[zapps-wg] Powers of Tau Round 38 Attestation

Wed Jan 17 21:47:21 EST 2018

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Powers of Tau Attestation
=========================

Round: 38
Date: 2018-1-17
Name: Ryan Close
Location: Florida, US

Challenge:
a58bcc60b15a6cd3d69fa7ef87b4f9d2f9be6eb2d470f66e0dadc8058a14c8ca18efaa1ca69346865d3f83bbc9fe1320e5c16f3580567963a206d337377a82ea
Response:
c63d895327712427bb14295d7935af4cb79bbdf9b84411684b9cd3292750f63261f3a874ec160e070cdd98bcdd2b1dd21cf20f937fb486c0ac1cab12bb3a0046
(tweeted: https://twitter.com/closerm/status/953816452997500929 )

Process
=======

UBUNTU 16.04.3 Desktop (x2)
Rust v1.23.0 (766bd11c8 2018-01-01)
powersoftau (github.com/ebfull/powersoftau commit
d47a1d3d1f007063cbcc35f1ab902601a8b3bd91)

I began by installing ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso to a brand new
formatted USB thumbdrive. The drive was encrypted (cryptsetup).
I booted from this drive in VirtualBox, allowing me to update the OS,
install the rust toolchain, and clone the needed git repository.
The VM was shutdown, and the thumbdrive was removed to be used with an
offline machine (no wifi, disconnected ethernet) that has no other physical
drives.

The above was performed twice, and moved to two seperate offline machines.

Prior to attaching the Ubuntu OS thumbdrives to either stand-alone machine,
each machines was booted with a live image and memtest was run.

The provided challenge file was downloaded and placed on a second new and
newly formatted thumbdrive and moved to the disconnected computer(s).

For each compute node, extra entropy was introduced by letting my kids type
at the keyboard until they felt good and satisfied, or until one of them
accidently hit [enter].

When complete, each node was verified (via verify_transform), results
copied to the thumbdrive. Dice (and kids) were then used to choose which
payload to report, and the result was uploaded.

All 3 thumbdrives have since been securely erased, reformatted, and
intermixed with a stash of several other similar and empty drives.

Driveless stand-alone machines have since been booted and memtest run, and
will eventually be brought back onto the network.

Side Note
========

Attempts were made to use additional hardware, OS, and software
configurations.

Raspberry Pi3 nodes were tested to see if they could be used, but do not
have enough RAM to complete the compute job.
PINE64 nodes were tested to see if they could be used, and while they
faired much better than the Raspberry Pi's, they ultimately failed to
complete the compute job aswell.