Skip to main content

Home/ Future of the Web/ Group items tagged tor

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

No, Department of Justice, 80 Percent of Tor Traffic Is Not Child Porn | WIRED [# ! Via... - 0 views

  • The debate over online anonymity, and all the whistleblowers, trolls, anarchists, journalists and political dissidents it enables, is messy enough. It doesn’t need the US government making up bogus statistics about how much that anonymity facilitates child pornography.
  • he debate over online anonymity, and all the whistleblowers, trolls, anarchists, journalists and political dissidents it enables, is messy enough. It doesn’t need the US government making up bogus statistics about how much that anonymity facilitates child pornography. At the State of the Net conference in Washington on Tuesday, US assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell discussed what she described as the dangers of encryption and cryptographic anonymity tools like Tor, and how those tools can hamper law enforcement. Her statements are the latest in a growing drumbeat of federal criticism of tech companies and software projects that provide privacy and anonymity at the expense of surveillance. And as an example of the grave risks presented by that privacy, she cited a study she said claimed an overwhelming majority of Tor’s anonymous traffic relates to pedophilia. “Tor obviously was created with good intentions, but it’s a huge problem for law enforcement,” Caldwell said in comments reported by Motherboard and confirmed to me by others who attended the conference. “We understand 80 percent of traffic on the Tor network involves child pornography.” That statistic is horrifying. It’s also baloney.
  • In a series of tweets that followed Caldwell’s statement, a Department of Justice flack said Caldwell was citing a University of Portsmouth study WIRED covered in December. He included a link to our story. But I made clear at the time that the study claimed 80 percent of traffic to Tor hidden services related to child pornography, not 80 percent of all Tor traffic. That is a huge, and important, distinction. The vast majority of Tor’s users run the free anonymity software while visiting conventional websites, using it to route their traffic through encrypted hops around the globe to avoid censorship and surveillance. But Tor also allows websites to run Tor, something known as a Tor hidden service. This collection of hidden sites, which comprise what’s often referred to as the “dark web,” use Tor to obscure the physical location of the servers that run them. Visits to those dark web sites account for only 1.5 percent of all Tor traffic, according to the software’s creators at the non-profit Tor Project. The University of Portsmouth study dealt exclusively with visits to hidden services. In contrast to Caldwell’s 80 percent claim, the Tor Project’s director Roger Dingledine pointed out last month that the study’s pedophilia findings refer to something closer to a single percent of Tor’s overall traffic.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • So to whoever at the Department of Justice is preparing these talking points for public consumption: Thanks for citing my story. Next time, please try reading it.
  •  
    [# Via Paul Merrell's Diigo...] "That is a huge, and important, distinction. The vast majority of Tor's users run the free anonymity software while visiting conventional websites, using it to route their traffic through encrypted hops around the globe to avoid censorship and surveillance. But Tor also allows websites to run Tor, something known as a Tor hidden service. This collection of hidden sites, which comprise what's often referred to as the "dark web," use Tor to obscure the physical location of the servers that run them. Visits to those dark web sites account for only 1.5 percent of all Tor traffic, according to the software's creators at the non-profit Tor Project."
  •  
    [# Via Paul Merrell's Diigo...] "That is a huge, and important, distinction. The vast majority of Tor's users run the free anonymity software while visiting conventional websites, using it to route their traffic through encrypted hops around the globe to avoid censorship and surveillance. But Tor also allows websites to run Tor, something known as a Tor hidden service. This collection of hidden sites, which comprise what's often referred to as the "dark web," use Tor to obscure the physical location of the servers that run them. Visits to those dark web sites account for only 1.5 percent of all Tor traffic, according to the software's creators at the non-profit Tor Project."
Paul Merrell

Use Tor or 'EXTREMIST' Tails Linux? Congrats, you're on the NSA's list * The Register - 0 views

