Digital Euro, 37c7, WiFi 7, Matrix, RICL, Hyphanet

Digital Euro, 37c7, WiFi 7, Matrix, RICL, Hyphanet

1. Digital euro (@ Wikipedia). But the great question is, why did many European countries give up payment independence completely? Why payments are handled by American corporations? I've been actually wondering this for around two decades when this happened. Nobody seemed to notice or care. Some people seem to be very pro, and as usual, some say it's totally wrong to have digital cash. kw: CBDC (@ Wikipedia).

2. 37c3 - Polish Train hacking (@ media.ccc.de) - So much good stuff in this talk. Yes, it's worth of watching and it's also entertaining as well as educational. Is it right to fix / sabotage hardware by software?

3. WiFi 7 brings multi-link operation to improve bandwidth, throughput and reliability of WiFi networks. ref: multi-link operations (MLO)

4. Full reset of Matrix identity keys and dropping of all old chat keys, so nothing is recoverable. This is how many systems should work by default. Everything should disappear automatically irreversibly, if desired so.

5. Watched Royal Institution - CHRISTMAS LECTURES (RICL) 2023 - Subject: Truth About AI -  As usual, these are fascinating and quite light but easy to understand talks, mostly for kids, but so very well made those are just wonderful to run watch / listen in background.

6. Matrix - It's good to note, that if your contacts aren't verified, it's allowed to add new encryption keys or replace existing keys without any kind of indication. So, verify your contacts! - It's also important to note, that there's a setting on session and or chat basis, which allows messages to be encrypted ONLY to the verified devices. Without this option, it's possible, that you'll be sending encrypted messages to devices without verified keys. Ie. anyone random pretending to be your contact.

7. AVIF (@ Wikipedia) support is finally coming to Edge with version 121. This means that for most of images AVIF is the best option, and when it's not, SVG or WebP (@ Wikipedia) lossless is the secondary best options, depending on type of the content.

8. Double (hybrid) encryption (@ blog.cr.yp.to) - Actually key agreement used for symmetric encryption isn't technically double encryption. It's just bit different key exchange / agreement process. Of course there could be also double encryption, where two full layers of encryption and key agreement are overlaid on top of each other. Like running aes-gcm https with dhe key-exchange, over Wireguard (which uses different cipher, key and key exchange). kw: t X25519Kyber768, NTRU-HRSS and X25519, KEM, sntrup761x25519-sha512, sntrup761-sha512, X25519+UltraKEM, Kyber-512, NSA, GCHQ

9. 37c3 Tor censorship talk (@ media.ccc.de) - Basic stuff, snowflake, obfs4 proxies, domain fronting, etc. As well as information how different countries censorship connectivity. Others are clearly more determined than others.

10. 37c3 - What your phone won't tell you (@ media.ccc.de) - Uncovering fake base stations on IOS devices, IMSO Catchers Everywhere kw: Cellular Security, Mobile Phones, Authentication, Integrity, Attackers, baseband capabilities

11. Something different: Ukraine getting Skyshield / Skynex (@ Wikipedia), I've blogged about it earlier just shortly, but not linked. It's quite nice air-defense system. kw: skymaster, mantis, shorad, rheinmetall, skyguard, skyranger, 2S22 Bohdana (@ Wikipedia). Ukrainian self propelled howitzer.

12. Original Freenet is called now Hyphanet and Locutus the new Freenet is now Freenet. See: www.hyphanet.org (@ hyphanet.org)

13. Why WhatsApp doesn't allow to set HD images and videos as the default? That's so annoying to remember to select it every-time. And even then it compresses images to very small files compared to many other messaging apps where images can be easily 10 mebibytes / image, or even 20 megs. At least Signal does let set this as option on as default.

14. Email: I don't anymore recommend anyone to use email. It's deliverability issues, spam and other more or less random filtering, and security issues are obvious to everyone. Therefore, if possible, I recommend avoiding email, if there is / are other more secure and reliable options that can be used instead.

2024-11-10