Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: randomOVDB#2 on January 25, 2012, 12:41 pm
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Silk Road computer security project
The purpose of this thread is to create or reconfigure a distro to suit the need of SR (and Darknet in general) users.
The purpose of this thread is to find a compromise between security and simplicity.
The purpose of this thread is NOT to create the ultimate "Theo would be proud" security toolkit.
Basically making something better than Liberte.
Ideally it should
- have GUI
- be bootable from a USB key
- support both Tor and I2P
- use persistent entry guards
- use whole disk encryption
- have GPG/Pidgin/etc
- ...
Issues
- which kernel
- which browser
- encrypton
- (para) virtualization
- isolation
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I don't know much about computer security but some of you really do, so why not build something and fuck over LE instead of providing them a laugh with inner forum battles.
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So much effort.. I wouldn't waste my time on such a project but if others are willing to im sure people will donate for their time
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I suggest starting with Liberte and incorporating a Torrified Bitcoin client and Exiv2 for cleaning images. Dump off their Cables communication thing, as far as I can see its bollocks and I have never heard of anyone on here using it.
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Why reinvent the wheel when you have Tails (https://tails.boum.org/)?
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Why reinvent the wheel when you have Tails (https://tails.boum.org/)?
Because tails has several terrible design choices that make it inferior to liberte from a security standpoint.
Dump off their Cables communication thing, as far as I can see its bollocks and I have never heard of anyone on here using it.
It's also insecure as you need to be running as a location hidden service instead of a client to run it.
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This project shouldn't be related to SR, but someone really should make a free market system that allows for the decentralized marketing of all goods (think a free market volunteer network of anonymized hidden services working redundantly to mirror the same cryptographically ensured as neutral and 'ignorant' market environment...after all taking out a network of fifty hidden services is going to be a bit harder than taking out one or two servers. Also taking out the admins of fifty hidden services is much harder than pwning the admin of a single site), and includes the ability to communicate via multiple latencies, place orders and product offers, easily create arbitrary network overlays for individual encrypted message distribution (compartmentalization) while allowing for whitelist based mostly open participation communications (some sort of pseudonym based distributed¢ralized trust whitelist system for large communication networks / far outreach product advertisement) analyze trust networks, manage bitcoins / mix bitcoins / manage escrows, run auctions, leave reviews and product ratings etc. These things can be done with much higher security and anonymity than we are getting with the currently used tool set, although some components we are currently using should work their way into the new system (Tor for example). The project should aim to avoid all hierarchy in the communications and market components, instead being an 'all channel network' in this aspect (look it up if you care). Users should be the administration and moderation of only their own perception of the market, of course maybe using input from other users to help them make their choices ;) (think distributed whitelists).
This is really good for another reason also. Running a site like SR is illegal. Hosting a server for a network like I describe isn't anywhere near as inherently illegal. There is no law against hosting sophisticated security technology. For the same reason it isn't illegal to run a Freenet server but it is illegal to host CP on a Tor hidden service, even though essentially all Freenet nodes host CP. No Freenet content is associated with any specific Freenet storage node, with Tor there is a direct relation between the site that you host and the server it is hosted on. This isn't to say that Freenet is better than Tor, SR should stay on Tor for now.
It should also come with a preconfigured operating environment. One that has been hardened to the maximum possible degree. It should support multiple 'modes of deployment' ranging from having applications pre-isolated with paravirtualization / mandatory access control systems to being easily usable with physical isolation solutions where components are run on individual machines that are physically networked together. It should include an installation script that puts it deniably encrypted on a thumb drive if you go with the paravirtualization based isolation route instead of physical layer isolation. And to the user it should be point and click simple, easier than using E-bay itself with a really nice shiny intelligently designed for end user simplicity GUI. It should allow users to set their own level of security to an extent, for trade offs between security and ease of use. A prime example of this is multi-latency mixing, where users set their own latency and anonymity requirements. Most of all it needs to hide the technical details from users who could care less, while making them very highly available to and audited by people who care at all. If it is a Silk Road project it will not get a large user base though, it really needs to be fully independent of illegal activity. And it probably needs to be done in a few individual projects that are then combined together, instead of one big project. One tool that looks like it will fit in very nicely is Open Transactions.
