fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
AZTEC vs PGC or the quest for confidential transactions
By: Seres István András
Tags: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, Cryptography, Privacy, Blockchain

Confidential transactions are transactions where the transferred amounts are “hidden”, however the validity of the transaction still remains publicly verifiable (i.e. no money is created out of thin air). Although they do not provide anonymity per se, unlike Monero and ZCash, that provides confidentiality AND anonymity, confidential transactions are an important first step in the right direction and in some use cases it is not even desired to hide the identity of the parties, rather just transacted amounts to retain them as business secrets.

Without doubt, the flagship of these proposals is the AZTEC protocol (Anonymous Zero-Knowledge Transactions with Efficient Communication), created and invented by Zachary Williamson. First, Zac proposes a novel perfectly hiding and computationally binding commitment scheme, which is tailored to admit efficient range proofs. Afterwards he defines the Joinsplit protocol and a NIZK (non-interactive zero-knowledge) proof system to prove the correctness of Joinsplit transactions.

What are Joinsplit transactions? AZTEC represents money as notes, one might think of them as UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs). In a Joinsplit transaction input notes are destroyed and output notes are created in equal amount, in a way that the values of these notes remain encrypted. More precisely, both input and output notes are commitments to the value these notes represent. A novel NIZK proof system is introduced in AZTEC to prove that the commitments in a Joinsplit transaction are well formed (the transaction originator can open the commitments) and the sum of input notes equal to the sum of output notes. Zac shows in the AZTEC paper that the proposed proof system achieves perfect completeness, special soundness and special honest verifier zero-knowledge in the random oracle model under the q-Strong Diffie-Hellman (SDH) assumption.

AZTEC’s efficiency comes at a price. It relies on a trusted setup, whose protocol details are not public yet, although I encourage anyone to participate in the trusted setup once the trusted setup MPC date and protocol details are known. Basically in the trusted setup, participants need to create Boneh-Boyen signatures on all the numbers in the interval [0..2³²-1] in a way, that the secret signing key is additively shared among participants and no participant knows the secret key in its entirety. The number 2³²-1 is defined in the protocol as the highest representable AZTEC note denomination.
Digitally Signing Objects with CryptoJS
By: Ole Ersoy
Tags: Typescript, Cryptography, Digital Signatures, JavaScript, Programming

Photo by Tanguy Sauvin on Unsplash

Scenario

We have an object:

const book = {

title: 'All dogs go to heaven',

publishDate: new Date()

}

We want to digitally sign it so that we can compare this object to any object we may encounter in the future in order to find out if they are the same. The digital signature is the finger print of the object.

Approach

I think this is how it should be done. Please leave comments if you have suggestions or feedback.

Here’s a stackblitz. Click on dependencies to see what packages are used.

Stringify the book using a canonical stringify function

const s = stringify(book); //canonical json implementation of stringify

We need stringify to be a canonical implementation that guarantees that the order / structure of the objects properties remains the same on each stringify invocation, and the built in Javascript implementation does not guarantee it so we used:

2. Base sign and 64 encode the stringify result.

console.log(enc.Base64.stringify(HmacSHA256(s, 'secret')));

And that’s it. Look at the stackblitz for all the implementation details.
Ethical Hacking Training in Kolkata — ICSS
Tags: Cyber Security, Cryptography, Ethical Hacking, Web Application Security, Penetration Testing

What is Ethical Hacking?

The Certified Ethical Hacker (C|EH) credentialing and provided by EC-Council is a respected and trusted Ethical hacking program in the industry. Since the inception of Certified Ethical Hacker in 2003, the credential has become one of the best options for industries and companies across the world. The C|EH exam is ANSI 17024 compliant, adding value and credibility to credential members. It is also listed as a baseline certification in the US Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 8570 and is a NSCS Certified Training.

Today, you can find Certified Ethical Hackers working with some of the finest and largest companies across industries like healthcare, financial, government, energy and much more!

Types of Hackers

Hackers are of different types and are named based on their intent of the hacking system. Broadly, there are two main hackers — White-Hat hacker and Black-Hat hacker. The names are derived from old Spaghetti Westerns, where the good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy wears a black hat.

1 White Hat Hacker

2 Black Hat Hacker

3 Grey Hat Hacker

Ethical Hacking Training in Kolkata from Indian Cyber Security Solutions is the most demanded training in India as well as across the globe. Certified Ethical Hacking Professional (C|EHP) The ethical hacking course goes in-depth into the techniques used by Black Hat hackers and demonstrates it live in a lab-based 100% practically oriented class.

Ethical hacking training in Bangalore is practical course modules from Indian Cyber Security Solutions. Ethical hacking Learning course in bangalore designed for beginners. ICSS rated among the Best Certified Ethical hacking Institute in banglore.

for more details please visit:https://indiancybersecuritysolutions.com/
Utreexo demo release 0.2
By: Tadge Dryja
Tags: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Cryptography, pre-compiled binaries, Accumulator

At the MIT DCI, we have several computers plugged in to the wall of our currently unpopulated office. One of them runs a bitcoin core node, and serves the blockchain to other newly arriving bitcoin nodes. This machine typically uploads about 1 TB of data a month.

