onsdag 20 oktober 2010

An absurdly geeky alternative Dynamic DNS scheme

Here's a scheme that could work great for Dynamic DNS and that do not need any central servers:


Version one, for individuals and small groups where everybody has administrative permissions:

You pick a secure password. This is the only thing you need to remember, but as you both connect to the server and administrate everything with it you need to keep it secret. This password is used to create an asymmetric cryptographic key pair. This must always be the same every time (no random elements), so the password also must be VERY secure!

The server has both the keys in the pair.
We use a peer to peer network (p2p, like bittorrent). The peers are random, so you connect to lots of strangers, since it's an open network.
The server does not need to be connected to the peer network 24/7, but it uploads the latest IP data there every few days (to prevent expiration) or when it changes.
The critical part: The IP adress of the computers you want to connect to are stored using DHT in the peer network, and it's signed with the private key and encrypted with the public key. You find it by searching in the DHT for a string that's unique to your key pair, probably the fingerprint of the public key. The current IP data is tagged with this string in the DHT.
The current data is always uploaded by the server every time it changes, and every time that the time stamp on the current IP data in the DHT gets too old.

To connect to one of your computers, you enter your password in a program. It computes the key pair, it computes the unique string, it searches in the DHT for the IP data, checkts the timestamp on it (important!) and it decrypts it and verifies the signature.
Then you connect to the IP (there could be a list, from which you pick an IP address).


Version two, for giving public access to the computers:

Changes:
Only the admin(s) has the password (as before), and the general public use the public key's fingerprint to connect instead of the password.
The public key is also uploaded into the DHT, and it is tagged with it's fingerprint. This fingerprint should be a SHA512 hash or comparable.
Both the public key and IP data is fetched from the DHT at the same time.
The IP data in the DHT is not encrypted, just signed with the private key.


Multiple IP's can be stored in the DHT, each IP can be tagged with a name. IPs can also be grouped. This allows you to easily give the public access to several different services and servers with one fingerprint, as well as letting admins managing servers with only one password to connect to them all.

I would recommend using this in combination with TCPCrypt for additional security to prevent MitM attacks once you've got the correct IP. The server's public key (that the user already have) is used to authenticate the connection. This means that the user only has to know one thing (the fingerprint) to establish a secure connection. Either computer could switch IP at any time, move whenever it's he owner feels like it or the computers could even be replaced - but as long as the server admin keeps the pass secret and the user has the right fingerprint, they are both safe and can connect securely in seconds, anytime.


I think this can be very secure. I also think that the fingerprints has to be "visualized" someway when used to let the general public connect to your server. The client program should always compute a visualization that's unique for each string, but without randomization so that each fingerprint always has the same one. This makes it very easy for the user to be assured that he's entered the right fingerprint.
It should be a little "identicon like" (search for "Identicons" and you'll know what I mean), but probably more detailed and stylish. Those randomart images that SSH use comes to mind, but they are not random enough. The process to generate them should make it hard to generate multiple keys with images similiar enough to be mixed up by a user.


What do you think? I want comments.

Posted via email from Nat's blog

tisdag 19 oktober 2010

Gadget: Sunnan, solar charged IKEA lamp

Let's begin with the specs:
The Sunnan lamp has a solar cell, 16 LEDs, 3 x rechargable 1200 mAh AA NiMH batteries (1.2V as usual), the solar cell and batteries is in/on a removable "box", it has a flexible "arm", ~4 hours of light, and for every lamp sold, a kid in areas in Africa without electricity gets one (it's so dark near the equator already at around 6 to 7 pm that you can't see more then a few meters far or read, so it's awesome for school kids).
Here in Sweden it costs 150 SEK.

Like somebody else said in a comment (that I don't remember where I read it), it would almost be a shame to not buy one.

I'm thinking of getting a second one for experimenting with the LEDs.

Posted via email from Nat's blog

onsdag 13 oktober 2010

Free software tag on donation apps in app stores?

See this: https://twitter.com/#!/Natanael_L/status/27249509668

FLOSS app developers could put #rewardfreedom in their donation app descriptions, making it easier for people to find and thus also directly fund free software development.
Just an idea, that I think should be tried out.

Posted via email from Nat's blog

söndag 10 oktober 2010

Read about OAM and radio yet?

"Orbital Angular Momentum".

Those three words should make you very exited. And why is that? Simple - massive radio bandwidth boosts!

Orbital Angular Momentum is a property of electromagnetical fields (photons, including radio AND light) that was discovered "recently" and that haven't really been used much yet. What makes it useful is that you can send MULTIPLE SIGNALS ON ONE FREQUENCY at FULL maximal bandwidth for the frequency on EACH signal!
It's because the signals can have different "OAM values" and be seperated from each other based on it!

One of the researchers think that 100 OAM different values could be used at once, meaning 100 channels on one frequency - bumping up 300 Mbps WLANs to 30 Gbps, with no other changes!

Oh, and that applies to fiber optics too, meaning 100x faster normal internet connections as well!

Search for "Orbital Angular Momentum radio" on your favorite search engine NOW!

(Some of the research is done by LOIS, a part of LOFAR, iirc, that study space with it.)

Posted via email from Nat's blog

tisdag 5 oktober 2010

Moving to Posterous

At the same time as my page at YIID broke I've decided to move my blog to Posterous completely.
http://natanael.posterous.com Edit: And now they're shutting down... My current blog: http://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/

Gonna use posterous a little more now

My subdomain at YIID have stopped working. Well, YIID closed them all. Meh^10000!!!

I'm going to use this site as my "home page" for things. Whenever I comment on news or blogs, etc, I'm going to use this. I used to use YIID for that, but as I said it's not working anymore. :/

In the middle of this, I also decided to merge my blogspot blog with this one. It might look a little weird with posts mixed up a little, but I can live with that.

And in combination with recently installing Sendy on my phone, you might also see more actual updates here. I guess it will be mostly pictures taken with my phone.

Posted via email from Natanael L's posterous page

söndag 3 oktober 2010

Testing Sendy on Android

Let's see how well it works...
via sendy

Posted via email from Natanael L's posterous page