  • Alleged leaked documents about the NSA's XKeyscore snooping software appear to show the paranoid agency is targeting Tor and Tails users, Linux Journal readers – and anyone else interested in online privacy.Apparently, this configuration file for XKeyscore is in the divulged data, which was obtained and studied by members of the Tor project and security specialists for German broadcasters NDR and WDR. <a href="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x250%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33U7ZK6qwQrMkAACSrTugAAAP1&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26unitname%3Dwww_top_mpu%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0" target="_blank"> <img src="http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ad?iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x250%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33U7ZK6qwQrMkAACSrTugAAAP1&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26unitname%3Dwww_top_mpu%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0" alt=""></a> In their analysis of the alleged top-secret documents, they claim the NSA is, among other things:Specifically targeting Tor directory servers Reading email contents for mentions of Tor bridges Logging IP addresses used to search for privacy-focused websites and software And possibly breaking international law in doing so. We already know from leaked Snowden documents that Western intelligence agents hate Tor for its anonymizing abilities. But what the aforementioned leaked source code, written in a rather strange custom language, shows is that not only is the NSA targeting the anonymizing network Tor specifically, it is also taking digital fingerprints of any netizens who are remotely interested in privacy.
  • These include readers of the Linux Journal site, anyone visiting the website for the Tor-powered Linux operating system Tails – described by the NSA as "a comsec mechanism advocated by extremists on extremist forums" – and anyone looking into combining Tails with the encryption tool Truecrypt.If something as innocuous as Linux Journal is on the NSA's hit list, it's a distinct possibility that El Reg is too, particularly in light of our recent exclusive report on GCHQ – which led to a Ministry of Defence advisor coming round our London office for a chat.
  • If you take even the slightest interest in online privacy or have Googled a Linux Journal article about a broken package, you are earmarked in an NSA database for further surveillance, according to these latest leaks.This is assuming the leaked file is genuine, of course.Other monitored sites, we're told, include HotSpotShield, FreeNet, Centurian, FreeProxies.org, MegaProxy, privacy.li and an anonymous email service called MixMinion. The IP address of computer users even looking at these sites is recorded and stored on the NSA's servers for further analysis, and it's up to the agency how long it keeps that data.The XKeyscore code, we're told, includes microplugins that target Tor servers in Germany, at MIT in the United States, in Sweden, in Austria, and in the Netherlands. In doing so it may not only fall foul of German law but also the US's Fourth Amendment.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The nine Tor directory servers receive especially close monitoring from the NSA's spying software, which states the "goal is to find potential Tor clients connecting to the Tor directory servers." Tor clients linking into the directory servers are also logged."This shows that Tor is working well enough that Tor has become a target for the intelligence services," said Sebastian Hahn, who runs one of the key Tor servers. "For me this means that I will definitely go ahead with the project.”
  • While the German reporting team has published part of the XKeyscore scripting code, it doesn't say where it comes from. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden would be a logical pick, but security experts are not so sure."I do not believe that this came from the Snowden documents," said security guru Bruce Schneier. "I also don't believe the TAO catalog came from the Snowden documents. I think there's a second leaker out there."If so, the NSA is in for much more scrutiny than it ever expected.
Paul Merrell

