Well good morning How's everybody doing so far? I'm amazed. I mean I have a sense that this is a very significant gathering an event that's happening here We'll look back at five years and say wow it all started then and I really want to thank Brian and Matthew For organizing this and for having us come here. I'm Sincerely honored and you know profoundly grateful. So thank you all and to Rebecca and Joseph as well who have been great to deal with I Wanted to acknowledge Nina whom everybody knows she's the co-founder of Bioneers and Joshua is over here our executive director So I guess most of the day is going to be about agriculture So that was what I was mainly going to focus on and Joseph had asked if I would just frame the bigger issues just a little bit But I have very limited time. So I'm just gonna keep that super short Which is all here. So here's the short version Basically as a species we've been acting like a rock star trashing a hotel room and it's the morning after only This hotel is planet Earth the guest rules are non negotiable And if we don't change our ways of living really fast, we're gonna get voted off the island So that's basically what we need to understand. You know the science is pretty well in on a lot of stuff Two-thirds of the planets ecosystems are in serious and accelerating decline. We're entering into uncharted territory For those of you who want to look at some of the I think the more Cutting-edge science right now the Stockholm resilience Center has done work on the nine planetary boundaries of which we've already crossed four The reality however on the ground here is that climate disruption is coming on bigger faster than even the alarmists predicted It's being called now the Anthropocene era the you know, we human beings have essentially become a force of nature This is completely unprecedented We there are no ground rules from here on out and what we know is we've set the big wheels in motion And we truly don't know what's going to happen now other than where there is going to be a very unfortunate Degree of suffering that was totally preventable So, you know, we need to do everything we can as quickly as we can and as you know Very intelligent and hopefully judicious choices that will make We'll get into a little bit later But from the perspective of Bioneers the solutions are largely present I mean we basically have a very good idea what to do right now or certainly what directions to head in What I'm witnessing is that we're in the thick of a revolution right now having watched the arc of this Solutions-based culture over the last 25 years. It's reaching a critical mass It's actually much bigger than people realize right now and infiltrating society at all levels very very quickly So, you know, the game is far from over You know as I mentioned yesterday, I think the coming years are going to make the 60s look like the 50s And that's here present in this room. It is a revolution it's a revolution from the heart of nature and from the human heart and We have four billion years of R&D from nature to learn from so You know, we've got a whole lot going for us at the same time I did want to say just one another note about the nine planetary boundaries is that they're all that there's a tenth planetary boundary, which is justice and The climate extremes that we're witnessing today correlate precisely with the extremes of wealth Which are unprecedented the concentration of wealth and power in the world. That is not an accident As our friends and you know Elders that in Iroquois six nations in the US tell us We will have peace with Mother Earth only when we have justice and justice is a process that never ends There will always be issues to address So we need to get really good at making peace and acknowledging justice and dealing with it, you know at all times So I just wanted to preface it. So why am I talking to you about agriculture? I grew up in New York City. My father taught at Columbia. My parents didn't even have a house plant You know, literally my mother has a black thumb basically any plant she touches will die just as soon as it sees her coming I'm not kidding actually So I was making a film in 1984 Called Hoxie how healing becomes a crime and it's about Medical politics and particularly the suppression and obstruction of unconventional Cancer treatments and the film is based around one case history a classic case history of this fellow named Harry Hoxie Who inherited his family's herbal treatment for cancer, which was actually discovered by his great-grandfather's horse reputedly and So I felt very deeply into the world of botanical medicine and I'm started to research, you know, everything I can learn about this particular plant medicine formula and in the course of my you know meanderings I met Christopher Bird who was the co-author of the book the secret life of plants, which is very controversial very interesting book at that time And I thought what I was doing provocative, you know, it's provocative herbal cancer treatment Chris was talking about plants having sentience and consciousness and communicating with each other and all that good stuff So anyway, he called me up a few months later and asked if I would make a film about a friend of his on an Indian Pueblo Just north of Santa Fe where I where I live and so sounded kind of interesting. It was a paying gig So I went and and it turned out Gabriel was a master organic farmer Who had studied with Alan Chadwick in California who helped bring biodynamic agriculture to the states? Chadwick told his students if you really really want to learn about farming go study with native peoples These are the people who have been doing it for millennia and have a very profound relationship with with growing so Gabriel started in Mexico and wandered down through Central America ended up in Latin America and As as native people, you know began to learn what's called T.E.K. traditional ecological knowledge a different kind of tech And as people came to trust him, which is not a small thing, you know that he that he had the integrity and the intention They began to share with him what for them is the most precious of gifts, which is the gift of seeds Because through the seeds speak the voices of the ancestors and each time that you plant a seed You become an ancestor for the generations to come. So it's a profoundly sacred transmission And he had gathered this extraordinary arc of traditional You know mostly food plants and herbs medicinal plants heirlooms and traditional indigenous Seeds and stuck them in the ground at San Juan Pueblo just north of Santa Fe So that's what I was up there to film it turned out and he gave me this tour of this astonishing arc that he had created Hundreds literally hundreds of varieties of corn including teosinte Which is this stubby little thing that you would barely even recognize as being corn. It's it's the mother of all corns Right from southern Mexico. It's where it all came from through the ingenuity of human plant breeding non genetic engineering you know and You know also just hundreds of varieties of tomatoes every size shape color you could be on what you could imagine I lived on a small farm for about six years But this was beyond anything that I had ever seen or imagined it was really my introduction to biodiversity and biodiversity in the garden and so as I filmed with Gabriel he also brought up the fact that these seed stocks were disappearing very very rapidly you know Genetic erosion the loss of the gene pool is actually the single greatest threat to agriculture on the planet We built this industrial system That's that's grows profits not food. That's really what it's there for and essentially Have engineered seeds well throttled seed diversity brought it down to monocultures Engineered those monocultures to grow with very heavy recipes of chemicals highly toxic chemicals the basis of all of it is Patents that's really what it is about is proprietary control and it was creating this catastrophic situation On which you know world food supply depends not a good idea So it became very clear to me in that moment how incredibly important it was and I thought I was there to make a movie You know it turned out I was there to start a seed company Which Gabriel and I launched in a couple years later in 1989 a company called seeds of change It was the first national organic seed company You know seeds are the first link in a safe food web But even today right now our seeds are not for the most part are not organic So that in itself is it don't get me started. That's a whole other discussion. We can get into but And then really the the idea was that you know The people who care about biodiversity are gardeners for the most part and we set it up as a commercial enterprise As a market partnership with backyard gardeners, you know, everybody's always leaning over the fence Hey, what's that tomato you got and how can I get some and can I trade you this and you know? that's really where the action was and It was it that's I won't get into the whole story of seeds of change but that was kind of where you know my my entry point into agriculture and then You know many of us in the early by the early 70s were highly aware of the collision course that Society was on with nature and that we really had to do something, you know It was no secret and so I didn't want to sit there kind of quivering in the dark You know being depressed and fearful So I just set out on a personal quest as a journalist and just a citizen actually To find out who was out there who might have real solutions to our major environmental crises and one by one by one Kind of during the 70s and 80s I came across all these different people who had really major fundamental solutions to you know huge global crises and The pattern that I started to observe Was first of all they were all systems thinkers, you know They took a solve the whole problem approach everything is connected, you know as John Muir once so beautifully said in nature Everything is hitched to everything else. Well, the same is true as of our society, you know as human beings We are nature. We didn't invent nature nature invented us We'd be wise to learn the ground rules that had a play by them and so And then the second principle really or pattern that connected all these people Was that they had looked to nature not as a physical resource But as a model a mentor and a metric, you know the basic disarmingly simple question being how would nature do it and You know boy, you can spend many lifetimes trying to understand that and that's what I'm so beautifully hearing people talk about here this morning so I was 1990 Nina and I started what became pioneers the idea was to bring together the you know the real social and scientific innovators To talk with each other and just like what's happening here this morning to begin to provide a platform to get these remarkable work out into the world and The entry point for a lot of it because of the association with seeds of change was around food systems And by the way, it was the biggest entry point into binaries at that time It still is today 25 years later food systems is often the entry point for people to develop environmental awareness So it should not be underestimated at that level what a profound educational tool it is And so we very quickly began the you know the seeds of change crew all these seed heads as we called