Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - kmfkewm

Pages: 1 ... 51 52 [53] 54 55 ... 249
781
Security / Re: Bug Detectors and what to do about them
« on: July 13, 2013, 03:07 pm »
Also you need significant training to even know what to do with professional grade equipment once you have it. Bug detection is an entire profession and it requires months to years of training and tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. If your attacker gets their bugging equipment from we-sell-spy-gear.info then you are probably good to go with bug detecting equipment from we-sell-bug-detecting-equipment.info , but if they are using professional grade equipment it will require professional grade equipment to detect it.

782
Security / Re: Bug Detectors and what to do about them
« on: July 13, 2013, 02:55 pm »
zxydwx3 you must not read much about law enforcement operations because bugging is extremely common. I know at least one busted internet vendor who had his car bugged with a GPS tracking device to aid in LE surveillance of him. It is also extremely common for bugs to be used in the form of wires, and hidden cameras have also been used in computer crime investigations, and physical key loggers have been used extensively as well. Not to be rude, but get a clue before you comment.

As far as bug detection goes, to the best of my understanding you are not going to be able to afford a professional bug detecting kit. The kits used by actual professionals cost upwards of $100,000. I have heard that the bug detecting equipment you can buy on the internet for cheap is great for detecting bugs that you can buy on the internet for cheap (often from the same stores), but that it is not truly professional grade equipment. The professional name for bug detection equipment is TSCM, technical surveillance counter measure equipment. A quick search reveals stores selling kits for a few hundred dollars, but searching for truly professional grade equipment shows single devices ranging from between $3,000 to $80,000.

783
Security / Re: Brainstorming the ideal anonymity network
« on: July 12, 2013, 11:58 am »
Quote
A network that consists of a mixed, decentralized, and distributed core, mixed PIR outer layers, variable latency via proof of work, multi data-type support, built-in multi host network support (clearnet, i2p, tor, etc cross communication) and the ability to completely hide who on the network is the recipient.

I think that mixing is very important for strong anonymity. PIR is also very useful but great care needs to be taken in how it is implemented. Cross network communication is a possibility, although it might be better to base it on top of Tor. In the case of routing nodes, it is better if they all share a common anonymity network.

Quote
CORE
The core network is a mesh topology in which all members exchange all data. Similar to Freenet.

In Freenet all members usually act as routing nodes and data stores, but all members don't share all data. All members sharing all data sounds more like BitMessage, and I don't like this because I think it will scale poorly. I also think that if all users are routing nodes that the anonymity of the network will be hard to ensure, when clients act as routing nodes it tends to open up the risk of intersection attacks. Freenet has managed to do this in a pretty secure way, but I2P is very vulnerable to intersection attacks due to essentially all clients also being routers. BitMessage is also very weak to intersection attacks due to all clients being routing nodes. Tor has substantially protected its users from several sorts of intersection attack by not having all clients act as routing nodes. Another issue with all nodes being routing nodes is that it will dilute the ability to mix messages. Mix networks are actually more secure if they have less routing nodes, because then more messages mix together at each hop. With a network like Tor the anonymity depends on the size of the network, because the goal is to prevent an attacker from observing both ends of a connection, and the more nodes there are, and the more geographically distributed they are, the less likely it is that an arbitrary attacker can view traffic as it enters and exits the network. With a mix network though, generally we would assume that the attacker is already capable of watching all links between all nodes, regardless of how many nodes there are. The anonymity of a mix network depends on the amount of traffic on the network, and particularly the amount of traffic passing through the utilized mixes, and if there are only a few mixes then there is much more traffic passing through all of them and therefor the anonymity provided significantly increases. 

Quote
Data is exchanged between machines using a mixed PIR retrieval system. Machines would accumulate data until the threshold is met. They would then mix and advertise their new data to the connections they have. The connections have the option to retrieve all, none, or some (Using PIR) of the advertised data.

