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Update styles; clean up drafts; begin work on TLS pt2.

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Bill Niblock 2015-05-21 16:00:20 -04:00
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Diary of An Assassin
Entry #42
I chose the location of this assignment based on several criteria. First,
the restaurant has outdoor seating, allowing me to have a public hit with ease
of escape. Second, the restaurant itself is located in a tightly-packed part of
the city, meaning I had many options for an escape plan through the many alley
ways. Finally, it has good souffle.
Target was a banker of some sort or another. Stole the wrong person's money.
Nothing new.
I sat at a table just outside where the target had reservations. I ordered a
salad, but requested no tomatoes, and explained it aggrivated my gout. The mint
I had taken moment before masked my breath with a rank smell. I made it
a point to brush my hair, which was cut short and colored brown. I also ordered
a creamy soup, and made it a point to have some in my beard for the waitress to
point out. Beard was full, slightly greying. I had considered feigning a
Brooklyn accent, but decided not to overplay the role. I wore a black
button-down shirt, tucked into a nice pear of jeans, and with a corduoroy
blazer.
After I finished my souffle, the target had just ordered his meal. The hit was
clean and quick, and I made my escape. Jumping the short fence surrounding
the outside eating area, I sprinted down the street, and made a left at the
first alley. I had one man following me, a waiter from the restaurant, and I
fired a warning shot back at him. He desisted. I wound through two more alleys
and finally climbed up a fire escape. I ascended to the fourth floor, and
entered a small, empty apartment. I took the stairs the remaining 6 floors up to
the roof, and jumped a small gap to the adjacent apartment building. I left that
building, and crossed to a hotel.
Back in my room, I cleaned and stored my weapon for disposal. After that, I
removed the clothing and dissolved it in a small bucket of fluid, which I then
diluted with water from the bathtub and flushed down the toilet. In my
maintenance bag I took out dropper 3 (for blue eyes, with a splash of green) and
the Fabio (long and full blonde hair). The drops would go in last, as they
lasted the shortest. I took the Fabio which would take roughly 20 minutes to
accelerate my hair growth. The new hair would be blonde, but I would need to
trim the remaining brown from the ends. As my hair grew, I trimmed my beard into
a short goatee and brushed in a blonde coloring. Finishing up, I put on a lotion
to make my face slightly greasy. My outfit was corduoroy pants, loose, with a
loose-fitting beige long-sleeve shirt; California hippie. I put on my glasses,
and began an AR-scan of the room for DNA. Removing a small crawling bot from my
pouch, it destroyed everything my glasses marked, then did a follow-up scan of
the room as I finished packing. I popped a mint to neutralize the previous one.
Leaving the hotel, I had a backpack with all my belongings, wearing my glasses
and reading my phone. I walked the two blocks on the main street to the
restaurant where police had cordoned off the restaurant, and on-lookers were
gathered. On the way I had smoked a fake clove cigarette for the aroma. I found
the waitress who had served me before and started making small-talk with her. I
verified she did not recognize me, and began to scan the scene for evidence.
Aside from the few hair folicles (loaded with false DNA), and the bullet casings
(linked to a pistol found near the lake), everything looked in order. A quick
tweet-pic of the scene from a temporary account (1 tweet, then deleted),
and I wiped and dropped my burner into a trash can.
Took bus to train station, and left for safe house 12.
Notes
=====
Hit takes place at restaurant with outdoor seating
Target has reservation, just inside where A is sitting
A makes point to emphasize certain features on current appearance:
- Hair cut, color, length
- Beard
- Clothing
- Defining feature: a twitch, or speech pattern
- Order something but request removing an ingredient due to allergy
- Fake an accent
Hit is a public display; A shoots target, runs for it
A takes advantage of set path, already designated due to previous research
- Sticks to alleys
- Eventually climbs escape ladder, enters into apartment building
- Eventually leaps over roof top to second apartment building
- Leaves second apartment building, crosses street into hotel
A changes appearance
- Trims beard
- Changes clothing
- Modifies hair length via specific medicine
- Changes eye color with drops
A returns to the scene, now with a changes appearance, to verify no evidence
- Using special glasses with AR capabilities to scan scene
- Talks to same waitress to get details
Satisifed that the hit was successful, and no evidence remains, A fades away.