Edward Snowden Explains How To Reclaim Your Privacy - 0 views

  • Micah Lee: What are some operational security practices you think everyone should adopt? Just useful stuff for average people. Edward Snowden: [Opsec] is important even if you’re not worried about the NSA. Because when you think about who the victims of surveillance are, on a day-to-day basis, you’re thinking about people who are in abusive spousal relationships, you’re thinking about people who are concerned about stalkers, you’re thinking about children who are concerned about their parents overhearing things. It’s to reclaim a level of privacy. The first step that anyone could take is to encrypt their phone calls and their text messages. You can do that through the smartphone app Signal, by Open Whisper Systems. It’s free, and you can just download it immediately. And anybody you’re talking to now, their communications, if it’s intercepted, can’t be read by adversaries. [Signal is available for iOS and Android, and, unlike a lot of security tools, is very easy to use.] You should encrypt your hard disk, so that if your computer is stolen the information isn’t obtainable to an adversary — pictures, where you live, where you work, where your kids are, where you go to school. [I’ve written a guide to encrypting your disk on Windows, Mac, and Linux.] Use a password manager. One of the main things that gets people’s private information exposed, not necessarily to the most powerful adversaries, but to the most common ones, are data dumps. Your credentials may be revealed because some service you stopped using in 2007 gets hacked, and your password that you were using for that one site also works for your Gmail account. A password manager allows you to create unique passwords for every site that are unbreakable, but you don’t have the burden of memorizing them. [The password manager KeePassX is free, open source, cross-platform, and never stores anything in the cloud.]
  • The other thing there is two-factor authentication. The value of this is if someone does steal your password, or it’s left or exposed somewhere … [two-factor authentication] allows the provider to send you a secondary means of authentication — a text message or something like that. [If you enable two-factor authentication, an attacker needs both your password as the first factor and a physical device, like your phone, as your second factor, to login to your account. Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, GitHub, Battle.net, and tons of other services all support two-factor authentication.]
  • We should armor ourselves using systems we can rely on every day. This doesn’t need to be an extraordinary lifestyle change. It doesn’t have to be something that is disruptive. It should be invisible, it should be atmospheric, it should be something that happens painlessly, effortlessly. This is why I like apps like Signal, because they’re low friction. It doesn’t require you to re-order your life. It doesn’t require you to change your method of communications. You can use it right now to talk to your friends.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Lee: What do you think about Tor? Do you think that everyone should be familiar with it, or do you think that it’s only a use-it-if-you-need-it thing? Snowden: I think Tor is the most important privacy-enhancing technology project being used today. I use Tor personally all the time. We know it works from at least one anecdotal case that’s fairly familiar to most people at this point. That’s not to say that Tor is bulletproof. What Tor does is it provides a measure of security and allows you to disassociate your physical location. … But the basic idea, the concept of Tor that is so valuable, is that it’s run by volunteers. Anyone can create a new node on the network, whether it’s an entry node, a middle router, or an exit point, on the basis of their willingness to accept some risk. The voluntary nature of this network means that it is survivable, it’s resistant, it’s flexible. [Tor Browser is a great way to selectively use Tor to look something up and not leave a trace that you did it. It can also help bypass censorship when you’re on a network where certain sites are blocked. If you want to get more involved, you can volunteer to run your own Tor node, as I do, and support the diversity of the Tor network.]
  • Lee: So that is all stuff that everybody should be doing. What about people who have exceptional threat models, like future intelligence-community whistleblowers, and other people who have nation-state adversaries? Maybe journalists, in some cases, or activists, or people like that? Snowden: So the first answer is that you can’t learn this from a single article. The needs of every individual in a high-risk environment are different. And the capabilities of the adversary are constantly improving. The tooling changes as well. What really matters is to be conscious of the principles of compromise. How can the adversary, in general, gain access to information that is sensitive to you? What kinds of things do you need to protect? Because of course you don’t need to hide everything from the adversary. You don’t need to live a paranoid life, off the grid, in hiding, in the woods in Montana. What we do need to protect are the facts of our activities, our beliefs, and our lives that could be used against us in manners that are contrary to our interests. So when we think about this for whistleblowers, for example, if you witnessed some kind of wrongdoing and you need to reveal this information, and you believe there are people that want to interfere with that, you need to think about how to compartmentalize that.
  • Tell no one who doesn’t need to know. [Lindsay Mills, Snowden’s girlfriend of several years, didn’t know that he had been collecting documents to leak to journalists until she heard about it on the news, like everyone else.] When we talk about whistleblowers and what to do, you want to think about tools for protecting your identity, protecting the existence of the relationship from any type of conventional communication system. You want to use something like SecureDrop, over the Tor network, so there is no connection between the computer that you are using at the time — preferably with a non-persistent operating system like Tails, so you’ve left no forensic trace on the machine you’re using, which hopefully is a disposable machine that you can get rid of afterward, that can’t be found in a raid, that can’t be analyzed or anything like that — so that the only outcome of your operational activities are the stories reported by the journalists. [SecureDrop is a whistleblower submission system. Here is a guide to using The Intercept’s SecureDrop server as safely as possible.]
  • And this is to be sure that whoever has been engaging in this wrongdoing cannot distract from the controversy by pointing to your physical identity. Instead they have to deal with the facts of the controversy rather than the actors that are involved in it. Lee: What about for people who are, like, in a repressive regime and are trying to … Snowden: Use Tor. Lee: Use Tor? Snowden: If you’re not using Tor you’re doing it wrong. Now, there is a counterpoint here where the use of privacy-enhancing technologies in certain areas can actually single you out for additional surveillance through the exercise of repressive measures. This is why it’s so critical for developers who are working on security-enhancing tools to not make their protocols stand out.
  •  
    Lots more in the interview that I didn't highlight. This is a must-read.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Tor Challenge hits it out of the park - Free Software Foundation - working together for... - 0 views