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kmfkewm (and everybody else): I'll reframe the original wording. The goal is to provide an alternative to Looker's Secure Virtual Machine (so far there is only Liberte) and not to built an entire system from scratch. I didn't meant to give that impression since I think that is way beyond the scope of SR.
I think much of things you talk about will be part of Qubes but here we're talking key in, TOR work, key out. Can something be done or should we just be using Liberte ?
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kmfkewm (and everybody else): I'll reframe the original wording. The goal is to provide an alternative to Looker's Secure Virtual Machine (so far there is only Liberte) and not to built an entire system from scratch. I didn't meant to give that impression since I think that is way beyond the scope of SR.
I think much of things you talk about will be part of Qubes but here we're talking key in, TOR work, key out. Can something be done or should we just be using Liberte ?
I think that almost nothing of what I talk about will be a part of Qubes other than preconfigured paravirtualization.... what makes you think they plan to do any of the things I just talked about? Certainly nothing any of the Qubes devs has said led you to this conclusion. If you want an alternative to lookers secure VM you could use pretty much any other thing and come away with better security. If you didn't realize Liberte essentially is an entire system built from scratch. I mean, what makes Liberte different from the system I described other than it lacks a few of the applications I would like to see created. Creating Liberte was not a small task either.
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So basically you decide to trash my thread to create a market for yourself? Boy aren't we the one with integrity.
Thats truly a scumbag move.
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So basically you decide to trash my thread to create a market for yourself? Boy aren't we the one with integrity.
Thats truly a scumbag move.
No, selling freeware is a scumbag move.
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This project shouldn't be related to SR, but someone really should make a free market system that allows for the decentralized marketing of all goods (think a free market volunteer network of anonymized hidden services working redundantly to mirror the same cryptographically ensured as neutral and 'ignorant' market environment...after all taking out a network of fifty hidden services is going to be a bit harder than taking out one or two servers. Also taking out the admins of fifty hidden services is much harder than pwning the admin of a single site), and includes the ability to communicate via multiple latencies, place orders and product offers, easily create arbitrary network overlays for individual encrypted message distribution (compartmentalization) while allowing for whitelist based mostly open participation communications (some sort of pseudonym based distributed¢ralized trust whitelist system for large communication networks / far outreach product advertisement) analyze trust networks, manage bitcoins / mix bitcoins / manage escrows, run auctions, leave reviews and product ratings etc. These things can be done with much higher security and anonymity than we are getting with the currently used tool set, although some components we are currently using should work their way into the new system (Tor for example). The project should aim to avoid all hierarchy in the communications and market components, instead being an 'all channel network' in this aspect (look it up if you care). Users should be the administration and moderation of only their own perception of the market, of course maybe using input from other users to help them make their choices ;) (think distributed whitelists).
This is really good for another reason also. Running a site like SR is illegal. Hosting a server for a network like I describe isn't anywhere near as inherently illegal. There is no law against hosting sophisticated security technology. For the same reason it isn't illegal to run a Freenet server but it is illegal to host CP on a Tor hidden service, even though essentially all Freenet nodes host CP. No Freenet content is associated with any specific Freenet storage node, with Tor there is a direct relation between the site that you host and the server it is hosted on. This isn't to say that Freenet is better than Tor, SR should stay on Tor for now.
It should also come with a preconfigured operating environment. One that has been hardened to the maximum possible degree. It should support multiple 'modes of deployment' ranging from having applications pre-isolated with paravirtualization / mandatory access control systems to being easily usable with physical isolation solutions where components are run on individual machines that are physically networked together. It should include an installation script that puts it deniably encrypted on a thumb drive if you go with the paravirtualization based isolation route instead of physical layer isolation. And to the user it should be point and click simple, easier than using E-bay itself with a really nice shiny intelligently designed for end user simplicity GUI. It should allow users to set their own level of security to an extent, for trade offs between security and ease of use. A prime example of this is multi-latency mixing, where users set their own latency and anonymity requirements. Most of all it needs to hide the technical details from users who could care less, while making them very highly available to and audited by people who care at all. If it is a Silk Road project it will not get a large user base though, it really needs to be fully independent of illegal activity. And it probably needs to be done in a few individual projects that are then combined together, instead of one big project. One tool that looks like it will fit in very nicely is Open Transactions.
