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This Chainalysis video got censored (let's help it with the Streisand effect)
  • Thanks Nyx!

    It seems the recommendations are:

    • use a trusted VPN
    • use a trusted remote node (like your own remote node)
    • in general, be careful which exchanges you use
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    Skepticism Sunday #7 — August 25, 2024
  • Nice! A disaster recovery plan would fit the bill nicely.

    Unrelated, I have personally started switching from pgp to minisign (for signing stuff and confirming it's indeed from me) and age (for encryption, when I don't want prying eyes on my stuff, https://github.com/FiloSottile/age).

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    Skepticism Sunday #7 — August 25, 2024
  • Good! It would be nice to have that written somewhere accessible for all.

    In case of Tornado Cash treatment everyone would also need a way to verify the signatures and authenticity for repos, links etc. That's not trivial either.

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    Skepticism Sunday #7 — August 25, 2024
  • Good points, I also think that they have easier fish to fry right now but that time will come, and the project needs to be ready for that. And when we start worrying is not a good time to start thinking about what to do.

    I am a bit uncomfortable about the lack of shared knowledge about what are the attack vectors, when should we start to worrying about this or that, etc.

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    Skepticism Sunday #7 — August 25, 2024
  • I don't know exactly right now what the plan should look like. We could ask the general fund to have someone at least look at it and give recommendations. Someone in opsec, systems design or the likes would do.

    The way I see it, a good way to neutralize monero is to first identity as many important participants as possible and then take the opportunity of the next 'crisis' to bash them very hard and associate them with the worst possible terrorists in the public opinion.

    By important participants I don't mean just the core devs. I am talking about people like rbrunner, Justin, Rucknium, etc. All those that are the 5% making the 95% of impact in the ecosystem (compared to us consumers of their marvelous work). They currently don't think their threat level is very high, they should not have to hide anyway. But the issue is that when they will find monero keys for whatever CP ring they can seize that opportunity to frame all our ecosystem as supporters of CP and terrorism. Remember, it doesn't need to be true, just to be repeated again and again to the masses. After that you can just jail a few core devs, a few Dex operators and some event organizers to scare the little bunch back to their caves.

    BTW the point is not to find a countermeasure yet but to put ourselves in the shoes of the adversaries and consider their options. The plan will itself come up after considering these points.

    Tldr: let's ask the general fund to review our strategic opsec as a project.

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    Skepticism Sunday #7 — August 25, 2024
  • Governance

    What's the plan when the assault against the monero devs is launched?

    The timeline is moving, the arrestation of Durov is a good marker of that.

    Some devs are anonymous but that's not a plan, just countermeasures.

    The fact that I am asking is a sign that the community does not know how it it will deal with the governance attacks coming up.

    Remember, they got BTC via its governance.

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    Monero darknet market Archetyp gets clearnet domain blocked & removed
  • On the Internet, .cc is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory. It is administered by a United States company, VeriSign

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cc

    Removing that clearnet domain does not seem impressive or disruptive at all...

    Please feel free to post here, you're a valuable member of the community, as is anyone of us. Side question, do you sometimes use monero as money?

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    eXaMinR: free and open source monero tracing tool
  • Good points. Especially since most people won't:

    • use tor to access it
    • or use the mullvad browser with a VPN
    • or just run it in local
    • or think about what information they are leaking there with their home IP address and browser fingerprint

    The project is interesting nevertheless.

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    Monero black marble 0day attack guide? Real or nah?
  • As @Blake said, "breaking the law" just means going outside of the boundaries set by your rulers. For anything outside the law, your rulers dislike it, but the majority of people could actually like it.

    Take going to the bar with black people as an example. You might be in a place where it's disliked by the ruling political elite, or in a place and time where it's fine. This is the legal/illegal view.It's sometimes quite different from the moral view of things. The same applies to other topics like should women be allowed to drive cars, or should drug addicts be allowed a safe source of drugs free from the influence of "very bad people"?

    Please don't let political elites set your personal morality. They are professional liars ( that's how they became political elites) and they have no morality to offer you.

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