In January, however, vnstat shows a total monthly upload of 5.73 TiB, several times the average for the last year. I like to think of this machine as welcoming new participants to the network, many of whom are likely arriving due to some other bitcoin-related number increasing several-fold in recent weeks.

But I also know that for new users of Bitcoin, despite the terabytes of welcome streaming from this machine’s RTL8111 chip to the far reaches of the globe, it’s not a great on-boarding experience. Laptop computers can take days to sync up with the Bitcoin network, even with fast internet connections. Once they’re done, even with pruning enabled, staying on the network takes several gigabytes of storage. It’s no wonder that many who try to run a Bitcoin node give up, and instead use SPV wallets with weaker security and privacy, or worse, give up on owning UTXOs entirely, and leave their coins on an exchange.

The goal of Utreexo is to make running a full node easier, faster, and smaller, and while that’s more of an asymptote than a point on any curve, we’re getting there. Today we’ve released Utreexo demonstration 0.2, which pairs the Utreexo accumulator with a modified version of btcd (temporarily called utcd). Most of the utcd work was done by Calvin Kim, as Niklas Gögge and myself have been working on improving the accumulator and how it interacts with the bitcoin data structures. Calvin has written a post about the work as well.

This new release works more like a normal bitcoin node: it starts up, finds peers, and verifies the blockchain. There are still things it doesn’t have, like a mempool, or a way to deal with reorgs. (It currently deals with reorgs by crashing.)

It’s also not as fast as it could be, and not as small as the Utreexo design allows for, but that’s exciting: it runs at an OK speed now, and there are still many avenues for performance improvements that we’ve identified. We’re working on improving the speed of the software, and benchmarking it on different hardware, and hope to have a post about that soon.

Several MIT undergraduate researchers are joining this semester, and as the project expands, there are lots of interesting avenues for improving performance and reliability. We’d love to help more people learn about this system and try to make Bitcoin stronger while working on some interesting problems. If you’re interested, there are pre-compiled binaries to try out, the code is all open source, and we have discussions on freenode IRC, channel #utreexo. We try to be as welcoming as the server in the office, though we’re not at the terabytes per month level yet :)
An Interesting Account Takeover!!
By: Mayank Pandey
Tags: Web Penetration Testing, Cybersecurity, Hacking, Cryptography, Bug Bounty

The original token and the forged token had a difference of 32 characters. This was a huge problem as the server was not accepting any junk value in place of that 32 characters. Both the tokens were being decrypted to the same value i.e

“a:2:{s:9:”timestamp”;i:1614104013;s:10:”profile_id”;s:8:”40884692";}”.

This left me totally frustrated 😫 😫. I started searching more about Zlib Compression. I went to Reddit and posted my query and surprisingly my Inbox was flooded with numerous amazing blog posts and ideas on how to deal with the Zlib.

And after 2 hours of reading on the internet, I found out that Zlib includes an ADLER32 checksum if you use the Adler-32_Checksum() function after inflating you get BC89137A, notice that this checksum is present in the original token. In Zlib, everything after this checksum is not part of the compression stream and will therefore be ignored, this was the reason why both tokens give the same result even after a difference in length.

So now the challenge was to find the 32-bit string. As all the token-related work was happening on the client side I was pretty sure to find something in the JS files.

After few hours of looking in the JS file, I Found an endpoint “ /php / user ”. I decided to brute force the directory and finally found the endpoint “https://example.com/php/user/example/”, this endpoint had a string named “Transction_Token”, and indeed this was the last piece I was looking for.

Putting the pieces Together

Now it was time for putting everything together and exploiting it.

This attack needed to be precise as every time the page is refreshed the “Transaction _Token” changes. So I made a python script to automate the whole thing.

I generated the token for my second account and used it to change the password and IT WORKED!!!!

Important Takeaways

If there is a token then there is a chance that it can be cracked.

Manually read the JS file once as these contain very important information on working of the Web App

Try asking on Reddit for technical details, it will surely surprise you, Also there people don't see your follower count before replying to you 😅 😉.

Trust your Gut Feeling And Always Go the Extra Mile 😇

Thanks a lot for reading. Share if you like it

You can find me on Twitter: mayank_pandey01
Balancing Privacy and Accountability in Blockchain Identity Management
Tags: Science, Cryptography, Concordium, Blockchain Research, Blockchain

Balancing Privacy and Accountability in Blockchain Identity Management Concordium Follow Mar 18 · 2 min read

Ivan Damgård¹, Chaya Ganesh², Hamidreza Khoshakhlagh¹, Claudio Orlandi¹, and Luisa Siniscalchi¹.

The lack of privacy in the first generation of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. is a well known problem in cryptocurrency research. To overcome this problem, several new cryptocurrencies were designed to guarantee transaction privacy and anonymity for their users (examples include ZCash, Monero, etc.).

