Silk Road forums

I have never used it but I am pretty sure I2P folk use it for their multi homed Eepsites. I think there is actually an I2P fork of it designed for multihoming Eepsites, but I dunno I never got into the I2P community very much.

Quote from: pakchoi23 on July 08, 2013, 03:38 pm

You're right, it is interesting.

Isn't the guy basically saying that clearnet is bad and TOR is a little better.  I think he is being naive assuming his net activity may be safer on the clearnet due to volume of users vs percentage of info grabbed by "the bad guys".

The first poster's argument is basically that bouncing your Tor circuits around the world exposes you to more intelligence agencies than direct clearnet links would, especially when some network resources are geographically close, so Tor is less safe than clearnet. The second poster argues that the vast majority of clearnet sites pull ad, tracking and analytics stuff from all over the internet, exposing you to many intelligence agencies as well.

And the first poster is clearly very wrong about this. Tor hopes that the multiple intelligence agencies you expose your traffic to do not cooperate in sharing intelligence with each other. Against weaker agencies this is effective. Not using Tor at all is obviously far less anonymous than using Tor. But when it comes to powerful and well positioned intelligence agencies, chances are you are bouncing your traffic around in such a way that they can still unravel what is happening.

Also Mike Perry is right the resolution of the intercept is important in determining how much damage can be done, but given the capabilities of Narusinsight supercomputers I think it is not a good idea to assume that intelligence agencies are merely sampling Tor traffic. In 2005 A single Narusinsight box could continuously analyze 10 gigabits per second of traffic in real time. The NSA has several of these things hooked up to split fiber optic cables at many major internet exchange points in the USA. They can target traffic based on all kinds of characteristics, and it would be trivial for the NSA to decide to start gathering all traffic to and from Tor nodes.

Also I will need to read through those papers, but I am currently under the impression that observation of a single 512 byte packet at entry and exit is enough to carry out a timing correlation attack. Resolution is still important, if the NSA only intercepts one out of a thousand Tor packets then a lot of traffic they could have otherwise deanonymized will get by. But as far as a single users traffic goes, if they can observe a packet at entry and exit I am under the impression that the user is very likely fucked. I don't believe that it takes megabytes of traffic to carry out a timing attack. I will need to read those .pdfs that MP linked to (again probably) when I have some more time. 

I think Arma is largely wrong about how much damage single intelligence agencies can do against Tor. Sure maybe the french signals intelligence cannot do significant damage against Tor, but the NSA sure as hell can. The GCHQ sure as hell can. Even Sweden sure as hell can. Sweden signals intelligence monitors 100% of communications entering and exiting Sweden. If your Tor circuit has an entry node in Sweden a middle node outside of Sweden and an exit node in Sweden and a destination outside of Sweden, the Swedish signals intelligence agency can certainly link you to your destination. If your Tor circuit has an entry node in the UK and a middle node outside of the Uk and an exit node in the UK and a destination outside of the UK, the GCHQ can certainly link you to your destination. Most worrying is the NSA, if you have an entry node in the USA and an exit node in the USA and a destination outside of the USA, the NSA can certainly link you to your destination. The signals intelligence agencies definitely seem most focused on international traffic, but it is safe to assume that even nation internal traffic is monitored to a large extent. Certainly there are many circuit constructions that are essentially known to be insecure against specific intelligence agencies without them having any need to cooperate with foreign governments. Taking into account the way that traffic is routed through the internet, the situation is even more dire. If somebody in Germany uses an entry node in the USA and an exit node in Canada that sends traffic through the USA on the way to a destination in Singapore, the NSA is going to be able to link that user to their destination without any cooperation from foreign governments.

It is deceptive to say that Tor withstands all but global external adversaries. In reality it is more accurate to say that Tor completely fails in the face of a global external adversary. Anybody who can watch entry and exit traffic of a specific circuit can defeat Tor in that instance. Simply looking at open circuits is enough to demonstrate that traffic sometimes takes a path that makes it vulnerable to single intelligence agencies. If the intelligence agency is the signals intelligence agency of Russia or China or Japan then you can see that very rarely will they be able to compromise a Tor circuit from an external position, without cooperation of foreign intelligence agencies. But if the attacker is the USA, or Germany or Sweden or the UK, then you can see that they can compromise a large percentage of Tor circuits, especially the NSA can.

Tor is not secure against major signals intelligence agencies in areas that route large amounts of the worlds internet traffic, or in areas where there are a large number of Tor nodes. Thinking otherwise is simply wishful thinking.