That is an interesting idea. A pull rather than push mix network. Normally in a mix network, one of the mixes receives so many messages and then they reorder them and send them on to the next mix on the messages path. Your proposal seems to be that mixes obtain so many messages, and then they reorder them and advertise that they have them, at which point other nodes on the network can pull them with PIR. There are two important points to consider. The first point to consider is, how do the pulling nodes determine which messages they pull? In a traditional mix network, the client selects the path of mixes that the message travels through. The client needs to have public keys for the mixes on the network first, which they obtain via bootstrapping with a set of directory servers. So the client doesn't need to tell each mix individually that it will use it on its path, it merely needs to construct a message that will be routed through each of the mixes on its intended path. If the client communicates with mixes telling them which messages to pull, the anonymity of the system is reduced to the anonymity the client has when constructing their path when they communicate with each of the mixes telling them the message to pull. If the message is tagged with the next mix on the path, then the PIR will be useless since the mixes will already know which messages are being pulled by which mix.

One possibility is for the messages to be tagged with an ECDH shared secret generated with the mixes long term public key and an ephemeral keypair generated by the client, with the ephemeral public key also attached to the message. If all mixes pull all attached ephemeral keys, they can derive shared secrets with them and then pull messages tagged with shared secrets that match shared secrets they generate with the attached ephemeral keys. This would require all mixes to obtain all ephemeral public keys though, and to derive ECDH shared secrets with all ephemeral public keys. That probably wouldn't scale very well.

The second thing to take into consideration is that generally PIR that isn't everybody gets everything assumes that a message is present on several non-cooperative servers. This opens up the strong possibility of intersection attacks if there is a large distributed PIR network. Because if my outgoing message is on 5 servers only, and the next layer of mixes on its route pulls the message with PIR from these servers, then the message is identified as being one of the messages that is on each of the 5 servers being pulled from. Unless all of the people routing messages use the same exact path as me, this will severely degrade any provided anonymity.   

Quote
Data that is transmitted across the network consists of two parts. The first part is a small identifier for the second, larger, part. The identifier would include the proof-of-work done on the message as well as an encrypted header for the second part. Once the accumulation threshold is reached then the first part is what is announced/sent to connections for advertising new data. If a connection already has one/some of the data being advertised, they will leave it out of their request list to the announcer. This also allows PIR operation to happen unannounced. Additionally this group can/may be padded.

Sounds a lot like BitMessage, and it will likely be weak to some of the same attacks that BitMessage is. For example, if Alice has a message before Bob does, then Bob could not be the sender of the message.

784
Security / Re: Tor and state surveillance
« on: July 12, 2013, 11:08 am »
"The information the NSA collects from Prism is routinely shared with both the FBI and CIA. A 3 August 2012 newsletter describes how the NSA has recently expanded sharing with the other two agencies."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

I can provide additional citations if needed.I feel it is extremely naive to think that if an NSA analyst uncovered serious drug crimes, the information would not be forwarded to the appropriate Federal Agency.We all know the Feds aren't concerned with small time dealers/buyers. But if "20 ki's" comes up in a conversation or some other trigger word, you can bet the DEA will notified.

Of course the NSA shares intelligence with the CIA, they are both part of the intelligence community. The CIA is also not a police agency. The FBI is a hybrid agency, they act as both a police agency and a domestic intelligence agency. The FBI is the only federal police agency that also acts as a more traditional intelligence agency. This is because the FBI does domestic terrorism investigations as well as domestic counterintelligence. The FBI is a very big organization with several different highly specialized subgroups. It consists of agents with vastly different skill levels and abilities, and the counter terrorism and counter intelligence agents are the very best and they are essentially trained as intelligence agents. A typical FBI agent is not trained to carry out TEMPEST attacks in order to covertly gather the addresses of a vendors customers, the FBI counter intelligence agents are trained to carry out TEMPEST attacks for counter intelligence purposes. The NSA sharing intelligence with the FBI and CIA does not convince me that any of them are acting in a policing capacity in regards to this activity, of the three agencies only the FBI is a police agency at all, but due to the fact that the FBI also has specialized groups for counter intelligence and counter terrorism, I suspect that it is operating in an intelligence rather than in a police capacity when it comes to this specific set of operations. In other words, I do not think the NSA is sharing the collected information with arbitrary FBI agents, but rather is sharing it with FBI agents who are active in a counterintelligence or counter terrorism capacity.

