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https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2023/04/18/cory-doctorow-red-team-blues-a-medium-boiled-forensic-accountant-detective-novel/>
"This is a medium-boiled detective novel. Martin Hench is a freelance forensic
accountant and old-school cryptography guy who lives quite well from his
occasional jobs recovering stolen cash. Marty is sixty-seven and more than
ready to retire from the tech gumshoe life. But he knows his stuff, and keeps
getting calls from the many good friends he’s accumulated over the decades.
Danny is another old-school cryptography guy. He runs Trustlesscoin, a
cryptocurrency blockchain that solves the Sybil problem with secure enclaves.
(See Mobilecoin for one real-world example.) Danny somehow got hold of the
private keys to various computer manufacturers’ secure enclaves — which would
let him fix issues on Trustlesscoin, but would also let an attacker get into
millions, if not billions, of devices of all sorts. The securely stored laptop
with the keys has been stolen, and Danny has been pickpocketed of the hardware
token to open it.
Danny calls his old friend Marty to help him recover the keys, or at least the
laptop. He doesn’t think it’s possible to recover even the laptop, but Marty is
the only hope he has left. Danny’s threat model is the criminals who he knows
are laundering money on Trustlesscoin, who will be very unhappy with him if it
gets hacked. And the ones who stole the keys in the hope of hacking
Trustlesscoin will be even unhappier.
Chapter one is an extensive “As you know, Bob” exposition, where Danny and
Marty explain to each other how cryptocurrency works — when we’ve already been
told they’re experts. Just including the Trustlesscoin white paper wouldn’t
have been worse.
I was almost put off by the “As you know, Bob,” but I kept reading because I
got hooked on the puzzle, which is the sort of problem that would interest the
sort of people who read this blog. It works. The characters develop character
along the way."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
