Zcash Genesis Ceremony

[LukeS]

1)5 immobile stations and 1 mobile station
2) All 6 stations mush be compromised
3)It made it more difficult for an attacker to prepare a side channel attack
4) An attack based on information gained from the implementation of a computer system.
5) It gives me more security in Zcash

[Aiisnotbad]

@Grant_Hawkins

• How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
• How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
• What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?
• What is a ‘side channel attack’?
• OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?

. Six.

. All of them. We need all the fragments to hack the maths.

. Obfuscation. The drawback is lack of public auditing.

. It is a way to extrapolate computations using the physical leakage of hardware doing such computations. The leaks could be the sound generated by the hardware.

. Neutral. It gives me confidence in some aspects and reduces this confidence in other aspects. The classic trade off we often refer to in tech.

[mervxxgotti]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony? — 6
2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption? — all 6
3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret? — so only the few were aware for security reasons, audit limited to a few
4. What is a side-channel attack’? — spying on a computer’s data without direct access but through what’s occurring to its physical components
5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash? I’m not sure haha the whole thing is trippy, it could also be all made up

[vegas316]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
Six
2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
Six
3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?
Less information broadcasted pre-ceremony makes it harder for attackers to prepare
4. What is a ‘side channel attack’?
Side channel attacks are when you don’t have to have direct access to a computer’s data but can still spy on it
5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?
More.

[ol_frank]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
   6

2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
   All six

3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?
   Reduces the window of opportunity for a malicious actor to prepare an attack

4. What is a side-channel attack’?
   Gathering information about the purpose of a CPU by the components that are accessible, i.e noise emitted, voltage use and fluctuation etc. The information can be used to spy on the CPU.

5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?
   More

[Zulu1]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony? Six stations, 5 immobile.

2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption? All six stations.

3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret? To limit the security audit to a handful of people inside the company. Also made it difficult for an attacker to prepare.

4. What is a side-channel attack’? By examining the physical component of a computer, you can piece together the software program’s operation.

5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash? Not more nor less. Probably less.

[Samuel1]

1. There were 6 stations, 1 mobile and 5 immobile.
2. All six must be compromised.
   3.It increases security of the procedure.
   4.Side channel attacks are attempts to spy on a device, observing its activity and understanding causes.
   5.It gives me more trust in Zcash security.

[HemalT]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?

Six

2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?

Six

3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?

To make it more difficult for an attacker to make the kinds of preparations that would be necessary to mount a successful side channel attack.

4. What is a side-channel attack?

When a computer is spied not accessing to it but through physical component analysis.

6.OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?

Less trust in my humble opinion.

[Ross-mathews]

1. 6
2. All of them
3. icnreased security
4. The idea behind side channel attacks is that you don’t have to have direct access to a computer’s data in order to spy on it. Often, you can piece together some idea of what a computer is doing by examining what’s going on with the physical components
   5.NA

[Denzel]

1.- six

2.- all six

3.- To make it difficult to organize an attack.

4.- To spy without a direct access, studying a computer’s physical behavior.

5.- I guess it becomes more trustworthy the more insights they give into the project.

[maxs]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
   Six

2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
   All six.

3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?
   Avoiding the disclosure of data that could make an attack easier.

4. What is a ‘side channel attack’?
   Attacks where “you don’t have to have direct access to a computer’s data in order to spy on it.” Instead, you can get relevant information from how the physical elements of the computer are behaving.

5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?
   It shows that the Zcash team takes security very seriously but you have to trust the team. Their algorithms being hard to understand is another aspect where as a user you have to trust and can practically not verify.

[walter_w]

1. Six
2. All of them
3. to increase the difficulty of an attack
4. an attack that utilizes factors other than direct access to the computer, such as sounds & radio frequencies
5. I don’t like the idea of a single key that can compromise the whole thing. I have less trust in that they needed to keep the ceremony secret. I agree that something is wrong if anything needs to be kept secret, even if it was well documented.

[Meddodreddo]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
   6

2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
   All 6

3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?
   Generation of a “bad key” which while necessary to generate a secure zcash, contains parameter info that can also compromise its security in future. The bad key was then destroyed.

4. What is a side-channel attack’?
   Essentially “sniffing” the acoustic and electrical impedance information of computer hardware which can then be translated into useful information about the software it is running.