It also says nothing about the NSA being compelled to share this information.

Quote
kmf seems to subscribe to some funny ideas, like : there are libertarians in the US military

Timoth McVeigh was in the US military and he is a prime example of an extremist militant libertarian who later actually blew up a federal building in protest of gun (and drug) laws, and particularly the federal police attack in Waco.

Quote
the Tor programmers are libertarians

I have heard the opinions of all of the Tor lead developers and all of them strike me as highly libertarian.

Quote
the NSA fights 'terrorism' and  'protects' the US from 'cyber attacks'

Both of these claims are true. An example of the NSA protecting the US from cyber attack is the creation and public release of SELinux, which is used to harden highly sensitive servers used by corporations and critical infrastructure.

Quote
and the NSA is bound by some kind of...what...'laws'?

Theoretically the NSA is bound by some laws, although apparently not to the extent that we thought they were, thanks to secret court interpretations. On the other hand, I never thought that the NSA was, in practice, bound by law. They are a major intelligence agency, they can do whatever the hell they want.

785
Security / Re: "Sorry. You are not using Tor" message on browser
« on: July 12, 2013, 10:41 am »
Tor Status has false negatives and positives on occasion. If your exit node has just been added then you will possibly not be detected as using Tor, because the list of known Tor exit IP addresses at Tor Status is not kept 100% up to date in real time.

786
Security / Re: longer message = better security ?
« on: July 12, 2013, 10:33 am »
I think what kmfkewm is talking about is more for like https:// communication with a key exchange rather than PGP.

The message length won't matter with PGP; it's all about whether the user can guess or obtain the private key (and password if pw protected). By brute force the more bits in the key the better. I thought I read 912 bit has been cracked in about 141 days using like 300 personal computers in parallel.

It doesn't really matter with PGP, that is what I was trying to say. It is a technicality. Technically, message length correlates with the time it takes to decrypt a message, I believe in every possible case but don't quote me on that. When a message is encrypted with PGP, what really happens is that first a random session key is generated. The plaintext message is then encrypted symmetrically with the session key. Then the random session key is what is encrypted with RSA, the session key will be either 128 bits or 256 bits depending on the symmetric algorithm used. The final ciphertext block contains the asymmetrically encrypted session key as well as the symmetrically encrypted message. After the session key is discovered, it is fed into a symmetric algorithm. The best example I can think of is counter mode AES which is a stream cipher, block ciphers work differently but I think the same thing will apply. With AES in counter mode, you feed the algorithm the session key and then it outputs a key stream. You obtain the plaintext message by XORing each byte of the ciphertext with the matching byte outputted from the AES algorithm that you fed the session key to. So a bigger message means that the AES function needs to generate more bytes, and more XOR operations need to take place, so technically it will take longer to decrypt a longer message, but it isn't significant.

787
Security / Re: Symantec Desktop Encryption?
« on: July 11, 2013, 09:42 am »
The question to ask is why would you even take a risk trusting that shit. Truecrypt is free and open source. Use Truecrypt. A more precise answer is that you really cannot trust proprietary encryption software, and there is no reason for you to. I mean, maybe it is not backdoored, maybe they implemented it correctly, but who knows? Not me, not you, only a few people at Symantec know if it is backdoored or not and not even they know for certain if they implemented it properly, because even with open source software that has no known defects nobody knows if it is implemented properly 99.99% of the time, but because it is open source arbitrary people can try to ascertain if it is correctly implemented.

788
onesickpuppy,

I understand what you are getting at, and yes it is possible the way you have described it, but it would only really be possible if some automatic system was implemented by a skilled web-programmer.

Which would take hours and hours to do, totally outside of the realm of possibility /me rolls eyes.

Quote
They would have to incorporate a system that automatically decrypts the addresses, saves the data, then automatically reencrypt it to the vendors corresponding public key. They would have to make it do this automatically. This would be incredibly difficult/challenging for a person to code as it would have to pair up the information in thousands of fake DEA keys to the thousands of vendor keys, and update them on a regular basis....

