Freemors Blog

Musings of an East Coast Techie

The Sheeplenet

2019-08-29 by Freemor

Today I am coining (as far as I am currently aware) a new term. "The Sheeplenet".

Sheeplenet: A term referring to Google, FaceBook, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter    
            Instagram (still facebook), Snapchat, Youtube (still Google), Etc. 
            That most people are referring to when they use the term Internet.

To be clear, the Sheeplenet is not, nor has it ever been "The Internet". The Internet is the collection of interconnected autonomous networks that people use via their ISP to talk to those things.

I am coining the term mostly for personal use but mainly to disambiguate all those services from "The Internet". I'm all over the Internet. I use it every day. I'm just not on the Sheeplenet.

People are often confused when I tell them, "I'm not on service A", "No I'm not on service B or C eiither.". This confusion leads to questions like, "Aren't you on the Internet?". Which is of course technically very, very, incorrect. That is akin to asking someone, "Don't you drive?" just because they never go to your favourite mall or coffee shop.

I use the "Sheeple" part, Not disparagingly but rather to refer to the unconsidered way that the vast majority of people end up, not only on these services, but also thinking that they are the "Internet".

Because of this incorrect mindset (And it is a mindset that the companies in question work hard to foster in the people that spend time there) people stop wondering what other wonderful things the Internet can do. What else is out there? What strange and wonderful corners are there? How else can the fact that I, You, almost anyone, can talk to every other computer on the planet be put to amazing uses?

It is the loss of the understanding that a service that you can access via the Internet is not "The Internet". It is a misconception that hides the wonder, potential, and freedom of the Internet from those using said services. I can talk to almost anyone on the planet with the Internet without the need for any of the Sheeplenet. Doing so is trivially easy. It's not because I'm an uber techie, or have some special ability that others lack. The only special ability I have is seeing the open roads of the Internet as exactly that. Roads that take me where I want to go. Without having to use any service that is gonna steal my data, my privacy, and my individuality in the process.

So if you're looking for Freemor.. I'm, "out there, traveling the open highways of the Internet...." And I am definitely not alone out there. There are many other people traveling those roads instead of sitting in a Mall and thinking it is the totality of this thing called the Internet.

Come on out and join us. Feel the freedom of the digital highway as you explore the wonder that truely is "The Internet".

P.S.A Re: Sextortion E-Mail Scam

2018-10-14 by Freemor

This is just a quick posting to alert those that read my blog that sextortion spammers have changed tactics.

They still claim that they hacked your life but are now claiming to have done so by breaking into an email account. As proof they offer the fact that the "From:" header shows the e-mail as coming from your account.

The important thing to know is that the "From:" header is completely and trivially spoofable. Anyone can send an e-mail with anything they want in the From: line.

Do Not Fall For this.

Here is the raw (source version with all the headers shown) version of one of these spams that hit my mailbox.

From Sat Oct 13 06:05:01 2018
Received: from ( [])
by server (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4127571C
for; Sat, 13 Oct 2018 06:05:01 -0300 (ADT)
Message-ID: <5F7026344D09625F7026344D09625F70@PSFB91RPS>
Subject: was hacked
Date: 13 Oct 2018 13:34:07 +0200
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Windows Live Mail 15.4.3508.1109
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V15.4.3508.1109
Status: RO

Hello freemor@







Send the above amount on my bitcoin wallet: 1MN7A7QqQaAVoxV4zdjdrnEHXmjhzcQ4Bq As soon as the above amount is received, I guarantee that the data will be deleted, I do not need it.




Even though both "From" lines say it came from me there are several important facts.

The "Received:" line clearly shows that it actually came from which is not my mail server. It is a computer in the Republic of Cyprus, Most certainly not where my mail server lives. And from the looks of the domain name probably from someone's home.

So let me say it again. The "From:" line in an email means Nothing. It is Trivial to spoof. Anyone with even a tiny bit of knowledge can send e-mails that claim to be from you, or Plato, or the Easter bunny. This type of sextortion scam is just trying to scare you into paying for no reason.