  •  
    "by Zak Rogoff - Published on Sep 23, 2014 09:54 AM If you need to be anonymous online, or evade digital censorship and surveillance, the Tor network has your back. And it's more than a little bit stronger now than it was this spring, thanks to the Tor Challenge. "
  •  
    "by Zak Rogoff - Published on Sep 23, 2014 09:54 AM If you need to be anonymous online, or evade digital censorship and surveillance, the Tor network has your back. And it's more than a little bit stronger now than it was this spring, thanks to the Tor Challenge. "
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Tor Director Accuses FBI of Spending $1 Million to Attack Tor Users - 1 views

  •  
    "Short Bytes: In a blog post, Tor Director has outlined the unethical ways that were employed by FBI to unmask Tor users. He added that the invasion of people's privacy on a wholesale level is unacceptable by crossing the ethical lines between research and targeting innocent users."
Gary Edwards

Out in the Open: Inside the Operating System Edward Snowden Used to Evade the NSA | Ent... - 0 views

  •  
    TAILS anonymous Operating System- excerpt: "When NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden first emailed Glenn Greenwald, he insisted on using email encryption software called PGP for all communications. But this month, we learned that Snowden used another technology to keep his communications out of the NSA's prying eyes. It's called Tails. And naturally, nobody knows exactly who created it. Tails is a kind of computer-in-a-box. You install it on a DVD or USB drive, boot up the computer from the drive and, voila, you're pretty close to anonymous on the internet. At its heart, Tails is a version of the Linux operating system optimized for anonymity. It comes with several privacy and encryption tools, most notably Tor, an application that anonymizes a user's internet traffic by routing it through a network of computers run by volunteers around the world. Snowden, Greenwald and their collaborator, documentary film maker Laura Poitras, used it because, by design, Tails doesn't store any data locally. This makes it virtually immune to malicious software, and prevents someone from performing effective forensics on the computer after the fact. That protects both the journalists, and often more importantly, their sources. "The installation and verification has a learning curve to make sure it is installed correctly," Poitras told WIRED by e-mail. "But once the set up is done, I think it is very easy to use." An Operating System for Anonymity Originally developed as a research project by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Tor has been used by a wide range of people who care about online anonymity: everyone from Silk Road drug dealers, to activists, whistleblowers, stalking victims and people who simply like their online privacy. Tails makes it much easier to use Tor and other privacy tools. Once you boot into Tails - which requires no special setup - Tor runs automatically. When you're done using it, you can boot back into your PC's normal operating
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

How to Install and Set Up Tor Browser on Linux - 1 views

  •  
    "Tor Browser is the official internet browser tool of the Tor Network project. This software is aimed at serving users who want to browse in full anonymity, preventing surveillance of any kind. This is achieved by"
Paul Merrell

