RAW Hacking, How different GM's handle problems Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Switch to: Outline Switch to: Standard Linear+

[Faelan]

I realize there are probably a dozen topics answering my questions to different degrees, and I have found many, but I have found it problematic parsing the information down into something useful. In this instance I am not looking for a whole new system, but more likely assorted house rules to rectify the following problems.

1) The speed of hacking leaves me wondering why anyone even bothers to encrypt anything, unless it is just to prevent casual users from access.
2) The quality of encryption leaves me wondering how financial transactions are conducted securely?
3) The existence of hackastack or agent smith makes me ask the question of how do you defend against the Mongol horde?
4) How do you maintain control of vehicles or drones with the above issues?

Most of my players avoid players avoid playing hackers like the plague so I get to use a lot of handwaving, however one really likes having his drone army.

Some solutions I came up with were as follows:

1) I have made breaking encryption an all or nothing roll, not extended. Break the threshold and succeed, don't and fail, get detected, prepare to be booted.
2) Agents must buy hits, they never roll. Get a secure enough system and it does not matter how many attacks roll in. In other words if its a hacker he has a shot.
3) Also looking at Electronic Warfare as a major way of cutting down on hacking, and for denying others use of their wireless networks.

So what house rules have people come up with for dealing with these issues, and better yet how do you use Electronic Warfare in your games. Thanks.

[Starmage21]

I realize there are probably a dozen topics answering my questions to different degrees, and I have found many, but I have found it problematic parsing the information down into something useful. In this instance I am not looking for a whole new system, but more likely assorted house rules to rectify the following problems.

1) The speed of hacking leaves me wondering why anyone even bothers to encrypt anything, unless it is just to prevent casual users from access.
2) The quality of encryption leaves me wondering how financial transactions are conducted securely?
3) The existence of hackastack or agent smith makes me ask the question of how do you defend against the Mongol horde?
4) How do you maintain control of vehicles or drones with the above issues?

Most of my players avoid players avoid playing hackers like the plague so I get to use a lot of handwaving, however one really likes having his drone army.

Some solutions I came up with were as follows:

1) I have made breaking encryption an all or nothing roll, not extended. Break the threshold and succeed, don't and fail, get detected, prepare to be booted.
2) Agents must buy hits, they never roll. Get a secure enough system and it does not matter how many attacks roll in. In other words if its a hacker he has a shot.
3) Also looking at Electronic Warfare as a major way of cutting down on hacking, and for denying others use of their wireless networks.

So what house rules have people come up with for dealing with these issues, and better yet how do you use Electronic Warfare in your games. Thanks.

I love the idea of #2, but #1 makes no sense at all. Real encryption, that SR4 encryption emulates, merely takes time.

[RunnerPaul]

1) The speed of hacking leaves me wondering why anyone even bothers to encrypt anything, unless it is just to prevent casual users from access.

Locks keep honest men honest.

2) The quality of encryption leaves me wondering how financial transactions are conducted securely?

The stronger encryptions offered up in Unwired go a long way to making Shadowrun's electronic banking actually possible, IMO. One possible solution is to have the central banks automatically issue a set of authentication tokens for transactions to account holders on an hourly basis, the tokens having been pre-encrypted with 24-Hour Strong Encryption. Think of it as the CVV number on the back of your credit card, except you have a set of them, using a different one for each transaction you make, and you get a replacement set delivered to you every hour. Oh, and the tokens are delivered by a high rating Agent that has encyrpted the entire set as a single archive using Dynamic Encryption. Set the system to reject any transaction bearing a token that's more than 18 hours hold, and make anyone who's had an unscheduled matrix-access outage of 24 hours or more go through extra verification procedures before being issued further tokens.

4) How do you maintain control of vehicles or drones with the above issues?

Use Unwired's rules for Slaving, bolt armor plate over top the drone's physical hardwire connection ports with a standing command to shoot anyone who comes after it with a wrench, and limit your wireless communications to point-to-point Beam Links.

1) I have made breaking encryption an all or nothing roll, not extended. Break the threshold and succeed, don't and fail, get detected, prepare to be booted.

Harsh. One alternative I've seen proposed was to use a "Diminishing Returns" style cascading test interval. First roll of the extended test takes a combat turn. Second takes a minute, Third takes an hour, fourth takes a day, 5th takes a month, 6th takes a year, 7th, takes a decade and so on.

[Faelan]

I realize decrypting just takes time, but the speed with which it occurs in SR4 seems ridiculous. My limiting decrypt to a single all or nothing attempt is meant for on the fly hacking, since it is described as a brute force attempt. In other words you will be detected and chased unless you manage to get inside and make it your own. The thresholds and times for slowly hacking seem fine to me, even as extended rolls. I don't want to ban the brute force approach, but I definitely want to make it very risky. My line of thinking is you take the sledgehammer to the backdoor, the SYSOP hears you and the encryption is changed immediately, and the hounds of hell are set loose on your ass. If you knock the door down you jump through and the SYSOP responds too late, you are in. The brute force approach does not take much thinking, hence Agents get to do it. The long term approach is something I am thinking of not allowing Agents to do. To really hack, in other words sneak in and mess with a high security system requires a sentient being behind the wheels not some program.

Thanks for the suggestion for the drones, and the diminishing returns. The financial transaction security still seems shaky. It really has to be damn near unbreakable for it to be reliable.

[kzt]

We used NPC hackers and hacking just happened. Life was good.

[Faelan]

Life was good. Keyword WAS, thanks for rubbing it in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[jklst14]

3) The existence of hackastack or agent smith makes me ask the question of how do you defend against the Mongol horde?

I haven't thought this through yet but in addition to the Access ID limitation in Unwired, you could cap the max ratings of Agents. Say the node's Response/2 instead of Response? Then a real life hacker will always be better than any agent, since most Agents would have a rating of 3 at most.

It would leave us with a problem of all IC sucking. Maybe there's a way around that? Or maybe this wasn't such a great idea...


-JKL

[The Jopp]

My solution to encryption and to make it take longer is to do the following:

Encryption - Program adds its rating to all tests against the node
Decryption - Decryption reduce the effectiveness of encryption by its rating.

So, a hacker with Decryption 3 going up against an encryption 6 will have a +3 to all treshold tests like probing the target and hacking on the fly and similar tests where there is a fixed treshold.

In opposed tests the target adds defense dice.

My reasoning with this is because the encryption is not static. Both sides use live encryption that changes by the second which means that there is no set encryption key as it changes constantly to keep people from getting inside.

Also, it mean that one can fail miserably if one doesn't have a decryption program as everything becomes a LOT harder.

[Ryu]

- Encryption is a success test. Check.
- The good old credstick is now a slaved node with integral passkey for a "militarised" bank server. The rating 6 encryption is just there to annoy hackers. We are using the logic+skill option, so the SOTA rules increase believeability for matrix banking.
- Using Agent Smith angers the universe. Yes, that is a solution. I´m playing around with a rule limiting multiple uses of one program in the same timeframe, but so far it does not work for cybercombat.
- Vehicle security is an issue? Encryption + passkey + firewall upgrade + slaving to the comlink.

2) Agents must buy hits, they never roll. Get a secure enough system and it does not matter how many attacks roll in. In other words if its a hacker he has a shot.
3) Also looking at Electronic Warfare as a major way of cutting down on hacking, and for denying others use of their wireless networks.

Number 2 is great, that might actually be a simple solution. Perhaps with rolling the "leftover" dice, to use the full range of ratings. I´m considering to count only the highest icon damage per IP, so that running multiple attack agents on one target gets inefficient fast.

If you are looking at Electronic Warfare, consider to use a smart jammer against known offenders. Adds ECCM to the requirements of hacking your net, if nothing else.

[Faelan]

Thanks for the input. I think what I will be going with is adding the logic attribute to any roles. This gives a live hacker an advantage over the machine (unless its an AI), combined with Agents having to buy hits (and yes I think rolling the left over 1 or 2 dice will work great) will create the effect I was looking for. Note the hacker defending against Agents can also buy hits, this essentially neutralizes the threat of the Mongol Horde, and makes hacking what I wanted, which is a character vs character situation. Ultimately I think it will cut back on unwanted dice rolling, give systems a decent level of everyday security since having Agents do your dirty work against a well secured system is out of the question, and in addition to the master and slave unit rules provide limited access to stealing drones. In other words I think things will be challenging now, without it being impossible.