What You Need to Know About efail

2018-06-15 by Freemor

I am writing this because there is a lot of hyperbole about efail

Are GPG/PGP and S/MIME broken?

No. efail is an attack on the mail client. Not on the cryptography. Although there is some mussing with the cryptographic elements That would be very apparent, signatures would fail, etc.

Are my Private Key Compromised, Does this lead to a compromise of the keys?

No. This tricks email reading programs into sending the clear text of the message once it is decrypted back to the attacker.

Is my email program affected?

Maybe. Not all are. There is an excellent chat on page 11 of The official report

Should I disable/stop using GPG or S/MIME?

That depends.

The real problem is HTML rendering in some email clients. Check the list Document mentioned above to see if yours is effected

Patches are coming on-line quickly so check that your E-mail client is up to date

If you are comfortable doing so turn off HTML rendering of E-mail. This will almost completely mitigate the issue. The researchers did not get a non-HTML rendered E-mail to be effected but they do suggest other more complicated things that MAY be able to do that.

Keep in mind that is a complicated Man-in-the-middle attack that requires the attacker to have access to your stored E-mails on the server or your computer or the ability to capture them in transit. This is not something generic hackers will be doing. It is something that Governments and places like the NSA will be interested in. If you are worried about them I'd strongly suggest making sure you are using a non-effected client and disabling HTML rendering.

But for the average person that isn't worried about nation states and spy agencies actively trying to get their stuff I'd say keep using GPG or S/MIME. Apply the patches as they become available. Turn Off HTML Rendering. or move to an unaffected client.

It's better to send encrypted and force people to work at decrypting it then just say fuck it and send everything in the clear and let them have it all with no effort.

The Bullet points

Why Open Source

2018-04-17 by Freemor

Ok, I'm going to attempt to explain why open source software is better then closed source. For the libre-software folks in the crowd I'll be addressing copyleft and the four freedoms in a following post.

I'm going to explain this using an analogy and what I hope is an apt one- that of a recipe. This is something everyone is familiar with and has probably worked with at one point or other.

Source code is a recipe for how to make a program. Depending on the language it is either "baked" (compiled) or "eaten as is" (interpreted).

Like a recipe the source code is just a list of things to use (resources) and instructions on how to use them (the program).

Just as many recipes need to be baked and one can't easily identify what went in to the recipe after baking, many modern programs are compiled and what comes out of the compiler looks way more like cake then eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla, etc. Therefore it is very hard to work on a program after it is compiled. Just imagine trying to add more oil to a cake that came out too dry after it's baked. It just won't end well.

Ok, now that we have the analogy established, imagine a world where recipes were all legally protected secrets. The only food you could buy was pre-cooked or ready-to-eat. Hate the flavour? Too bad. Want to add blueberries? Sorry can't do that, or at least not in a meaningful way. Ovens would be for heating alone just as most people's computers are just for using a browser.

Worse still, if you did figure out how to make a brownie, somehow found the ingredients and tools to use them and then, GASP! used your oven for cooking, you'd probably promptly get sued by the local big brownie concern for stealing their secrets. And because they are secrets you couldn't prove that you didn't or it would be very hard to.

In this world almost no one could help you with your brownies as only a select few know how to cook or what cooking even is, other then "That thing specially trained people do for big companies".

This is the world of closed source. This is the world of the late 80's and early 90's before the open-source movement. There were a few small pools of hobbyists keeping programming for fun alive but mostly all the recipes had disappeared or were very old and stale.

Now imagine a world where everyone publishes their recipes. And because of this the tools to use the recipes are readily available. If you didn't like Magoo's chocolate cake, you could download the recipe and fix it and bake your own. Now depending on the license that Magoo attached to the recipe you may or may not be able to tell anyone about how you fixed it, and may or may not be able to sell the better cake you made. This is where software freedom and copyleft comes in which I'll talk about in a later posting.

