Has anybody seen this description of Hocnet? It's billed as "A competitively decentralized internet." It seems to be a sort of p2p mesh network where nodes that provide services such as routing are rewarded with payment. Although there's been some discussion on how to do payment, Bitcoin figures prominently in the plans. I think the financial incentive to miners in Bitcoin is one of the major drivers of its success so far, so I believe that the same kind of financial incentive to mesh net operators could be a huge driver of mesh net deployment. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1osU8vnuOW1eV3hdYMxg8hDh7E6kZLvf05uKvgYAE6SU/edit#heading=h.z59dueh145yuhttp://www.reddit.com/r/hocnet |
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I have been thinking about somethin like that, too. But I came up with some attacks, that have to be prevented for a smart card to be useful (more than some kind of offline storage netbook).
In my opinion the system to which the reader is connected has to be considerd as totally corrupted with trojans, rootkits, etc.
The reader or the smartcard has to ensure, that the host system can't have arbitrary signature requests signed by the card.
The only solution, that came to my mind, was to display the to be signed transaction at the reader (which is secure, and therefore does not display a bogus transaction). Then the user has to enter the pin/password at the reader (so it can not get into the host system), which gives it to the smartcard, which in turn can use it to decrypt the private keys and sign the transaction.
Beyond this, there has to be a more secure way of presenting the recipient bitcoin address. Imagine that the host computer is infected with a virus. The virus monitors all unsigned transactions sent for signing, and when a particularly big one shows up, it slightly modifies the recipient address to an address owned by the attacker. This address could be generated on the fly, or generated in the background based on past addresses the virus has seen in use by the user, or even related addresses it finds on the blockchain. It's very hard to visually diff bitcoin addresses on two separate screens. One solution would be to convert the public recipient address into a phrase, similar to what Electrum does for private seeds. Perhaps the universe of words used for the conversion could be pruned so that there are no similar words. Of course, this phrase would have to published by the recipient himself, and not by the potentially infected host software. However, even if the recipient didn't publish the phrase, this might still be pretty strong, since it could be very hard to find a bitcoin address that is both similar to the original recipient address and has a very similar phrase. |
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Has anybody made a live linux distro version for a wallet to a thumb drive setup ?
I've started a project that builds a modified Ubuntu Privacy Remix distro to create secure offline wallets, and execute offline transactions. Might be of interest to the readers of this thread. More details in the original post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=94321.0 |
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The proposed bill is available online: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr3179ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr3179ih.pdfThe bill would allow states to charge sales tax on the delivery address, and if there's no delivery address, on the billing address, so in most cases Bitcoin wouldn't help here, unless the whole operation was off the books. On the other hand, businesses with less than $1 million in out-of-state sales are exempt from the bill, so you might see a lot more small Internet stores popping up to cater to customers who don't want to pay sales tax. |
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This looks very cool. A couple of questions: 1. Once all of the parties submit their signed transactions, aren't they at risk of losing their funds to a rogue mixer? 2. How is m determined for the 1/m probability of having to do another mixing? |
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I've whipped up a mod of Ubuntu Privacy Remix and I'd love to get help testing it and refining it. You can try it with an existing computer, it won't change your existing OS in any way. Or you can even try it with virtualization software like VirtualBox. It offers the following features: - Create a new encrypted offline Electrum wallet, with associated split keys, with one command. - The command takes care of deseeding the wallet, encrypting the seed file, and backing up the pass phrase into split keys. - Split keys are created with the ssss program. Once each key is copied to a separate usb drive, any two of the three drives will be sufficient to recover the pass phrase. - Decrypt seed file from either split keys or pass phrase, reseed wallet, and create offline transaction with one command. - All necessary software is already on the cd/usb image, there is no need to ever connect to the internet. The idea is to get a cheap netbook or old laptop, and boot with the cd or usb. All hard drives and internet access will be disabled at the kernel level. A wallet is created on this computer, and the secured files are transferred to a usb drive. The offline wallet can now be monitored from Electrum, Blockchain.info and other clients. To transfer any amount of Bitcoins from the wallet, the deseeded, and updated wallet file is copied back to the offline computer via usb, and a transaction is created offline. The transaction is transferred back to the online computer, and broadcast via Electrum or an online service. I didn't develop anything groundbreaking here. The heavy lifting is done by GPG, ssss, Electrum, and the UPR distro. I believe this mod adds some value though, because it was previously difficult to get everything working on UPR, especially without internet access. This makes it a bit more accessible. That being said, development is at an early stage, and error messages in particular need a lot of love. 
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Instructions:
Boot
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Boot computer with Bitpit CD or USB
Create Wallet
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Type the command: create-wallet.sh
Backup Wallet
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Copy the vault directory to a usb drive. This can be backed up on the cloud.
Copy each split key file in the split-keys directory to a separate usb drive. These are only needed if you forget your pass phrase.