However, the anonymity provided by such systems appears to be fundamentally problematic in current business and legislation settings: banks and other financial institutions must follow rules such as “Know Your Customer” (KYC), “Anti Money Laundering” (AML), etc. It is also well known that the (alleged or real) anonymity guarantees provided by cryptocurrencies have attracted ill-intentioned individuals to this space, who look at cryptocurrencies as a way of facilitating illegal activities (tax-evasion, ransom-ware, trading of illegal substances, etc.).

The fact that current cryptocurrencies do not comply with such regulations can in part explain why traditional financial institutions have so far been very sceptical of the ongoing cryptocurrency and Blockchain revolution.

In this paper, the authors propose a novel design principle for identity management in Blockchains. The goal of our design is to maintain privacy, while still allowing compliance with current regulations and preventing exploitations of Blockchain technology for purposes which are incompatible with the social good.

You can read the complete paper at https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1511.pdf

You can find all Concordium’s science papers at: https://concordium.com/science/science-papers/
Book Of Secrets
By: Ofer Shmueli
Tags: Life Hacking, Cryptography, Passwords, Crypto

Cryptography Handbook For Beginners

Let’s start with a question

You Enter your office and you need to enter a 4-character password

The keypad has 10 digits

“How many password possibilities are there? “

Using basic math, The answer is 10 to the power of 4 ( you multiply 10 by itself 4 times )

This question actually leads to some basic crypto terminology

The secret key complexity is 10 digits from 0–9

complexity is digits from The key length is 4 characters

is characters The keyspace, the number of possibilities is 10,000 combinations

When we deal with cryptography, the art of hiding things, anyone knows what is the cipher algorithm that generated the cipher message. But the attacker/hacker tries to find out what is the secret key

https://www.amazon.com/Book-Secrets-Cryptography-Handbook-Beginners/dp/B08YCXPHGZ/ref=pd_ybh_a_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=PGTXBGPAZ506S4VY6Y4A

“Book Of Secrets”, will walk you through the most important cryptographic concepts from the classic era up until now. we will look at different use cases and learn how encryption and cryptanalysis work.

This book is a fascinating journey to one of the most secret and unknown skill

Every chapter includes hands-on practices

It is written for beginners and intermediate users
Privacy Protection in the time of COVID
Tags: Cryptography, Covid-19, Contact Tracing, Privacy, Blockchain

Privacy Protection in the time of COVID

We are all in this together… at least that’s what we are being told. The “Stay Home, Save Lives” yard signs are all over town. There is a sense of connectedness in what we are all missing and what we are all willing to sacrifice in this public health experiment. One of the familiar new terms in our COVID lexicon is ‘Contact Tracing.’

This is precisely how South Korea was able to create fantastic curve flattening results. Positive cases were interviewed and tracked using mobile GPS, credit card receipts, and even surveillance cameras. Given this success, it is not surprising that a report by Blockchain Research Institute cites data as the most powerful tool in the fight against pandemics. More specifically, we need to know the what, who, where, when, and how of the virus. This information can then be used to ‘flatten the curve’, ‘slow the spread’, or whatever the term of the week. That sounds fantastic until you realize that the Data is you. To combat this virus, we need to know all about you. Where have you been, who are your friends, where did you shop?

The dark side of contact tracing became apparent this week when an employee at a New Zealand Subway restaurant was fired for stalking a woman based on her contract tracing information. Even more scary was the response, “All Subway franchisees have received refresher training about their responsibility for management of personal information.” (article link) Quite frankly, I never want my personal information to be paramount to the manager at Subway (and likely neither do they).

It is time for zero-knowledge proof contract tracing. In this scenario, contract tracing can be anonymous, yet verifiable. This type of tracing takes out much of the privacy-compromising human intervention. It also eliminates the need to remember every person that has been in your proximity in the last two weeks. It leverages smartphone technology with advances in cryptography and, in some solutions, distributed ledger.

The race is on for privacy, interoperability, and user adoption. There is even a contract tracing bill of rights or Individual Data Rights For Exposure Notification. This calls for best practices in data collection, protection, and ownership. By using Bluetooth Low Energy proximity sensors and cryptographic keys, developers are able to create continuous, location agnostic, anonymous, private data monitoring.

The cartoon below illustrates how the DP-3T Digital Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing works. This open source protocol has inspired the Google/Apple Contract Tracing Collaboration.
PlatON Bi-Weekly Report, 5.1–15, 2020
By: Platon Network
Tags: Bi Weekly Update, Platon Network, Cryptography, Data Privacy, Blockchain

News:

1. PlatON Upgrade its New Baleyworld Test Net to Reset the Whole PlatON Underlying Chain for a More Stable and High-performing Infrastructure

On May 8th, 2020, PlatON 0.12.0 upgrade started to reset the whole PlatON underlying chain for a more stable and high-performing network and infrastructure. Meanwhile, the supporting tools including ATON, PlatScan, etc, have been greatly optimized to the latest v.0.12.0 for more smooth user experience.