Computers are extremely good at doing things automatically. I highly doubt you know how to code anything and therefor your claim that this would be incredibly difficult or challenging is likely directly delivered from your ass. When it comes to computers, thousands is not a big number. Nothing needs to be updated on a regular basis. It wouldn't be hard to do this attack if you have control of the server. It would be hard to do it consistently and get away with it if anybody checks for it though, so long as we have anonymity. It would be hard to detect if it is only done occasionally though.

Quote
So while this IS possible in an extreme circumstance, it is incredibly unlikely and could be found out/detected simply by checking on an alternate buyer account. Even if they just did one vendor at a time, it would still be a somewhat difficult code to implement, and not worth their time in the first place.

If they did it with just one vendor at a time it would be absolutely positively trivial to implement and wouldn't need any code at all, a human could do it against a single vendor provided that they have access to the server. They just need to change the vendors public GPG key for a while, then switch it back, then intercept all communications to the vendor and try to decrypt them with the key they put out there for a while. Absolutely trivial.

Quote
If they wanted to bust buyers and they already had possession of the site... they would just lock vendor/s out of their accounts and intercept purchases.... and then tell buyers their pgp key doesn't work. Etc. Just an example. There are much easier ways for them to bust people if they took control of the site.

That proposed method will be detected in no time, and would raise all kinds of red flags to any intelligent buyer. The sort of attacker the OP mentioned is widely recognized, it is called a man in the middle attack, it can be automated and carried out on a massive level, and it is irritating to see people calling him a dumbass when they are obviously the ones who don't know what they are talking about.

789
Security / Re: Tor and state surveillance
« on: July 11, 2013, 04:12 am »
It doesn't make sense that the NSA reports on crime and yet there are high profile targets that use the internet and avoid arrest for years or indefinitely. I personally doubt Snowden if he truly claims that the NSA reports on all illegal activity that they intercept. It sounds like bullshit to me, for a variety of reasons. Without documented proof that they are compelled to report on criminal activity, I am completely unconvinced.

From The Guardian :

Quote
Even if upon examination a communication is found to be domestic – entirely within the US – the NSA can appeal to its director to keep what it has found if it contains "significant foreign intelligence information", "evidence of a crime", "technical data base information" (such as encrypted communications), or "information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property".

Note that it says the NSA analysts may *appeal* to the NSA director to keep intercepted US internal communications that are *inadvertently* intercepted. It doesn't say that the NSA is compelled to report criminal activity to the police. It doesn't say that NSA analysts are compelled to report criminal activity to the NSA director. It says that they *can appeal* to keep the communications. I also note that they mention evidence of a crime and also information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property. In general, anything they intercept that pertains to a threat of serious harm to life or property is evidence of a crime, and I imagine in the likely extremely rare cases that they exercise their ability to utilize US internal intercepts, that it will be in cases of domestic terrorism and similar things. I think people are taking this way out of proportion in assuming that the NSA is systematically sucking up US internal communications and then piping them off to the FBI for criminal investigations. That is not what the NSA does.

Furthermore, traffic metadata intercept of US internal communications has *always* been legal without a warrant. Even the FBI and the local police do not need warrants to intercept traffic metadata. The courts have never considered traffic metadata to be protected by the constitution, only payload data. The only difference between what the NSA is doing and what the FBI and local police are probably doing, is that the NSA is gathering *all* of the traffic metadata whereas the police only gather metadata when they think it will assist them in their current investigation.

790
Security / Re: Tor and state surveillance
« on: July 11, 2013, 03:06 am »
show me a link where it says that the NSA is compelled to report crime that they become aware of. The only thing I have seen is that they are legally allowed to report crime that they become aware of, I have seen nothing that says they are compelled to do anything.

791
Security / Re: Tor and state surveillance
« on: July 11, 2013, 01:11 am »
Quote
libertarians do not work for the american military.

Lots of libertarians work for the US military. The US military is not a police force.

Quote
I never said the NSA will shut down SR. What they will do is tell some other government monkeys how to find SR.

Extremely unlikely.