I think I will be using EW for limiting opposing wireless connections or preventing jamming of friendly connections. Proper use of this could require a hacker to hardwire into the local node just to avoid potentially getting kicked off by losing "bars" at an inopportune time.

[Aaron]

The stronger encryptions offered up in Unwired go a long way to making Shadowrun's electronic banking actually possible, IMO.

Electronic banking relies on strong encryption only when it's a centralized system. In a decentralized system, you don't really need any encryption.

[RunnerPaul]

Electronic banking relies on strong encryption only when it's a centralized system. In a decentralized system, you don't really need any encryption.

Two questions then:

• Can you detail how a decentralized banking system works? A swarm of computers all taking a vote on how much available funds are in account A and whether or not the account holder authorized a transfer of some of those funds to account B?
• What canon references lead you to believe such a system is in use in Shadowrun?

[Aaron]

[*]Can you detail how a decentralized banking system works? A swarm of computers all taking a vote on how much available funds are in account A and whether or not the account holder authorized a transfer of some of those funds to account B?

I have before on DS, albeit a while ago. You'll have to search for it, sorry.

[*]What canon references lead you to believe such a system is in use in Shadowrun?

Again, I've posted this before, too. At this point, you'd be doing the same search through DS or the PDFs that I would. Plus there's probably something in Unwired; I'd start in the fluff and then maybe look in the game info sections for forging cash.

[RunnerPaul]

I have before on DS, albeit a while ago. You'll have to search for it, sorry.

I tried, but I'd be more successful if I had a better idea of timeframe than "A while ago" or a better keyword than "banking" or "decentralized" to use. You're approaching the 2K post mark, and the only two hits turned up on either of those two keywords under your name were your posts in this thread.

Plus there's probably something in Unwired; I'd start in the fluff and then maybe look in the game info sections for forging cash.

Unwired sections for forging cash only apply to funds on certified credsticks, which are really just an obscure corner case of SR's Electronic Banking.

[Aaron]

I tried, but I'd be more successful if I had a better idea of timeframe than "A while ago" or a better keyword than "banking" or "decentralized" to use. You're approaching the 2K post mark, and the only two hits turned up on either of those two keywords under your name were your posts in this thread.

All I can say is keep looking. I'm getting sick of spending time rendering professional explanations of how computers (or networks, or encryption, or programming, or anything else I get paid to teach) work, only to have some obtuse twit not bother to read it, give obtuse replies, and insult the intelligence of myself and of other readers. I'm not naming names and I'm not saying that I expect you to do the same thing. It's just that I'm sick of being lead down the path to frustration just because I like to teach and be helpful. I'd be happy to describe the system in person if you catch me at a convention or something, but until then I'm afraid you'll have to do your own research.

It might be about identification rather than banking, but it's pretty much the same whether your data is money or identity, if that helps.

Unwired sections for forging cash only apply to funds on certified credsticks, which are really just an obscure corner case of SR's Electronic Banking.

This one I'll help with, because I remember reading that and thinking that AH was pretty cool for including it. Lemme see ... here it is on page 95 of Unwired. It seems to have been chopped down a bit; now it's only something about online cred being constantly tracked and monitored. So I guess it's been edited down to just an implication of a decentralized system.

Hm. Maybe I will give a mini-lesson. Here: the system is akin to the way a BattleTech Grand Melee or a game of hopscotch is refereed.

[RunnerPaul]

Hm. Maybe I will give a mini-lesson. Here: the system is akin to the way a BattleTech Grand Melee or a game of hopscotch is refereed.

At first blush, I'd have questions about the scalability of those techniques, but I'll just attribute that to the mini-ness of the lesson.

[Ryu]

Something in that direction (link)???

I sent my (information access code) to my bank, after sending individually worthless "junk" to several other servers, tampering with one of those just destroys the transaction, and the bank can access my data just fine, because it got the access code?

[Aaron]

Sorta like that, yeah, except that since the data is held in a large number of places at once, and those places can query one another to double-check their own information, the only way to forge electronic cash is to alter the data in all places at once. If storage and transfer speeds are ridiculously high (as is the case in Shadowrun), then you can't actually forge electronic cash unless you crash the whole Matrix at once, assuming you can find all of the places the cash is being tracked.

[RunnerPaul]

assuming you can find all of the places the cash is being tracked.

Surely that's just a matter of traffic analysis?

[Faelan]

I think what Aaron is saying is that you essentially have these rock solid sites, which constantly double check each other, so unless you hack all of them simultaneously the information will revert to its proper format near instantaneously. My question to this then is how does this quorum of trust identify a legal transaction? Is a legal transaction essentially bursting the access code to twenty different servers and since it is good to go they all accept. Whereas with an illegal transaction I would have to hack those twenty servers simultaneously for the same effect. The security gets better as the number of secure servers I am transmitting to goes up. Of course you could still steal from someone if you manage to break their perfectly legal access code, but this would require what?

[kzt]

Of course you could still steal from someone if you manage to break their perfectly legal access code, but this would require what?

Recording, decrypting and replaying the code....

The claims that you can't record an encrypted signal would certainly surprise people who do real world decryption, because that is a key element of the process. That's how the US broke the Venona one-time pads, the Purple Japanese diplomatic codes, the JN-25 navy code, and the Germans broke the British BAMS, Naval Cipher No.3 and the US Black diplomatic code.

[Aaron]

Surely that's just a matter of traffic analysis?

That's a valid approach, but what if you're trying to find hundreds or even thousands of nodes for each single nuyen? Let's say you only have a thousand nodes tracking cash, and each unit is tracked by only two hundred of those nodes. That's a one in 6.6 x 10²¹⁵ possible sets of 200 nodes to choose from. Incidentally, that's also the number of cash units that such a system could track.

And what if the data you mined five minutes ago is out of date? If the tracking nodes keep trading responsibility for any given unit of cash, that makes it even harder to track.

Could such a system be viable today? Well, in smaller form, yes; see Ryu's link to the distributed file system, above. Could it be viable in The Future? It'd not only be viable, it would be trivial.

[kzt]

You expect to maintain a consistent state table on EVERY commlink in the ENTIRE world for EVERY nuyen? Really? I'd attack the synch process then, just a little. It's got to be like someone trying to use OSPF to route the internet and should crash nicely.

Otherwise, I'd start randomly nuking packets bound for several of the major sites. Now they don't agree and the world melts down.

[Aaron]

You expect to maintain a consistent state table on EVERY commlink in the ENTIRE world for EVERY nuyen? Really? I'd attack the synch process then, just a little. It's got to be like someone trying to use OSPF to route the internet and should crash nicely.
Otherwise, I'd start randomly nuking packets bound for several of the major sites. Now they don't agree and the world melts down.

See, this is why I've given up trying to offer stuff to DS.

kzt, if you're clever enough to think of that attack (which, obviously, you are), you're also clever enough to come up with a solution to it. It's not as much of a vulnerability as your post suggests.

[Ryu]

You would not need to maintain consistency on every server, far from that. Let several thousand servers compare data, and accept a 75% result as valid.

The commlinks can connect to a few transaction servers, which establish trust in the commlinks identity by comparing data. They maintain coherency of the money, and manipulate the money conditionally if the transaction comes from a trusted source and is acceptable to the bank. The security of your account does depend on the security of your endpoint.

[JoelHalpern]

We can argue all day about whether secure money is possible without decent dynamic crypto.
I tend to suspect that if the number of nodes (not combinations, just nodes) is reasonably limited, and if traffic monitoring is practical, then the system is probably broken.

But it doesn't matter.

The assumption we are making is that the financial system works.
We also are assuming that credsitcks are, for some reason, hard to break.
And we are assuming that hackers can get into lots of things, and find lots of useful information.

These assumptions are necessary for anything resembling the game world to work.
They are probably also actually mutually inconsistent.
But, frankly, I am more interested in playing the game than in playing amateur cryptographer. And I have no interest in trying to get a security professional to audit / analyze the assumptions and conclusions of the system. I am sure that the system is, in a formal sense, broken.
So that means that trying to craft more secure techniques is probably a bad idea. We have to live with what is written, and reasonably small generalizations from that. (If wiring things together works in one context, it better work in others.)

