Matt Blaze

Scientist, safecracker, etc. McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown. Formerly UPenn, Bell Labs. So-called expert on election security and stuff. https://twitter.com/mattblaze on the Twitter. Slow photographer. Radio nerd. Blogs occasionally at https://www.mattblaze.org/blog . I probably won't see your DM; use something else. He/Him. Uses this wrong.

Public Key

npub1d7ggne0xsy8e2999q8cyh9zxda688axm07cwncufjeku0nahvfgsyz6qzr

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxlyyfuhngzru4zjjsruztj3rx7arn7ndhlv8fuwyevmw8e7mky5gpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgqgkwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46qc8gn5a

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relay.nostr.band

relay.primal.net

Author Public Key

npub1d7ggne0xsy8e2999q8cyh9zxda688axm07cwncufjeku0nahvfgsyz6qzr

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Last Notes

2024-09-19 23:00:10

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@npub1q2u…tv7q “We can’t stop them, but we can make them work for it” is a useful model.

2024-09-19 22:29:24

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@npub1q2u…tv7q the (successful) people I know who work against sophisticated national adversaries (in various capacities) are all - universally - remarkably humble about their own limitations.

2024-09-19 21:57:15

God, the number of techbros here who are confident in their ability to resist targeted attacks from sophisticated national intelligence agencies is terrifying, but also explains a lot about why Silicon Valley is the way it is.

2024-09-19 21:54:07

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@npub1vex…5npz I admire your confidence.

2024-09-19 21:38:46

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@npub1jup…nmx2 the “special militia discount” should have been a red flag.

2024-09-19 21:12:09

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@npub1f87…qdlz the pagers were custom manufactured.

2024-09-19 20:51:23

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@npub1gg4…0da2 Yeah, I saw a couple of those reports, but they didn't seem well sourced or particularly corroborated. Seems possible, but not confirmed, I think.

2024-09-19 20:17:19

I have a burner phone that's been off for a week, which I just turned on for something. It has a PA area code (a swing state). Apparently the previous user signed up with both the RNC and DNC, and right now the inter-arrival time for SMS fundraising solicitations is shorter than the time required to turn off SMS notifications.
Never, ever, give them your mobile number.

2024-09-19 20:01:31

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@npub142z…uqgq Everything I know about international law and the law of armed conflict suggests that it's extremely complicated and subjective.

2024-09-19 19:51:40

Coincidentally, I just got a replacement battery pack for a two-way radio, which I am EXTREMELY HOPEFUL will not explode.

2024-09-19 19:24:17

My monster thread of (evolving) news and analysis about the exploding pagers and radios in Lebanon. https://federate.social/@mattblaze/113155549356329510

2024-09-19 19:14:12

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And we know almost NOTHING about how the radios were compromised, not even insider speculation. We don't even know that it was a supply chain attack in the sense that the pagers were.
My guess, with no inside information, is that the radios may have compromised with the help of a recruited agent working for Hezbollah and still inside Lebanon. That's obviously not something you'd want to draw attention to if you're Israel.

2024-09-19 18:58:23

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@npub14ad…r96n Oof. Sorry.

2024-09-19 18:42:59

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@npub1vex…5npz Yes, you can defend yourself against THIS EXACT THING, which they almost certainly will never do again. What you can't defend yourself is an attacker who has this level of capability.

2024-09-19 18:32:39

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Captured with a small full-frame camera and 21mm lens. A three second exposure smoothed waves and surf.
This was an exercise in tone, perspective, and convergence. The four major boundaries of the scene converge (approximately) near the center of the frame, forming a flattened X.
I moved around and composed this both with and without the driftwood in foreground, which interrupts the composition but, I decided, is helpful to anchor the frame.

2024-09-19 18:31:57

Pescadero, CA, 2014.
Grains of sand converted into pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/14832380095/
#photography
https://cdn.masto.host/federatesocial/media_attachments/files/113/165/643/198/599/651/original/1dacc8b82fe39a2b.jpg

2024-09-19 16:17:53

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Lebanese military now doing controlled demolitions of suspect pagers and walkie-talkies, implying that at least some of the sabotaged devices failed to detonate. I would strongly suspect that they aren’t blowing up all of them, but saving a few for (presumably extremely careful) reverse engineering and forensic analysis.

2024-09-19 03:09:29

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But again, none of this was necessarily how the exploding walkie-talkies were delivered. We don't know much of anything about that yet.

2024-09-19 02:45:08

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... So we know a lot more about the pagers at this point than the exploding walkie-talkies, which appear to have made their way into Hezbollah's hands through a different channel than the pagers. Unclear whether the radios even involved a supply chain compromise, as opposed to, e.g, an insider mole swapping out radios and/or batteries.

2024-09-18 23:52:23

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Important caveats on all this: there’s a lot we don’t know, and much of what we assume we know may be mistakenly or deliberately misleading. In particular, as far as I know, no one has yet reverse engineered or forensically examined (or publicly reported the result of any such investigation) any surviving pagers or radios, which would be very helpful in confirming a lot of these assumptions.