ourselves at the time We're just the Olympics of gardening. I mean these guys were absolute maniacs and you know deep deep into esoteric farming methods of all sorts so we began to provide a platform for permaculture for biodynamics for John Jebens for West Jackson and you know perennial Prairie Prairie culture and on and on and on and really try to bring the major schools of alternative agriculture together and to provide You know a platform to get the word out about all of that So we've had the tremendous privilege of being able to learn from all of these people and also to cross pollinate these many important You know schools of knowledge because no one there is no one magic bullet or one solution It's a suite of solutions and it's there's so much knowledge yet to be gained We're very humble in what we don't know, you know, that's what keeps us up at night So just to give you a few examples a few stories of some of the kinds of things But Nina mentioned to a smaller group yesterday about our friend Paul Stamets Paul's a mycologist up in the Pacific Northwest in the US Who you know I studied a lot about the medicinal properties of herbs and as an ecologist He began to wonder well, what is the the medicinal function, you know the the healing function that that mycelia play in the landscape so he got a chance to test that when there is a very large diesel fuel spilled near his little farm and They the state of Washington invited a bunch of people companies to come in and kind of rode You know take a crack at this contaminated soil. They set up these cells of dirt About 20 feet by 20 feet. I think you know They stank horribly putrid from you know hydrocarbons and it was just pretty much dead dirt at that point when it happened So Paul decided to have at it along with all these other companies And he inoculated the spore of oyster mushrooms into his cell of dirt and they all covered it up And I think it was about six or eight weeks later They came back and one by one by one they ripped the tarps off these things and still the stench of hydrocarbons I mean if the other treatments were working at all it was very very slow They were using enzymes the usual heat beaten treat, you know If brute force doesn't work you haven't used enough You know that was basically the mentality and then they get to Paul's little cell of dirt rip the tarp off And it's completely blanketed with oyster mushrooms some of the foot foot and a half in diameter They tested the soil. There was absolutely no residue of diesel. They tested the flesh of the mushrooms Nothing there. So this is not changed. This is transformation something the mycelia knew to had it You know in nature. There is no waste everything is somebody's lunch of either food or energy It's very simple the mushrooms treated the oil as food the reason that I bring this up is it has profound implications for agriculture because Most of our fertilizers are oil-based as our herbicides and pesticides When if we talk about large-scale transition to organic farming We're dealing with highly contaminated soil all over the planet It can take a very long time to you know to detoxify that the official length of time is three years to transition to organic But even if you've done that the soil realistically is still going to be contaminated Mushrooms and mycelia could fast forward that entire process It takes months not years and you can actually completely bioremediate the soil at the same time that you're building the soil health So this is and you don't need an engineer. You need a gardener to do this stuff This is gorilla stuff I mean I think many of us become frustrated by bureaucracy by government by regulation all this kind of stuff This is stuff that could be done by gorilla gardeners worldwide over the planet all around the planet effectively its citizen science in action You know, this is one of the things I think that we should move on quickly to actually just enable people to do this on much much larger scales Let's see So another thing that's a really important point is you may have seen the new Rodale Oh, by the way, let me just finish that story with one little thing which is that Paul who's basically an old hippie got contacted by the Pentagon Because forget Saddam Hussein the US, you know the late Saddam Hussein the US has by far the biggest stockpiles in the world of chemical and biological weapons and There's no good way to get rid of them They wanted to incinerate them in Arkansas and other places and of course the people did not want that It just goes into the air and you know spreads So they asked him if he had any mushrooms that might have an effect on this So, you know, he's a pretty serious scientist and he took 28 samples that he gave them blind samples one through 28 Didn't tell them what they were sent it off to the Pentagon. This is for sarin nerve gas Which is right up there with plutonium right a human made super deadly and indestructible basically So he kind of forgot about it. They give him security clearance all this stuff six eight months later He got a callback sure enough two of the mushrooms had worked. They completely Metabolized the sarin no trace left whatsoever One of them is the turkey tail mushroom which Paul also used on his mother for breast cancer stage four breast cancer Successfully it's now going through trials at the NIH And the other one which he doesn't know if and say publicly which was the super performer was psilocybin mushrooms magic mushrooms, which were the super performer for detoxifying, you know Sarin vx so go enjoy your own conclusions, but they don't call them magic mushrooms for nothing So The Rodale study that has come out recently. They've been doing very careful trials for about the last decade Agriculture is basically responsible now for about 30% of of GHDs of global greenhouse gases, right? This is it's the single most destructive human activity against the environment Farming it's death by farming and what we have done this so badly. It's almost, you know, it can be hard to do it worse in a Lot of ways So what do we do with that?  You don't need government. This is actually in some ways more about engaging the business sector Then the government in that regard But I think this is an area where going to scale makes tremendous sense to do it and without going into some of the Biology behind it, but I don't think there's much question that this is largely true And if we wanted to stay below the 1.5 centigrade level, you know, two degrees is actually too high We've got to stay even under that from what we understand You know, who knows what's going to happen here But if we transitioned about 55 percent of our farmlands by 2020 that would take that would take it down I would take it down by if we did half of that we would take it down by 55 percent Which would keep us below 1.5 centigrade So this is really really big stuff that we're you know looking at here And this works it at all scales and the tropics and the temperate zones, you know and so forth When we talk about bringing things to scale it can be confusing because it doesn't always mean getting bigger In many cases, especially if we're talking about resilience It means multiplying spreading these things at smaller scales, you know, like distributed energy is a very good analogy for that You don't want one giant centralized solar power plant in Navajo Nation that provides all the electricity for the whole US You want distributed energy all over the country. The same is true of farming. The issue there right now Is that what we are growing is really not what we need when you go to the farmers market, for instance It's pretty much fruits and vegetables and artisanal product products. That's not what we actually eat Michael Abelman has talked a lot about this. We need grains. We need legumes This is what really needs to be scaled up at the mid-range level What we also we did a whole project in New Mexico that I'll mention just briefly called dreaming New Mexico To look at local food sheds and what's really needed But there's what's called farming in the middle, which is farms that are about a thousand acres to three thousand acres Those are often the ones most under threat Those are the ones we actually most need right now that is scalable to spread that and to conserve Whatever we do have right now to not let those farms go down or that farmland to be lost So that's something we really need to be looking at in a much more analytical way is what should we be growing and that mid-range scale is Actually, that's those are large farms. If you've ever been on a farm 1000 to 3000 acres is a lot So I wouldn't underestimate it at the same time small and medium-sized family farms are absolutely not going to feed the world I mean, let's not kid ourselves So I think we need to be extremely reality based here and we're dealing with you know beyond urgency We're an emergency from here on out pretty much So we need to act very quickly on some of these things. So there's a really important book called world agriculture By Jason clay at WWF. This is I don't know about 10 years ago that Jason did this We first had binaries at Jason at binaries. I think in 91 or 92 Genius grade. I mean he's work that he does but anyway what they did is they looked at the 15 major global agricultural commodities To understand whether we could transition production at that scale You know of agricultural commodities and with green practices and what they found is absolutely It's doable. The book gives case history after case history of how it can actually be done Shrimp rice, you know cotton and weed and all of it and The most interesting takeaway from the whole thing was the most successful models Where ones where workers had a stake in it Duh, you know, I'd like to form one more nonprofit before I die called the duh Institute, you know We'd have plenty of work. That's for sure But but that work it's it's already been proven out, you know again It needs to be we need to understand what are the triggers that are going to now make that into an actual reality And make it happen, but we cannot ignore large-scale commodity production And as I said, the world is simply not going to be fed by by small family farms Most of you here are probably are pretty familiar with holistic range land management as it's now called But you know the meat industry clearly is a huge problem in the way that it's done now We definitely eat too much meat and same time meat production is not going to go away I know that Christiana is going to be talking about this later, nor should it necessarily go away and Back to kind of by an years world in biomimicry the idea of imitating nature Essentially what holistic range land management does and I'm sure other people who are far more knowledgeable about the practicalities than I am But it mimics the original patterns in the US of migratory herds of ungulates mainly the buffalo in the United States And the key hallmark is what's now called in management move them and mob them The real problem is keeping the animals in one place for too long and as a result the grass cycle never gets to complete So the animals graze it down to the nub and it's simply unable to regrow it causes soil erosion You know many many many problems what huge water problems because the animals are stuck in one place So basically instead of having coyotes and wolves to chase the you know the herds of ungulates