In this world there would be lots of people cooking, sharing ideas on how to cook, how to cook better, coming up with new and interesting things. Also people could look over Magoo's recipes and say "Too much salt in cake #3, it should be 1 teaspoon not 1 tablespoon". Also people could make sure Magoo's wasn't including rat poison, or making a frosting of raw eggs, sugar and lard that'd go off in a day and lead to people getting sick and dying, thus making everyone safe.

Just imagine if VW's emission control software had been open source. People would have looked at it and said "WTF! What are you doing?" Now I know some of you are saying "Ah, but they could publish a good recipe and then bake the bad one". True, but it'd still be a lot easier to catch them as you could bake the recipe they published and then compare it to the pre-baked version. In the VW example the pre-baked version would somehow, mysteriously have way better mileage. And because people know how to cook, they'd know there are only a couple of ingredients that could be fiddled with to achieve that result.

VW is not the only one hiding things in their closed source software. Most programs that you find in "App Stores" are closed source and many of them do their best to take your personal information, often without permission. These activities would be plainly visible if people could look at the source code, as would many vulnerabilities or things like back doors in the program.

This is where we are hopefully heading. Many programs are now open source; many are still secret. We will probably never get to a 100% open source world. But as people learn more about the open source movement, and realize that programming is just a learned skill like cooking, instead of seeing it as a magical "something" that only rare geniuses can do, there will be more and more pressure for companies to open their source code, or for software repositories like "App Stores" to include a way to also download the source code for a program.

What You Need to Know about Meltdown and Spectre

2018-01-04 by Freemor

I am writing this because there is a lot of hype, click bait and other stuff going on around Meltdown and Spectre. I want to put out the info in plain simple terms.

First and Foremost

Your computer is not broken or defective.

Intel DID NOT screw up.

The fact that Out-of-order Execution has been around since the '70s and in modern PCs since the mid '90s and the exploit is only now being found shows that this is a extremely clever, highly technical, exploit that builds on much more modern concepts like "CPU cache timing attacks for side channel leakage of information.".

There are software patches already on the way to mitigate the problem. The "performance hits" talked about are not well documented and as the mitigations improve any performance hit will be reduced.

Is it bad?

It is a serious issue. It is not the end of the world, or your computer, or the internet.

What is it?

Both techniques take advantage of a feature of many (not all) modern processors called Out-of-order execution. Which is a technique that most modern CPUs use to get things done more efficiently and faster.

It is NOT a technique to get code on your machine. It is a technique that code that has already gotten on your machine can use to access information that is usually protected.

Access to such information would let the code then bypass several other protections to gain more privileges or steal information from other processes.

What should I do

Breath. Relax. There is no evidence that these have been exploited in the wild yet. Patches/Fixes are coming online quickly.

Apply patches as they become available. Many people are working on ways to mitigate these problems.

What about all the noise.

Sadly this is the type of exploit that makes for great attention grabbing headlines and news coverage. But the facts are much more complex then the mainstream media want to cover. It is much easier to say "Every Intel Processor is effected but this bug." than "There is a highly technical side channel attack on processors that support Out-Of-Order Execution that leads to the leakage of privileged information. This would let them steal information or use information about the layout of system memory to use another advanced technique called Return Oriented Programming to gain full control of the system."

Divorcing My SmartPhone

2017-08-28 by Freemor























Where I Stand...

2016-07-15 by Freemor



   Because I know the world is mostly safe,
   Because I know that all sane people wish peace and stability,
   Because I know that the sane far far outnumber the troubled.


Stop Calling it Sharing

2016-04-09 by Freemor

I'm getting tired of term "Sharing" or "sharing economy" being applied to things that clearly are not sharing. It muddies the waters in discussions of these services, it's more about marketing then the reality of the situation, and frankly it's highly inaccurate.

Sharing is something one does without profit in mind.

Things like Uber, AirBnB, etc. are not about sharing. There is an exchange of funds involved. The companies provide a service to people how in turn provide a different service to clients.

If you go to Uber's "Drive" page it is quite clear from the wording that this is not about sharing. Phrases like:

"earn what you need"


"we deduct a service fee"

clearly show that this has nothing to do with sharing. So any references to Uber as a sharing service are completely inaccurate. It is a business plain and simple.

