Generational Dynamics World View News

[zzazz]

The other thing is that few people understand the security
issues with Huawei's chips. The Chinese simply say, "Provide
the evidence." But as I've shown, a person with my skills could
easily implement a "backdoor" that uses encryption techniques
that are impossible to detect.

I completely missed where you showed that, and am infinitely skeptical. Please show it again. Be sure to pay particular attention to the part where you show that the silicon footprint of the back door is invisible to reverse engineers looking at the silicon through a microscope.

[josa0512]

** 04-Apr-2019 Breaking news on China-Japan Book

I now have 2-3 weeks of work to do to resolve some formatting issues,
do a complete edit, and then get the book into Amazon. The changes
will be reflected online as I make them. There are about 103,000
words, and in printed form it will be 300+ pages.

If there's anyone willing to take a few hours and review the entire
book errors and typos, that would be greatly appreciated. If that's
too much, then just review one part of the book that interests you.

Thanks.

John

What's the best way for us to send our grammar suggestions to you?

I read your introductory paragraph Chapter 1 and I have two suggestions for you.

Chapter 1:

3rd paragraph, line 2: - Remove the comma between the words "paranoid" and "schizophrenic".

3rd paragraph, last word of line 3: Add the ending "ly" to "repeated" so the sentence reads "being repeatedly beaten economically".

[FishbellykanakaDude]

Skimmed.
Only quibble I see so far is the title of 5.1:
5.1. China's biggest resource: billions of expendable people
"billions" implies plural billion, ie 2 billion. Maybe change it to "A billion expendable people", since I doubt even China would want to lose more than that?
-Your friendly grammar nazi

5.1. China's biggest resource: fistfuls of scores of tens of thousands of thousands of expendable people

..better?

[John]

** 05-Apr-2019 Huawei backdoor, typos, copyright

> The other thing is that few people understand the security issues
> with Huawei's chips. The Chinese simply say, "Provide the
> evidence." But as I've shown, a person with my skills could easily
> implement a "backdoor" that uses encryption techniques that are
> impossible to detect.

> I completely missed where you showed that, and am infinitely
> skeptical. Please show it again. Be sure to pay particular
> attention to the part where you show that the silicon footprint of
> the back door is invisible to reverse engineers looking at the
> silicon through a microscope.

The "backdoor" isn't a physical door with a tiny little doorknob.
The chip hardware is not modified. The backdoor is all software.

I don't know why you're skeptical. It's been widely publicized
that the Feds can't crack an iPhone password. Obviously Huawei
can do the same with its 5G routers.

The following is what I wrote to you the last time you
asked the same question:

First, you obviously don't know the simplest thing about cryptography.
I could easily write C++ code that would react to a secret 1024 bit
key, and even if you had the commented source code in front of you,
you wouldn't be able to derive the secret key.

One obvious, simple implementation would be to use public/private key
encryption. The public key could be embedded in the code, and even
someone in possession of the source code could not derive the private
key, which would be the secret key in this case. That's just one way
of doing it. There are many others.

Second, I could write C++ code that would baffle the experts. Someone
might be able to reverse engineer the code, and might even be
suspicious that there's a hidden algorithm in there, but it would
never be more than a suspicion and they'd never be able to prove it.

This is all software, with no hardware changes

-----------------------------

> John What's the best way for us to send our grammar suggestions to
> you?

> I read your introductory paragraph Chapter 1 and I have two
> suggestions for you.

> Chapter 1:

> 3rd paragraph, line 2: - Remove the comma between the words
> "paranoid" and "schizophrenic".

> 3rd paragraph, last word of line 3: Add the ending "ly" to
> "repeated" so the sentence reads "being repeatedly beaten
> economically".

Thanks for the correction.

-----------------------------

> Skimmed. Only quibble I see so far is the title of 5.1:
> 5.1. China's biggest resource: billions of expendable people
> "billions" implies plural billion, ie 2 billion. Maybe change it
> to "A billion expendable people", since I doubt even China would
> want to lose more than that? -Your friendly grammar nazi

Any number greater than one permits a plural noun, as in
"one and one-half slices of bread."

-----------------------------

> Yes, I self-published the Iran book using Amazon's KDP service.
> The way it works is that I submit a DOC file for the book, supply
> an ISBN number, and fill out all the forms. Then when somebody
> wants to buy the book, Amazon simply prints one out and sends
> it.

> Do you keep the copyright? How much does Amazon charge?

Yes, you keep the copyright. But if you want full publishing
rights, then you have to buy your own ISBN from Bowker.

There's no charge to submit a book to Amazon. They take a cut
of each sale.

[Guest]

Yes, you keep the copyright. But if you want full publishing
rights, then you have to buy your own ISBN from Bowker.

There's no charge to submit a book to Amazon. They take a cut
of each sale.

What does that mean? Does Amazon control future publishing rights if you don't buy your own ISBN? How much does it cost?

How much of a cut does Amazon take?

Also, what about cover art? Do you control that?

Thank you for the information.

I bought your Iran book, and I'm going to buy the China book, too.