What they use are electric fences mobile electric fences which get moved and the cycle of the grasslands You know is able to regenerate appropriately and what they find which is what you know when the when the Europeans first came to North America In the Great Plains the grass was chest high literally and there were huge herds of buffalo So what it turns out is the buffalo co-created that ecosystem they created the grasslands which brought the rain Which you know and fertilized the soil and you know it's a complete food web and a hub but the animals actually co-created that So that's being done very successfully a number of places around the world now You can do large scale meat production in that kind of a setting while you're also actually regenerating the ecosystem at the same time The question of how much meat we should eat and all the other health consider that's a whole another discussion Practical terms this is a really significant thing So I wanted to mention one other cup two other things but we did a project called Dreaming New Mexico My partner tragically died of cancer you know about six seven years into the project Peter Warshall whom I honor in this moment Who is a polymath and I mean blindingly brilliant incredible mind but so the idea was very simple Which is that dreaming the future can create the future and most of us as people seeking change and as activists End up in a position of resistance most of the time of just trying to stop all the bad stuff from happening And it's an endless struggle I mean it's always coming at you right and it's you got to resist But what happens is we don't step back and ask what it is that we really really want you know what it's actually our dream If we what does success look like right you know if we really got what we want instead of settling for what we think we can get What would the world look like so that was the premise we started with and no one had ever done this that we were aware of Anyway at a state level of trying to take a systems view of what that would be for so the year is 2020 We've done everything right what is the age of local food sheds look like right what would that actually be And so I'm sorry the materials didn't arrive but we can make sure that they do and it is all online but we created future maps And we created actually a shadow think tank as we called it of the you know top people we could find across a very diverse spectrum of Both areas of activity as well as perspectives and kind of worked with them to develop co-develop all these different dreams And then we started a mapping process of literal mapping and when you look at a state like New Mexico It's really just lines on a map that have nothing to do with the reality on the ground right with the actual ecology So what we discovered very quickly if you're talking about local food sheds and this was Peter Warshall's first innovation Was these are actually agro eco regions New Mexico has six different agro eco regions they're quite distinct They're defined by the watershed first and foremost and then of course by climate and micro climate They're also defined by what we call culture sheds which people often don't look at but you know that that's a significant part of it So I think that in looking at this kind of mapping it's tremendously important to start you know from both the ecology But then also to integrate the culture and you know oftentimes people in the local food movement get a bit carried away Which I understand I appreciate the passion but you know every we got to be 100% local right well great Would you like to give up coffee or chocolate or mangoes or you know where do you want to start so so that's just not going to happen So that was one of the things that we tried to really confront in in this meaningful way of well how do you deal with that With the fact that in fact what you're doing is going to be limited in that regard and the conclusion that we came to Which we actually put to the governor was that New Mexico should become the first fair trade state that we are going to find sister communities With kindred values and practices and we're going to trade for the things that we want because if we went 100% local in New Mexico Which we couldn't do anyway we'd be putting out a business hundreds of small farmers in Mexico subsistence organic farmers Is that the intention of course not you know so why don't we instead trade with them So that was a really really important thing another thing you probably are familiar with local economies it's called the lowest model Lois local ownership import substitution right those are really the two primary cornerstones of what you're looking for So what more widely distributed local ownership but the import substitution okay very interesting question So we went you know there's we have a pamphlet with it with the age of local food sheds that you'll see just as incredibly rich with data And what we found was the data did not exist for a lot of things that we were trying to find so the state of New Mexico like most places The only thing that they track is exports right because that's cash in the bank that's how the the mentality of that economy So what do we import in the way of food that we could substitute for so we had to actually construct that data as best we could And just to give you one small example that blew our minds but okay suppose you wanted to have all organic dairy in New Mexico cheese and milk and so forth It turned out it would take one medium sized organic dairy to supply the entire state I mean that was it So you know it's that kind of thing same with chickens it would take a couple of farms you know so the stuff once you dial in on the granular It's it's a whole it's much more doable than anybody really thinks so I know my time is almost out I just wanted to close with two short very short stories So Peter Warshall did a lot of consulting in the 90s for major food companies and everybody sustainability was kind of the first wave of corporate sustainability you know consciousness at that time So he had spent about a day and a half with Paul Hawkin with a giant food company I forgot I think I can't remember who it was maybe anyway but So they went through sustainability 101 and not deprive future generations of what we have now and leave the world a better place and blah blah So finally they asked okay anybody got and can you tell me one product in your company you know that you would consider to be sustainable It was kind of a long pause finally guy raises his hand he says well we have this breakfast cereal and it has a shelf life of six months So we got a lot of education to do still you know and then my theory of social change is that so because of plantation agriculture we're good cacao You know the basis of chocolate is under tremendous threat and within probably less than 10 years we're going to see a worldwide chocolate shortage So my theory of change is I believe that at that moment the women of the world are going to rise up and take over and do it right May it be so So I think I'm out of time is there Q&A at all or we need to keep moving I really enjoyed the stats and the nuances and the key themes and ideas that you raised there We are quite short on time but I know people will be really eager to ask questions so we thought we'd allow time for two questions So first two hands up get the prize You're a winner Wonderful talk I'm wondering if you could tell me the how far is the reach of Monsanto I have started a library garden and I've been working it for the last six years You know I get seeds from different companies and I'm going to look your company up Do you know the reach of Monsanto? I've been told by workers that I've called certain seed companies and they say they get their seeds from Monsanto Various vegetables Well actually it's you know it's more political and economic reach that they have in a lot of ways but you know they're informally called Monsatan I mean they're truly a bad actor and you know I people you know I'm for the death penalty for corporations They are given a legal charter they're a legal fiction they exist only on paper they're not a person I mean we all know this So I think that we're reaching the point where there may be an international criminal court that actually you know goes after this But Monsanto the destructive capacity of that company in particular is unimaginable So I think that it's going to have to reach that point but you know I'm not sure exactly what your question was The reality on the ground is that genetic engineering of plants and the way that they're doing it is very brittle When you think about the vulnerability of a monoculture what they've done with genetic engineering is to take that an octave further This is the ultimate monoculture where every single plant is genetically identical So particularly as climate disruption comes in these things are super vulnerable and we're going to see really big crashes There's also a ton more research coming out about now about glyphosate and water pollution and all kinds of health effects from that So I mean I think there's a fuse lit and you know that whole aspect of Big Ag is going to crash and burn But a lot of it is really political not biological in that sense so I'm not sure if that's what your question was about Okay thank you so we've got one more question before we do some stretching exercises from the lovely Jess Hi Kenny, when I went looking for the most sustainable free-ranging meat I could find It turned out not to be at the grocery store at all it was actually raising itself in the forest and treating itself rather well comparatively And so it took up hunting of venison in America and have been sort of dumbfounded ever since that Apparently none of that meat ever makes its way to the grocery store any restaurant or anything The actual role of a professional hunter is outlawed in America there's no such thing it's just a recreational pastime And in California suburbs there's herds of deer walking through people's backyards while the meat that ends up on the table has come from a concentration camp What's going on? You know I think it's a really great point to raise Josh and there are absolute pests on the east coast of the US as well I mean tremendous hazards with driving and roadkill and all that so I think it's a really valid point in light of the conversation this morning about pests I mean there's overpopulation because the predators are gone and the whole natural balance has been upended So I think that kind of question is really valuable to raise as to why we aren't doing that So I know I've got to get off the stage here so thank you thank you I really appreciate it