I sure as heck don't want to try to get into how they manage key exchange, key refresh, and key revocation without dynamic crypto. But it has to somehow work.

I am actually a bit concerned about the magic side of this same question. The spell design system in street magic allows for a lot of spells not thought of by the devs. That is neat. But like generalizing the matrix security, it is almost certainly subject to breaking the structure. (Yes, the GM can be careful about what he allows. There are still going to be surprises. And there is also the fact that the GM is probably going to have to sometimes say "sorry, not allowed" when there is no good reason, when someone comes up with something that is too strong. Remember that gam e balance is an important concept to us, but irrelevant to meta-physics. Reality is not game balanced.)

Joel

[Kerris]

Sorta like that, yeah, except that since the data is held in a large number of places at once, and those places can query one another to double-check their own information, the only way to forge electronic cash is to alter the data in all places at once. If storage and transfer speeds are ridiculously high (as is the case in Shadowrun), then you can't actually forge electronic cash unless you crash the whole Matrix at once, assuming you can find all of the places the cash is being tracked.

So... they're crowdsourcing financial verification?

That. Is. AWESOME.

[DireRadiant]

Is something borken because you don't know exactly how it works?
Do you know how you work?
Are you borken?

If there is one case where it might be borken, does this mean it must be borken in all cases?

Are all things which can be borken always borkened?

Up until it's actually borkened, things tend to work just fine... is it an acceptable lifecycle?

[kigmatzomat]

I realize there are probably a dozen topics answering my questions to different degrees, and I have found many, but I have found it problematic parsing the information down into something useful. In this instance I am not looking for a whole new system, but more likely assorted house rules to rectify the following problems.

1) The speed of hacking leaves me wondering why anyone even bothers to encrypt anything, unless it is just to prevent casual users from access.

I think Unwired refers to "new math" from the Crash2 virus that cracks algorithms like rock candy, which is essentially what I did in my game. Encryption is now a nuisance on par with current WEP security on WiFi. It acts like the flimsy lock on a screen door; breaking it proves you have criminal intent.

2) The quality of encryption leaves me wondering how financial transactions are conducted securely?

Short answer now is multiple connections. I figure credsticks are like the "fob" one time key generators. As long as the credstick doesn't get tapped too often, there's not enough of a dataset to "decrypt" the key generation. If a hacker has to sniff and decrypt 3 datafeeds simultaneously, the transaction can outrun the hacker.

3) The existence of hackastack or agent smith makes me ask the question of how do you defend against the Mongol horde?

Same way you do today: traffic analysis. You start refusing connections, particularly at a gateway level. Local security could use a fiber optic connection to root out agents once all the external connections are closed.

Of course my house rule is that each agent needs their own user account. If you want 24 Smiths to attack Renraku, you need to either have 24 user accounts or have the 24 begin hacking their way in. The odds of triggering an alert go waay up then. If you're just trying to DDOS them then that's fine.

4) How do you maintain control of vehicles or drones with the above issues?

Primarily by disabling connections to any other network. Then a hacker a) has to find a hidden connection, b) break the encryption, c) analyze the rigger's Persona and d) start issuing spoof commands. I often set drones down to the minimal signal level required to operate. In really stealthy operations, the drones are assigned to people on the intrusion team (mage's like having mechanical bodyguards) so that the signal level can be 0 or 1.

Outside of runs I strap a rating 1 comm operating in public mode to vehicles or drones expected to meet legit challenges and it handles the "paperwork."

I also install a LOT of databombs. Sure, you can spoof a command to add your Comm to my vehicle's subscription list. But then you've got to defuse the r:5 databomb to issue it any commands directly without taking some damage and letting me know someone's on my net. So their option is to continue spoofing, which is not a zero risk operation.

[pnut75]

I realize decrypting just takes time, but the speed with which it occurs in SR4 seems ridiculous. My limiting decrypt to a single all or nothing attempt is meant for on the fly hacking, since it is described as a brute force attempt.

Even IRL, hacking an encryption can take 5 minutes or five hours. All those articles you read in the news about new encryption methods developed over time can apply in SR as well.

Look at it this way, most hackers can break 32-bit encryption in less than 1/2 an hour, 64-bit in less than 6 hours, and 128-bit in less than 2 days. It depends on the encryption method as well, but apply that to the tech in SR4 and you see how it would be possible to hack a node in a single round, especially considering most places employ similar if not the same encryption and coding software.

[kzt]

If you can break a 128 bit in less than 2 days you can break a 64 bit in a milliseconds. You need 2^127 tries to break a 128 bit code (on average). You need 2^63 tries to break a 64 bit code. It's 18 sextrillion times harder to break a 128 bit code then a 64 bit code. (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 to be precise). It's only 4 billion times harder to break a 64 bit code than a 32 bit code.

The amount of computing power this implies (ignoring the violation of the laws of thermodynamics) is pretty astonishing.

[DireRadiant]

There's always a bigger number.

[pnut75]

If you can break a 128 bit in less than 2 days you can break a 64 bit in a milliseconds. You need 2^127 tries to break a 128 bit code (on average). You need 2^63 tries to break a 64 bit code. It's 18 sextrillion times harder to break a 128 bit code then a 64 bit code. (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 to be precise). It's only 4 billion times harder to break a 64 bit code than a 32 bit code.

The amount of computing power this implies (ignoring the violation of the laws of thermodynamics) is pretty astonishing.

I should have added that I am not the hacker doing this. At a conference I attended there was a competition to see if developers, coders and hackers (there is a difference) could crack different levels on encryption. One person was able to crack 64-bit encryption (I believe it was a type called Blowfish) in 12 minutes. I was stunned, but I do know it's possible.

I will also grant that these folks had some powerful computing power. I'm not sure which law of thermodynamics would be violated as matter was neither created nor destroyed, the rule of entropy was followed, and no one approached absolute zero at any point.

Remember, just like our characters, real hackers have developed programs and schemas that work for them and cut time down drastically.

[kzt]

It's complex, but here's the most readable analysis I've seen, from Robert J Hansen.

"Entropy is a measure of the statistical disorder of a system. In physics, disorder manifests itself as heat. Something that’s hot is in a much, much more disordered state than something that’s cold. In computer science, disorder manifests itself as…

"…heat.

"This is something that stunned Claude Shannon when he discovered it. He was trying to figure out a way to measure the information content of telephone lines, and the equations he kept on discovering looked very familiar. Shannon eventually called it “entropy�, just because the equations were the same as the physics equations for entropy. Shannon’s discovery was that information and “entropy� were opposite sides of the same coin: an increase in one necessarily involved a decrease in the other.

"What nobody disagrees on, though, are the real–world implications: that every single time you discard information, you have to pay a cost in heat. Period. End of sentence.

"This number is very, very small, but it’s not zero. Every single time you lose a bit of information, you pay kT ln 2 joules of energy. That’s how much energy has to leak from the system with every single bit of information that’s lost.

"This is an incredibly small amount—about 10^-23 joules per bitflip. By comparison, a car battery puts out about 10^26 times that each and every second. That’s a huge difference, just mind–blowingly huge. Most people think we can just ignore the Landauer Bound… but when it comes to crypto, that’s just folly.

"Assume a 128–bit cipher. Each time you want to try a new key, you’re going to have to discard (on average) 64 bits. 64 is close enough to 100 for our purposes—we want some quick back–of–the–napkin estimates, nothing more—so let’s write down: “each key = 10^2 bits lost.�

"Now, to break a 128–bit cipher by brute force requires, on average, 2^127 attempts. That’s close to 10^38, so let’s write that down. “Total attempts, 10^38.�

"Multiply the two numbers together to get the total number of bits of information you’ve discarded. To multiply together two numbers written in scientific notation, you add together their exponents. 10^2 × 10^38 = 10^40.

"Finally, we have to multiply our total number of discarded bits by the price we have to pay for each of them. Just like before, multiplying scientific–notation numbers is addition… except this time, one of the numbers is negative, so we can think of it like subtraction. 1040 × 10^-23 = 10^17.

