A quick FAQ about NFTs

I thought I'd write up 4 technical questions about NFTs. They may not be the ones you ask, but they are the ones you should be asking. The questions:What does the token look like?How does it contain the artwork? (or, where is the artwork contained?)How are tokens traded? (How do they get paid? How do they get from one account to another?)What does the...

4w

Deconstructing that $69million NFT

"NFTs" have hit the mainstream news with the sale of an NFT based digital artwork for $69 million. I thought I'd write up an explainer. Specifically, I deconstruct that huge purchase and show what actually was exchanged, down to the raw code. (The answer: almost nothing).The reason for this post is that every other description of NFTs describe what...

5w

We are living in 1984 (ETERNALBLUE)

In the book 1984, the protagonist questions his sanity, because his memory differs from what appears to be everybody else's memory.The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his...

Mar 2021

Review: Perlroth's book on the cyberarms market

New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth has written a book on zero-days and nation-state hacking entitled “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends”. Here is my review.I’m not sure what the book intends to be. The blurbs from the publisher implies a work of investigative journalism, in which case it’s full of unforgivable factual errors. However, it...

Feb 2021

No, 1,000 engineers were not needed for SolarWinds

Microsoft estimates it would take 1,000 to carry out the famous SolarWinds hacker attacks. This means in reality that it was probably fewer than 100 skilled engineers. I base this claim on the following Tweet: When asked why they think it was 1,000 devs, Brad Smith says they saw an elaborate and persistent set of work. Made an estimate of how much work...

Feb 2021

The deal with DMCA 1201 reform

There are two fights in Congress now against the DMCA, the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". One is over Section 512 covering "takedowns" on the web. The other is over Section 1201 covering "reverse engineering", which weakens cybersecurity.Even before digital computers, since the 1880s, an important principle of cybersecurity has been openness and...

Dec 2020

Why Biden: Principle over Party

There exist many #NeverTrump Republicans who agree that while Trump would best achieve their Party's policies, that he must nonetheless be opposed on Principle. The Principle at question isn't about character flaws, such as being a liar, a misogynist, or a racist. The Principle isn't about political policies, such as how to hand the coronavirus pandemic,...

Oct 2020

No, that's not how warrantee expiration works

The NYPost Hunter Biden story has triggered a lot of sleuths obsessing on technical details trying to prove it's a hoax. So far, these claims are wrong. The story is certainly bad journalism aiming to misinform readers, but it has not yet been shown to be a hoax.In this post, we look at claim the timelines don't match up with the manufacturing dates...

Oct 2020

No, font errors mean nothing in that NYPost article

The NYPost has an article on Hunter Biden emails. Critics claim that these don't look like emails, and that there are errors with the fonts, thus showing they are forgeries. This is false. This is how Apple's "Mail" app prints emails to a PDF file. The font errors are due to viewing PDF files within a web browser -- you don't see them in a PDF app.In...

Oct 2020

Yes, we can validate leaked emails

When emails leak, we can know whether they are authenticate or forged. It's the first question we should ask of today's leak of emails of Hunter Biden. It has a definitive answer.Today's emails have "cryptographic signatures" inside the metadata. Such signatures have been common for the past decade as one way of controlling spam, to verify the sender...

Oct 2020