Why it matters whether the problem with emotions like anger or in general lack of tranquility, whether we conceive of that as disrupting our ability to assess true propositions or whatever, or whether we need to think of this as going the other direction causally. That's something to do with how we're thinking about propositions that affects whether we have emotions or not. Now, why is that an important thing? Why was I dwelling on that point at length? It seems like such a minor detail of the theory. Why did I keep coming back to that point and sort of obnoxiously saying, no, you're wrong, you've got it exactly backwards, which you were very good supportive of. And I think I know from subsequent discussion with you that you understand the reason, but I'm wondering if other people clued into what we were talking about. It's a rather fundamental point about the stoic theory of emotion. Why would it matter which direction we were talking about? Okay, Alex. It's kind of the key difference between epicureanism and stoic philosophy, because one of them is the end for one and the other is the end for the other. So, anyhow, you look at that situation, you would be going towards a stoic end or an epicurean end? Well, I don't follow you. How is it epicurean? What does it have to do with epicurean? Wasn't the discussion between... We didn't actually talk about epicureanism in that discussion at all, I don't think. Maybe I'll take another comment. Right, the question is why, let's try to be as exact as possible, there was a claim that the problem with having emotional states is it means that we become irrational and don't ascend to the true proposition so we can't live in accordance with nature. And I said, well, that sounds good. That all sounds like stoic slogans, like living in accordance with nature and controlling emotions and so forth. But the model actually goes in a different causal direction, opposite of that. It has to do with not ascending to the right propositions, producing emotions. Now, why is it relevant which direction that goes in? Why does that matter and why do I insist on that? Yeah, because I think when we were talking about that being ascended to a position by living in accordance with nature was simply a by-product of living in an emotional state. You don't pursue having the right attitude and propositions but simply the by-product of pursuing living in accordance with nature. So therefore it's not causal but it's not the intent. I think that's what we were trying to get at last time. Well, so whether I ascend to the propositions is a by-product of the emotional state that I have. Is that what you just said? Yes, yes. I think that's what you just said. So then in your view, this is sort of similar to what Daniel said. It goes like this. I have an emotional state like anger and then I have these propositions. It'd be good to have examples of what we mean but if I'm in that emotional state then I end up ascending to false propositions and that's bad because I need to affirm true propositions in order to live in accordance with nature. Okay, so let's say that the proposition is somebody insults you and you're angry, right? Well, why don't you actually give an example of a proposition? So that's a sentence or something. You gave an example of an action, somebody insults you but we need something like somebody insulted me and that's a bad thing or it's bad that I was insulted. So a proposition is an attitude based on something else. Is the proposition like a virtue? Well, proposition in general is just a sentence. It's just a predication of something of a subject. Okay, so it's a linguistic entity and in the Stoic theory it's a lactate. It's a sayable. It's a thing that's said but it's a really simple thing. It's a subject and a predicate. Okay, but certain subjects and predicates combined in certain ways, some of them are true and some of them are false. So if I say that it's raining right now and it's not raining then that's false. If I say it is raining right now and it is then that's true. And why is it true? Because truth means saying of what is that it is and also it is saying of what is that it is not. So a proposition isn't a spooky, scary, logical thing. It's just a sentence. Now the relevant ones as far as both virtue and a motion of concern are sentences about values, about things being good or bad. Okay? And we seem to have a pretty plausible thing here that we don't like anger, for example, because anger makes me a scent to false propositions like I become angry because somebody insulted me, insulted my having shaved my beard because when I came in and you asked this mocking question of me then I could have thought this student is insulting me at night because I became angry and then I think this is a bad thing and so consequently I do something unjust like failure in the class or refuse to accept the revision of your paper and so then I don't live in accordance with nature and so that's why the Stoics don't like anger because it makes us a scent of false propositions and when I ascend to false propositions I don't live in accordance with nature that is I'm not virtuous so I'm not giving the end of life. Now that sounds like a pretty plausible story to me and it's using a lot of great phrases of Stoicism and of ancient philosophy but it's actually not the theory and if this was the theory then the work we read last time on tranquility to soul wouldn't make any sense like what he's saying to do and so forth would have no value and no worth and would be totally in vain so it's a nice plausible sounding theory that somebody could defend it's just not the theory we're talking about so we need to understand the details of the philosophical account of how it works and all propositions relate to emotional states how that relates to living in accordance with nature So I think if you're going this way saying that our emotional states determine what propositions we ascend to that kind of undermines the whole view about what nature is and what wisdom is because so they have the view of human nature and they have the leading part of the soul and then the final part or that God being like somebody I didn't hear that You pulled the rational leading part of the soul There aren't parts of the soul That is the human soul the hegemonic soul So actually that's pretty important is that you lapsed into a non-Stoic psychological theory there there's parts of the soul So parts of them could be rational parts of them could be irrational and then there's an issue of trying to modulate the irrational one like use reason to control the emotional state or modulate it so it's just the right amount of emotion and you're right that's a peripatetic Aristotelian account of emotion based on platonic, tripartite psychology Now the Stoics reject that view of the soul Let's just start with that point There aren't parts of the soul But they did think that the leading part of reason determined what propositions we ascend to Okay good, now that's true and that's on the path to understanding why they can't hold this model of emotion and why they need to hold a different one Now Luke, you've been very patient I keep avoiding eye contact with you but go ahead and say your piece No, I mean if emotional states proceed our ability to ascend to rational propositions and Seneca's exhortation to use the propositions or the virtues which are forms of propositions to modulate our emotional states in a cheap train doesn't make any sense because if we're already pissed off we can't ascend to the virtues which will let us be less pissed off so it doesn't operate this whole mechanism Exactly, so that is the key reason So you've now got the psychology right that I've got this leading part of the soul and I need to think of myself as the one who has control of which propositions I ascend to and so it must be a matter of which propositions I ascend to that produce the relevant emotional state and the reason that's important is exactly as Luca just said because the Stoics in theory have a cure for these diseases called emotions these pathological affections or passions called emotions they've got a therapy or a cure for them a cognitive behavioral therapy now what does that mean? It means we change the cognition so we change this part of the equation we change the part that has to do with which propositions are being ascended to and thereby change the emotional state and so the emotional state, Toran, is a byproduct of what propositions we ascend to you had exactly the backwards model that Daniel did according to which ones I ascend to was just a byproduct of the emotional state if that was the case then there would be no point of attachment where Seneca's advice could do anything I would have to be in an antecedent emotional state in order to make any use of his propositions but then they would be worthless to me because I would already be in the emotional the relevant emotional state so now there are theories of the emotions that go that direction and so they work on trying to directly affect mood and emotion and that sort of thing and that is the great promise some people would say triumph but I don't think we're there yet but promise of things like pharmacological solutions to psychological problems that maybe we can just directly modify the person's mood and emotional state and then they'll be able to reason more clearly and so they'll see, for example, that their lives aren't so bad and they'll ascend to different propositions and accordingly won't be as depressed or whatever or have the same kind of anxiety but insofar as there's a sort of psychotherapeutic solution where through talking and rationalizing and reasoning about things we can produce different emotional states we have to see the causal arrow going in a different direction here so one thing I'm still confused about that in it going from propositions to emotional state is doesn't that contradict the stoic point where it's not that we're moving distress and pain in the final end, is that virtue is supposed to be the final end that's supposed to be the highest good so if you're saying that this isn't a diagram of means and ends means and ends are a matter of what we're consciously doing what we're pursuing and we're actually talking about a different kind of causality here not that kind of final causality about being motivated by goals and things happening in the future but actually what efficiently produces the other thing which one actually produces it now, under any of these models that's to make sense I mean even the parapetetic one the goal is to live in accordance with nature but they have a different concept of the value of emotions and they think that having the Aristotle for example thinks that you should have the right amount of anger you don't try to eliminate or extirperate anger you try to have the right amount of anger because there's to be something wrong with you if you don't have anger in certain situations like suppose you witness some injustice or something if you're not angry about that something's wrong with your character right and so that's not the Stoic view but if you had a view like that then you take the emotions as more primary to our agency and you try to modulate them and so forth Stoics don't try to modulate emotions they try to get rid of them now as some people are writing papers on it's complicated because they not only try to extirperate them but they try to for example developing self-control to feel emotions in the right way and there was another title that captured this emotions extirpated and approved by Stoics okay so there are these there are these positive emotional states but they too are products of reasoning in a certain way and so as crazy as this theory sounds the idea is that you can reason your way to not just not suffering from bad emotions but all the way to happiness and success in life that's what it's about is just reasoning in the right way and that you can always do that and it's always within your power even if you're being tortured on a rack you can still assent to the right things and not assent to the wrong things and so live like a god so