"That gives us an absolute lower bound on the amount of energy we would have to lose while brute–forcing a 128–bit key. 10^17 joules… but that’s just a number. It doesn’t mean much to us, does it? So let’s put it in terms we can understand. "

A one megaton nuke releases 4.2*10^15 joules. Hence your system cracking really big numbers will make the room it is in VERY warm.

[Aaron]

Except that the energy numbers are directly related to the technology used to flip those bits. I can increase the amount of heat generated by hiring a fifteen-year-old to flip dinner plates. This isn't about information generating heat, it's about machines that manipulate information generating heat. It's just nifty geekery, on the same level as calculating the physics of Santa Claus.

[pnut75]

...on the same level as calculating the physics of Santa Claus.

I think they actually had a guy on NPR's Science Friday work out the math on Santa once. It was interesting and absolutely hilarious.

He also mathematically explained how your christmas lights get tangled no matter how you pack them. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Ryu]

Heh. It´s not what you have, it´s how you use it.

[kzt]

Except that the energy numbers are directly related to the technology used to flip those bits. I can increase the amount of heat generated by hiring a fifteen-year-old to flip dinner plates.

No, that's the amount of energy generated just by the bit flipping. Any additional work created by an inefficient process is just additional overhead.

For a more detailed and numeric approach see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_th...ormation_theory

You can pretend that Pi=3 because you don't understand how Pi is derived, but it still isn't 3.

[Ryu]

Any process that is efficient today might/will be tomorrows inefficient tech.

An ideal processor would not waste energy at all, but can not exist. Real tech wastes energy, but steadily increases calculations/entropy. Take nowadays personal computers vs. an equally powerful number of revered C64-PCs. The question is if the necessary increase in calculation power is larger or smaller than the increase in available calculation power.

[Aaron]

No, that's the amount of energy generated just by the bit flipping. Any additional work created by an inefficient process is just additional overhead.
For a more detailed and numeric approach see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_th...ormation_theory

This is more than I should be offering, but I recommend you read it yourself. I mean really read it, not just skim it. Heck, just read the first four words of the actual article text, the ones that go "There are close parallels ..." I'll also recommend the entire section entitled "Theoretical Relationship."

You can pretend that Pi=3 because you don't understand how Pi is derived, but it still isn't 3.

While you're at it, here's another Wikipedia article for your reading pleasure.

[Carny]

This is more than I should be offering, but I recommend you read it yourself. I mean really read it, not just skim it. Heck, just read the first four words of the actual article text, the ones that go "There are close parallels ..." I'll also recommend the entire section entitled "Theoretical Relationship."


While you're at it, here's another Wikipedia article for your reading pleasure.

Aaron, you are a glutton for punishment. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[JoelHalpern]

The other point on the energy analysis is that if you assume the mathematics has been cracked (which is the assumption the game makes) then you don't break a 128 bit key by testing 2^127 different possible values. You break it by applying the mathematics which lets you dramatically reduce the search space, and then using brute force.

(As a minor note, it takes very different kinds of mathematics to break asymmetric key systems (like RSA and Elliptical curve systems) and to break symmetric, fast key systems like Blowfish and AES. However, for game purposes it is perfectly reasonable to assume that both have been suitably weakened / broken.)

Joel

[kzt]

This is more than I should be offering, but I recommend you read it yourself. I mean really read it, not just skim it. Heck, just read the first four words of the actual article text, the ones that go "There are close parallels ..." I'll also recommend the entire section entitled "Theoretical Relationship."

The Connection between Logical and Thermodynamic Irreversibility

Good cryptography is by definition logically irreversible. If you can trivially recover the input from the output without the key it's not a very effective encryption system. And, yes, the fact that there IS a key doesn't make it reversible.

"It is clear that every logically irreversible transformation is equivalent to
a logically reversible transformation plus one or more Reset operations. To
see this consider an arbitrary logically irreversible transformation. It can
be converted into a reversible transformation if a copy of the input state is
appended to its output. This clearly allows the input state to be recovered
from the output state. To obtain a transformation logically equivalent to the
original irreversible transformation we simply reset the copy."

That's also why people are interested in differential power analysis as a side channel attack, because the power consumption of the encryption process is directly related to the key and what it's encrypting. Odd how it all ties together, isn't it? Brute force attacks on well run and well designed crypto systems are just not a viable approach in the real world for a reason. Brute force attacks against naively run systems, particularly if you have hints, are perfectly viable to use as a starting point because you can greatly limit the keyspace you have to search to variations on their kids name, SSN, birth dates, etc.

And this all started with "ignoring the violation of the laws of thermodynamics"....

[Zaranthan]

Forgive me if I've missed a cryptology lesson along the way, but what does "reset the copy" mean? There's not quite enough context there for me to put it together (and I seem to have glitched my Data Search roll, as Google is hating me on all relevant searches).

[Aaron]

The Connection between Logical and Thermodynamic Irreversibility

"It is clear that every logically irreversible transformation is equivalent to
a logically reversible transformation plus one or more Reset operations. To
see this consider an arbitrary logically irreversible transformation. It can
be converted into a reversible transformation if a copy of the input state is
appended to its output. This clearly allows the input state to be recovered
from the output state. To obtain a transformation logically equivalent to the
original irreversible transformation we simply reset the copy."

That's a nice quote, but it's a bit out of context. Try the first line of page seven, or the entirety of section 4. Maybe everything after that, too. I'm afraid it doesn't support your point at all, but it does go directly to my comment.

I think I'm going to be done with this sub-thread, unless something convincing comes up.

[BishopMcQ]

I'm just going to throw some questions out there and see how they fall.

My understanding of the thermodynamics generated around cryptography etc, is that we are working with silicon systems and traditional computer processors as we understand them today. How does that impact optical systems? Does an optical chip heat up by writing or removing data from it, since there are no moving parts?

If reducing entropy increases heat, does increasing entropy reduce heat? I have some problems with visualizing how exactly organizing a bunch of 1s and 0s makes heat, but scrambling them should definitely not make the world a cooler place.

Completely removed from the cryptography discussion:
Are there any modifiers for hacking use if I am running a sculpted system, where the sculpture uses Generic Matrix Iconography, but several key substitutions have been made? (Example my IC are sculpted to carry the icons of system maintenance bots and vice versa.) The visual representation would seem like everything was normal, but when an Analyze program was run on a specific Icon, different information than expected would return.

[kzt]

That's a nice quote, but it's a bit out of context. Try the first line of page seven, or the entirety of section 4. Maybe everything after that, too. I'm afraid it doesn't support your point at all, but it does go directly to my comment.

The entire point of the paper is defending Landauer's Principle, as first shown in "Irreversibility and heat generation in the computing process". The primary argument used against it is that entropy only applies to physical systems. Which is why the phrase he uses is "Thermodynamic irreversibility" with the paper showing that the general form of Landauer's Principle is true in a physical system, then applying it to a logical system. As noted it's pretty suggestive that you get the same answer using 'information-theoretic' entropy or phenomenological thermodynamics entropy.

It's possible that the second law of thermodynamics isn't actually true, and it's true that the relationship between of information theory and thermodynamics isn't firmly established, but Landauer's Principle is a tool that is found useful in other areas of science and models our understanding of reality in a useful fashion, as does thermodynamics in general. For example "Landauer’s Principle and Black-Hole Entropy." Given this it's perfectly reasonable to use it as tool to analyze cryptographic systems, which is why it is in fact in general use by people who work on cryptographic systems for a living.

You may be attempting to snidely claim that quantum computing will sidestep the heat dissipation issue, but that's also not true, as long as people don't choose encryption systems that can be easily attacked by QC. Logically it seem unlikely that corporations and governments will choose to use cryptosystems that they know can be trivially broken. Currently the commonly used symmetric systems are not easily attacked by QC, so I can't see any reason this will change.

It's all well and good to continually shout "wrong", but it's pretty pointless when you can't actually be bothered to produce any evidence other then your clear belief that you are omniscient.

[kzt]

My understanding of the thermodynamics generated around cryptography etc, is that we are working with silicon systems and traditional computer processors as we understand them today. How does that impact optical systems? Does an optical chip heat up by writing or removing data from it, since there are no moving parts?