[John]

** 05-Apr-2019 Book publication

> Yes, you keep the copyright. But if you want full publishing
> rights, then you have to buy your own ISBN from Bowker.
> There's no charge to submit a book to Amazon. They take a cut of
> each sale.

> What does that mean? Does Amazon control future publishing rights
> if you don't buy your own ISBN? How much does it cost? How much
> of a cut does Amazon take? Also, what about cover art? Do you
> control that?

> Thank you for the information. I bought your Iran book, and I'm
> going to buy the China book, too.

Bowker has something of a scam. All it does is issue numbers, and
charges quite a bit for each one. They give quantity discounts, so I
bought ten of them for $300 last year. Go to bowker.com for details.

Amazon will supply an ISBN if you don't provide one, but then if you
want to publish the book with another publisher, you still have to get
your own ISBN, and there may be some rules requiring you to make
changes to the book enough so that you aren't publishing the same book
with two ISBNs.

Royalty formula:

Royalty = 60%*ListPrice-PrintingCost

For Iran book:
List price = $7.00
Printing cost = $2.72 (Depends on # pages)

Royalty = 60%*ListPrice-PrintingCost = 60%*7.00-2.72 = $1.48

You provide all graphics, including cover art.

[zzazz]

> The other thing is that few people understand the security issues
> with Huawei's chips. The Chinese simply say, "Provide the
> evidence." But as I've shown, a person with my skills could easily
> implement a "backdoor" that uses encryption techniques that are
> impossible to detect.


zzazz wrote:
> I completely missed where you showed that, and am infinitely
> skeptical. Please show it again. Be sure to pay particular
> attention to the part where you show that the silicon footprint of
> the back door is invisible to reverse engineers looking at the
> silicon through a microscope.


The "backdoor" isn't a physical door with a tiny little doorknob.
The chip hardware is not modified. The backdoor is all software.

I don't know why you're skeptical. It's been widely publicized
that the Feds can't crack an iPhone password. Obviously Huawei
can do the same with its 5G routers.

The following is what I wrote to you the last time you
asked the same question:

First, you obviously don't know the simplest thing about cryptography.
I could easily write C++ code that would react to a secret 1024 bit
key, and even if you had the commented source code in front of you,
you wouldn't be able to derive the secret key.

One obvious, simple implementation would be to use public/private key
encryption. The public key could be embedded in the code, and even
someone in possession of the source code could not derive the private
key, which would be the secret key in this case. That's just one way
of doing it. There are many others.

Second, I could write C++ code that would baffle the experts. Someone
might be able to reverse engineer the code, and might even be
suspicious that there's a hidden algorithm in there, but it would
never be more than a suspicion and they'd never be able to prove it.

This is all software, with no hardware changes

This answer is complete BS. you obviously don't understand the most elementary concepts of chip design and which parts of a computation run in the chip and which parts of a computation run on the chip. Most telling is the "with no hardware changes" which while not quite a complete fantasy would still be a neat trick. If you really could do that, it would imply some really deep understanding of the detailed innards of one of these chips (to get C++ to somehow run inside the chip), and you wouldn't have any trouble at all pulling down a $250,000 a year job at Intel or any of a dozen other different outfits. Or you could start your own company and be a millionaire within weeks.

[John]

** 05-Apr-2019 Huawei backdoor

> This answer is complete BS. you obviously don't understand the
> most elementary concepts of chip design and which parts of a
> computation run in the chip and which parts of a computation run
> on the chip. Most telling is the "with no hardware changes" which
> while not quite a complete fantasy would still be a neat trick.
> If you really could do that, it would imply some really deep
> understanding of the detailed innards of one of these chips (to
> get C++ to somehow run inside the chip), and you wouldn't have any
> trouble at all pulling down a $250,000 a year job at Intel or any
> of a dozen other different outfits. Or you could start your own
> company and be a millionaire within weeks.

Lol! I guess the five years that I spent implementing board-level
software for embedded systems were all a hallucination.

You talked about using a microscope to detect whether a chip contains
a backdoor. My point with "no hardware changes" is that the chip
looks exactly the same with or without the backdoor. There is no tiny
little door with an even tinier little doorknob in the chip that you
could find with microscope.

The backdoor is entirely in the software. Some of the software is
burned into the chip, some of it runs outside the chip. What I
described is how a backdoor could be implemented in software (with no
hardware changes) in such a way that it was completely undetectable,
even by reverse engineering the software. The backdoor would be
undetectable until the Chinese military activated it, and shut down
networks around the world.

[FishbellykanakaDude]

** 05-Apr-2019 Huawei backdoor

> This answer is complete BS. you obviously don't understand the
> most elementary concepts of chip design and ...

Lol! I guess the five years that I spent implementing board-level
software for embedded systems were all a hallucination.

.... There is no tiny
little door with an even tinier little doorknob in the chip that you
could find with microscope.

.... The backdoor would be
undetectable until the Chinese military activated it, and shut down
networks around the world.

------ Backdoor Bandits! ------

[FishbellykanakaDude]

Interesting paper:

Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans: Extended Version