lol..you are now in my "top 5" list of HERO's, lol...but a couple others got u beat, sorry. :)
but. ive been playin this game for 25+ years, been online from tha 'start'. most likely better known under "other" names,..but...ya' know? :)
but everything you said is 'for the most part', what we "need" to stay 50 steps ahead, yeah?...
just sayin. im down to help out on a project like that. fo sho'. ;)
cuz we need to stay 100 steps ahead? cuz WE do, NOW, "finally", have the technology..dig?
but what about them damn "particle sniffers"? japan uses them on ALL inbound mail customs now. thats another big "soon to come" problem that could "end" this entire scene...which i have "Known and Loved" for many, MANY years, dig? ;)
anyways, really liked your post alot! thankz! ;)
peace
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The project should have CIPAV installed as well.
i am being sarcastic.
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So basically you decide to trash my thread to create a market for yourself? Boy aren't we the one with integrity.
Thats truly a scumbag move.
No, selling freeware is a scumbag move.
Wrong again, selling a service, but I suppose you are fully behind this project now aren't you since it's not like this wouldn't be the perfect thing to undermine SR, oh wait thats what you said about my offering, well I fail to see how that wouldn't exist here as well.
Problem is, who's going to provide the support for it? And for how long?
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The difference between your project and the project I think the Agorist community needs is that your project is a bundled bunch of freeware installed on an insecure OS by a fucktard and what the agorist community needs is a decentralized military grade market oriented network , user interface and operating environment.
If loyalty to SR matters more to you then having the best system at your disposal feel free to keep using it. Anyway anything like this is still a long way away, most of what is required is already there but a lot still needs to be created from scratch and just the configuration of the components that are already there would take several hundreds of hours. Add in making the missing components and configuring everything totally and you are looking at a few thousand hours worth of work and that assumes the workers already have the required skills and know how. How long did it take you to install spybot?
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And you are going to give away hundreds and thousands of hours? LOL the only thing you produced thus far is trolling. Not so great when someone decides to troll your thread now is it?
We'll see how useable yours is when all is said and done, it will be so ridiculously overkill and overly complicated not a single person will want to deal with the mess you will create and relearn another OS thats completely foreign to them. Then will end up abandoned due to useability. You might still be able to claim it's secure despite how unfriendly it will be for the average individual to use.
And I'm quite sure you are going to be providing all kinds of free tech support to all the people who will have a laundry list of questions right? Not likely, you'll just put them off by being arrogant and pompus like you were in my thread.
I'll enjoy watching this ship sink
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Looker, I made one post in your thread. I don't see the need for personal attacks since the joke is actually on us. I'm surprised you didn't figure it out yet. And of course, this would be free.
kmfkewm, in my layman's take is Qubes besides paravirtualization, also allows your own security adjustments (trusting levels of domains) and is "easier than using E-bay itself with a really nice shiny intelligently designed for end user simplicity GUI" while allowing the more technical types to go deeper into the system's core.
I admit I went into this a bit too quickly. I imagined we could add/remove some stuff from Liberte while now I think a better move would be just to write an email to them asking about the potential integration of X. In any case, some great ideas here so thread justified its existence.
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The joke is on you eh? Well regardless several people here saw fit to do nothing more than undermine my particular project and the reason now is clear, to cause people to lose faith in it to start their own similar project for their own personal gain.
Best of luck, and this isn't directed specifically at you, but more at your 'collaborators' who saw fit to deliberately seek out to undermine another vendors/members thread for the sake of their own is a pretty genuinely low life thing to do, but that's ok. Like I said I'll enjoy seeing this fail because it becomes made so impractical nobody but a very experienced user would want to use it. That is of course assuming you aren't some form of LE attempting to data-mine anyone from SR who uses it under the guise as being so secure.
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I found this today.