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TLS: An examination into the Security of the Internet, Part 1
TLS, more often referred to as SSL, is the means by which a secure connection is
established over a computer network. Most often these connections are
established over the Internet, between a client (ex., web browser) and a server
(ex., a web site). In the specific case of web sites, HTTP is layered on TLS/SSL
to ensure a secure and private connection; HTTPS is not a separate protocol,
rather a combination or protocols. Establishing a secure connection thus
requires a few steps:
Step 1: Establish an TCP connection
TCP is a transport-layer protocol that establishes a connection which is
reliable and fault-tolerant. As opposed to UDP, TCP will seek to verify that
information is transferred successfully and as intended. This is important
for the next step. The connection is established as follows:
1. A client will contact a server and announce it wishes to establish
a connection. (Called a SYN, short for synchronize). This SYN is a
number, stored as part of the TCP header; we'll call it A.
2. The server will respond to the client announcing it has received
the client's wish, and also state that it wishes to establish a
connection. (Called a SYN-ACK, short for synchronize-acknowledge).
Ths SYN-ACK is actually two values: One is the ACK value, A+1. The
second is the server's SYN value, which we'll call B.
3. The client then acknowledged the server's wish, thus establishing a
connection (Called simply an ACK). Because it was expecting an ACK
value in step 2, and expecting that value to be A+1, it can verify
that this connection is the same as the one it started. Additionally
and similarly, the ACK which gets returned to the server as B+1.
4. At this point, the connection is established. Both client and
server have assured themselves of a proper connection thanks to the
three-way handshake described above. From this point forward, the
server has bound a specific port to listen for any further
communications with the client.
Step 2: Establish an SSL/TLS Connection
TLS, Transport Layer Security, is appropriately on the same layer as TCP,
the transport layer. TLS relies on public key authentication to establish a
secure connection between the aforementioned client and server. The
connection is established as follows:
1. A client will announce to the server it wishes to establish a
TLS/SSL connection. It will include information such as it's TLS/SSL
version, the ciphersuites it wishes to use, and which compression
methods it wishes to use.
2. The server then uses the highest possible TLS/SSL version, chooses
one of the ciphersuites available to the client, chooses one of the
compression methods available to the client, and sends it's
certificate. A certificate is basically a container for a server's
public key, but with many additional details, and often signed by a
certificate authority, to further verify the certificate contains the
proper key. More on certificates in part 2.
3. The client then uses the server's public key to encrypt a secret.
This secret is then sent back to the server.
4. The server decrypts the secret with it's private key. This secret
is now shared by only the client and the server, and from this point
on is used for symmetric encryption.
From this point forward, the connection is encrypted and secure from
external threats. Of course, this all depends on a trusted certificate and
proper encryption algorithms.
Step 3: Establish an HTTP connection
HTTP is an application-layer protocol, and is responsible for translating
the information from the transport layer into information used by an
application. Your web browser, for example, will utilize HTTP to translate
a bunch of hexidecimal information into alpha-numeric information, which is
then formatted and presented to you as a web page. Security is previously
established thanks to TLS/SSL, and reliability is previously established
thanks to TCP.
Of course this is an over-simplification of the whole stream. TCP itself is
worthy of many research papers. However, many sources on TCP already do an apt
job of explaining it in understandable ways. I felt that SSL was less-so
explained, so I wanted to dive a bit more into that. In Part 2, I'll dive more
into the TLS handshake, what certificates are and how they play a role, and the
importance of secure ciphersuites for keys.
============================
Sources
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography
[2]
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/6290/how-is-it-possible-that-people-observing-an-https-connection-being-established-w
[3]
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20803/how-does-ssl-tls-work
============================
Notes
Asymmetric Key Authentication:
- Relies on two keys: Public key, Private key
- Both keys are related, but impossible (computationally infeasable) to
identify the private key based on the public key [1][2]
- The public key can be distributed publicly
- Used to encrypt message to the owner of the private paired key
- Used to verify signatures from the private key
- The private key is kept secret
- Used to decrypt message from the public paired key
- Used to as a digital signature
Basics of an Asymmetric Key handshake:
1. Client reaches out to server, requesting a secure connection
2. Server acknowledges request, sends back it's public key
- This is commonly known as a certificate. Often signed by a
third-party to ensure it is what it's supposed to be.
3. Client uses this public key to encrypt a secret, and sends the package
back to the server.
4. The server then uses it's private key to decrypt the public-key
encrypted secret, and uses that secret hence forth to encrypt all traffic.
5. A private connection is now established.
Basics of Certificates
1. A certificate is a vessel for a server to provide authentication
information.
2. Typically a certificate will contain the following information:
- A UUID of the certificate itself
- The subject of the certificate
- The signature, and signature algorithm used
- The issuer of the certificate, as well as dates when it is valid
- The purpose of the key
- The thumbprint, and algorithm, used to hash the key
- The public key itself
3. Certificate Authorities act as a third part to verify the integrity of
public keys.