2. PlatON Founder and CEO Lilin Sun Unpacked the Role of Privacy-Preserving Computation in COVID-19 Outbreak in His Byline on Sixth Tone

On May 13th, 2020, PlatON Founder and CEO Lilin Sun spoke to Sixth Tone to analyze today’s data collection & disclosure, and the role of privacy-preserving computation in epidemic response and control in China and around the world.

http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005634?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0

3. Eurocrypt 2020, the 39th Annual International Conference on Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Technologies Sponsored by PlatON Started

On May 11st, 2020, Eurocrypt 2020, the 39th annual international conference on theory and applications of crypotographic techniques started. This is the 2nd consecutive year that PlatON sponsors this flagship conference of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). And the Eurocrypt 2020 is the first Eurocrypt to be run as a virtual conference.

https://www.iacr.org/meetings/eurocrypt/

4. PlatON Chief Architect Shenglin Li Shared the Mutual Empowerment of PlatON and Privacy-Preserving Computation in the AMA hosted by PlatON, FinNX and Crypto Valley Jointly

On May 15th, 2020, PlatON hosted an AMA with FinNX and Crypto Valley jointly. PlatON Chief Architect Shenglin Li, as a guest speaker, talked about the mutual empowerment of PlatON and Privacy-preserving computation with Fundamental Labs Managing Partner Howard.

5. PlatON CTO James Qu Share How Blockchain Technology Evolution Facilitate the Industrial Transformation and Upgrade with 武谷论链

On May 15th, 2020, PlatON CTO James Qu, invited as the guest speaker of 武谷论链, gave a sharing on how blockchain technology evolution facilitates the industry transition and upgrade.

6. PlatON Introduced Its Contract Session of Galaxy Rally to Guide All Developers to Approach PlatON EVM and WASM Contract

On May 15th, 2020, PlatON shared the forthcoming contract session of Galaxy Rally to guide all developers to get closer to the compiling, development and application of PlatON contract. Besides, PlatON will launch different contract campaigns with sufficient rewards for all participants.
How to Set Up End-to-End Encryption in an iOS App Using Apple’s CryptoKit
By: Matheus Cardoso
Tags: Mobile, Security, Cryptography, iOS, Programming

Step 2. Encrypting Data

To encrypt data for a user (recipient) you need to first fetch their public key from the trusted service.

The initializer Curve25519.KeyAgreement.PublicKey(rawRepresentation: Data) can be used to deserialize the public key coming from the trusted service.

Step 2.1 Deriving a symmetric key

Public keys can’t be used to encrypt data directly. They’re used by the two parties communicating to agree on a symmetric key for encryption, via a Diffie-Hellmann key agreement. To do this, we will use the sender’s private key and the recipient’s public key to generate a shared secret from which we can derive the symmetric key using the HKDF key derivation function.

The protocol salt is a value that alters the outcome of the symmetric key derivation. Choose one that will remain constant for your use case, for example: "My Key Agreement Salt".data(using: .utf8)! . If you wish, you can store this symmetric key for later using the same strategy Apple recommends for the private key; however, it should be discarded if any of the communicating users' key pairs change.

Step 2.2 Encrypting the data with the symmetric key

Now we can finally use that symmetric key to perform the encryption. This job can be done by one of the ciphers CryptoKit supports. In this guide, we’ll use ChaChaPoly, which can be three times faster than AES in mobile devices, according to Adam Langley and other researchers.
My Wallet
By: The Ubrican
Tags: Health, Cryptocurrency, Cryptography, Wallet, Ubricoin

A secure and quick way to pay through Digital..

Vincent O.

I am pretty sure most of you are wondering how you can get the Ubricoins (UBNs). We’ve already seen some of the projects that Ubrica has put in place to decentralize and facilitate global health. In this blog we’ll handle how to get the Ubricoins! First we start with the basics.

Let’s talk about wallets! Yes wallets. Normally, we have wallets of different colors, shapes and sizes where we keep money when walking about. Sometimes the money inside our wallet is less than the amount you spent on that wallet. Sometimes all we have are identification cards and no money. This is not strange especially among the youth. Life happens! In as much as I’d enjoy talking about the contents of our wallets, we won’t be discussing that today. Instead, we’ll be talking about digital wallets.

A digital wallet is a software that allows you to communicate in a cryptocurrency network when you want to do transactions. Unlike the physical wallet, you do not store money here. The purpose of a digital wallet is to facilitate the peer-to-peer communication during transactions. To understand this better, a lot of people have used different ways to explain this but I prefer using the example of an email. To communicate via email we need an application (e.g., Gmail) and an email address. The email address must have a password in order for you to have privacy. Digital wallets work in the same way. You’ll need an application such as Coinomi that is available on PlayStore or AppStore. Apart from the application/software, there are also the address (public key) and private key.

The public key allows you to receive and send coins. Assuming you were to receive money from a customer in USA who ordered your product in Soko Janja. Just like you share your email address in order for someone to send an email to you, you will share your public address with this particular person and with that public key, the person is able to directly send you money. The private key on the other hand must not be shared under any circumstances. You do that and forget about your money!

Now that you have understood about digital wallet. How do you get money for your wallet?