5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?
   Less. Namely because the cell phone was likely hacked, and it isn’t satisfactory that the genesis ceremony could not be openly audited. This is telling of the potentially vulnerability of the security set up for zcash in principle or another consideration is that the ceremony despite its best efforts could have been compromised. Lastly too few participants need to be trusted that the bad key was destroyed. Trust is the antithesis of our space.

[Fjell]

1. There were six ‘stations’ for the genesis ceremony. One mobile and the other five immobile.
2. All six stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption, because the generation of the keys was decentralized such that each station would only be responsible for creating a fragment of the bad key.
   3.The rationale for keeping the ceremony secret is that the Zcash team limited their security audit to just a handful of people inside the company, but they may also have made it more difficult for an attacker to make the kinds of preparations that would be necessary to mount a successful side channel attack.
3. A side-channel attack’ is where you don’t have to have direct access to a computer’s data in order to spy on it. Often, you can piece together some idea of what a computer is doing by examining what’s going on with the physical components. What frequencies are humming across the metal capacitors in a laptop? How much power is it pulling from the wall? How is the voltage fluctuating?
4. OPINION: I trust nothing until I have verified it to the best of my knowledge. Regarding whether this story give me more or less trust in the security of Zcash I remain resolutely neutral in that regard. In fact, I am highly skeptical of the whole mobile phone incident and strongly suspect that it was added to the story for “dramatic embellishment”. I have no evidence for this however, apart from a long life’s amount of experience.

[ryan9632]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
   There were 6 stations.
2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
   All 6 must be compromised.
3. What is the retionale for keeping the ceremony secret?
   If the secret “network parameters” are known to somebody, they can essentially create new Zcash. So they kept the ceremony a secret to minimize the number of potential attackers and to give them less time to prepare the attack.
4. What is a ‘side channel attack’?
   It’s described as an attack on an electronic device where you don’t have direct access, but you analyze the physical components to try to figure out what’s happening. Like listening to the noises coming from the components.
5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?
   I bought some Zcash before doing this module. And honestly I’m more unsure about Zcash than I was before. Nobody understands zk-SNARKs, and there’s no way to audit the total supply. And there’s no way to know for sure if the genesis ceremony was hacked. I would prefer to use a crypto that doesn’t require such a genesis ceremony. And maybe someday someone will find the secret parameters, maybe with new technology. I think it would be impossible to notice that the network was compromised.

[tony1999]

2. All of them.
3. The less people knew about the ceremony, the harder it would be for a hacker to acquire information and then mount a side channel attack.
4. A side channel attack is ingenious - it works by attempting to piece together what a computer is doing without actually having access to it. The frequencies generated by the metal capacitors, the power being used, voltage fluctuation and other physical aspects.
5. It makes me feel a bit more comfortable, knowing that Zcash creators are aware of possible attacks like this.

[Timbalasian]

6 stations.

All 6 must be compromised.

The same reason why the stations are kept segregated during the ceremony: it is to maintain a high level of security.

The idea behind side channel attacks is that you don’t have to have direct access to a computer’s data in order to spy on it. Often, you can piece together some idea of what a computer is doing by examining what’s going on with the physical components. What frequencies are humming across the metal capacitors in a laptop? How much power is it pulling from the wall? How is the voltage fluctuating? The patterns in these signals can leak information about a software program’s operation, which, when you’re running a program that you want to keep secret, can be a problem.

Less trust. It seems to me the story is more sensationalism perhaps to help drive up the price of the coin.

[moragarcia75]

1. How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?

Six

2. How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?

Six

3. What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?

To prevent an attack

4. What is a side-channel attack’?

An attack based on information gained from the implementation of a computer system, rather than weaknesses in the implemented algorithm itself.

5. OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?

One article is not enough to trust any privacy crypto or any crypto for that matter.

[Konzaih]

1.) 6
2.) All 6
3.) To have max security and prevent an attack.
4.) Attacking a computer without having direct access to its data
5.) I see that alot of Effort and Thought was put into the ceremony and that they were somewhat transparent with the phone incident but this article enough isn’t enough to greatly affect my opinion.

[Baidis]

@Grant_Hawkins

• How many ‘stations’ were there for the genesis ceremony?
• How many stations must be compromised to break Zcash’s encryption?
• What is the rationale for keeping the ceremony secret?
• What is a ‘side channel attack’?
• OPINION: Does this story give you more or less trust in the security of Zcash?

1. 6 Stations with one being mobile
2. All 6
3. No one can prepare an attack on the setup.
   4.Using other device like a phone to attack computer.
4. The story seems positive over all.