There aren't any moving parts in a Intel processor either. Just moving electrons. That said, most of the heat in modern CPU (the vast majority) is due to resistance, not Landauer's. I'm not sure if any Landauer heating can even be detected. An optic fiber used for data will heat up (slightly) due to the laser light being absorbed over several kms of glass. I have no idea how much an actual optical computer would heat up, as somewhere you need RF converted to light, which implies a laser or vscel. Plus the gates will absorb some photons. This article suggests that there isn't any evidence for an optical system being cooler running. I have no idea how accurate this is, but I know the power requirements of high speed optical interfaces are pretty big due to the lasers.

If reducing entropy increases heat, does increasing entropy reduce heat? I have some problems with visualizing how exactly organizing a bunch of 1s and 0s makes heat, but scrambling them should definitely not make the world a cooler place.

It never gets cooler. You can move the heat to somewhere else, but that creates more heat in the process, which you have to move too.
The joke version of the laws is:
First: You can't win. Second: You can't break even. Third: You can't quit the game.

[Ryu]

Not exactly new, but it shows why Landauer entropy is no issue: Bennet: Logical reversibility of computation

[Cthulhudreams]

I think what Aaron is saying is that you essentially have these rock solid sites, which constantly double check each other, so unless you hack all of them simultaneously the information will revert to its proper format near instantaneously. My question to this then is how does this quorum of trust identify a legal transaction? Is a legal transaction essentially bursting the access code to twenty different servers and since it is good to go they all accept. Whereas with an illegal transaction I would have to hack those twenty servers simultaneously for the same effect. The security gets better as the number of secure servers I am transmitting to goes up. Of course you could still steal from someone if you manage to break their perfectly legal access code, but this would require what?

This skims over the biggest problem with it all - verisimilitude

Why is banking protected by security ninjas, but identity isn't? Especially when banking relies totally on identity and secure transaction for verification. I could simply get the ID of bill gates for what, 6k, wait for him to buy a coffee while monitoring him, then empty his bank account, because I all have all the information he could present to his bank.


Wham bam thank you ma'am.

And any defense that works for money is equally applicable to identification. It is stupid.

[Aaron]

You may be attempting to snidely claim that quantum computing will sidestep the heat dissipation issue [...]

Nope.

It's all well and good to continually shout "wrong", but it's pretty pointless when you can't actually be bothered to produce any evidence other then your clear belief that you are omniscient.

Oh, please.

My position is now and always has been that I don't believe your assertion; I believe I've offered plenty of evidence to that end and I dare anybody to disprove it. I'd be happy to be convinced otherwise, but the evidence offered thus far seems to support the debate more than than the conclusion (the recently-linked paper, for example, has a number of fallacies itself, and uses a lot of correlation and hedging; I'd offer a real critique, but I don't really have the time or interest). I'd much rather see evidence that conclusively supports your point, not what has been posted.

[Cthulhudreams]

See, this is why I've given up trying to offer stuff to DS.

kzt, if you're clever enough to think of that attack (which, obviously, you are), you're also clever enough to come up with a solution to it. It's not as much of a vulnerability as your post suggests.

The problem is the system has to be vulnerable otherwise the identity system wouldn't be vulnerable. Both are build by the same people and important infrastructure components.

[Aaron]

The problem is the system has to be vulnerable otherwise the identity system wouldn't be vulnerable. Both are build by the same people and important infrastructure components.

You should be able to come up with a counterpoint to that on your own, too.

[Carny]

You should be able to come up with a counterpoint to that on your own, too.

I'm somewhat reminded of the old arguments back in the day over gods and such in DnD.

Something like this:

"Hey, what's Odin's AC?"

"Why does it matter?"

"Well, I want to kill him."

"Why?"

"Ummm, because then I'd be really tough and everybody would know it."

"You can't kill him."

"Why not? I have x, y, z, ad infinitum magic items, maxed out stats, and all sorts of neat spells and stuff."

"Yeah, but he's a god, so you can't kill him. If you could kill him, he wouldn't be a god, and pretty much the whole campaign world wouldn't work."

"So what? This sucks! So unrealistic!"

"Yeah, tell me all about realistic, Gandalf/Conan/Elric boy."

[Cthulhudreams]

You should be able to come up with a counterpoint to that on your own, too.

I thought about it a bit. The first logical point was that SINs are held invidually. But SIN issuers are of sufficient scale - most of them are bigger than current major issues of currency - to support the same redundancy model. In most cases the issuers of currency (corp script) are the SAME as the issuers of identity (megacorps)

Also, like cash, identity has the same trust requirements, so there is sufficient impetuous to 'conform' to expectations - otherwise your identities will be held in the same regard as someone with a Sealand passport - you'll require additional special screening and the issuance of some sort of visa affirming your identity.

I just cannot see the driver that applies to currency and doesn't apply to identity. Given the prevelance of e-commerce, I actually think they are pretty much the same because if I can effectively fake your identity I can steal your money.

In summation, given the

A) Identicial nature of the issuring authorities

B) Identitical requirements for trust between issuing authorities

I see that the level of security would be identical.

Possible exceptions

A) The crash. But that would have also destroyed the financial system if they were hosted identically, which doesn't seem to have happened.

B) Inserting people at the point of registration, but again money is 'inserted' into the financial system all the time (issuance of debt) so that doesn't hang together either.

[DireRadiant]

All I know is money shouldn't work in theory, but I still can buy my lunch every day with it,

[Aaron]

DireRadiant, that's probably the best answer, over all.

But for the intellectual exercise, Cthulhudreams, you've got the start of a pretty good analysis going. What happens if you factor in some of the situational states, such as who issues each, who uses each, and how many entities have a vested interest in tracking each kind of data chunk?

[Cthulhudreams]

Money works perfectly well in the modern world because we have absolute trust in the issuing authorities (Australian Federal Reserve) and when we don't it doesn't (Zimbabwe)

The entire system of money today is based on the system of trust.

@Aaron

Well, both are issued by the same people (corps and governments), both are used by the same people (everyone, because etailing is a cornerstone of SR), and the same authorities have the same vested interests (ie Ares only cares about ares scrip and ares' ID -- but it has to be confident in the integrity of everyone else's currencies and identities otherwise it is impossible to conduct a transaction with them, which they need to have because they are by definition focused on conducting successful transactions).

With the assurance of integrity by other issuing authorities - for both currency and identification - the entire system breaks down.

The two are very strongly interlinked, but are we positing that one is radically vulnerable to a weeks work by some guy, and the other one isn't.

[BishopMcQ]

I think you may be making a false assumption. Money and Identity are different systems, issued by different groups. Yes generically, the government issues me money and a passport, but they are separate branches of the government with separate operating parameters.

Every dollar bill has a unique identifier, based on serial number, date of printing etc. This same way, currency systems track each nuyen by a unique identifier--it may be possible to falsify funds on a system that is outside of the network, but once it connects to the verification system your fake money gives up the ghost. This is possible today with manual credit card transactions during terminal failures, or when banking firms have database corruption issues. With the distributed network, each of the systems that has a vested interest in a specific nuyen block will be queried and a consensus reached as to whether it's a trusted source.

On the other hand, Social security numbers aren't unique. They are re-used post-humously and the systems which track those changes are not always updated. Likewise, identity systems link numbers to other numbers--this is part of why identity theft works. If I'm born outside of the system, it's possible for me to steal someone else's number and use it as my own. Eventually based on transaction usage, it can become possible to identify pluralistic usage of an SSN, but there aren't as many counter-checks against that. Often, it's a simple query--John Doe says his SIN is 8675309. System responds that 8675309 is a valid SIN and because there is no need to probe deeper, the system doesn't.

In cases where a deeper probe is necessary, that's where fake SINs out themselves because the information on file does not match the presented information. This can even happen in the cases of legitimate access of a SIN, when the SIN has been compromised and is used criminally.

Joe Runner intercepts John Doe's information and sets up a fake ID. Joe Runner does a series of "legal" purchases on that SIN. Later gear that Joe Runner purchased on that SIN is found by LoneStar during a criminal investigation. They find that it was purchased by John Doe, they go to his residence and find that his SIN data has been stolen. The system destroys that SIN data and starts a fresh SIN for John Doe. Joe Runner's fake SIN has outlived it's usefulness and must now be replaced.