ExposeFacts - For Whistleblowers, Journalism and Democracy - 0 views

  • Launched by the Institute for Public Accuracy in June 2014, ExposeFacts.org represents a new approach for encouraging whistleblowers to disclose information that citizens need to make truly informed decisions in a democracy. From the outset, our message is clear: “Whistleblowers Welcome at ExposeFacts.org.” ExposeFacts aims to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war. At a time when key provisions of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are under assault, we are standing up for a free press, privacy, transparency and due process as we seek to reveal official information—whether governmental or corporate—that the public has a right to know. While no software can provide an ironclad guarantee of confidentiality, ExposeFacts—assisted by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and its “SecureDrop” whistleblower submission system—is utilizing the latest technology on behalf of anonymity for anyone submitting materials via the ExposeFacts.org website. As journalists we are committed to the goal of protecting the identity of every source who wishes to remain anonymous.
  • The seasoned editorial board of ExposeFacts will be assessing all the submitted material and, when deemed appropriate, will arrange for journalistic release of information. In exercising its judgment, the editorial board is able to call on the expertise of the ExposeFacts advisory board, which includes more than 40 journalists, whistleblowers, former U.S. government officials and others with wide-ranging expertise. We are proud that Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was the first person to become a member of the ExposeFacts advisory board. The icon below links to a SecureDrop implementation for ExposeFacts overseen by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and is only accessible using the Tor browser. As the Freedom of the Press Foundation notes, no one can guarantee 100 percent security, but this provides a “significantly more secure environment for sources to get information than exists through normal digital channels, but there are always risks.” ExposeFacts follows all guidelines as recommended by Freedom of the Press Foundation, and whistleblowers should too; the SecureDrop onion URL should only be accessed with the Tor browser — and, for added security, be running the Tails operating system. Whistleblowers should not log-in to SecureDrop from a home or office Internet connection, but rather from public wifi, preferably one you do not frequent. Whistleblowers should keep to a minimum interacting with whistleblowing-related websites unless they are using such secure software.
  •  
    A new resource site for whistle-blowers. somewhat in the tradition of Wikileaks, but designed for encrypted communications between whistleblowers and journalists.  This one has an impressive board of advisors that includes several names I know and tend to trust, among them former whistle-blowers Daniel Ellsberg, Ray McGovern, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Ann Wright. Leaked records can only be dropped from a web browser running the Tor anonymizer software and uses the SecureDrop system originally developed by Aaron Schwartz. They strongly recommend using the Tails secure operating system that can be installed to a thumb drive and leaves no tracks on the host machine. https://tails.boum.org/index.en.html Curious, I downloaded Tails and installed it to a virtual machine. It's a heavily customized version of Debian. It has a very nice Gnome desktop and blocks any attempt to connect to an external network by means other than installed software that demands encrypted communications. For example, web sites can only be viewed via the Tor anonymizing proxy network. It does take longer for web pages to load because they are moving over a chain of proxies, but even so it's faster than pages loaded in the dial-up modem days, even for web pages that are loaded with graphics, javascript, and other cruft. E.g., about 2 seconds for New York Times pages. All cookies are treated by default as session cookies so disappear when you close the page or the browser. I love my Linux Mint desktop, but I am thinking hard about switching that box to Tails. I've been looking for methods to send a lot more encrypted stuff down the pipe for NSA to store. Tails looks to make that not only easy, but unavoidable. From what I've gathered so far, if you want to install more software on Tails, it takes about an hour to create a customized version and then update your Tails installation from a new ISO file. Tails has a wonderful odor of having been designed for secure computing. Current
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Anonymizing Networks - GNU/Linux - PRISM Break - 0 views

  •  
    "e Recommendations freenet.png Freenet Decentralized censorship-resistant network. gnunet.png GNUnet GNUnet is a fully free P2P network. i2p.png I2P The invisible internet project. syndie.png Syndie Distributed, anonymous forum software. tor.png Tor Free software for enabling online anonymity. Tor directs Internet traffic through a free, worldwide, volunteer network consisting of more th… "
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Tor Project: Overview - 2 views

  •  
    Overview Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Opt out of PRISM, the NSA's global data surveillance program - PRISM Break - 0 views

  •  
    "Use a combination of Tor Browser and another free browser to surf the web. Try to use Tor for as many things as possible. Browsing the web may be slower, but it will offer you far better anonymity. Make sure to learn the basics of Tor before using it."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Raids cast doubt on the integrity of TOR | ITworld - 1 views

  •  
    "Federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Europe have shut down more than 400 Web sites using .onion addresses and made arrests of those who run them, which calls into question whether the anonymizing The Onion Router (Tor) network itself is still secure."
  •  
    "Federal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Europe have shut down more than 400 Web sites using .onion addresses and made arrests of those who run them, which calls into question whether the anonymizing The Onion Router (Tor) network itself is still secure."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Researchers claim they've developed a better, faster Tor | Ars Technica - 1 views