To buy Ubricoins (UBNs), go to https://ubricoin.ubrica.com/buy-ubricoin/ you will get further instructions on how to create a wallet and buy the coins. Be part of the digital currency revolution. Don’t be left behind.

Follow UBRICA on Twitter @UbricaKe Instagram @Ubrica_ke

Originally published at Ubrica World Cafe (UWC)
SageMath installation issues and solutions in Ubuntu 20.04
By: Pavani Poluru
Tags: Cryptography, Sagemath, Installation

Usually you can install sagemath using the following commands.

sudo apt update

sudo apt install sagemath

When I used these commands, but I end-up with sage crash report. So, I installed sagemath using dockers later. Instead of using $sage command, we have to use $ docker run -it sagemath/sagemath:latest to run sage in terminal. I never tried to import Crypto modules or pwn modules in sage. Today I tried to import Crypto modules in sage. I realized that it wasn’t working fine. umm…

So, here I started my search and finally, I found a solution for this and it is working fine now.

Let’s see…

I came across this. So I tried to use

$ docker run -it sagemath/sagemath:latest -sh.

It’s not worked fine. So, later I downloaded a torrent file from sage documentation.Now, extract that tar file using this command and enter the following commands using this doc.

$ tar -xf sage-9.3-Ubuntu_20.04-x86_64.tar.bz2

$ cd Sagemath

$python3 relocate-once.py

$ ./sage -sh

This will takes you to sage -sh as shown.

Now use pip install <your package> command and install required packages.

Here I installed the pwn tools package.

After installing required packages enter exit and run sage usually inside Sagemath folder.

Note: Always run ./sage inside SageMath folder.

Hurry !!! Problem solved.
Serialize Closure, Batches & Jobs
Tags: PHP, Laravel, Cryptography, Closure, Serialization

This week I found a pretty weird issue.

Trying to get info about Batch in a project, I found the following error:

Opis\Closure\SecurityException with message ‘Your serialized closure might have been modified and it’s unsafe to be unserialized. Make sure you use the same security provider, with the same settings, both for serialization and uns

erialization.’

This is given that Laravel uses a key to cipher cookies also closures, with the same key setted at APP_KEY.

My biggest preocupation is that I work with a development team with a few developers in a same database. All of us have a different APP_KEY, so if someone create a batch of jobs with a serialized closure, I can’t instanciate that because I have a different APP_KEY.

A little research drive me to found that exists a Service Provider called \Illuminate\Encryption\EncryptionServiceProvider that implements the method registerOpisSecurityKey

\Illuminate\Encryption\EncryptionServiceProvider

So, I created a Service Provider with the same name that inherits the Illuminate class, implements the method in different manner and I changed the /config/app.php to make the Service Provider register in each request.

app/Providers/EncryptionServiceProvider.php

changes at config/app.php

With this changes, I sure that all of our team has the same key and when we have to work with batches, we can hold the data coherency.

I hope this can be useful.
The Mathematics of Secrets: Cryptography from Caesar Ciphers to Digital Encryption full_online
By: Crap Rajau
Tags: Cryptography

The Mathematics of Secrets: Cryptography from Caesar Ciphers to Digital Encryption, — ->>> The Mathematics of Secrets takes readers on a fascinating tour of the mathematics behind cryptography — the science of sending secret messages. Using a wide range of historical anecdotes and real-world examples, Joshua Holden shows how mathematical principles underpin the ways that different codes and ciphers work. He focuses on both code making and code breaking and discusses most of the ancient and modern ciphers that are currently known. He begins by looking at substitution ciphers, and then discusses how to introduce flexibility and additional notation. Holden goes on to explore polyalphabetic substitution ciphers, transposition ciphers, connections between ciphers and computer encryption, stream ciphers, public-key ciphers, and ciphers involving exponentiation. He concludes by looking at the future of ciphers and where cryptography might be headed. The Mathematics of Secrets reveals the mathematics working stealthily in the science of coded messages.A blog describing new ……. MORE …… Visit link : https://playbookworldwide.blogspot.com/?book=0691183317

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We have added thousands of books to our CLEARANCE SALE!

Go check it out and see what great deals you can find!
Arweave Puzzle Series: Puzzle 02— Solved
By: Zoren X
Tags: Cryptography, Arweave, Cryptopuzzle

START

To solve the puzzle, we have to input the correct answers on the specified place to put the solution.

There are 4 mini-puzzles to solve in Puzzle 02 and no hints were given by the admin.

Here is the link to the puzzle: https://yvmqerqbjzui3g2lnze7qwkaocl3ikhavhuvl2vvcek4u7f3e2la.arweave.net/xVkCRgFOaI2bS25J-FlAcJe0KOCp6VXqtREVyny7JpY

Inside The Puzzle

Points of Interests

Upon first glance on the puzzle image, the most noticeable thing were the numbers on some pieces of paper and the words.

1. It is clear that the mini-puzzles are on the pieces of papers with numbers in it and there are 4 of them.

2. There are 4 words without a number in them (except for the ‘squares’ where the last ‘s’ looked like ‘5’). There words will help in solving the mini-puzzles.

