Notices by Micah Lee (micahflee@mastodon.social), page 2

Just re-read a 2015 article I wrote called Chatting in Secret While We're All Being Watched. It's about the tools and operational security involved with having an anonymous, encrypted conversation over the internet, under mass surveillance.

After over three years, it still stands up: https://theintercept.com/2015/07/14/communicating-secret-watched/

ICYMI: In July I presented at the Circle of HOPE about the amazing things that the Qubes operating system makes possible, like

- opening email attachments in "disposable VMs"
- managing anonymous identities with Whonix
- keeping secrets like password databases, PGP keys, and sensitive documents stored in vaults without Internet access
- anonymously connecting to VPNs over Tor

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4U8YbXKwog&feature=youtu.be

Today, whistleblower Reality Winner was officially sentenced to 63 months in prison, the longest sentence for a journalist's source in federal court history.

Shortly after her plea deal last month, the Mueller investigation used some of the same information that she revealed to the public to indict 12 Russian military intelligence officers for conducting "large-scale cyber operations to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

We just published a Snowden document from 2006 about NSA successfully breaking the encryption and spying on VPNs run by Al Jazeera, the Iraqi military, airlines and reservation systems, and other "high potential" targets https://theintercept.com/2018/08/15/nsa-vpn-hack-al-jazeera-sidtoday/

GPG Sync 0.2 is released! It's an open source tool to make it easier for every member of an organization to have up-to-date versions of every other members' PGP public keys.

This version looks way nicer, is more stable, and now has support for Windows.

https://code.firstlook.media/gpg-sync-v0-2

After the Hackers on Planet Earth refused to remove white supremacist disruptors on Saturday, a large autonomous group have published a statement of no confidence in HOPE’s CoC mechanism, and in opposition to fascism, nationalism, and racism in our space.

The statement is signed by 13 organizations including Riseup, Tor Project, and many others. It's signed by over 40 individuals including keynote speakers Chelsea Manning and Barrett Brown.

https://medium.com/@nofashathope/statement-no-fascists-at-hope-c6873a64cc94

I spent 2 years traveling with a honeypot laptop, leaving it my hotel room, checking it in luggage, and then manually checked for this type of evil maid attack after each trip https://theintercept.com/2018/04/28/computer-malware-tampering/

Police broke into Chelsea Manning's home with guns drawn last week during a 'wellness check' after she posted, then quickly deleted, seemingly suicidal tweets. She provided us with security footage of the armed raid.

Luckily she wasn't home at the time and she's safe. Here is the video and more info: https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/chelsea-manning-video-twitter-police-mental-health/

British neo-Nazis are on the rise — and they’re becoming more organized and violent https://theintercept.com/2018/05/03/uk-far-right-terrorism-national-action/

Amazon threatens to suspend Signal's AWS account over censorship circumvention https://signal.org/blog/looking-back-on-the-front/

Amazon and Google are both coming out opposed to people using their services for domain fronting, to circumvent censorship.

Note that Signal is actively blocked in Egypt, Oman, UAE, and Iran. So, that sucks.

For the last two years I've carried a honeypot laptop with me every time I traveled. I checked it in my luggage, left it unattended in my hotel rooms. After each trip, I did forensic analysis on the laptop to detect if it had been tampered with.

I wrote about my experience and methodology here: https://theintercept.com/2018/04/28/computer-malware-tampering/

Cybersecurity for the People: How to protect your privacy at a protest

Watch this video for tips on how to prepare your phone before you go to a protest, how to safely communicate with your friends and document the event, and what to do if you get detained or arrested.

(This is the first in a new video series I'm hosting!)

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/21/cybersecurity-for-the-people-how-to-protect-your-privacy-at-a-protest/

Hmmmmmmm something's seems just a bit off here
https://mastodon.social/media/eLqbByaQM9CkGDo2EMw

Here's the Debian Project's statement about the arrest of Dmitry Bogatov, a Debian Maintainer who worked in the Debian Haskell group and currently maintains several packages for command line and system tools. He was arrested by Russian authorities, and Debian has removed his keys from their servers in case they're compromised. https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170417

This is an excellent longread about some of the players that made Snowden's whistleblowing possible. It's a firsthand account, published today, and contains many new exciting details http://harpers.org/archive/2017/05/snowdens-box/

I'd like to be able to read a Mastodon instance's local and federated timelines without having an account on that instance

I've published a technical explanation of how to get unsandboxed arbitrary code execution in Subgraph OS, and how this attack compares with Qubes https://micahflee.com/2017/04/breaking-the-security-model-of-subgraph-os/ cc @rootkovska

I added link to my Mastodon profile on my website -- :feet: seems like the appropriate icon
https://mastodon.social/media/wT-xwhKPmOee_SHyP00

Still a long ways off before bundle Tor OnionShare Bundle is complete, but this is a good start...

https://mastodon.social/media/N6BWHAf__T4cBZdaugk

@lambadalambda @quincy @mcscx

Well, on twitter I have 23k followers, but here I have 78. I'm a journalist, and it's nice to be able to reach a large and diverse audience. Will mastodon only be populated by nerds?

And while I hope it will, I have no idea if mastodon will end up being successful, or if it will end up in a pile of forgotten technology next to diaspora. It's too early to tell.