[Cryptography] Gaslighting ~= power droop == side channel attack

[Ray Dillinger]

On 12/01/2016 09:35 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
> At 11:15 AM 11/29/2016, Home wrote:
>> An "easy" way to swamp out almost all of the usage signal available to the meter would be to put a one or two horsepower motor between each phase and ground (assuming standard 240V 2 phase house wiring) and use an Arduino or Raspberry PI to randomly vary the load on the motor, using a cryptographically strong random number generator to vary both the load, and the interval between load changes.
>>
>> Besides the initial cost of the equipment, there is the cost of constantly using (roughly) 2 kw of electricity just running this device, which could be enough electricity to have other snoopy sorts (narcs) raiding your house on suspicion of growing pot in the basement, but it would keep the smart meter befuddled.

> BTW, pot is now legal in California, thanks to the Nov election; however, I don't know if you're now allowed to grow your own at home.

Yes, growing your own at home is explicitly legal according to state
law, like brewing your own hooch.  Unless you're growing more than
anyone believes you could consume yourself, and not licensed to sell.  I
think the guidance is no more than 3 or 5 plants, but I could be wrong.
Nothing that would require a server room full of grow lights anyway.

Still, now that commercial farmers are moving into the market, I imagine
in a few more months a grow-light operation is going to be about as
commercially viable as my hobby of growing ghost pepper plants when I
can make my hotdog relish by buying habaneros by the pound cheaper than
the potting soil I use every year.

I imagine Trump will be concerned about the inevitable fact of immigrant
workers doing the picking and processing, while Pence will be upset
about the possibility that somewhere someone might be enjoying something
immoral.  Screw them both, says the California Legislature.

There's an odd reciprocal effect going on here; people have less and
less privacy, and other people (except for advertisers, I guess) give
less and less of a flying crap about what they're doing.

There was a time when people would have been ashamed for it to be known
they were buying, or selling, sex toys for example, and businesses would
have been boycotted etc; now they're on sale and recommended as
christmas gifts at Walmart.  Lack of privacy, or lack of caring about
privacy, has revealed how utterly normal this is, and most people just
don't care about it anymore because normal means boring.

				Bear

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