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---
layout: default
tabtitle: An Examination of TLS, Part 2
title: An Examination of TLS, Part 2
tags: tech
---
<article>
<h1>TLS: An examination into the Security of the Internet, Part 2</h1>
<p>TLS, more often referred to as SSL, is the means by which a secure
connection is established over a computer network. Part 1 examines how to
establish a secure connection using TLS. This article examines further the
techniques and technology that makes TLS secure. Specifically, a brief
examination of certificates, cipher suites, and public-key
authentication.</p>
<h2>Certificates</h2>
<p>A certificate is a vessel for a server to provide authentication
information. </p>
<h2>Cipher Suites</h2>
<p>A cipher is the algorithm used to encrypt the information
to be transmitted.</p>
<h2>Public-Key Authentication</h2>
<p>Big topic, very important!</p>
<h3>Sources</h3>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography">
Wikipedia: Public-key Cryptography</a></li>
<li><a
href="https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/6290/how-is-it-possible-that-people-observing-an-https-connection-being-established-w">Stack
Exchange: How is it possible that people observing an HTTPS
connection being established wouldn't know how to decrypt
it?</a></li>
<li><a
href="https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20803/how-does-ssl-tls-work">
Stack Exchange: How Does SSL/TLS work?</a></li>
</ol>
<br /><h4>[Bill Niblock][2015-05-][Technology]</h4>
</article>
<!-- ================================= -->
<!-- ================================= -->
<!-- Notes (because why remove them?)
Asymmetric Key Authentication:
- Relies on two keys: Public key, Private key
- Both keys are related, but impossible (computationally infeasable) to
identify the private key based on the public key [1][2]
- The public key can be distributed publicly
- Used to encrypt message to the owner of the private paired key
- Used to verify signatures from the private key
- The private key is kept secret
- Used to decrypt message from the public paired key
- Used to as a digital signature
Basics of an Asymmetric Key handshake:
1. Client reaches out to server, requesting a secure connection
2. Server acknowledges request, sends back it's public key
- This is commonly known as a certificate. Often signed by a
third-party to ensure it is what it's supposed to be.
3. Client uses this public key to encrypt a secret, and sends the package
back to the server.
4. The server then uses it's private key to decrypt the public-key
encrypted secret, and uses that secret hence forth to encrypt all traffic.
5. A private connection is now established.
Basics of Certificates
1. A certificate is a vessel for a server to provide authentication
information.
2. Typically a certificate will contain the following information:
- A UUID of the certificate itself
- The subject of the certificate
- The signature, and signature algorithm used
- The issuer of the certificate, as well as dates when it is valid
- The purpose of the key
- The thumbprint, and algorithm, used to hash the key
- The public key itself
3. Certificate Authorities act as a third part to verify the integrity of
public keys.
-->
<!-- ================================= -->
<!-- ================================= -->

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TLS: An examination into the Security of the Internet, Part 2
---
layout: default
tabtitle: An Examination of TLS, Part 2
title: An Examination of TLS, Part 2
tags: tech
---
In Part 1, I went over how a connection is established with TLS. In this part, I
want to examine the more involved details of TLS itself. Namely, I want to
examine certificates, cipher suites, and public key authentication.
<article>
Certificates
<h1>TLS: An examination into the Security of the Internet, Part 2</h1>
<h2>Certificates</h2>
A certificate is a vessel for a server to provide authentication informat
Cipher Suites
<h2>Cipher Suites</h2>
A cipher is the algorithm used to encrypt the information to be transmitted.
Public-Key Authentication
<h2>Public-Key Authentication</h2>
Big topic, very important
</article>
============================
Sources
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography
[2]
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/6290/how-is-it-possible-that-people-observing-an-https-connection-being-established-w
[3]
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/20803/how-does-ssl-tls-work
<!-- ================================= -->
<!-- ================================= -->
============================
Notes
<!-- Notes (because why remove them?)
Asymmetric Key Authentication:
- Relies on two keys: Public key, Private key
- Both keys are related, but impossible (computationally infeasable) to
@ -59,4 +60,8 @@ Basics of Certificates
- The thumbprint, and algorithm, used to hash the key
- The public key itself
3. Certificate Authorities act as a third part to verify the integrity of
public keys.
public keys.
-->
<!-- ================================= -->
<!-- ================================= -->

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"tour" is for; the last few games I want to play on Windows, before I go
Linux only.</p>
<h2>Featuring</h2>
<h3>Featuring</h3>
<p>The list isn't huge, but there are some definite strong players:</p>
<ul>
<li>Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2</li>
@ -58,7 +58,7 @@
run fine on Windows, and they may work in Wine but I don't feel like
either figuring out if they do, or trying to make them play nice.</p>
<h2>Special Guest Appearances By</h2>
<h3>Special Guest Appearances By</h3>
<p>There are a few games that I will fiddle with to get working in Wine
though, and these are games I don't quite want to let go, but still are
Windows only: Skyrim and Guild Wars 2. I love Guild Wars 2, I think it's
@ -69,10 +69,12 @@
want. Regardless, I imagine I'll be playing plenty of each of these while
finishing up the main list.</p>
<h2>Tickets on Sale Now!</h2>
<h3>Tickets on Sale Now!</h3>
<p>Well, not exactly. But this would be a fantastic way to get into
streaming, and maybe I'll transition from Windows to Linux with that as
well. Streaming has always been something I've wanted to do, but never had
the time nor effort to pursue. So, either tradition will hold strong, or a
new challenger will appear. Until then.</p>
<br /><h4>[Bill Niblock][2015-04-28][Gaming]</h4>
</article>

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Stack Exchange: How Does SSL/TLS work?</a></li>
</ol>
<br /><h4>[Bill Niblock][2015-05-06][Technology]</h4>
</article>
<!-- ================================= -->

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text-align: center;
padding: 10px;
border-top: 1px solid darkgrey;
font: 1.0em "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
text-shadow: 2px 2px #DEDEDE; color: darkgrey; letter-spacing: 0.6em;
font: 0.8em "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;
color: darkgrey; letter-spacing: 0.4em;
}
article p {