  •  
    "HORNET, a proposed anonymizing network architecture based on an "onion routing" approach similar to Tor, could be much faster and integrated directly into Internet infrastructure, say its authors."
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Tails 1.5, Tor Browser 5.0 y hágase el anonimato en Internet » MuyLinux - 0 views

  •  
    "Vaya con el par de semanas que llevamos en lo que a lanzamientos de distribuciones se refiere, y he aquí uno más: Tails 1.5 es lo nuevo de The Amnesic Incognito Live System, que como siempre viene acompañado por lo nuevo de The Onion Router, Tor Browser 5.0. "
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Why Facebook Just Launched Its Own 'Dark Web' Site | WIRED [+ TOR IS THE NSA http://lwn... - 2 views

  •  
    "Facebook has never had much of a reputation for letting users hide their identities online. But now the world's least anonymous website has just joined the Web's most anonymous network." [# ! Just a #PR #Campaign… # ! … as, You'll learn soon… TOR IS THE NSA Posted Jul 9, 2008 21:13 UTC (Wed) by dulles (guest, #45450) Parent article: GNU/Linux free software tools to preserve your online privacy, anonymity and security (FSM) # ! Anyway, since long ago, You Must Know that there is no privacy in # ! a Network built by others -Governments and Big Companies # ! among 'em. # ! Don' come to The Web expecting privacy, as You won't look for # ! intimacy in a Stadium Full of Pe@ple… # ! … but meet the places You get in.]
  •  
    "Facebook has never had much of a reputation for letting users hide their identities online. But now the world's least anonymous website has just joined the Web's most anonymous network."
Paul Merrell

Internet privacy, funded by spooks: A brief history of the BBG | PandoDaily - 0 views

  • For the past few months I’ve been covering U.S. government funding of popular Internet privacy tools like Tor, CryptoCat and Open Whisper Systems. During my reporting, one agency in particular keeps popping up: An agency with one of those really bland names that masks its wild, bizarre history: the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG. The BBG was formed in 1999 and runs on a $721 million annual budget. It reports directly to Secretary of State John Kerry and operates like a holding company for a host of Cold War-era CIA spinoffs and old school “psychological warfare” projects: Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Radio Martí, Voice of America, Radio Liberation from Bolshevism (since renamed “Radio Liberty”) and a dozen other government-funded radio stations and media outlets pumping out pro-American propaganda across the globe. Today, the Congressionally-funded federal agency is also one of the biggest backers of grassroots and open-source Internet privacy technology. These investments started in 2012, when the BBG launched the “Open Technology Fund” (OTF) — an initiative housed within and run by Radio Free Asia (RFA), a premier BBG property that broadcasts into communist countries like North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, China and Myanmar. The BBG endowed Radio Free Asia’s Open Technology Fund with a multimillion dollar budget and a single task: “to fulfill the U.S. Congressional global mandate for Internet freedom.”
  • Here’s a small sample of what the Broadcasting Board of Governors funded (through Radio Free Asia and then through the Open Technology Fund) between 2012 and 2014: Open Whisper Systems, maker of free encrypted text and voice mobile apps like TextSecure and Signal/RedPhone, got a generous $1.35-million infusion. (Facebook recently started using Open Whisper Systems to secure its WhatsApp messages.) CryptoCat, an encrypted chat app made by Nadim Kobeissi and promoted by EFF, received $184,000. LEAP, an email encryption startup, got just over $1 million. LEAP is currently being used to run secure VPN services at RiseUp.net, the radical anarchist communication collective. A Wikileaks alternative called GlobaLeaks (which was endorsed by the folks at Tor, including Jacob Appelbaum) received just under $350,000. The Guardian Project — which makes an encrypted chat app called ChatSecure, as well a mobile version of Tor called Orbot — got $388,500. The Tor Project received over $1 million from OTF to pay for security audits, traffic analysis tools and set up fast Tor exit nodes in the Middle East and South East Asia.
  •  
    But can we trust them?
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