it's really crucial to understand the difference between those two and not to just sort of muddle the idea of emotions propositions living in accordance with nature together but see actually what the substance of the theory is but now are there other comments or just resting all those on the table go ahead so as I understand that you could have propositions that you believe to be true or propositions that you kind of have knowledge of to be true and so the ones that you believe to be true would kind of lead to the states that are more irrational like the passions or whatever that's all you end up and then the propositions where you have knowledge of to be true would lead to the you have to be happy where that's kind of the rational side yes that's correct you've got the terminology correct and that's because of course it's only opinions that can lead to emotional states and it's only knowledge that can lead to the good emotional states now why do I say that it could only be that that we could only use the term opinions for one and only use the term knowledge for the other can anyone think of just that epistemological point let's just concentrate on that to be using and insisting on that terminology to me opinion, knowledge, it's all the same right no why is it that you couldn't have a case where knowledge produced the bad kind of emotion but an opinion produced the right kind of emotion why does that not make any sense Esther is it true that this isn't a quarter of what nature yes it's because if I am producing a bad emotion that I am necessarily embracing a falsehood having a false value statement for example that he insulted my beard and that was a really bad thing and therefore I'm hurt about it yes and therefore I'm outraged and angry about it right and everyone's going to be made to suffer for this so and that's false so it obviously can't be knowledge because knowledge can't be false knowledge can only be true girls it's not knowledge but opinion can certainly be false and so if I have so it must be the opinion that I have this proposition or this judgment you know that's another way to think of propositions judgments we could just call them that they're judging that A is B that's what a proposition is it's just a judgment that A is B and A either could be B in which case and I could judge it that way in which case it's true or A could not be B and if I judge it that it is then I'm ascending to something false so I could certainly have an opinion that malicious insult and so forth I could have an opinion that it's bad I can't have knowledge of it because it's false and knowledge can't be false but opinions can be false so if I ascend to that then I could suffer from this emotional state called anger okay so that's very important now Chester you were raising your hand too no I was just saying like if it's synagogues we would just say if there's a proposition that empty your emotions that's the knowledge so I'm sorry could you say it again so if there's a proposition that like empty your emotions like just get rid of all your emotions is that the true knowledge well tell me this magical proposition that's going to get rid of all of my emotions so there's no knowledge so there's no knowledge isn't the optimal emotion state of so it's just empty of emotions yes so if there's no proposition well except as Mutzi and some other people have pointed out they do though there's a lot of rhetoric about completely getting rid of emotions there still are these approved emotions we don't even really call them emotions so yes let's say in general the goal is apathy which means apathy not suffering not experiencing these emotional states that's the goal yes but it seems to me that the question was is there some proposition I can ascend to that's just going to allow me to immediately achieve this goal of apathy of not suffering from any emotions no of course there can't just be one proposition for that why can't there just be one proposition that would dispel us from this disease of emotions why couldn't it just be one proposition that's the question what is the minimum number of propositions that it would have to be let's put the question that way ideally what are the minimum number of propositions that would rid me of every emotion yeah one per emotion that's very good and so how many kinds of emotions are there very many no I mean infinitely many maybe or maybe there's just one but actually I think there's a more definite answer didn't I give a handout that actually lays them all out okay so there's four right so I would need at least to always be ascending to the true propositions in each of those four categories now each of those divides into a number of subcategories and that may be infinite there may be infinite shades of different kinds of anger there's hatred, there's anger, etc and I mean there's an infinite number of continuous variations within that field of that emotion but it all comes down to the same thing believing that something bad is present to me that isn't and so as long as I never ascent to a proposition that has that form and that that content gets filled in then I should never experience that emotional state but that happens all the time people insult my beard they insult my threadbare clothes and and my anger about students not returning books that I've loaned them and every day there's constant sources of possible anger in me believing that bad things are happening that aren't actually bad and so that's maybe not infinite but indefinite number of propositions things that could anger me okay so but there is a definite answer to that if it was really just there's an unlimited number and the four kinds that they give are just sort of examples but there's an infinite number of emotions out there think about the consequences of that if that was really infinite then we could never pin down which true propositions would answer to those possible false propositions so we could never hope to ultimately control emotions through cognitive behavioral therapy because you can't traverse an infinite sequence of propositions so that's a really scary thought I mean maybe it's true but if so then hopefully we're going to come up with some very good drugs to deal with anger there are some pretty good ones but they're not perfect by any stretch yeah I mean couldn't human emotion be like on a I guess a limited spectrum kind of like I mean with human eyesight there's technically an unlimited amount of frequencies yeah and I think something like that's their view yeah because we only have like a well there's an unlimited amount of frequencies and colors we only have a limited spectrum this obsession that they have defining each emotion so if you look at that they gave you each one is not just a name of an emotion it's a definition of what would cause that emotion the reason they're obsessed with definitions is not just because they're like really pedantic people that you know try to act like walking dictionaries or something it's because they're trying to define that is to limit the scope of emotions and if they couldn't do that because there was an infinitely vast field and the mind was really that you know that extensive and maybe it is but if it was then there'd be no hope of defining every single one so there'd be no hope of figuring out on a rational basis how to avoid it and so of course that's a possibility though I mean let's not always convert to stoicism it might be that the reason why we're basically no farther along in treating depression and anxiety much less fear of death and belief that life is short and things like that maybe the reason we haven't been able to make any advancement over ancient philosophy about this is just because there is an infinite number of things it is irrational it is absurd and we can't just define our way out of it and think about things differently and have different cognition of it or I guess just continuing with the comparison I made with color it's like there's technically like an infinite amount of shades of red starts turning orange but there's still like a set amount that we would still call red or like there's like on a spectrum of emotion there's probably many different kinds of anger but we could still call it anger yes and as I said I think that's something like their like their view but we better hope that you know propositions are very definite things they predicate one thing of another so unless we've got really good fuzzy logic or something where we don't just need very true false statements we're going to need very definite definitions of each thing along that spectrum and I don't know how good our definitions are of the one millionth shade of red or whatever as long as we can still define it as red I guess we're okay just like we need to be able to define anger even if we can't define every infinite subspecies of it but I think they shade into each other and it's not it's not that big of a deal but maybe it is maybe it's like when I say it's not that big of a deal you know white beige whatever just painted out whatever you want that is not how my partner would see the remodeling of our house okay so sometimes these things matter and sometimes they don't okay so any other comments about that I mean I'm sorry to digress but if we don't get this point we're sort of missing the whole value of the theory yeah well wasn't that one of Cicero's main criticisms of stoicism that they were creating all of these definitions to define things and if you are defining these things that are going to be the solution to these issues and you yourself are defining them and isn't that kind of like a well um isn't that kind of what like a circular reasoning well I don't think they would agree that it's circular it would be circular if I mean we this could be a circular diagram if we thought propositions cause emotional states and then emotional states affect propositions then that would be circular they bite the bullet and say it's a unidirectional thing okay now and so what was Cicero's criticism about stoic definition, mongering and terminology and so forth cause that isn't it it's good that you noticed that he was criticizing them on that score but what was the criticism have you ever been saying that their technology just wasn't better than the ancients like the old yes yes academic, oristotelian you know old fashioned academic philosophy he's basically saying that their terminologies weren't more useful yes they created variations unnecessary variations of terms talking about things like cataleptic fantasy you know graspable impressions and sort of talking about just appearances or something right and he doesn't like that creating a massive technical vocabulary that nobody that he doesn't really seem able to grasp and certainly not able to translate into Latin that inferior language of philosophy so that is actually the complaint is that the stoics reinvent terminology but that's not specifically a criticism about their theory of emotions because there they just do use the conventional terminology so if you look at the terminology on the handout that I've given out twice now you'll see it's all the standard stuff about you know distress pleasure, anger, things like that those aren't they didn't rename anger right and insist that you call it rage or something like that or call it rage anger or something and create neologisms like they do in their physics and in their epistemology