Piece #1

Word clue: squares

Answer: 11

It was clear that the only word that can relate to the piece #1 is the word ‘square’ because of the dots forming squares. We counted the squares easily by going to https://www.puzzlesandriddles.com/perceptualpuzzle16.html
YouTube Promotes Сrypto Scammers
By: Bitxmi Pte Ltd
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Cryptography, Crypto, Cryptocurrency Investment

Kataryna Kovtun July 13, 2020

BitXmi.Com

YouTube users are reporting that fraudulent ads for free BTC are often appearing on the platform.

These videos cause the most outrage in the cryptocurrency community since relatively recently YouTube blocked crypto blogger accounts, including educational ones. At the same time, the creators of the channels did not receive any feedback from the platform.

Users have already reported downloading four videos using images of reputable people in the cryptocurrency industry and beyond. This is CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance Changpeng Zhao, co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin, Apple creator Steve Wozniak, and the lead of podcast Joe Rogan.

The structure of the videos repeats each other, which indicates that they are created by the same person or group of people. When users click on the video, instead of the crypto leaders speaking, they see an advertisement in which people are encouraged to send bitcoins in exchange for an instant return in double size. This is a classic hoax.

According to some users, this advertisement in the rotation is already a few weeks.

“I watched 3 out of 5 videos that appeared at least once a day for a week. I reported this, but it turned out to be completely useless, despite the fact that the removal takes about 10 minutes.“ — wrote one of the users

Thus, these egregious frauds occur against the background of strict censorship of the video hosting platform to bona fide crypto enthusiasts and at the same time its inaction to the actions of criminals.

Other Twitter users openly accuse YouTube of hypocrisy and the inability to protect their subscribers from the actions of obvious fraudsters.

Read more crypto news here…

Join Bitxmi Exchange and get $10 worth of BXMI token after your first trade
What is Proof of Work?
By: Mining Crypto
Tags: Proof Of Work, Cryptocurrency, Cryptography, Crypto, Blockchain

There is seemingly a million things to know about blockchain technology, and today I’ll be covering one important concept: Proof of Work. This is what underlies many blockchains’ security.

What’s Proof of Work?

It’s a method to validate the transactions on a blockchain, i.e. a “public online ledger which records all…transactions” that uses cryptography to validate the transactions.

What happens is that “blocks” are “mined.” A block is a group of transactions, and these blocks are mined by people, i.e. miners, who run a program and complete cryptographic equations. What these equations do is prove that the funds haven’t been double-spent and that the transaction was a valid one.

These miners solve these equations according to rules and then pretty much say, “Here’s the answer; this transaction was in/valid.” The answer is the “proof of work;” proving one used energy to solve the equation. The reward for figuring out the answer is the whole block reward — the newly minted coins and the transaction fees.

If one decides to provide a wrong answer, then they do not collect any reward and have wasted resources.

How Proof of Work works

What are Some Blockchains Using PoW?

There are quite a few blockchains that are using Proof of Work (PoW) mining. The first being Bitcoin when it was created by Nakamoto Satoshi in 2009. Other well known ones are Litecoin, a very early altcoin, and Bitcoin Cash, a 2017 hard fork of Bitcoin with blocks up to 32x larger than Bitcoin’s.

“Useless Computation”

Some try to paint the processing done as a negative quality of PoW. They say that so many people work on just a few transactions, and that the cryptographic computation has no utility outside of the blockchain. These two points are fallacious.

As pointed out in an article I’ve already cited (PoW is Efficient), the security of the blockchain is rooted in the fact that the mining is so costly. “The fact that Proof of Work (PoW) is ‘costly’ is a feature, not a bug…through its transparent costly design, it would take an equivalent amount of energy to tear it down.” This shows that all the processing power put into mining actually serves the purpose of showing that the transactions are absolutely legitimate. The guy speaking in this somewhat short yet informational YouTube video explains how using Proof of Work mining to do other functions such as protein folding or finding prime can actually endanger the security (and hence legitimacy) of a blockchain. If that secondary function becomes more profitable in relation to validating transactions, then more miners will likely switch to the secondary function rather than stick to securing the blockchain.

The above references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.
[PC Update] v1.9.1 Update Preview
By: Prism Live Studio. Official
Tags: Live, Prism, Live Streaming, Prismlivestudio, Livestream

Hey there! Editor X here with PRISM Live Studio, the global live streaming app.

Today, let’s take a quick peek at the v 1.9.1 update.

The Windows update is scheduled for April 24th, 2020. the Mac update is scheduled for April 27th, 2020, though the schedules are subject to change.

v1.9.1 Major Changes:

BAND account linkage support

Connect BAND accounts for easy and convenient live streaming.

2. BAND multicast support

Band channel added through account linkage supports multi-platform live streaming.

★ BAND account connection

[☰]> [File]> [Settings]> [Channel Settings] > select [Add Channel].

2. Mouse over the BAND channel, select [Login with account].

3. Login by entering your BAND account and password.

4. After linking is complete, switch the band channel on in the channel settings.

If you want to live stream to multiple platforms, you need to switch the multistream button to On, and then switch all the channels you want to live to On.