If you still trust Tor to keep you safe, you're out of your damn mind | PandoDaily - 1 views

  •  
    " By Paul Carr On December 26, 2014 rottenonionEarlier today, a group of hackers who had previously shut down Playstation Network and Xbox Live turned their sights on a bigger target: the Tor network."
Paul Merrell

After Paris Attacks, French Cops Want to Block Tor and Forbid Free Wi-Fi | Motherboard - 0 views

  • After the recent Paris terror attacks, French law enforcement wants to have several powers added to a proposed law, including the move to forbid and block the use of the Tor anonymity network, according to an internal document from the Ministry of Interior seen by French newspaper Le Monde.That document talks about two proposed pieces of legislation, one around the state of emergency, and the other concerning counter-terrorism. Regarding the former, French law enforcement wish to “Forbid free and shared wi-fi connections” during a state of emergency. This comes from a police opinion included in the document: the reason being that it is apparently difficult to track individuals who use public wi-fi networks.As the latter, law enforcement would like “to block or forbid communications of the Tor network.” The legislation, according to Le Monde, could be presented as early as January 2016.
Gonzalo San Gil, PhD.

Tor Just Launched the Easiest App Yet for Anonymous, Encrypted IM | WIRED - 0 views

  •  
    " ... Now the non-profit Tor Project has officially released another piece of software that could bring that same level of privacy to instant messaging: a seamless and simple app that both encrypts the content of IMs and also makes it very difficult for an eavesdropper to identify the person sending them. ..."
Paul Merrell

He Was a Hacker for the NSA and He Was Willing to Talk. I Was Willing to Listen. - 2 views