they just use absolutely standard terminology for these things because it's a diagnosis of what's happening what people are complaining about I get too angry I have fears of this and that and I have desires for such and such so they couldn't very well come up with an obscure vocabulary on an issue where they interface with the non the people that aren't devoted to the school but they could benefit from their therapy yeah modern equivalent of this is cognitive therapy and I remember when last quarter I took a class, a college class and somebody came in who actually is a he gives CBT to patients and the main focus of his terminology was we called a hexaflex and what's important is that it sounds sorry? a hexaflex it sounds really you know superficial I'm just trying to amologize the point is that there is this kind of disregard of emotions the different destructive emotions that people have I thought it was a square there are six instead of four there was overlap there are emotions more than cognitive states the six cognitive states there is a lot of overlap between a lot of them that he posited and so therefore in this modern kind of sense of sort of thought it isn't probably defined by one emotion it's kind of an overlap by not to be overlap you move on and just be able to treat the emotions and move on you don't get so caught up in the definition of things well that's more and more departure from the stoicism if you don't get caught up in the definition and you don't try to limit and figure out exactly what the proposition in this person's mind is so I understand it a little bit differently that you actually do need to become conscious of what the thing is but then counteract it with other propositions so if I'm thinking that everybody's trying to insult me I need to start thinking no they aren't they're just they don't care, they care about their own lives or if they slight me or something that's because they're having a hard day or something like that then I replace these false thoughts with true thoughts and then so I don't go off on the tangent of the false thought and I certainly don't ruminate about it over and over again thus producing the emotion but it's I to me it's not as promising as a solution to say oh well just don't think about it anymore just move on don't think about that proposition it's sort of like don't think about an elephant in the room right now it doesn't it doesn't really work I mean if we could just stop thinking about things no problem but actually stopping thinking about things stopping thinking stopping this train of thought is almost impossible it takes you years and years of dedicated devotion to studying meditation techniques in order to be able to like stop your mind from thinking for 30 seconds you're constantly thinking whether you like it or not and the stoic idea is so you better start getting that thinking in accordance with nature in the sense of the thinking is ascending to true propositions and then you'll be happy because of it if that thinking which is more or less inevitable almost impossible to stop filled with falsehoods then you're going to be mentally ill essentially to varying degrees and you're going to be foolish so therefore we have developed these techniques that have to do with giving to people to think about them differently


Welcome back to the session on latex. In this session, we will learn to cite and style the references in our document. Whenever we write papers, articles, books, etc., we read a lot of material which could be in various forms. While using the ideas given in them, it is a practice to attribute in our document. For this, the first step is to create a bibliography that is a .bib file which would contain our references in bibtech format. Let us go to tech studio and create a .bib file. I click new, I save it as biblio.bib and I will click save. Let us go back to our slides. So, what goes in the bib file? Other citations. Some examples are in proceedings, article and book. Consider that you want to cite an article you would write at article, then in the curly brace followed by the key which you will use to cite in the document, then mention the details like title, author, journal, etc. Book on the other hand will have different set of details. Well, do not worry, you do not have to write all of this manually for citing it. We get the bibtech either using Google Scholar, ACM, IEEE or similar other sites. Let us look at it one by one. Let us say I am already on the ACM page viewing a paper called an elastic SQL, etc. Over here on the right, there is an option called bibtech. Let us click on it and there would be a pop-up which will display what needs to be put in the bib file in order to attribute it. Let us copy paste it in the bib file we just created. So, I copy this and in the bib file I will paste it. I click save. Same goes for other conferences as well, well but the most preferred way would be to search the intended reference on the Google Scholar that is scholar.google.in. Let us say my search query is database and I get these search results. See I want to cite principles of database systems by JDUlman. Over here there is a site option. Click on it, choose the bibtech format and the bibtech appears here. Let us copy paste this in the bib file we created. Let us save it. Well, sometimes you may want to cite only the URL for example, wikipedia. So, for that instead of at book or at article we write at MISA and we write the key as say wiki comma title equal to in curly brace we write wikipedia comma we want to cite the URL. So, we write how published equal to in double quotes we write slash URL and we write https colon slash slash en dot wikipedia dot org slash wiki slash wikipedia. Well, this is nothing but the URL of wikipedia. Let us save it and if you see the key of Ulman is Ulman 1984 principles, well you can change it in case you do not like it. So, we just write Ulman and if you see the key for this in proceedings is big. So, we just write the first word. Let us save it. Now, go back to our slides. Now that we have created a bib file we would need to go ahead with citing them in the document. The command is slash site and the key that we wrote then we need to mention the bibliography style and the bib file we created. The bibliography styles are plain, alpha, unsorted, ACM etcetera. I am switching to tech studio. In session number 34 I already have some content over here. So, we just scroll down and before the end document we write slash bibliography style we write plain and we say slash bibliography we write the file name which is biblio. Now let us build and run. Notice that the word references have appeared. Now, let us cite them. So, over here we write slash site the first reference for the database we write slash site old man and over here for the wiki link we write site wiki. Let us build and run. Notice that the references and the citations have appeared. Now, let us change the style to alpha. So, instead of plain we write ALPHA. Let us save it. Whenever we change bibliography style it is a good practice to clean the auxiliary files which latex has generated. So, we click tools and we say clean auxiliary files. It will delete the log files, auxiliary files, DBL etcetera. Let us click ok. Well now let us build and run. The style is changed to alphabets. It appears over here as well. Let us go back to our slides. Well, each conference like ACM, IEEE have their own latex templates. You would find them on their websites. You can find the IEEE template over here. Now, let us go back to tech studio and we add some random content slash lip sim 1 dash 2. Let us add it over here as well. Let us build and run. So, we have some content over here. Now, let us change the document class to IEEE trun and we write conference here. This is a style suggested by IEEE. Note that the IEEE trun dot cls file lies in the same directory as my session 34 dot tx. Let us change the bibliography style as well. So, instead of alpha we write IEEE trun. Let us clean the auxiliary files. So, we write tools, clean auxiliary files, click ok. Let us build and run. Well, this is the IEEE format. These would be the only steps needed to format the paper based on the conference style. So, using latex you can change the formatting of your papers, reports in a very short time and without any hassle. Research scholars actually consider this as a blessing. So, in this session we learnt to add references, change the bibliography style and format the paper in IEEE format. Thank you. Have a nice day.


Welcome to the ROC3! Hello everyone. Welcome to the talk of Tobi Buchberger from FH Campus Wien. Here we'll talk about the special feature of TOX, a new kind of distributed instant messenger. Tobi will talk about the authenticated key exchange in TOX and how to do it right and secure. If you have any questions on the TOX, please click on the chat tab below the video and leave us a message. Thank you. Hello, welcome to Tobi here. Yeah, welcome everybody to my talk about adopting the noise key exchange in TOX. In this talk I will present the results of my master thesis which I conducted this year also on FH Campus Wien. Yeah, and I will start by shortly explaining what is TOX. TOX is a peer-to-peer messaging protocol and a free and open source library implementation thereof. This protocol provides features like instant messaging, voice calls, readers calls, screen and screen oil byshadowing. The development of TOX started in 2013 as a reaction to Snowden's leaks regarding the NSA's mass surveillance of the internet and is intended as an entrant encrypted distributed Skype replacement and to avoid confusion a short intro to the terminology in the context of TOX. So there is TOX, which is the name of the protocol in general. Then there is the implementation of the TOX protocol, which is called TOXCOR. This is a network library written in C and the clients. So the actual check lines that use TOXCOR have specific names like UDOC for example. So then a few more details on TOX. It is based on a cryptographic network library from Daniel J. Bernstein, which is called SOLT. And the protocol consists of multiple modules. And the module which is relevant for this talk is the net crypto module where the handshake is implemented. But there are other modules like distributed hash table module and the general crypto module and so on. The cryptographic primitives that are used in TOX are the X25-519-DV-Helman function for the key exchange, the XSR20 stream cipher for symmetric encryption and PULI-1305 for authentication. Then there is a distributed hash table, which is used to store peer information. And to add a friend in TOX, you need this user's TOXAT. And this TOXAT includes the static long-term public key of this user. So why am I doing this talk? Because there is a problem in the TOX handshake. And for TOX to establish an entrant encrypted communications channel, there is something that is called an authenticated key exchange. And authenticated key exchanges are protocols to set up a shared secret key for a communication session. This enables two parties to communicate securely over an untrusted public network like the internet. And such protocols are, for example, based on asymmetric cryptography like DVHelman. And the problem in TOX authenticated key exchange is that users are possibly affected by a so-called key compromise impersonation vulnerability. This vulnerability