So with the "sharing" mystique stripped away it is clear that Uber is just another taxi service and thus should be regulated like any other taxi service.

AirBnB is about the same, their website starts off with:

"Rent unique places to stay from local hosts in 190+ countries." (emphasis mine)

Renting is not sharing. Also the "Hosts" pay a service fee to AirBNB:

"You'll only pay a 3% service fee".

So, once again we have a Company offering a service to people who offer a different service to clients. No Sharing. And with the "Sharing" mystique once again stripped away it's clear that this is just an unregulated hotel service.

So can we please stop referring to companies like this as "sharing" or being part of a "Sharing Economy". The use of that term is nothing but marketing buzz and an attempt to try and duck regulations that are generally there to protect the public.

Now if you take a site like CouchSurfing you'll be looking at something that is about sharing. Accommodations offered for free. No stings attached. No earning or service fees. However the company providing the site is not entirely in the sharing business, from their "Terms of use" we see:

"Couchsurfing may offer the opportunity to purchase products and services from third parties. You acknowledge that such products and services are offered and sold to you by one or more third parties. For more information, please refer to the applicable third party's terms of sale and privacy policy that are presented as part of the checkout process."

So even though CouchSurfing facilitates sharing they are in it to make a buck. They are a business. They are offering a monetized service.

I am in no way disparaging CouchSurfing. Everyone needs to eat. And bravo! they are facilitating actual sharing. Good for them. I'm just saying that their motivations are not entirely selfless.

I am also not saying that there is a dearth of sharing. Certainly the capitalistic society in which we live tries hard to push people away from sharing, as it is bad for their bottom line. Even so, I have seen many people offer public spaces and resources on-line for altruistic and/or selfless reasons.

People who run Tor nodes are sharing their bandwidth and computer resources. The same goes for people running I2P nodes, or people running publicly available nodes or Diaspora pods. There is also the thousands of people that devote their time and energy to creating freely available GPL'd software.

So there is definitely a sharing economy out there. It just isn't the one you hear about. And sadly the "Sharing Economy" that is getting all the press isn't about sharing at all, just more capitalistic endeavours trying to wrap themselves in a palatable and marketable guise.

He who controls the server and software 'owns' the device

2016-04-05 by Freemor

With recent articles like this and this, I felt it was important to point out the golden thread running through these. Which boils down to one thing. "He who controls the software and/or server controls the device" at least in devices like these.

When buying a product that is Internet ready or Internet connected it is very important for people to ask the question "What happens if the Internet part goes away?"

For some products it's no biggie, like say a media player that downloads from a specific site, but also let you put your own music on. In this case the Internet part is more of a "Value added" piece then an mandatory one.

Then there are things like the Google Chromecast. If the Internet back end goes away because Google decides to move to ChromeCast V3.0 and not support earlier ones, then the device will become a brick. useless. And due to the lack of software freedom in these devices there is nothing the owner can do.

This same thing is true of an ever increasing number of products. Especially as we move into the whole "Internet of Things" (IoT) world. One of the reasons that businesses are so hot on the IoT idea is the reach it gives them over the product. This was seen with Kindle when amazon reached into thousands of devices and Erased the book 1984.

There are two separate issues at play here:

The "ownership" of the device hinges on these two things. Lets look at each of them.

Who controls the software

If you do not control the software on the device, then it controls you. You do not own that device. The person that controls the software owns it.

When I talk about control I am not talking about how "Usable" the software is. I'm talking about the users ability to Change, modify, study, etc. the software on the device.

If you can't change the software at all them you have absolutely no control.

If you can swap one opaque mass of software for another opaque mass of software you have the limited illusion of control

Only when you can Study the software to see how it works, Change it to work the way you want it to, Share the changes you've made and have the freedom to use the software in any way you choose do you truly control the device.

Sadly an ever decreasing number of devices fall into this category. Even many devices that appear free, like the Raspberry Pi, are actually Not truly so due to the fact that they can not work without some opaque bit of software. In the case of the Raspberry Pi it is impossible to boot the device without software that is not in your control.