I really don't know the specific details of that card. Things also are probably different in different countries. As far as I am aware, there are no entirely legitimate reloadable debit cards that can be used anonymously, the best you can hope for is a severely limited $500 or less non-reloadable debit card that cannot be used for cashing out or buying things on the internet. Different countries almost certainly have different limits and rules, but all countries that I know about seem to have similar guidelines. Don't feel bad that you fell for the anonymous trick if it turns out to be the case (my guess is that it is the case, but I don't know the laws of your country or the way Mastercard regulates itself there). Lots and lots of people fall for the anonymous trick. You can go to the store and buy these cards and load up to $1,000 on them at the store without ever showing ID, and the only way to learn that you need to tie the card to your identity and get a new one shipped to you in the mail that actually has a PIN and is activated, is if you read the fine print. It really seems to me like they are trying to trick people into thinking they can obtain and USE the cards anonymously, and by the time people figure out they cannot they already have hundreds of dollars frozen waiting for identity verification etc.

As I already mentioned, there are underground companies that do provide real anonymous debit cards, but they are generally either operating illegally or at least covertly. They get a bank to back their cards and then they issue them without obtaining identification from customers, without telling the bank what they are doing, and then operating as E-currency exchangers as well to let people load the cards. When the bank finds out what is going on they revoke the cards issued and stop doing business with the people (who are generally Russians or Eastern Europeans it seems), and then they need to find a new bank and start up again. Generally there is a several month to a year or so time frame in which the anonymous cards work though, which is plenty of time to use them for cashing out illegal money anonymously at ATM's, but these cards are not really good for long term storage of value and general use as debit cards. They are effectively cash out cards for vendors. 

I've been studying Tor for some time now and am considering building my own hidden service and eventually hosting hidden services for others. Does anybody have any experience with this? I understand the whole onion routing process very well and have read through the Tor design paper as well as the protocol specs on gitweb, but I am concerned that the server itself might leak information through error messages or some other unforeseen channel. I know configuring applications to route through Tor can lead to issues like DNS leaks but binding the server to localhost should prevent any data from being sent outside of Tor from the server. I was planning on going with Apache running on linux for the server unless anyone can recommend a better alternative. I don't have much experience with server configuration yet. Insights and advice would be appreciated, thanks.

The number one step you need to take to secure the server from IP leaks is running the entire thing inside of a virtual machine that is only capable of communicating with the internet via Tor, and which does not know your external IP address. If you do that it prevents all IP leaks and DNS leaks, and it also makes it a lot harder for hackers to obtain your real IP address even if they manage to root the VM with the web server in it. I consider this technique to be absolutely indispensable, especially for hidden services.

Generally, the simpler the application, in this case the web server software, the smaller the attack surface. Apache is a complex web server with a large attack surface. If you can avoid running scripts entirely, then a simple server that only serves static html would be the safest, but Nginx with minimal features would still be better than Apache.

This. Don't use Apache. Go with Nginx or Hiawatha.

Use full disk encryption. You will have to request this feature if the provider doesn't have a way for you to load installation images and install the OS yourself.

It isn't possible to use FDE on a remote server without something like KVM over IP. You need total access to the entire boot sequence. That said, using a server with KVM over IP is a great idea.

Rent the server anonymously, whether or not it's disposable. The vast majority of providers don't take bitcoins, so you'll have to anonymize fiat currency. I haven't done that for years and the most popular method back then, Liberty Reserve, is gone, so you'll have to find other ways of bouncing your money through exchanges. Other people are more knowledgeable than me about that and can probably consult you in private.

Definitely renting the server anonymous is 100% required for your security. You can still use exchangers to cash out Bitcoin to bank wires and such probably, although it has been a while since I bought a server anonymously, and since LR is gone and a lot of exchangers have been busted it might be harder these days. It was already a pain in the ass even before they busted LR, since people renting dedicated servers generally have various anti fraud systems in place that are hard to get around while maintaining your anonymity. I am sure you can still get dedicated servers anonymously, it is just a bit of work and probably even more so now than it ever has been before.

There are a lot of other things to take into consideration as well. I mean, for the absolute ultimately secured hidden service I could write a book on the subject, but pretty much nobody goes to all of the trouble and expense required to make a hidden service as secure as humanly possible. Some steps are totally indispensable though, like running the web server isolated in a VM that doesn't know your external IP address. Check the securing hidden services thread that Astor linked to as well. 

Your understanding of government is blurred. I don't think you can differentiate the difference between current laws and a sitting government. To you they seem the same. While a government is capable of creating laws, no one branch dictates them. I won't get into how its all setup but there are many checks and balances to ensure that no one entity - legislative, judicial, or executive, has monopolistic control over law making.

Yes the king, his wife and their children all can work together to pass the laws! Freedom! Checks and balances! First of all there are only two main political parties, and they agree on 90% of the issues, and they make damn sure that no other political party has a snowballs chance in hell of gaining any significant power at all, and they also all collude with the police. You are damn naive as hell if you think that there are really checks and balances. You totally buy into the idealistic image that is presented to you rather than looking through the lies and seeing the fucking reality of the matter. First of all the various branches select who is part of the other branches to some extent, the Supreme court judges (who are insanely powerful) are nominated by the president and then confirmed by the senate. The president is whoever the electoral college selects from either the Democrat or Republican party. It is a fucking oligarchy and only a fool would think otherwise. No one entity has control over law making, but two parties have 100% complete control between them, and it is also theoretically possible for a single party to obtain complete control as well.