is in the TOX handshake because it is a home-brewed cryptographic protocol. And shortly, what does KCI mean? So key compromise impersonation enables reverse impersonation if a static long-term private key of a user is stolen. So if an attacker stole the private key of a user, it is trivial to impersonate this user. Because in TOX, if you stole the key of someone, you are more or less dispersing in TOX. And so you can start up a TOX client using the key and you are dispersing. But with KCI, it gets even worse because an attacker can also impersonate other people to you. So he can impersonate your TOX friends to you. So he uses your key and you then think you're talking to a friend of yours, but actually you're talking to someone else. So this KCI vulnerability can also be used to mount many of the middle attacks. The vulnerability was reported by Jason Donofeld in 2017, where Jason Donofeld is the creator of the WireGuard VPN. So to understand what this KCI issue is about, I will shortly explain how the TOX handshake looks like. So in the TOX handshake, there is an initiator, which is called Alice, and a responder, which is called Bob. And in fact, both peers can be initiated and responded at the same time. But to simplify this explanation, I will assume that only one peer is initiated. So at the beginning of the TOX handshake, there is a cookie face, which is in place to mitigate some kind of denial of service attacks. Then there is an authenticated gear exchange phase, which is in place to establish a secret key to encrypt the packets afterwards. And in the end, then there is a transport phase where just encrypted packets or messages or audio packets, etc., are exchanged. So during such a TOX handshake to establish this encrypted communications channel, there are in total three X2519 key pairs involved. There is a key pair necessary for the cookie phase of the handshake, which is a distributed hash table keeper. Then there is a static long-term keeper used during the authenticated key exchange. So this public key is the one that's also included in the TOX setting. And then there is an ephemeral keeper used, which is then there to establish this session secret key. And to use this key afterwards by using symmetric cryptography. And symmetric cryptography in TOX is established by using X20 polyethylene file. So let's shortly take a look at the authenticated key exchange phase of the TOX handshake. So as I said, both peers that want to perform such a handshake need to own a static long-term keeper, which identifies them. And a ephemeral keeper to establish the session secret. And the PRLIS is the initiate of the handshake. And PRBOP, which is abbreviated as B, is the responder to the handshake. And it starts like that. Alice sends the handshake message to POP. This handshake message is encrypted by using a shared secret, which is based on the static long-term keys, the private key of Alice and the public key of POP. This key is then used to encrypt the ephemeral public key from Alice for this session. Then POP does the same by responding with a handshake message to Alice. And POP uses his static private key and the public key from Alice and encrypts his ephemeral public key. After both peers successfully receive the handshake message of the other peer, we can use the electric curve differential operation to calculate the same shared secret session key. Alice by using her ephemeral private key, or by using his ephemeral private key, and by using the ephemeral public key from the other peer. So what does this authenticated key exchange provide for security? This authenticated key exchange as it is currently provides forward secrecy. It also provides mutual authentication, which means that both parties get authenticated during the handshake. Also, it provides key confirmation, which means that both peers prove the possession of the secret key. And it also provides deniability, which means that POP users can deny having taken part in a specific communication session because the communications are authenticated but not signed. But as I said, it provides no KCI resistance, therefore it is vulnerable to KCI attacks. So I will show you now how a simplified KCI attack works. To perform such a KCI attack, there needs to be a few prerequisites met. So our setting is that the attacker, which is called Mallory, abbreviated with M, impersonates POP to Alice. To do so, it is necessary that POP is a POP's friend of Alice. And then the attacker, Mallory, needs to compromise the static long-term private key from Alice. He also needs to know the static long-term public key from POP, for example, by knowing his toxicity. And he also needs to generate an ephemeral text 25.519 key pair. So to perform such an attack, it works like this. So in this case, the attacker, Mallory, is sending a handshake message to Alice and he does so by using the same shared secret that Alice would generate by using Alice's private key and POP's public key. With this, he can encrypt his ephemeral public key. Then Alice will think she received a handshake message from POP and will answer the handshake message with the same shared secret. Also can connect it with the same private key and the same public key as the attacker and encrypting their ephemeral public key. And in the end, the attacker and Alice are both able to direct the same session key by again using the exchanged public keys from the other and their private key. So, but during my research, I found out that the... So as I said, this really can be used to amount a minute to middle attack on a tox session. But during my research, I found out that the DHT key pairs involved in the cookie face of the handshake make an actual KCI attack on the tox handshake more complicated. This is because of this cookie face. The attacker's malware is not able to send a cookie response packet on their own, which means that it is necessary that Alice and POP need to be on at the same time and initiate a handshake on their own. So the attacker is not able to initiate a handshake on his own as I showed you on the slide before. And if Alice and POP initiate the handshake, then the attacker malware needs to interfere with the handshake packets after the cookie face. He does so by intercepting the handshake packet from Alice. This handshake packet contains enough information to send valid handshake packets to both peers. Then the attacker performs a handshake with Alice and POP separately and establishes two connections. And therefore, he also needs even more key pairs for both connections. And if this was successful, then the attacker is now able to eavesdrop, modify, insert or drop messages, which are exchanged between Alice and POP. And Alice and POP just think they are just talking to each other like normally. So as people don't like just to hear about theoretical vulnerabilities and also want to see actual exploit of these vulnerabilities, I tried to implement such a minute and middle attack program. But I discovered a few more difficult things for this attack because if the attacker is using Alice's private key to start the TOX core instance, like TOX is designed, this TOX core instance from the attacker would announce itself in the distributed hash table. So if Alice and the attacker use the same private key at the same time, this would mess up the state in the distributed hash table. And I didn't find out if it's possible to start the TOX core instance without announcing the distributed hash table because this would require more detailed understanding of the DHT module and I didn't have time to look at this in detail during my thesis. So this may, maybe there is a solution to this problem, but if not, this attack may not be possible at all to exploit in practice. Additionally, it would be necessary to adapt TOX to further to be able to use the handshake information from my peer in one handshake with another peer. So if I intercept as a table the packet from Alice, I need to use the information from Alice's handshake packet in the connection with Bob. And there would also be needed to implement a way to pass messages between two TOX connections because otherwise the attacker would need to paste their messages manually. Overall, this means that a complete redesign of the TOX category would be necessary to possibly make this attack available, which means that unfortunately I cannot show you a POC attack, but I will show you a proof of concept of the KCI resistant TOX handshake implementation. So how did I fix the KCI vulnerability in the TOX handshake? There is a framework which is called NOISE. This framework can be used to create so-called secure channel protocols based on DfM and key agreement. A secure channel protocol is for example SSL or TLS or SSH. This framework was created by Trevor Perrin, who is the co-author of the signal protocol. So from the signal messenger, this framework provides formally verified authenticated key exchange constructions, which are also designed to protect against this KCI vulnerability. The framework is there so that developers do not roll their own crypto and just use the formally verified construction from NOISE instead. Crypto protocols based on this NOISE framework are already used in, for example, the WireGuard VPN. It's also used in WhatsApp for client-to-server communication, and it's also used in Slack, for example, for internal server communication. I didn't implement the NOISE framework myself, but instead I used the available open source library, which is called NOISE C. And then this is just the implementation of the NOISE framework, which was implemented by Bruce Wendley. So, shortly an introduction to the NOISE protocol framework. In the crypto protocol based on NOISE, the parties involved have either long-stem static DfM and key pairs, and or ephemeral DfM and key pairs. Every NOISE protocol starts with two parties exchanging handshake messages. There are different handshake patterns available in the NOISE framework. These define which DfM and public keys are exchanged and a sequence of DfM operations which is performed. The results of these DfM operations get hashed into their secret keys, which are used later to send encrypted transfer messages. And the handshake messages which are exchanged in the NOISE protocol can already contain encrypted application chosen payloads.  