Who controls the server

This question is either of slightly less or equal importance to the "ownership" of the device based on what the server bit does.

If the server bit is strictly "Value added", as in the device will continue to function completely without the server. Then the question is a minor one.

However increasingly, and by design, devices will not function if the server is gone.

Now if you have freedom in the software as mentioned above. It wouldn't be an issue. You or someone else could study the software, change it to use a different server or to not need the server and then share that change to the world. Problem solved.

Sadly as mentioned above it is a rare device where that can be done. Partly because most software licenses prevent you from doing any of those and thus from using the software any way you want

So lacking freedom in the software and being tied to a server that you don't control means that not only can you not fix, or modify the device, you are now entirely at the whim of the person that controls the server. What if the server says to delete all your stuff? Nothing you can do. The device wont work without the server so you can't prevent it from connecting and once it does bang your stuff is gone.

It goes well beyond just deleting your stuff. The server could push out an update that kills the device. Now it wont even turn on. Or they could just shut down the sever, Again you're stuck with a useless device. It is also important to remember that the connection to the server is a two way street and can be used to spy on anything you do with or near the device, as Windows 10 does and it looks like Occulus Rift will.

As the whole IoT thing takes off this is going to become a huge issue and one that customers need to pay attention to. An IoT fridge that you do not control could be remotely told to not keep food cold anymore when the manufacturer decides it is time for you to buy a new one.

Think that is far fetched? There have been printer out there for years now that decide to stop working based on a software counter in the printer. There is absolutely nothing mechanically wrong with them the software just decides "Sorry I'm done.. go buy a new printer". If manufacturers are willing to screw with you like this how much more so when they can reach over the network and do what ever they like to your device?

So the next time you buy an electronic device ask, Who controls the software? Is the server part "Value added" or mandatory? Can I change the software? Can I run my own server? And ultimately, Do I want to buy a device I will not "own or control".

A Phone is not a House

2016-04-01 by Freemor

With the ongoing debate about strong encryption on mobile devices, I'd like to take a moment to clear up a misconception that I've seen tossed around and sadly accepted by too many people.

To be clear anyone that reads my stuff will know that I fall well inside the "must have strong crypto" camp. So the views expressed here will clearly be coloured by that.

The point I want to clear up is this new comparison of cell phones to physical spaces. The argument tends to go like this: "Peoples homes are private but the government can get a warrant to search them. So the government should be able to do the same for Phones."

On the surface that may seems to make sense and I suspect that is why people are buying into it, but the truth is much closer to saying: "Peoples homes are private but the government can get a warrant to search them. So the government should be able to do the same for private conversations."

What the government is seeking is not access to a physical space but rather retroactive access to private conversations. The government has never had the ability in the past to compel you to divulge what you said to your friend last Tuesday. Especially if such might be incriminating.

By wanting all encryption breakable the government is trying to do an end run around your right to remain silent, or plead the 5th, or what ever the equivalent is in your country.

Cell phones are by definition communication devices, not dwellings, not safes, not a place of business. Cell phones store and transmit conversations, which is speech, which has special safe guards when talking privately with another individual.

Yes there are wiretaps and police can get a warrant to get a wiretap. But wiretaps have never been retroactive. Remember it's "You have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court..."

How safe do you feel knowing that by breaking into your phone and having retroactive access to your speech, "anything you say" now includes much of what you said for the last 2, 3, 5 years. Did you have an indiscretion that they can blackmail you with? Did you joke with a friend about robing a bank? Did you talk with someone about the possibility of fudging your taxes a bit? Did you get really drunk after a break-up and text something that could be considered a threat? And on, and on.

One of the reasons that speech is protected is because it is so easy to twist and use against someone. As the famous quote goes "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

We can not, we must not allow governments and police to have easy unfettered retroactive access to our speech going back years. It removes too many safeguards and tips the balance of power dangerously to the side of the already powerful.

Keep private conversations private. Say No to big brother.