Logs for the Monero Research Lab Meeting Held on 2018-07-30
July 30, 2018
Logs
<sarang> We can start now
<sarang> Greetings
<sarang> This will be a brief meeting to catch up on recent research
<sarang> All bulletproof audits have completed
<sarang> Kudelski's final report is posted. QuarksLab is updating theirs with our responses before releasing their final version. Benedikt Bunz is updating his similarly with our feedback.
<silur> yaay
<sarang> I continue to work on some new ring signature algos from Ruffing et al.
<oneiric_> very nice, excited to read the most recent reports
<sarang> lots of fun building blocks with that scheme
<sarang> and suraeNoether has provided a multisig paper for me to review
<sarang> that is also in progress
<sarang> any questions on these things in particular?
<silur> let's collaborate on that I have an implemaentation on the first paper version
<silur> C, openssl
<sarang> silur: sure, the initial parts of the prototype are on my repo, rupol branch, in python
<silur> been working on rtrs for a long time
<silur> okay, will write you after the meeting
<sarang> anything in particular to share regarding your rtrs silur ?
<silur> well we just have to update it to the new-new-new construction
<silur> I only have the unpublished internal version of the first paper
<sarang> righto
<sarang> We shall talk afterward
<sarang> Any other interesting work to be shared?
<endogenic> anyone see a problem with running openssl transpiled via emscripten in a browser?
<sarang> I feel extremely not qualified to answer that properly
<andytoshi> endogenic: openssl, transpiling, emscripten, and browsers are all bad for security
<endogenic> yep, no worries, just throwing it out there
<sarang> lol
<endogenic> then why does monero use it lol
<silur> where?
<andytoshi> monero is writtcen in C++
<endogenic> common/util.cpp (LOL) #include <openssl/sha.h>… ringct/bulletproofs.cc #include <openssl/ssl.h> …
<silur> yea but where do we transpile it with emscripten?
<endogenic> just asking
<silur> I don't really recommend that
<endogenic> any specific reason?
<silur> don't know about emscripten internals but we used to have a thing called openssl code health tuesdays
<silur> after a month we eliminated 40K dead lines and 8 dead platforms
<silur> I think that's a reason not to include it in browsers
<endogenic> emscripten handles that sort of stuff
<andytoshi> there are lots of reasons that projects might have an openssl dep (bitcoin had one for a while). it takes time to eliminate it as other options are developed
<silur> also it has lots of inline ASM stuff how does emscripten handle that?
<andytoshi> but in all seriousness, if you're doing crypto in a browser, you should stop, because it's snake oil. a browser cannot run code in a secure environment.
<needmoney90> Did anyone check out the paper I posted last week?
<needmoney90> https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.07588
<andytoshi> http://matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/
<endogenic> andytoshi: people are going to run worse web wallets if we don't
<endogenic> run one that is
<needmoney90> I'm curious if FHE can be used for remote node syncing, to allow us to make queries on encrypted data
<endogenic> silur: 1sec
<andytoshi> needmoney90: you want PIR for that, not FHE. and there are existing PIR primitives that are actually implemented and usable (see percy++)
<needmoney90> It's possible that due to our static append only data set that we can't actually hide access patterns
<silur> needmoney90 thanks a lot, it seems super interesting
<needmoney90> Never heard of PIR, got a paper for me?
<needmoney90> Maybe I just don't know the acronym
<sarang> private information retrieval
<silur> lots of stuff on PIR
<silur> thanks for percy++, i'm working with pir a lot for riffle
<silur> where do we need that btw?
<silur> in monero?
<endogenic> silur: emscripten might not be able to handle it, depending on exactly what's there. i guess maybe an alternative implementation exists
<endogenic> people seem to have been able to do it , in any case
<endogenic> 🤞
<oneiric_> is boringssl an option for you?
<endogenic> oh
<endogenic> ./configure –no-asm
<endogenic> of course
<endogenic> oneiric_: not to ignore you - i'll investigate if it becomes necessary
<sarang> Anyone else wish to share something intriguing on their minds?
<sarang> Also welcome andytoshi
<isthmuscrypto> Oh, I can give a #noncense-research-lab summary
<sarang> please
<isthmuscrypto> Lots of action in the Monero Archival Project this week. @n3ptune released a new version of our custom archival daemon, and @serhack has been working wonders, configuring and maintaining our network of global VPS-based nodes.
<isthmuscrypto> I have been playing around with temporal analysis of the blockchain. Miner-reported timestamps were shown to be very unreliable, since 2% of blocks include a timestamp that is *before* the timestamp of the block prior.
<isthmuscrypto> These time-traveling Merlin blocks showed up while scoping out the distribution of wait times. https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/tLUEZ9aU/ttblocks.png // Looking at the wait times for the block above and below the Merlin blocks themselves, we see that it is skewed toward a longer interval afterward, suggesting that they are actually being retroactively timestamped.
<isthmuscrypto> Our new daemon (upgraded last night) records the node-receipt timestamp(s) in addition to the miner-reported timestamp, so expect some way more detailed analysis of that soon.
<isthmuscrypto> I'm a little exploratory study of how fast the blockchain syncs at each height. It's mostly a cute novelty, but if there are interesting features (e.g. discontinuities around introduction of new tech), or notable conclusions about empirical scaling, I'll share back here.
<isthmuscrypto> (/end)
<isthmuscrypto> Whoops, here's the second link, showing the skew in wait times before and after Merlin blocks: https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/f46p6Ddd/merlin_parent_child
<sarang> this is very interesting work
<andytoshi> sarang: we've made a lot of progress on musig recently; you can see https://github.com/apoelstra/secp256k1/blob/2018-04-taproot/src/modules/musig/musig.md for our current API. may have insights valuable to monero in future when you guys support arbitrary multisigs
<sarang> oh excellent, thanks
<isthmuscrypto> Shoot, I gave the wrong channel above. #noncesense-research-lab
<sarang> andytoshi: what are the overall plans for musig?
<andytoshi> sarang: well, musig signatures verify identically to schnorr..
<andytoshi> so the goal is for bitcoin to support schnorr as part of taproot
<andytoshi> and then wallets would implement musig if they're doing multisig stuff
<andytoshi> since the resulting multisigs would be smaller/more private than ones using CHECKMULTISIG
<sarang> Great, so laying the groundwork for future wallet code
<sarang> cool
<sarang> It seems fairly quiet here otherwise today, so any other material to share?
<andytoshi> not really, i've mostly been doing rust-bitcoin ecosystem work
<endogenic> yknow people have been transpiling rust to JS too :P
<silur> and wasm :D
<endogenic> well that's what i mean :P
<silur> wasm openssl is not a bad idea tho
<silur> looks like I have a new sideproject
<endogenic> oh that's just what i'm talking about…
<endogenic> whoever beats the other to it i guess
<endogenic> it's easy enough
<endogenic> i have instructions.. :P
<endogenic> i have boost transpiled already..
<sarang> Well, I think we can safely call the meeting then, everyone can continue performing admirably
Post tags : Dev Diaries, Cryptography, Monero Research Lab