, seine Arbeit beim Tor-Projekt nicht fortsetzen kann. Lovecruft versucht schließlich, bei den selben Professoren wie Appelbaum angenommen zu werden. Am Ende wird ihr das nicht gelingen. Ein anderer Mensch wird jedoch das Büro beziehen, das direkt neben Appelbaums liegt. Es ist der Lebenspartner von Isis Agora Lovecruft oder einer ihrer Lebenspartner, das ist nicht klar. Dieser Mann wird später Arbeiten von Appelbaum bewerten, deren Ergebnisse für dessen Vorankommen in der Universität wichtig sind. Im Januar 2016, kurz nachdem sie an der Universität in Eindhoven abgelehnt wird, beteiligt sich Isis Agora Lovecruft daran, Geschichten zu sammeln über Jacob Appelbaum.”

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

philodeon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:05:49 +0000

I enjoyed the @tptacek cameo. I suspect tptacek didn’t.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF, Part 9"

philodeon — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:02:32 +0000

The purpose of a system is what it does.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013...

New comment by philodeon in "Jason Arday Found Dead"

philodeon — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:35:56 +0000

The article has at least a dozen side by side highlighted examples of plagiarism. The title is irrelevant.

New comment by philodeon in "Jason Arday Found Dead"

philodeon — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:06:45 +0000

Yes, the plagiarism has been amply demonstrated.

https://ncofnas.com/p/dei-fraud-and-cover-up-at-cambridge

New comment by philodeon in "Half-Life ported to Mac OS 9"

philodeon — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:35:56 +0000

And just a few years later, Apple shipped an iTunes 2 installer that could wipe your external hard drives.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:22:05 +0000

Yes, that’s the deflect part of deflect and minimize.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:16:04 +0000

Because both the article and your continued arguments about ML-KEM demonstrates that in confirmed cases of NSA sabotage and in hypothetical cases of NSA sabotage, your job is to deflect, minimize, and avoid any responsibility being doled out. I hope you’re well paid for this job.

When we find out that the ML-KEM math was thoroughly broken by NSA for years, your response will be “gosh, nobody could have known that. It’s best not to hold anyone responsible though, certainly not the NIST employees whose names are all over the evidence…”

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:02:39 +0000

Ok, let me be clear: the NIST is a proxy organization for the NSA. The declassified internal history of the NSA makes it clear that they were subverting the NIST back when they were still called the National Bureau of Standards.

Just because NIST engages in some wholesome activities doesn’t mean that their core purpose isn’t to do the bidding of the NSA.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:36:12 +0000

I was making the point that if you have subverted the NIST to do your bidding in what appears to be a neutral way, obviously you’re going to have some feel-good projects in your portfolio. Otherwise, the folks that the Soviets called “useful idiots” wouldn’t have anything to point to to exonerate them.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:34:21 +0000

As your article points out, Hoffman wrote a specification for spewing as many NSA-controlled “random” bytes into TLS packets as he could get away with, after Rescorla’s attempt failed. Hoffman’s work became an experimental RFC.

Yet, your article says “In at least one case, Hoffman even attempted to provide a cryptographic rationale for extra randomness. Of course, naming-and-shaming either of them is pretty silly.” This makes no sense. We have names for criminal equivalents of his behavior: criminal mischief, disturbing the peace, conspiracy, etc. But if you do these things on a standards board, you get a pass? This was a concerted well-funded effort to compromise your security and my security. I think he should be put in a pillory and tarred-and-feathered.

You continue to cover for malicious actors with your “but the NSA didn’t write it!” insistence. The classic anti-Schneier Dual-EC take around 2007 was “but the NSA wouldn’t insert a backdoor, they would destroy their public image!” Your insistence is the equivalent of “but the NSA wouldn’t do that AGAIN!” Fool me once…

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:09:40 +0000

To quote you: “ (I'm among an elite cadre† of cryptography-adjacents who felt it probably wasn't, but only because I thought it was too stupid to actually be used anywhere --- as soon as it was disclosed that (a) it was a default-yes algorithm in BSAFE and (b) big companies actually used BSAFE in important products, it was immediately clear what was going on).”

The BSAFE disclosure happened in 2013 with Snowden. In 2015 you published an article still questioning whether Dual-EC was a backdoor, and providing an immense amount of plausible deniability for folks like Hoffman.

https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/08/04/is-extended-random-ma...

You don’t even remember the historical Ptacek Gut Logic!

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:50:20 +0000

The Godfather Part 2 demonstrated overwhelmingly that a good part of Vito Corleone’s ill-gotten gains went to strengthening his community. The Italians in his neighborhood adored him.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:43:39 +0000

DJB wrote a short history of NSA’s malicious meddling in the cryptography we all use, based on a declassified internal history of the NSA.

https://blog.cr.yp.to/20220805-nsa.html

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:41:44 +0000

> pure ML-KEM is much more "proven" than people are discussing. The core hardness assumption dates back to 2005, and has been intensely studied (the paper introducing it got a cryptography version of a Nobel prize (Godel prize), as did several follow-up works only achievable using that hardness assumption.

The inventor of the lobotomy won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for it.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:35:20 +0000

> Incorrect. My argument is that they aren't the same entity.

Your mind is going to be blown when you learn about proxy organizations and cut-outs.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:22:43 +0000

To be clear, the Schneier Facts on Dual-EC turned out to be far more accurate than the Ptacek Gut Logic.

New comment by philodeon in "NSA and IETF: Fairness"

philodeon — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:20:19 +0000

You do realize that the NSA spends many millions on employing mathematicians, right? And that they wouldn’t keep doing that if all the mathematicians did was get really shit-hot at Kerbal Space Program?

An analysis of the comparative risks of these crypto systems should include “The NSA knows a lot of math they’re not sharing, and if they really really like ML-KEM, that’s concerning even if Ptacek keeps pointing out NSA didn’t write it”