If Joe Runner, using John Doe's SIN information before it was compromised, also managed to get John Doe's bank routing number and biometric data, it may be possible to screw much more deeply with John Doe's life. This way he could access John Doe's bank accounts, move funds around, etc. Credit pattern analyzation may notice a distinct change in John Doe's spending patterns and flag his account (thank you Horizon) or if done subtly, no one may notice until John Doe goes to pay for his lunch and finds that his account balance is off.

At least that's my two cents on the matter.

[kzt]

Not exactly new, but it shows why Landauer entropy is no issue: Bennet: Logical reversibility of computation

It's an interesting approach. I've seen some articles discussing doing reversible block cypher systems to avoid some side channel attacks based on power consumption. However encryption is computationally a lot easier than breaking encryption.

The italicized limitation in "The existence of logically reversible automata suggests that physical computers might be made thermodynamically reversible, and hence capable of dissipating an arbitrarily small amount of energy per step if operated sufficiently slowly" suggest some minor issues if you are intending to perform an exercise that requires 1.7 * 10^38 operations on average and plan on success before the sun becomes a red giant. And that's 128 bits, it's perfectly possible to do a 1024 bit or longer crypto system.

And storage of 1.7*10^38 copies of the message with the current key try sounds like it might occupy a lot of storage too.

[Cthulhudreams]

I think you may be making a false assumption. Money and Identity are different systems, issued by different groups. Yes generically, the government issues me money and a passport, but they are separate branches of the government with separate operating parameters.

Two points

A) I'm not saying materially they are the same system. For starters, the transactional processing rate on the monetary system has to be higher. I am saying that the same principles apply to both.

B) This has clearly changed with the eventuating of the megacorp - they are definitationally one organization. if you want to get fincky about business divisions, i'll counter with the point that currency and identity is shared services and will be managed directly by head office.

On the other hand, Social security numbers aren't unique.

Well, the SSN system in the US is stupid. In SR4 computers remember my SSN. My SSN can be significantly more complex as a result. I would have to be some sort of moron to come up with a scheme that reuses numbers under any circumstances. It would be like reusing numbers when I'm printing nuyen.

I certainly wouldn't do it in either system.

Edit: Also, you say that the systems arn't always updated. I'm clearly saying that the idea is to reuse the technology & principles that underpins the currency tracking system for the identify system and one of the posits of Aaron's position is that the database will also be consistent. So updates will happen.

Edit2: Also, why doesn;t the system probe deeper? Are you saying that it's never going to check if my nuyen are legit if I just restrict myself to 4 yen purchases?

[Zaranthan]

Edit2: Also, why doesn;t the system probe deeper? Are you saying that it's never going to check if my nuyen are legit if I just restrict myself to 4 yen purchases?

Well, yeah. If it costs you 2 nuyen to do a Valid/Invalid SIN check, and 20 nuyen to actually verify the name and face (which requires a few more database queries), you're only going to use those in-depth services when the purchase will still offer a profit. It's a bit silly to assume that the megas offer free background checks, so it's fair to assume that retail businesses will only pay for those services when they stand to be implicated in identity fraud (by helping the runner steal John Doe's money).

[Ryu]

It's an interesting approach. I've seen some articles discussing doing reversible block cypher systems to avoid some side channel attacks based on power consumption. However encryption is computationally a lot easier than breaking encryption.

The italicized limitation in "The existence of logically reversible automata suggests that physical computers might be made thermodynamically reversible, and hence capable of dissipating an arbitrarily small amount of energy per step if operated sufficiently slowly" suggest some minor issues if you are intending to perform an exercise that requires 1.7 * 10^38 operations on average and plan on success before the sun becomes a red giant. And that's 128 bits, it's perfectly possible to do a 1024 bit or longer crypto system.

And storage of 1.7*10^38 copies of the message with the current key try sounds like it might occupy a lot of storage too.

This might be better than the previous one: here

Quote concerning your point, pg. 503:

"The second objection, that even logically reversible data-processing operations
cannot be accomplished in a thermodynamically reversible fashion, I believe has
largely been overcome by explicit models, proposed by myself and others, of physical
mechanisms, which obey the accepted conventions of thermodynamic or mechanical
thought experiments, and which accomplish reversible computation at zero cost (socalled
ballistic computers, such as the Fredkin-Toffoli hard sphere model; Fredkin &
Toffoli, 1982), or at a per-step cost tending to zero in the limit of slow operation (socalled
Brownian computers, discussed at length in my review article; Bennett, 1982).
These questions were revisited and vigorously debated in an exchange in Physics
Reviews & Letters (Porod, Grondin, Ferry, & Porod, 1984). Of course, in practice,
almost all data processing is done on macroscopic apparatus, dissipating
macroscopic amounts of energy far in excess of what would be required by
Landauer’s principle. Nevertheless, some stages of biomolecular information
processing, such as transcription of DNA to RNA, appear to be accomplished by
chemical reactions that are reversible not only in principle but in practice."

[noonesshowmonkey]

I am coming into this late, and for that I apologize. My responses here will be disorganized as I will be addressing multiple points on this very interesting piece of thread drift.

First off, I will qualify my statements that I am not degreed in mathematics, computer science, information technology or information management. I will not be linking people to interesting articles on the nature of flipping bits, thermodynamics etc. Know ye now that I am an 'uneducated' (amusing bit of irony there, ain't it?) party in this.

On the topic of the nature of cryptology, data security and the ability of anyone to find out anything. While the history of the world is one of oblivion, that the world we live in has long since been producing more data than can be processed, viewed, recorded or otherwise manipulated for as long as the world has turned, information has had this nasty trait of being 'known'. Epistemologically speaking, knowledge of any kind 'wants' to be known and has an interesting and observable habit of becoming known. At the same time, once information reaches a certain sublime magnitude it has an equally amazing quality of becoming unknowable for all intents and purposes. Take the two metaphors of a a deadly family secret - these come out into public view almost inevitably (though a rare few are carried to the grave, but mostly by accident). The second is the construction of a cultural and technological monolith - the Windows operating system, the space shuttle, a 3rd generation nuclear powerplant. In these instances information has accumulated in a physical and verifiable form that far exceeds the ability of any party observing or participating to parse, learn, handle, interact with or otherwise know the subject in its entirety. Individual engineers and men of great genius may know a great deal about many of the parts involved but ultimately they will not have the slightest clue how the whole thing works together besides the most vague and knowledge-effacing/repudiating generalities.

What this means for data security is immense. First off, any cryptographic method that intends to be transmitte in a meaningful fashion to other users and eventually decoded suffers from the immediate flaw of being decodable and thus knowable in some fashion - ie is obtainable by a 3rd (interested) party. Secondly, only be achieving a magnitude so enormous that it becomes unmanagable by the individual, thus becoming the suzerian responsibility of a larger body (wherein individuals fail to comprehend the whole and thus the whole is not comprehended at all), does information achieve a measure of oblivion so sought after by 'security'.

When applying this to the concept of money or identification (which I will address in a moment), I would suggest that there is a strong trend towards a misleading kind of transparency that is often more opaque than one might wish. By this I mean that in a modern society where there is a vast amount of information easily available at any given moment achieving a minimum level of knowledge on a topic is rediulously easy (again with the irony. I really should stop.) while gaining meaningful and significant knowledge on that same topic runs into an exponential growth in difficulty, often with rapidly diminishing returns. As the seeker taps out each information source that will naturally lead to another a profound shift away from truth begins to occur. One individual source's knowledge is for all intents and purposes finite but as the number of sources increase so does disagreement, shift in focus and origin and ultimately in content.