Liberte Linux discussion board
hxxps://forum.dee.su/#home
Indeed why built or own if we can suggest or encourage new features in Liberte. The author seems to be replying to nearly every suggestion so make your voice count or something like that.
bitcoin
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/how-to-install-bitcoin
Isolation
hxxps://forum.dee.su/#Topic/65650000000014025
Hidden volume
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/hidden-volume
Midori
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/midori-set-in-stone
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I found this today.
Liberte Linux discussion board
hxxps://forum.dee.su/#home
Indeed why built or own if we can suggest or encourage new features in Liberte. The author seems to be replying to nearly every suggestion so make your voice count or something like that.
bitcoin
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/how-to-install-bitcoin
Isolation
hxxps://forum.dee.su/#Topic/65650000000014025
Hidden volume
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/hidden-volume
Midori
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/midori-set-in-stone
I'm on liberte right now. tried first time last summer, there were some issues, but last November release perfect, all solved.
all these years Liberte!!!
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If someone spends the time and sweat to put something together, they should at least be able to ask for a small donation or fee.
That being said, due to the very nature of what is done round here, trusting anyone but yourself to put together a software package is like playing russian roulette with four bullets.
Anyone could hide tracking software,remote connections, keyloggers, etc. in their release.
I just wouldn't put that kind of trust towards a stranger without a third party software engineer with a security background looking it over.
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I found this today.
Liberte Linux discussion board
hxxps://forum.dee.su/#home
Indeed why built or own if we can suggest or encourage new features in Liberte. The author seems to be replying to nearly every suggestion so make your voice count or something like that.
bitcoin
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/how-to-install-bitcoin
Isolation
hxxps://forum.dee.su/#Topic/65650000000014025
Hidden volume
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/hidden-volume
Midori
hxxps://forum.dee.su/topic/midori-set-in-stone
I'm curious why you obfuscated the http protocol by replacing the 't' with 'x'? When I replace the 'x' with 't' and attempt to visit the page, I get a "This Connection is Untrusted" page in Aurora. I am given the choice of "Get me out of here" or "I Understand the Risks".
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I'm using a debian build on usb, with tor bundle, truecrypt.
Full drive encryption, plus partition encryption. It is much faster than liberte, and also much easier to update.
Good thing as well, because 16gb drives are ~$20 these days... bargain...
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b4b33, just a habit.
The reason you are getting untrusted is,
"forum.dee.su uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is only valid for *.zoho.com
(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)"
"If your website is secured by a certificate with the name www.example.com you will receive a name error if you connect using any of the following names:
example.com
example.local
208.77.188.166
10.1.1.7"
I wouldn't worry but if you do, just use the search engine with "forum.dee.su".
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I'm using a debian build on usb, with tor bundle, truecrypt.
Full drive encryption, plus partition encryption. It is much faster than liberte, and also much easier to update.
Good thing as well, because 16gb drives are ~$20 these days... bargain...
plus USB3 as fast as HDD and good motherboard like MSI 870-G46 with USB3 goes for usd76
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Tails/Amnesic and Liberte already cover this. You just need to make a few modifications, like booting them in bridge mode to avoid grabbing guard nodes everytime you reboot.
Any branded drug buying software would be too risky to use. Have to trust anonymous developers who could be agents, have to trust repositories security, too many problems.
Use Tails/Amnesic but boot in bridge mode.
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Why reinvent the wheel when you have Tails (https://tails.boum.org/)?
Because tails has several terrible design choices that make it inferior to liberte from a security standpoint.
Can you elaborate on that?
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You don't have to worry about AES/Twofish/Serpent being cracked there are no quantum computers. You have to worry about your implementation is it resistant to side-channel attacking, brute force, memory leakage ect. Oh, and being beaten by third world cops.
What the US feds like to do to suspects with encrypted drives is wait for them to go on vacation to a place with zero rights like Mexico, Turkey, Eastern Europe, ect. Then the agents pay local cops to beat you to death in prison trying to extract your keys.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10069776-46.html
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Nobody has any intention of making money off this project. If you were really a highly paid security researcher or whatever you claim to be, you wouldn't be so bent out of shape over the money aspect of this. Someone with the talent you claim to have would make too much money to care about it.
