Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday December 12 2015, @05:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the ooops...we-got-the-wrong-guy dept.

Cornell computer science professor Emin Gün Sirer has posted a blog on MIT Technology Review reacting to the recent news 'outing' the Australian Craig Steven Wright as the person most likely to be 'Satoshi Nakamoto', the creator of Bitcoin. The WIRED story presents evidence both for and against the Wright-as-Satoshi hypothesis; for starters, Wright is supposedly a polymath with two Ph.Ds who has dabbled in finance, has spent considerable time in the cyber-underground, and has a huge stash of coin. Most tellingly, there are a series of blog posts and emails referencing Bitcoin made by Wright in 2008 and 2009, coinciding almost to the day with posts made by Satoshi to the cryptography mailing list. But the WIRED story points out that there is evidence that the blog posts were edited by Wright in 2013 to include the Bitcoin references, raising the possibility of a hoax. And Wright's awesome Linkedin profile seems to have been recently deleted.

More doubts about Wright (warning: possible paywall) here.

Sirer thinks the press, and the Internet, are looking for Satoshi in the wrong place. Rather than look for a polymath and uber geek with an amazingly broad range of knowledge and interests, we should look at the limited community of individuals who have expertise in consensus algorithms and protocols; in other words, a specialist. Furthermore, the person would almost certainly be one who makes mental models and presents arguments in the same manner as Satoshi; Sirer calls this a "mental signature". Sirer says that Wright doesn't satisfy either of these criteria, based on his personal dealings with the man.

But who could be a match? Sirer:

Interestingly, I have come across one person who was a perfect fit. That person had precisely the same intellectual signature as Satoshi, and could have written, word for word, some of Satoshi's forum posts.

Sirer then goes on to say why he won't disclose his suspect - not that he's 100 percent sure he's got the man (or woman).


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @06:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @06:42PM (#275472)

    I restate: ENCRYPT EVERYTHING.

    Your mannerisms, let you not become predictable.

    Your interests, let them shift and range over any subject.

    Click some random advertisements.

    Use your neighbors' phone number instead of your grocery shopper's card -- Indeed foodstuffs have been datamined to try and discover people.

    Hide in the crowd as best you can.

    It is not enough to try and remain anonymous. While doing so you must also encrypt your personality, your typing, your sentence structure and method of indentation. All can reveal a pattern, and have been extensively studied to do just that and thwart your anonymous efforts.

    Your digital DNA is just as strong as your physical DNA when it comes to leaving your fingerprints.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:13PM (#275494)

    I restate: ENCRYPT EVERYTHING.

    38 3f 42 ad 10 0f 1c 2c 56 b0 f3 00 ee 4a cf 79
    a5 38 37 31 d9 3e fa 1f e0 7c 02 d6 3c 3e 59 6f

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:32PM (#275506)

      42

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @08:37PM (#275513)

    It scares me that people will go to such lengths to expose someone and ruin their life, for the sake of additional ad hits.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @10:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @10:15PM (#275578)

    You didn't mention the double thickness tinfoil.

    Encrypt your brain.
    Talk in gibberish to confuse their listening devices.
    Roll your eyes in your head so they don't know where you're looking.
    Go up to random strangers in the street to create false leads.
    Stockpile assault rifles - but you're doing that already, right?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @10:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @10:36PM (#275593)

      You didn't mention the double thickness tinfoil.

      Totally ineffective at this point with the newer technologies being able to penetrate triple thickness already. We've moved on towards Faraday Burkas.

      Encrypt your brain.

      Hah! Already using deniable encryption in my brain. Upon inspection, nobody can prove it holds anything useful.

      Talk in gibberish to confuse their listening devices.

      I'm a programmer and sysadmin. I already confuse every single person I talk to.

      Roll your eyes in your head so they don't know where you're looking.

      I'm a programmer and sysadmin. I already roll my eyes back in my head about 4 dozen times each day. Twice as much if I'm dealing with CSS.

      Go up to random strangers in the street to create false leads.

      Had to stop. I only speak gibberish.

      Stockpile assault rifles - but you're doing that already, right?

      Can't. Too expensive. Faraday Burkas don't grow on trees.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by VanessaE on Saturday December 12 2015, @11:50PM

    by VanessaE (3396) <vanessa.e.dannenberg@gmail.com> on Saturday December 12 2015, @11:50PM (#275613) Journal

    I swear, this site needs a "-1,Excessive Paranoia" mod option.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @12:01AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @12:01AM (#275617)

    Encryption does not mean hidden forever.

    There is one type of encryption if done properly that is unbreakable. Everything else is based upon 'given the computer tech of today you can not break it'. Almost all of the broken ones were state of the art neato 20 years ago. Given computers of that time they were for practical purposes unbreakable.

    3d computing and quantum computing is going to radically change how we make computers. It is also going to radically change what we can do. Right now we pretty much make 2d computers. But it become we make layers that do one thing. That one thing will do it very well. We will then stack them up. Think along the lines of the current circuit count for an intel core cpu. But only made of ALUs or branch predictors or cache or memory or so on. The capabilities are going to skyrocket. With quantum communications you can basically do a '4d' sort of computer which minimizes some of the nastier bits of Amdahl's law. It really kicks into gear what moores law was all about. Make the installing of modules cheaper of which currently power and data lines are making it difficult.