Quote
Again, terrorism does not exist, except for US terrorism (which is massive, but oddly it's not the terrorism you seem to have in mind)

US commits terrorism but terrorism is also committed against the US and its allies, on a fairly regular basis. One of the reasons terrorism is not committed as frequently on US soil is due largely to the efforts of intelligence agencies.

Quote
Do you think these alleged terrorists discuss their  plans on facebook and gmail? Or even Tor? Don't be silly.

Osama Bin Laden had a courier who used I believe USB devices to take communications from Osama to cyber cafes, after which he sent them via the internet to various terrorist contacts, got messages back and took them to Osama where he was hiding. I don't know if the messages were hidden with steganography or encryption or what the technical details are, but during Osama Bin Ladens time in hiding after 9/11, he frequently made indirect use of the internet to engage in communications with his terror network, and apparently many of his contacts also made either direct or indirect use of the internet to transfer their communications. I don't believe Osama was caught due to signals intelligence locating his courier, but rather was caught because somebody who knew who his courier was was tortured and revealed the information, after which his courier was located and followed back to the location Osama was staying at. It seems like the CIA was probably mostly responsible for this operation, but theoretically the NSA could have located his courier with signals intelligence.
   
Quote
Maybe one of the purposes of the NSA is to spy on 'foreign' governments, but their main purpose is to spy on ordinary sheep. both american sheep and foreign sheep.

The NSA doesn't give a fuck about ordinary sheep. They also extensively spy on foreign governments. Another one of their big responsibilities is securing the USA from cyber attack.

792
You've gotta - watch your back or be a victim
can't trust anybody everybody out to get some
nobody cares about yours, 'cept to take it
give a chance and you'll wind up naked and broke
people - talk the talk but then they talk to walk
people - balk at the thought of livin locked in prisons
the police plot missions to pop peasants to populate prisons
to prop profits for their brethren
the reverend propagates hate he's not benevolent
and the prophets and the pastors are all liars
but people fear the fire of the heavenly messiah  - want to save their soul -
demonstrates that a lie can enslave us all
the politicians promise amelioration ,
there's no alleviation, their plan is to rob the nation
they're two faced, replaced, same shit different day

793
Pretty noob mistake to always send from the same location. Smart vendors try to recycle drop off points as little as possible.

794
Somebody with 1 post sent me a PM saying he has further information about what happened. I cannot translate or understand this, but here is what he sent me and asked me to post. Any German speakers care to translate?

Quote
    M bestelle drei Drogenpäckchen im Netz über denselben Dealer im Abstand von 3 Monaten. Man kontrolliere wo die Pakete aufgegeben werden, in dem Fall an einer kleinen Poststelle in einem Kiosk, wo die Überwachung halt nicht so vorhanden ist. Man bestelle ein weiteres Paket, man kennt nun den Zyklus den der Drogendealer hat, man bewache die Poststelle in der Zeit wo er das Pakt gewöhnlich aufgibt, drei Tage Observierung einer Poststelle durch zwei Beamte, man identifiziere den Drogendealer über die Kamera, folgt ihm und observiert ihn, erhärtet sich der Verdacht nicht geht man hin und meldet ein Problem und kommt eventuell so an den Dealer ran. In diesem Fall sah der Paketbote schon aus wie ein Junkie, diesen Paketboten haben die in Bayern festgesetzt ausgequetscht und dann die Dealer gefunden

    > Der Dealer übergibt die Drogen verpackt einem Mittelsmann der das Paket verschickt, meist eine kleine Nummer die nichts weiss, leider wusste dieser Paketbote ziemlich viel über den Dealer was fatal war.
    > Ich hatte ein wenig in den Berichten gestöbert was die Kollegen in BAyern da gemacht haben, eigentlich saubere Polizeiarbeit, aber die fühlen sich jetzt voll wie die Häckerkönige.


So ist es bei PF / AH wohl gelaufen.

795
This yet again demonstrates the advantages of using a fake ID box, customers who had worked with the busted vendors could at this point drop their boxes and get new ones. Customers who had shit ordered to their real addresses are at the mercy of the security of the busted vendor.

Pages: 1 ... 51 52 [53] 54 55 ... 249