Nobody said your gains were financial. I've never claimed to be a 'security researcher' I've only claimed to have experience working in highly secure environments and with similar systems as well as some of the mechanisms used to secure them. I also claimed to have been working with virtualization for ~15 years and currently employed to architect and design/plan very large scale enterprise virtualization clusters. My most recent was north of 160 blades in HP C7000 chassis for a large company that intends on competing in the same space as Amazon's AWS/EC2 offering and generates over 100 billion in revenue a year. All of which can actually be verified by a few members of the community.
It's not the money aspect that I dislike, it's that people deliberately set out to undermine something I had put work into for no reason other than to discourage people from considering using it. I don't see myself losing money to this project (as it's a slightly different market segment anyways) but it's not about the money and never has been it's about screwing with someone else when they are attempting to help the community.
I have the same concern about your project. Before anyone claims that they have scanned his VM with an antivirus, remember that the fed backdoors will never be detected by an antivirus.
Nobody said they would but everyone who uses it is very pleased with it and there isn't a single shred of fact to even merit suggesting that anything like this has been done. It's purely a red herring to discourage people from using it.
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This promising thread degenerated into a poo-flinging contest quite quickly.
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I think that the poo flinging has boiled down to the truth. There isn't anywhere else for it to go now. Why not comment on something technical instead of poo? Or both.
Honestly? I don't have anything to contribute in the technical side, since I'm not very knowledgeable in the area.
It makes me sad that the people who seem to know the most about cybersecurity around here also seem to be the proudest and most easily angered. It's like a forum full of Richard Stallman clones who disagree with each other on everything.
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Really? We didn't have valid concerns about your project being insecure? We are just a bunch of big meanies?
I never claimed the concerns weren't valid, but the concerns were not unique to my offering (and I've stated that MANY times) and many were possible security issues that exist in every copy of windows xp available and beyond the scope of what it's intended to protect people from. All that those arguments did was essentially bring up technical issues far beyond the scope of the users using the product and instill fear and confusion to serve no purpose other than to discourage people from using something that would otherwise in many cases help them do things in a more secure fashion.
So if you say it about our project, that is completely valid. If we say it about your project, it is purely a red herring.
It is a valid concern about both projects. The difference is, I have provided a solution to this problem for our project.
I've never claimed it's not just as much a red herring for this project or my offering, simply using your own argument against you since the same things apply to it as do to mine to demonstrate that there is nothing unique about the challenges that were cited about my offering and yours.
What solution have you actually provided? because I don't see anything more than a very lacking suggestion to use liberte and install a few utilities and set them up. This assumes a level of expertise above and beyond the customer base that my offering is intended to help. Anyone who already has this level of expertise has probably already done this on their own so it really doesn't solve anything.
On the other hand I have provided a solution, and so far every person who has used it, or uses it currently is very pleased with it. It's not the software that people are looking for, it's the expertise to set it up properly which this does not accomplish any more than googling does.
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This project shouldn't be related to SR, but someone really should make a free market system that allows for the decentralized marketing of all goods (think a free market volunteer network of anonymized hidden services working redundantly to mirror the same cryptographically ensured as neutral and 'ignorant' market environment...after all taking out a network of fifty hidden services is going to be a bit harder than taking out one or two servers........ [ snip ]
It should also look like one of those foreign hacker OS systems like in the movies.
What happened to blackopsecurity.net ?
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I know 3 well publicized examples of carding admins that wrote supposedly 'secure' proxy software which in reality was backdoored so they could read your hard drive and steal your money, and gain intel on you.
If I was to write SR secure software, I would backdoor it so I could steal bitcoins before you even loaded them here. Trivial to do. Anybody dumb enough to use the software would blame this website, not the snake oil secure software I gave them. Can't trust anybody else's security, unless they are writing a guide book and you do it all yourself. There is no instant secure solution you can just start using security is a process and the more you learn the better.
Look up The Datalocking company, one of many examples of supposedly bulletproof secure systems that were in fact backdoored from the very beginning. Write books, and guides, don't hand out software. Especially here.
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if some body interested in HD installation then check our Pirate linix, based on Ubuntu 11 already has TOR, PGP, and bitcoin vallet, all HD encrypted. I installed it recently seems like best OS for HD installation.