Create Transaction
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Copy the vault directory back to the offline computer.
You only need to copy the split keys back if you've forgotten your pass phrase.
Run the command: tx.sh -- you'll be asked for the destination bitcoin address, the amount, and your pass phrase.
Copy the resulting file, tx.dat, to your online computer, and send.
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Project code: https://github.com/joshmh/bitpitDownload the iso image for burning on a CD or USB drive: https://www.dropbox.com/s/99utv37azpvjwfk/upr-10.04r2.iso |
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Can't wait to move to be a part of this and many other events!
Looking forward to meeting you! |
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4th weekly New Hampshire Bitcoin meetup is on Saturday, July 21, at the Strange Brew Tavern in Manchester, NH at 6:30. This continues to be a well-attended event, and we're getting new people each time. Beers are getting cheaper, too: just 0.33btc now! If you're in the area, we'd love to see you  |
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The meetup in New Hampshire (The Free State) is about 3 weeks old and going very well. It meets weekly on saturdays, and has 8-12 people show up, with 1-3 new people each time.
Here's a link to a post I wrote about the first NH meetup: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91059.0
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3rd weekly New Hampshire Bitcoin meetup is today, Saturday, July 14, at the Strange Brew Tavern in Manchester, NH at 6:30. Everybody in the area is welcome to show up. (Boston is just an hour away.) We expect to have about ten people this time, but the more the merrier. Feel free to PM me or post here for more details.  |
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This post has now been translated into Spanish: http://elbitcoin.org/en-porcfest-bitcoin-es-moneda-corriente/PorcFest ["porc" de puercoespín, un símbolo libertario] es el Festival anual de la Libertad, organizado por el Free State Project [Proyecto Estado Libre]. Cientos de libertarios se reúnen en un campamento en el norte de New Hampshire para armar carpas, comer, beber, comerciar, conversar y festejar.
¿Pero qué tiene que ver el PorcFest con Bitcoin?
...
Thanks, elbitcoin.org! |
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$ electrum
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/electrum", line 148, in <module>
gui = gui.ElectrumGui(wallet)
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/electrum/gui_lite.py", line 36, in __init__
with open("data/style.css") as style_file:
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'data/style.css'
I'm getting this too, on Ubuntu 12.04 |
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We had our first New Hampshire Bitcoin meetup yesterday and it was great! Ten people showed up and we had a boisterous two hours talking about all aspects of Bitcoin. From how to get them and how to store them to predicting the future of the coin. We exchanged Bitcoins for cash and, per custom, asked the waitress if she accepted Bitcoin. This going to be a weekly event, and anybody's who's in the area is cordially invited to join.
Wow, weekly? You really think the level of enthusiasm is enough to support such frequency? If so I'm pleasantly surprised, and glad to see Bitcoin making such inroads into the community. The consensus at the meetup was that it should be a weekly event, especially for currency exchange purposes. I expect the meetup to grow way beyond 10 people. Looks great!
Can you post a link to the details for the meetup?
Sure: https://www.facebook.com/events/345108722234334/ |
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The security measures described are all possible, for sure. Ideally, the system should be able to function only on SMS commands, since many users will not have a mailing address or second device. Still, secondary security measures can be implemented, such as a pin number.
Can't a PIN be intercepted by the telecom guys, or are we assuming they won't be that sophisticated? |
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How many days after realizing that SMS wallets are starting to catch on before texts to and from the SMS wallet provider's number are blocked? (and thus the user's funds left stranded, at least temporarily). Unlike bitcoin's peer-to-peer architecture, telecom infrastructure operates as the givernment instructs them to.
This problem may be a little overstated. Governments don't always act so efficiently, and they'd have a tough time blocking us in such a way. Assuming we go international through a series of phone numbers in different service areas, it would be quite easy to get new numbers for any given service area. The local gov. and mobile service provider would be playing whack a mole. What's more, I'm sure the people would have something to say about it. Good point. This reminds me of the Chinese govt vs Tor IPs. Most governments have nothing close to the systems set up by the Chinese, and even they're having a hard time. It also maybe possible to embarrass them in their favorite UN clubs or the world press if they start blocking numbers. I bet there are ways around the telecom guys stealing bitcoins, too -- anything from a separate one-time password device (could be super simple and cheap, even a printed card, especially because the individual transactions are mostly small) to some security questions, like "what's the 3rd letter of your son's name". |
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Isn't curious that a community form around promoting some kind of money, which by then should be booooooooooooring no brainer? It's like forming a community around promoting a kind of concrete.
Concrete Engineering general discussion Forum |
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That reason they give is patently ridiculous. They have a fiduciary responsibility? To whom? Well, to the person who gave them the money. If that person wants to give them money in BTC, how can it be a dereliction of duty to accept it? If they want, they can convert it immediately into FRNs.
"This has been interpreted" -- note the weasel passive voice, interpreted by whom?
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