And in the NOISE specification, there is defined which cryptographic derivatives are available. So how does a NOISE protocol for TOX look like? So as I already mentioned, there are these public keys which are exchanged using the TOX IDs in advance. So TOX users friend each other. So these are exchanged out of the band, for example via email. The matching NOISE pattern for this is called KAK. But I discovered that in the actual TOX core implementation, the responder of a TOX connection receives the public key of the initiator from the initiator's handshake packet. So therefore this is not compatible with the KAK pattern because to be able to receive a NOISE-based handshake message, it is necessary to initialize a handshake state beforehand with both pure static non-term keys. But yeah, so currently the TOX handshake is incompatible with the KAK pattern, but it may be possible to use the KAK pattern by redesigning a little bit and let's flip the structure a little bit. So I didn't want to do that yet. Therefore my solution was to use the so-called IK handshake pattern. This handshake pattern requires that the initiator senses static public key already encrypted in the handshake message. For a security point of view, it doesn't make a difference if I use the KAK or the IK pattern because they both provide the same security properties including the KCA resistance. So we'll try to show you how such handshake pattern works like in NOISE. So there is a pre-message from the responder to the initiator where he sent his static public key. Then this is the delimiter for the active exchanged handshake messages. And then the first message is sent by the initiator. This includes the initiator's ephemeral public key, then already development operation which already gives us a secret key. So I used to encrypt the initiator's static public key and then there is another development operation performed. Then the responder was presiding his ephemeral public key performing and performing two additional development operations which are all into the same shared secret key. And this is the handshake pattern and the full noise protocol that is used in TOGST is shown here. So this string just tells us that the NOISE IK pattern is used, that the X25-519 D.V. Hammond function is used, then charge 20 is used as stream cypher for symmetric encryption, there is poly-325 used for authentication and the charge 512-512 function. This noise protocol provides zero runtime encryption which means that in the handshake messages there are already encrypted payloads. But you need to be aware of that the security properties for the handshake payloads are weaker than for the transport payloads. The egg phase is 1.5 roundtrip time because so this would be one roundtrip which means that one message from the initiator and one from the responder. But the egg phase is 1.5 roundtrip time because the responder needs to receive the first transport message from the initiator to be assured of forward secrecy. And then the result of a handshake based on this noise protocol are two so-called cypher state objects and the cypher state objects contain key used for symmetric encryption and the corresponding nodes. This is for the symmetric encryption. So how does this noise protocol fit in the talk's handshake? As I mentioned, there are three phases and the first phase, the cookie phase remains unchanged in this noise-based handshake. And as you may already noticed the handshake payload encryption uses Charger 20 instead of Excelsior 20 which is used in other places in talks. This is because Excelsior 20 is not supported by the noise framework. Then in the transport phase there are two symmetric keys used instead of one because there is one key for encrypting packets to send them to the other peer and one key for decrypting packets received by the other peer. And so this noise-based handshake using this noise protocol is now a formally verified construction instead of a home protocol like before. And I implemented this noise protocol in the talk score in two different approaches. In my first approach I used Charger 20 for encryption during the handshake and also during the transport phase. In the second approach I used Charger 20 during the handshake phase and then Excelsior 20 during the transport phase. And I will now shortly explain why there are these two different approaches. In the Charger 20-based approach I just adapted the existing functions in talk score for the handshake to the new handshake and this was possible by only adding one new function and only adapt the existing functions. The handshake packets look now slightly different because the firmware public keys are sent unencrypted and the initiative is to include his encrypted static long-term key. You may remember from the slides before that in the old vulnerable handshake the firmware public keys were sent encrypted and it was not necessary for the initiator to include his encrypted static long-term key. Also, I didn't include a base nonce in the handshake packets because the nonces are now handled in this cypher state object by the noise stealer. And I adapted the functions in talk score which I used to encrypt and decubed messages to use noise c functions based on Charger 20 instead of the XS20 base functions with Charger talk score. So then I finished this implementation then I needed to test it. I did this by building my modified version of talk score together with midi-talks which is a minible talk client and together with noise c. Then I started multiple midi-talks instances on the DB and VMware and then I added these midi-talks instances as friends and tested packet loss between these instances by using predicate. And then I discovered that this implementation solution works only if there are no encrypted packets lost which is most likely to happen with a UDB based protocol. This is because the nonces are saved in the cypher state and if a packet is lost and the next packet is received then the wrong nonce will be used for encryption and therefore the nonce is for descent and for the perceived error out of sync which means that the decryption will not be possible. So the solution to this problem could be that the nonce could be sent together with an encrypted message and after receiving sets this nonce in the cypher state which is providing a function which is provided by an OSC but I discovered that the OSC library is not compliant with the null specification in this case. This is because the nonce needs to be greater or equal than the current nonce in the cypher state but this is not always the case if packets are received out of order. Also, if I would do this I would need to implement the packet loss functionality but there is already a packet loss functionality in Dockscar implemented which is based on XS220 which leads me to my second implementation approach. This implementation approach uses XS220 during the transport phase and is a solution to this packet loss problem from my first implementation because as I already mentioned XS220 is not supported by the null framework to circumvent this I added two functions to the OSC library to be able to retrieve the symmetric keys after a successful handshake instead of these cypher state objects then I can use these symmetric keys with the existing XS220.0755 encryption functions and these functions are also using then the existing packet loss and out of order packet functionality in Dockscar. This means that I need to include the base nonces again in the handshake packets as it is the case in the KCA everywhere handshake. I finished this implementation I tested it again by using Minitox and Playkinnet and now I discovered that the handshakes are also successful if there are up to 50% packets loss on both sides of the connection and also discovered that compared it to a normal handshake so a non-noise based handshake and I discovered that if more than 50% packet loss is too much for the Dockscar protocol in general to establish a stable connection. So my work is not finished here there is still some work to do in the future for example I could work or I could continue working on the PUC attack program but with the difficulties I mentioned I most likely think that this vulnerability cannot be exploited in the wild there are a few other things I could work on as I mentioned in the noise based handshake it's a noise will differentiate between an initiate and a responder but as I said in the Dockscar protocol as it is designed both peers can be initiated and responded at the same time so this is not ideal in the current implementation and could lead to practical problems which means that the handshake could take longer than an old KCI protocol handshake and also the error handling during the handshake implementation is further testing at review as I said the noise based handshake I implemented using the noise seal algorithm where the noise seal algorithm implements the whole noise framework and therefore supports all handshake patterns and cryptographic primitives but there is not everything necessary for the usage in Dockscar therefore we could implement the noise AK pattern explicitly for the use in Dockscar then we would have no noise seal algorithm as a dependency for Dockscar and in general less lines of code which means less possible vulnerable lines of code further future work could be a redesign of the Dockscar handshake as I said the current proof of constant implementation of the noise based handshake uses two different ciphers for symmetric encryption judge the 22nd handshake and access the 23rd transport phase this could maybe streamline to only use one of these two ciphers also my noise based handshake is currently not backwards compatible which means that clients using a Dockscar version with the vulnerable handshake would not be able to establish a connection to the noise based handshake Dockscar instances and when we already redesigned the Dockscar handshake we could maybe change the implementation to use the KK pattern instead of the IK pattern there is also some other interesting functionality which noise could provide noise enables session rig key which means that the key used to a far symmetric encryption could be updated after a defined number of messages also it is possible with noise to add quantum resistance by using an optional 256-bit pre-shared key this is for example already implemented in the wire guard window and besides the handshake it would be nice to conduct a full security analysis of the protocol and also of its implementation Dockscar because this wasn't done until now so if you want to have additional information there is the link to my full master's thesis right before my talk there was an introduction to Dockscar from Enceli from Q-Tux then there is also a Dockscrypt part here which is organized by SOF and in general for further information you can visit us at our assembly and and order on the 3.ioc channel this is just a few related work these are the references that I used during the talk and I thank you for your attention and special thanks to frankonin.net and the Hackerspace Bumpback for hosting the talk and now I open the questions Thanks a lot Tobi Buchberger for your talk if you have any questions on this talk please use the addresses you see if you press the chat tab below the video then you can send us a question there are no questions by now but I have a personal question Tobi why is it called noise protocol what is the noise in this protocol any idea about this to be honest I don't know actually where the noise is coming from or if I I already forgot it ok ok so maybe in such sophisticated talks people maybe have to think a bit about all this information you gave us because we have no questions so far but again thanks a lot for your talk and hope to see you again oh one question from the IRC channel please wait a second oh there's somebody on the IRC channel asking about getting backwards compatibility by using a cookie which would indicate which kind of handshake the responder expects yes we already thought about ok so this is a problem that can be solved here ok ok and another question from the IRC channel is coming in but somebody making a joke is there a COVID-19 friendly way alternative to avoid handshakes between users but ok but this is just a joke I think so COVID-19 is not a problem of using talks I think even if talks sounds a little bit toxic ok so no more questions I see Tobi thanks again for having your talk here with us and have a good day and see you again bye bye