In terms of money or information, in this case identity - in the modern world, including the 6th world, the two are nearly identical. Money is information in a modern society. I mean this on several levels. First and most crudely, money is no longer backed by gold or some other physical object whose agreed upon value props up a currency. Long, long ago this changed. Instead our currency, in abstract, is linked more heavily to securities of a more ephemeral form - companies in particular, large banking and loan institutions etc. All of these eventually lead to some form of embodiment - a house, the property of the company etc. but what matters is that the value of these goods fluctuates in a far more liquid way than the value of gold ever did. The value of these properties fluctuates based on their utility rather than intrinsic value. This is extremely important to understand when dealing with information - value is proportionate to its utility. Information that is extremely useful but known only to one person is in fact almost entirely useless (though it may have huge potential value - much like an excellent company that is undervalued until it gains public respect). That value has as its core vehicle the utility of a given thing has immense implications on the ways of financial institutions and the interplay between information and currency. Hell, just consider the 'identity' of a given person in 2008 America, much less in 2070s fictional Seattle... 98% of the datapoints tied to our social security number are financial records having to do with my credit card, my checking account, my insurance, my taxes etc...

Data, value and identity are intrinsically related in such a fashion that arguing that they function differently matters only in terms of their embodiment, not necessarily in their core behaviors. Identity is not 'issued' - the folder or filter or container or whatever is 'issued'. The actual identity is populated by the user. Analogies to stock are close at hand here.

In practical terms the unifying of these two concepts produces a hide in plain sight strategem and reality. As one user noted, can you be tracked if you spend only 4 nuyen over and over? God yes. Would it be easy? Depends. 4 nuyen is but a smal ldot in a sea of small dots. 1500 of these dots in close proximity stops being data points and becomes a point of analysis. Data naturally creates convergence, creates patterns, prepares conclusions to be discovered and ultimately leads to more data (which can ultimately obscure the intial intentions, meaning and goals of the first contact!).

The system will always check transactions relative to the magnitude of information being transacted (since information = value). 4 nuyen will pass under the radar because to verify it will place the analyzer smack dab in the middle of a sea of datapoints and white noise. 40,000 nuyen, however, reduces the field considerably. That 40,000 nuyen can by one transaction or 10,000 four nuyen transactions. If the correlation can be made a primary event occurs which then leads to other events. This is why a decentralized data system is so unbelievably robust. It at once protects information and at the same time makes vulnerable certain kinds of information by way of query. To make any significant impact on the value of anything you either have to make changes on a nearly infinite scale OR make changes on such a finite scale that the discovery by reasoning parties is nigh on inevitable.

That seems enough for this post. Let the sharks feed.

[kzt]

What this means for data security is immense. First off, any cryptographic method that intends to be transmitte in a meaningful fashion to other users and eventually decoded suffers from the immediate flaw of being decodable and thus knowable in some fashion - ie is obtainable by a 3rd (interested) party.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who have access to SIPRNET. Thousands of these have access to KH-11 images, hence everyone should be able to get them. As proof of your premise, please send me a KH-11 image obtained in the last 3 months of Iranian or NK nuclear weapon sites. I'm sure you'll have no trouble obtaining one.

[Aaron]

There are hundreds of thousands of people who have access to SIPRNET. Thousands of these have access to KH-11 images, hence everyone should be able to get them. As proof of your premise, please send me a KH-11 image obtained in the last 3 months of Iranian or NK nuclear weapon sites. I'm sure you'll have no trouble obtaining one.

I think it's fair for the person you quoted to wait on your request for you to offer an argument that isn't fallacious first. I was going to point out a specific one, but I stopped when I realized I was trying to choose between three.

I know this is off-topic, and I might get thumped by a mod for it, but the amount of intellectual dishonesty in this otherwise relatively technical topic is almost embarrassing. I think an appeal to reason is worth a warning. Yes, I know it's Dumpshock, and yes, I know DS has a reputation for being full of idiots, but I'd like to believe that Shadowrun players are a cut above those typically found in the discussion of other role-playing games. Futile though it may be, I will shake my tiny fist and hope it can get better.

[Cthulhudreams]

Well, yeah. If it costs you 2 nuyen to do a Valid/Invalid SIN check, and 20 nuyen to actually verify the name and face (which requires a few more database queries), you're only going to use those in-depth services when the purchase will still offer a profit. It's a bit silly to assume that the megas offer free background checks, so it's fair to assume that retail businesses will only pay for those services when they stand to be implicated in identity fraud (by helping the runner steal John Doe's money).

This undermines the currency system though. If you don;t check (ever) on small transactions, I can undermine the entire system by buying crap from vending machines and apple itunes. Each individual actor has no incentive to ever check, so no-one will ever check collectively.

Also, incidentally, its not like a free background check. Its more like me showing you my passport and you checking that the face matches the photo. However in this case what you probably do is collect my biometrics and check them against the database.

Its actually difficult to posit a world in which encryption doesn't work and that does though because how do I stop the middle man just stealing all my details? Normally I'd use cryptographic hashes, but they don't work.

Data, value and identity are intrinsically related in such a fashion that arguing that they function differently matters only in terms of their embodiment, not necessarily in their core behaviors. Identity is not 'issued' - the folder or filter or container or whatever is 'issued'. The actual identity is populated by the user. Analogies to stock are close at hand here.

In practical terms the unifying of these two concepts produces a hide in plain sight strategem and reality. As one user noted, can you be tracked if you spend only 4 nuyen over and over? God yes. Would it be easy? Depends. 4 nuyen is but a smal ldot in a sea of small dots. 1500 of these dots in close proximity stops being data points and becomes a point of analysis. Data naturally creates convergence, creates patterns, prepares conclusions to be discovered and ultimately leads to more data (which can ultimately obscure the intial intentions, meaning and goals of the first contact!).

Well, to me its obvious that you'll be tracked if you spend 4 nuyen a go. Its only a problem with the previous posters suggestion when there is a unit cost for checking. Because to conduct your analysis you need to segregate funds and conduct multiple checks - if you aggregate, all you'll find out is that people are defrauding you.

So I'm sying that your ID and cash would be checked every time, and when you can forge one, you can forge the other, but if you cannot forge both, your screwed.

Also, identification is definatly issued, it is a very seperate concept from an 'identity'. Identification is something you present to assert your identity - You have a passport and drivers license and maybe a building pass and they all have issuing authorities - who people trust to certify that you are person XYZ.

Witout that trust (say, sealand) that identification is worthless, even if it has substance.

[kzt]

I think it's fair for the person you quoted to wait on your request for you to offer an argument that isn't fallacious first. I was going to point out a specific one, but I stopped when I realized I was trying to choose between three.

I know this is off-topic, and I might get thumped by a mod for it, but the amount of intellectual dishonesty in this otherwise relatively technical topic is almost embarrassing. I think an appeal to reason is worth a warning. Yes, I know it's Dumpshock, and yes, I know DS has a reputation for being full of idiots, but I'd like to believe that Shadowrun players are a cut above those typically found in the discussion of other role-playing games. Futile though it may be, I will shake my tiny fist and hope it can get better.

If someone makes an unreasonable and intellectually dishonest claim I don't feel obliged to make a reasonable test for them to show it's accurate. I know they can't.

The guy who likes to pretend to never use fallacious arguments should recognize one when he sees one. The argument he uses, partially included below, is a combination of (at least): Appeal to probability, Begging the question, and False dilemma. Hence I'm unimpressed with the intellectual dishonesty shown in this thread too.

First off, any cryptographic method that intends to be transmitte in a meaningful fashion to other users and eventually decoded suffers from the immediate flaw of being decodable and thus knowable in some fashion - ie is obtainable by a 3rd (interested) party.

[Aaron]

I'm putting this here because it's tangentially relevant to the discussion. Plus some injustice has been shown toward someone else, and while that's something I know I should let slide, I find that I lack the restraint. If you (kzt) find fault with anything in this post, I invite you (kzt ... well, okay, or anybody else, I suppose) to PM me so we can come to some conclusion about rhetoric and logical argument without spamming the boards with irrelevant material.

If someone makes an unreasonable and intellectually dishonest claim I don't feel obliged to make a reasonable test for them to show it's accurate. I know they can't.

That would be a base assertion fallacy you're using, there. The argument you're defending with this fallacy is itself fallacious in at least that it relies on negative proof.

The guy who likes to pretend to never use fallacious arguments should recognize one when he sees one. The argument he uses, partially included below, is a combination of (at least): Appeal to probability, Begging the question, and False dilemma. Hence I'm unimpressed with the intellectual dishonesty shown in this thread too.