5. Click the [Live Info] button to enter live information.

BAND live information will be exposed on the BAND web page.

6. When the scene to be used for live streaming is ready, click the [Ready]> [Go Live] button to start live streaming.

7. To finish live streaming, click the [Finish] button in PRISM.

★ BAND Custom RTMP connection

[☰]> [File]> [Settings]> [Channel Settings] > select [Add Channel].

2. Mouse over the BAND channel, select [InputRTMP].

3. The BAND channel URL is automatically entered in the New RTMP channel pop-up.

To enter stream key information, open the BAND page.

4. On the BAND page, select the [Live Streaming] menu, and click the Stream URL and Stream Key [Generate] button.

5. Click the stream key copy button on the BAND live streaming start page, and paste it in the [stream key] field of the PRISM.

* The stream key of BAND changes every time, so you must check and enter it every time when you want to go live streaming.

*BAND’s stream key is valid for 3 minutes, so if you do not start live streaming within 3 minutes after entering the stream key, you must get it again.

6. Finally, click [Save] to create the channel.

7. When the scene to be used for live streaming is prepared, click the [Ready]> [Go Live] button.

8. Go to the BAND page and click the ‘Go Live’ button to live to BAND members.

9. To end the broadcast, first click the [Finish] button in PRISM, then go to the BAND page and click the [End Live] button.

*Band channels added with Custom RTMP are not supported for multi stream.

If you want to multi stream, remember to add the BAND channel by linking your BAND account!

Thank you !!!
Announcing a New 2key Network Product: Zoom SmartSessions!
By: Erez Ben-Kiki
Tags: Zoom, Webinar, Crypto, Live Streaming, Blockchain

The First Blockchain-Crypto Product Officially on the Zoom Marketplace!

Three weeks ago, we announced a big shift in focus to join the global effort in finding new solutions to the COVID-19 and global economic turbulence. We are not doctors (yet), and we have not yet found a vaccine, but we do know how to build decentralized products on the blockchain.

During these crazy times, with the virus in the wild, and the global economy going haywire, almost all of us had to change practices, switching to remote communication, mainly through video calls, we thought a lot about how we can make the lives of all of us a little easier.

Then it hit us! We knew what will help so many these days:

Self-managed Zoom event- Registration, Payment & Promotion Solution!

One of the greatest obstacles people need to overcome right now, with the imposed closures and social distancing, is the ability to maintain continuity, and most people are using remote solutions like video calls. We are all trying to adapt quickly to the new normal.

Many people have started offering their services on Zoom, from yoga teachers, psychologists, or mentors to crypto-webinars and conferences that have completely switch to Zoom. In fact, Zoom’s user base has skyrocketed from 10 million to 200 million (At 2key, we were not surprised by this exponential growth, as we have been using Zoom for over two years and know it is the best product on the market).

Looking at what was missing from Zoom, we noticed that, though Zoom was ideal for global teams, it was not tailored for professional services based in a physical setting, or to replace large events and conferences.

So we came up with an idea!

Zoom has by far the largest user base, and we, therefore, through the power of SmartLink technology, designed a custom solution to address Zoom’s new usage demand from millions of professionals now hosting sessions or events through the platform.

With no major changes to our existing smart contract, and a mere new product line extension from our core technology, we have built, in mere weeks, a SmartLink-based smart contract that allows Zoom’s users to:

- Launch ready-made paywalled sessions.

- Accept cryptocurrencies as payment.

- Grow with the 2key viral referral system of SmartLinks.

A SmartLink Powering a Paywall for any Zoom Session!

We named it SmartSession.

In less than 14 days we built an MVP for this product, connected with the Zoom API, and after few modifications based on Zoom’s feedback and requests, we are super proud to announce to you:

2key is now officially part of the Zoom marketplace!

The first-ever Blockchain company on that great marketplace and the first-ever Smart-Contract to support Zoom sessions!
Livestreaming an Emerging Trend for E-Commerce Sales
By: James Ambrose Meyer
Tags: E-commerce, Livestreaming

James Ambrose Meyer is a Dallas entrepreneur who guides the cloud storage innovator Nebulr and is a fullstack developer. Among James Ambrose Meyer’s areas of professional knowledge are mobile app development and finance, and he also has an e-commerce background.

As reported in Digital Commerce 360, one emergent e-commerce trend centers on livestreaming. This approach was pioneered by Mogujie, a Chinese fashion platform, in 2014, and subsequently adopted by Alibaba’s popular Taobao site. The initial emphasis was on female consumers in the 18–23 age range who were range seeking low to mid-priced apparel.

Through livestreaming, consumers are able to interact with hosts their size as they try on a variety of clothes. Viewers also gain insight to different fabric types and see how accessories look joined with various items.

