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Yeah, reminds me of the "Security" xkcd (https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/) - a threat from a good ol' 5-dollar wrench defeating state-of-the-art encr
by cyber_kinetist 9mo ago
Yeah, reminds me of the "Security" xkcd (https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/) - a threat from a good ol' 5-dollar wrench defeating state-of-the-art encryption.
Never estimate how state actors can use violence (or merely the threat of it) to force people to do things. The only way to respond to that is not through code or algorithms or protocols, but through political action (whether it be violent or non-violent)
- dlahoda 9mo agocan we align that code, algorithm, code to be forms and important forms of political action?
- wizzwizz4 9mo agoSoatok Dreamseeker is working on a more xkcd-538-proof system: https://soatok.blog/2025/08/09/improving-geographical-resilience-for-distributed-open-source-teams-with-freeon/ https://soatok.blog/2025/08/09/improving-geographical-resili... https://github.com/soatok/freeon https://github.com/soatok/freeon. Fundamentally, though, it's built on the assumption that geographical resilience is possible – that a group can be distributed such that no one organisation can perform $5-wrench attacks against enough of them to break the cryptography. (Given that the attack's impossible, a sensible attacker would avoid tipping their hand by attempting it, thus sparing contributors from violence.)
- some_furry 9mo agoI should be clear: Nothing is xkcd-538-proof, in absolute terms. Violence is always possible. But having a tool that is more resistant to authoritarian overreach by being geographically distributed does make it harder to pull these attacks off.