  • he message arrived at night and consisted of three words: “Good evening sir!” The sender was a hacker who had written a series of provocative memos at the National Security Agency. His secret memos had explained — with an earthy use of slang and emojis that was unusual for an operative of the largest eavesdropping organization in the world — how the NSA breaks into the digital accounts of people who manage computer networks, and how it tries to unmask people who use Tor to browse the web anonymously. Outlining some of the NSA’s most sensitive activities, the memos were leaked by Edward Snowden, and I had written about a few of them for The Intercept. There is no Miss Manners for exchanging pleasantries with a man the government has trained to be the digital equivalent of a Navy SEAL. Though I had initiated the contact, I was wary of how he might respond. The hacker had publicly expressed a visceral dislike for Snowden and had accused The Intercept of jeopardizing lives by publishing classified information. One of his memos outlined the ways the NSA reroutes (or “shapes”) the internet traffic of entire countries, and another memo was titled “I Hunt Sysadmins.” I felt sure he could hack anyone’s computer, including mine. Good evening sir!
  • The sender was a hacker who had written a series of provocative memos at the National Security Agency. His secret memos had explained — with an earthy use of slang and emojis that was unusual for an operative of the largest eavesdropping organization in the world — how the NSA breaks into the digital accounts of people who manage computer networks, and how it tries to unmask people who use Tor to browse the web anonymously. Outlining some of the NSA’s most sensitive activities, the memos were leaked by Edward Snowden, and I had written about a few of them for The Intercept. There is no Miss Manners for exchanging pleasantries with a man the government has trained to be the digital equivalent of a Navy SEAL. Though I had initiated the contact, I was wary of how he might respond. The hacker had publicly expressed a visceral dislike for Snowden and had accused The Intercept of jeopardizing lives by publishing classified information. One of his memos outlined the ways the NSA reroutes (or “shapes”) the internet traffic of entire countries, and another memo was titled “I Hunt Sysadmins.” I felt sure he could hack anyone’s computer, including mine.
  • I got lucky with the hacker, because he recently left the agency for the cybersecurity industry; it would be his choice to talk, not the NSA’s. Fortunately, speaking out is his second nature.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • He agreed to a video chat that turned into a three-hour discussion sprawling from the ethics of surveillance to the downsides of home improvements and the difficulty of securing your laptop.
  • In recent years, two developments have helped make hacking for the government a lot more attractive than hacking for yourself. First, the Department of Justice has cracked down on freelance hacking, whether it be altruistic or malignant. If the DOJ doesn’t like the way you hack, you are going to jail. Meanwhile, hackers have been warmly invited to deploy their transgressive impulses in service to the homeland, because the NSA and other federal agencies have turned themselves into licensed hives of breaking into other people’s computers. For many, it’s a techno sandbox of irresistible delights, according to Gabriella Coleman, a professor at McGill University who studies hackers. “The NSA is a very exciting place for hackers because you have unlimited resources, you have some of the best talent in the world, whether it’s cryptographers or mathematicians or hackers,” she said. “It is just too intellectually exciting not to go there.”
  • The Lamb’s memos on cool ways to hunt sysadmins triggered a strong reaction when I wrote about them in 2014 with my colleague Ryan Gallagher. The memos explained how the NSA tracks down the email and Facebook accounts of systems administrators who oversee computer networks. After plundering their accounts, the NSA can impersonate the admins to get into their computer networks and pilfer the data flowing through them. As the Lamb wrote, “sys admins generally are not my end target. My end target is the extremist/terrorist or government official that happens to be using the network … who better to target than the person that already has the ‘keys to the kingdom’?” Another of his NSA memos, “Network Shaping 101,” used Yemen as a theoretical case study for secretly redirecting the entirety of a country’s internet traffic to NSA servers.
  • “If I turn the tables on you,” I asked the Lamb, “and say, OK, you’re a target for all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. How do you feel about being a target and that kind of justification being used to justify getting all of your credentials and the keys to your kingdom?” The Lamb smiled. “There is no real safe, sacred ground on the internet,” he replied. “Whatever you do on the internet is an attack surface of some sort and is just something that you live with. Any time that I do something on the internet, yeah, that is on the back of my mind. Anyone from a script kiddie to some random hacker to some other foreign intelligence service, each with their different capabilities — what could they be doing to me?”
  • “You know, the situation is what it is,” he said. “There are protocols that were designed years ago before anybody had any care about security, because when they were developed, nobody was foreseeing that they would be taken advantage of. … A lot of people on the internet seem to approach the problem [with the attitude of] ‘I’m just going to walk naked outside of my house and hope that nobody looks at me.’ From a security perspective, is that a good way to go about thinking? No, horrible … There are good ways to be more secure on the internet. But do most people use Tor? No. Do most people use Signal? No. Do most people use insecure things that most people can hack? Yes. Is that a bash against the intelligence community that people use stuff that’s easily exploitable? That’s a hard argument for me to make.”
  • I mentioned that lots of people, including Snowden, are now working on the problem of how to make the internet more secure, yet he seemed to do the opposite at the NSA by trying to find ways to track and identify people who use Tor and other anonymizers. Would he consider working on the other side of things? He wouldn’t rule it out, he said, but dismally suggested the game was over as far as having a liberating and safe internet, because our laptops and smartphones will betray us no matter what we do with them. “There’s the old adage that the only secure computer is one that is turned off, buried in a box ten feet underground, and never turned on,” he said. “From a user perspective, someone trying to find holes by day and then just live on the internet by night, there’s the expectation [that] if somebody wants to have access to your computer bad enough, they’re going to get it. Whether that’s an intelligence agency or a cybercrimes syndicate, whoever that is, it’s probably going to happen.”
  • There are precautions one can take, and I did that with the Lamb. When we had our video chat, I used a computer that had been wiped clean of everything except its operating system and essential applications. Afterward, it was wiped clean again. My concern was that the Lamb might use the session to obtain data from or about the computer I was using; there are a lot of things he might have tried, if he was in a scheming mood. At the end of our three hours together, I mentioned to him that I had taken these precautions—and he approved. “That’s fair,” he said. “I’m glad you have that appreciation. … From a perspective of a journalist who has access to classified information, it would be remiss to think you’re not a target of foreign intelligence services.” He was telling me the U.S. government should be the least of my worries. He was trying to help me. Documents published with this article: Tracking Targets Through Proxies & Anonymizers Network Shaping 101 Shaping Diagram I Hunt Sys Admins (first published in 2014)
1 - 20 of 47 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page