Among consumers who use livestreaming, this approach has generated significantly higher conversion rates. On Singles Day in 2019, livestreaming was responsible for sales totaling $2.9 billion in China and was driven by the direct participation of livestream stars. The end result is that more than 100,000 sellers and brands now offer livestreaming options, including global fashion powerhouses such as Levi’s, Burberry, M.A.C., and Ralph Lauren.
[PC Guide]Mac color inversion issues
By: Prism Live Studio. Official
Tags: Live, Prism, Live Streaming, Prismlivestudio, Livestream

Hey, everyone!

This is Editor X with the global live streaming app, PRISM Live Studio.

Today I want to explain the Mac color inversion issues (Mac screen blue issues) and provide you with a solution.

Mac color inversion issues

Specific causes have been identified for this issue:

Since Mac 10.13, Metal, the main rendering engine on Mac, has not considered compatibility with NVIDIA graphics cards.

The red and blue colors are interchanged.

However, in case of using INTEL / AMD graphics card, output in red accurately.

Please refer to the following link for specific cause:

If your Mac is included in the following list, you may encounter the problem:

MacBook:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), MacBookPro11,2

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013), MacBookPro11,3

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012), MacBookPro10,1

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012), MacBookPro9,1

MacBook Air (Mid 2009)

iMac:

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013)

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012)

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009)

iMac (Early 2009) 20-inch; 24-inch

★ Solution is as follows:

If your Mac has more than one graphics card,

You can use another graphics card than the NVIDIA graphics card, the output may be normal.

Select ‘Energy Saver’ in Mac System Preferences.

2. Check ‘Automatic graphics switching’.

3. Restart PRISM.

If you encounter this problem, you can solve it by the above methods.

Hope it helps you.

Thank you!
LIVE// Phoenix Mercury vs Indiana Fever LiveSTREAM (Women’s Basketball)
By: Robert Maddox
Tags: Live Streaming

Indiana Fever Phoenix Mercury live score (and video online live stream*) starts on 9.6.2019. at 20:00 UTC time at Bankers Life Fieldhouse stadium, Indianapolis, USA in WNBA — USA. Here on SofaScore livescore you can find

Watch Live NOW >http://bit.ly/2XnqtKj

Watch Live NOW >http://bit.ly/2XnqtKj

all Indiana Fever vs Phoenix Mercury previous results sorted by their H2H matches. Links to Indiana Fever vs. Phoenix Mercury video highlights are collected in the Media tab for the most popular matches as soon as video appear on video hosting sites like Youtube or Dailymotion. We’re not responsible for any video content, please contact video file owners or hosters for any legal complaints.

You can watch Indiana Fever vs. Phoenix Mercury live stream online if you are registered member of bet365, the leading online betting company that has streaming coverage for more than 140.000 live sports events with live betting during the year. If this match is covered by bet365 live streaming you can watch basketball match Indiana Fever Phoenix Mercury on your iPhone, iPad, Android or Windows phone. It’s also easy to find video highlights and news from the most popular sports leagues in the world. Live bet365 odds are viewable in SofaScore’s basketball livescore section. We don’t offer a TV schedule here, if you would like to watch this match on TV you’ll probably find it it on some more popular channels like iTV, BBC, Al Jazeera Sports, Sky Sports, Gol TV, Canal+, SportTV, FOX Soccer, Setanta, ESPN, etc.
How To Secure The Suspected Area By Using The Arlo Pro 3?
By: Online Camera Setup
Tags: Arlo Base Station, Arlo Security Cameras, Arlo Pro 2, Arlo Pro 3, Live Streaming

All Arlo security cameras are the best security system all over the world. They provide you more relevant security features compared to other security cameras. When it comes to Arlo Pro 3, then it is best security system at affordable prices. It has complete security features to fulfill your needs. If you have made your plan to but this security camera, and you want to take more info. Then you should read this complete post you enhance your knowledge about the Arlo Pro 3. You can take more information from the Netgear certified team. They will provide you the best info like when you are trying to open the Arlo application in your device, then the device page will display your camera feeds.

To watch the Arlo Pro 3 feeds-

● You will have to open the Arlo application.

● Then click on the play option on the camera feed. And your camera feed will update & icon will display.

● For stopping viewing and listening to the live feed, click on the stop.

Local 2k live streaming

You are allowed to live stream in 2k resolution from the Arlo Pro 3 wireless security camera in the Arlo application on your cell phone device it is on the same local networks as the SmartHub. When you enabled local 2k live streaming in the video setting, then click on the play button on the camera stream in your Arlo application.

For enabling local 2k live streaming to perform some needed steps-

● First, you need to open the Arlo application.

● Then you have to click on the settings > my devices.

● After that, you should choose the camera which series you are using.

● Click on the video settings and again click on the local 2k live streaming for toggling live streaming on & off.

Follow the required steps to change the camera order

● First, you need to open the Arlo application.

● Click on the settings and inside the system, you have to click on the device order.

● If you use the smart-phone or tablet, then you have to click on the edit upper side of the page.

● At last, click & hold the list-icon & drag it in your every device for the accurate position on the list.

Hopefully! You will get more essential information from this post. If you are willing to get additional information about this security camera with this you want to know about the Reset Arlo Base station process. Then without wasting your important time, you need to get in touch with the assistance team of this security system.

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