I love irony. The arguments quoted above demonstrate an ad hominem attack and quoting out of context, and those are fallacies I can prove off the top of my head on the first reading.

Of course, the proof is up to the reader, since as is the case with the main offender, I have offered no proof of my claims of fallacy. I have other, more productive things I should be writing, so I will have to simply offer this as an opinion, and let us here let it lie. Or else.

[WearzManySkins]

let us here let it lie. Or else.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

And now we step in to the Cranial Rectal Inversion Mode? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

"Get Some, Pogue"

WMS

[noonesshowmonkey]

As I pointed out in the begining of the post I was doing so from the delightfully simple point of view of complete ignorance of the technical side of this topic. Forgive me for viewing several users lost in the technical weeds and opening my mouth without linking to at least several journals. If it is academically dishonest to produce an opinion or summary on a topic while first advising that the entire thing is a fabrication I am not entirely sure what it is that you are upset about, kzt, but that is nothing new.

In the case of information theory, as far as I know it, there is a certain quality of probability fallacy built into it. To pesume that you can create information that can be transmitted without being decoded removes the condition of information from what you have just sent - it is now just datapoints without any rhyme, reason or correlation to anything. Without having the tenor of information - a pattern, for example - there is naught but vehicle - the data points. As far as I have known any cryptology is breakable given the time, inclination and resources. If it is not breakable now, it will become breakable as resources develop. Information, like technology, is a process of accumulation. Should the encrypted information reamain completely unknowable it is just that - unknowable and thereby useless with perhaps potential value. Crypto is but a facet of the process I am speaking of in that you may encrypt something utterly while other, cursory bits of information on the subject will crop up elsewhere, will be leaked by human sources, will find a way of being known through all manner of sources.

Lastly, if I cared to bludgeon people with the 'logical fallacy' stick with any sort of regularity I would soon tire and be unable to raise my arm. I leave that to rhetoricians and lawyers. You can call me an idiot, a pedant and naive all you want.

[Cthulhudreams]

As far as I have known any cryptology is breakable given the time, inclination and resources.

This is not the case. Nothing we know about can defeat a properly managed 1 time pad. (Unless you define 'resources' to include a 'copy of the key' but thats really a bit shallow.)

People don;t use OTPs all the time because its a difficult and annoying process.

[Aaron]

This is not the case. Nothing we know about can defeat a properly managed 1 time pad. (Unless you define 'resources' to include a 'copy of the key' but thats really a bit shallow.)

People don;t use OTPs all the time because its a difficult and annoying process.

OTPs are vulnerable, but only by user error. If a key is used more than once, messages that are encrypted with that key become vulnerable. With perfect protocol security, though, yeah, it's pretty damn secure.

[noonesshowmonkey]

Also, identification is definatly issued, it is a very seperate concept from an 'identity'. Identification is something you present to assert your identity - You have a passport and drivers license and maybe a building pass and they all have issuing authorities - who people trust to certify that you are person XYZ.

Witout that trust (say, sealand) that identification is worthless, even if it has substance.

Agreement is defitely part and parcel to the process of identification or currency exchange, though I am not entirely sure that I agree with you that the two are extremely seperate. The identification gains its worth from an issuer who is able to back up the identification with parity. If the issuer is unable to regularly produce reliable agreements on information then the value of their information plummets. The strength of American ID against that of a 3rd world country with little to no information tracking and storage system is that the idenity of the US citizen is a search filter that yields massive amounts of potentially correlated data. The trust inherent in either currency exchange or identification relies on the issuer or backer to be able to reliably produce correlated data. Just saying that you are trustworthy and that you are who you say you are does not go a long ways towards proof and does not a passport make. The reason that a, for example, British passport is a powerful form of identification relies on the British information processing method. The passport is linked to tons of supporting information which the passport itself can make possible a check of. The 'identification' here is just a little booklet that says "these are the various claims being made on behalf of this party, they can be checked against these verifiable systems to indeed be true (or in the case of Sealand, are unable to be checked in a meaningful fashoin). They are who they say they are because their information checks out."

As far as societal interaction goes, we are but lumps of data on this or that which is queried. I am me, but me is only my DoB, my SSN, my bank accounts with their huge histories of usage on this or that, my subscriptions to various services, my educational records etc. when it comes to a system checking my veracity. A person is viewed as data points and the identification is suggesting that these data points be organized in this recongizable fashion to have this meaning attached to that person.

The issuer, however is, as you say, extremely important. Though I think that the issuers importance is directly related to the way that the issuer gathers and handles information. I would consider this trend to be similar to that of currency no longer being backed by gold.

[noonesshowmonkey]

OTPs are vulnerable, but only by user error. If a key is used more than once, messages that are encrypted with that key become vulnerable. With perfect protocol security, though, yeah, it's pretty damn secure.

People don;t use OTPs all the time because its a difficult and annoying process.

That is entirely my point. Methods may exist but they have many weaknesses that facilitate the transfer of information in spite of themselves. I am coming from the point of view that a OTP may be unbreakable but consider what happens when you lose the other half of the pad to decode that information? Does the presence and avaialability of the means to decode the information then present its own vulnerabilities? While this is not necessarily directly related to the practice of crypto as such, it is relevant to the ways in which information is processed and handled.

[kigmatzomat]

Well, yeah. If it costs you 2 nuyen to do a Valid/Invalid SIN check, and 20 nuyen to actually verify the name and face (which requires a few more database queries), you're only going to use those in-depth services when the purchase will still offer a profit. It's a bit silly to assume that the megas offer free background checks, so it's fair to assume that retail businesses will only pay for those services when they stand to be implicated in identity fraud (by helping the runner steal John Doe's money).

This undermines the currency system though. If you don;t check (ever) on small transactions, I can undermine the entire system by buying crap from vending machines and apple itunes. Each individual actor has no incentive to ever check, so no-one will ever check collectively.

No more so than identity theft or credit fraud already does. As it stands, credit agencies don't verify transactions under a certain threshold, that's why you can buy fast food without a signature. The fast food places consider the expense of tracking signed receipts greater than the expense of eating disputed charges.

Why would that change in the future? There's no real difference in business operations between credit fraud and shoplifting. If an item is lost or a charge disputed, the cost gets eaten by the store. If the cost of loss is acceptable relative to the expense of improved security, the company continues operating as-is. Only a swing in the balance sheet or some external force (like Visa threatening to retract card rights at a store) will justify implementing better security.

Market forces would almost guarantee that some vendors of low margin items in low-crime areas would operate using low-cost/high-risk transactions to either undercut the competition or increase margins.

The only time it becomes an issue is if it afflicts a significant percentage of an economy's GDP.

[kzt]

No more so than identity theft or credit fraud already does. As it stands, credit agencies don't verify transactions under a certain threshold, that's why you can buy fast food without a signature. The fast food places consider the expense of tracking signed receipts greater than the expense of eating disputed charges.

But they do track them. They just don't require Id for them. The transactions go into their main data base and get run through the anomaly detection routines like all other transactions. If you want to see for yourself, go to a gas station with 6 friends and their cars and use your visa card to pay for all of their gas, one right after another. You won't sign anything, but it's pretty unlikely that you'll get gas in all 7 cars, as you'll hit one of the anti-theft tripwires used by the credit card companies.

[kigmatzomat]

That's because if a single charge is disputed, the store takes a hit for not verifying the identity by checking the buyer's ID and signature. But if a card is stolen it becomes a liability to the credit card company as they often promise credit protection to their users. In this case the risk/damage to the bank is very high while the expense of tracking is relatively low given they already have the massive servers in place.

So if a flurry of un-verified requests come through that are atypical, the card gets flagged, the card holder contacted and/or the card is temporarily frozen.

But if you visit six different gas stations over the course of a couple hours with that stolen card to buy $30 worth of stuff, nothing happens at all because that isn't really atypical behavior for someone out driving around so it won't twig a security alert.

Going back to the original example, hitting a couple of vending machines isn't necessarily enough to cause an alert. It would be even less so if you spoof multiple people.

As long as there is profit after the losses and the cost of improved security is greater than the value of those losses, there will be plenty of unverified transactions in the world.