It sounds though like you believe that there are simply to many existing laws that restrict your freedom to .. *lets take a look at what you wrote* ...  ".. look at what you want".  I'm not sure what has been denied to you in this arena. The only thing I can think of would be child pornography, of which I think the vast majority of people will agree, is harmful to children and ought to be illegal under any political system.

Look, I am not going to turn this into a victims of the war on CP thread because we have already had enough of those. So I will keep my response to this concise. The constitution of the United States of America promises freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The Supreme Court said that child pornography is not protected speech, because:

1. The government has a very compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of children.

Viewing child pornography is not sexually exploiting children. I imagine that the government also has a very compelling interest in preventing the violent exploitation of adults, but the Supreme Court has never said that it is illegal to view videos of people being murdered. For that matter, the government has a compelling interest in preventing the sexual exploitation of adults, but there are no specific laws against rape pornography featuring those over the age of 18, rather they must first be classified as obscenity (obscenity laws are another violation of the right to free speech). Let's see what the Webster dictionary, the authority on English words, has to say about the word exploiting:

A. To make use of selfishly or unethically: a country that exploited peasant labor.

It is a bit of a stretch to say that viewing child pornography is making use of children selfishly or unethically. Making use of their images perhaps, but the people making use of the children are the pornographers themselves. The matter of ethics is entirely subjective, but the argument that every time a picture of CP is viewed it causes the depicted child to be molested all over again, is purely rubbish. There is nothing unethical about viewing an image of anything, and I would love to know why it is unethical to view a self taken picture of a 17 year old girl flashing her mirror but it is ethical to view a picture of the genocide of millions of people. Doesn't the government have a compelling interest in preventing the genocidal exploitation of the masses?

B. To advertise; promote.

Advertising and promoting are actually entirely different from viewing. If I view a major motion picture it does not mean that I am advertising it or promiting it.

2. Distribution of visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children. The images serve as a permanent reminder of the abuse, and it is necessary for government to regulate the channels of distributing such images if it is to be able to eliminate the production of child pornography.

Distribution is different from viewing, and in fact even distribution of visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity is not intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children. For example, it is illegal to view a self taken image of a 17 year old flashing her camera phone. In some cases the images are not even documenting abuse by any stretch of the imagination, also images of the holocaust serve as a permanent reminder of mass genocide but any sane person would agree that it is unconstitutional for the government to ban such images. Additionally, it is very clear that it is not necessary to attack distributors or viewers of child pornography in order to prevent child sexual abuse, and various leading experts on the subject have stated quite clearly that there is no evidence for the market model of child pornography leading to abuse, the groups involved in production and possession are very distinct with little overlap, and indeed having channels through which child pornography is made available has led to LOWER levels of child molestation in EVERY STUDIED COUNTRY WHERE CP POSSESSION IS LEGAL.

3. Advertising and selling child pornography provides an economic motive for producing child pornography.

Sure, and advertising and selling child pornography have absolutely nothing to do with viewing child pornography. It should be illegal to fund the molestation of children, it should be illegal to instruct others to molest children, but it is *clearly* unconstitutional to restrict a persons ability to view child pornography. Just nobody gives a fuck because they are so against it. So even when we have CLEAR CONSTITUTIONAL COMMANDMENTS protecting peoples right to view child pornography, the Supreme Court can just interpret the constitution away as they see fit. It is actually a PERFECT example of the government being in total control and the people having their constitutional rights blatantly violated.

4. Visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity have negligible artistic value.

This is entirely subjective and not even true. Visual depictions of children engaged in sexual activity can very well have significant artistic value. In many cases it will not have artistic value IN MY OPINION, but it is entirely possible for it to. In fact, I believe there are several images of nude underage children that have been declared as legal by the courts and not child pornography due to the fact that they were recognized as having artistic value. In non CP related cases of obscenity it is up to a randomly selected Jury to determine if a given image or video is obscene (although obscenity laws are also clearly unconstitutional).

5. Thus, holding that child pornography is outside the protection of the First Amendment is consistent with the Court's prior decisions limiting the banning of materials deemed "obscene" as the Court had previously defined it. For this reason, child pornography need not be legally obscene before being outlawed.

So because according to the Supreme Court all CP is inherently obscene, it does not need to be found as obscene by a jury, unlike all other obscenity. Something tells me you will be hard pressed to find a jury that thinks pictures of teenagers flashing their mirrors are particularly obscene, but the Supreme Court decided that in cases of CP it doesn't matter what the jury thinks because they have determined that all nude or sexualized images of anyone under the age of 18 are inherently obscene (oh but feel free to fuck the shit out of 16 and 17 year olds if you live in over half of the USA, just don't take pictures of it because that is definitely obscene and abuse and omfg).

Aside from that, maybe you should campaign to eliminate or alter existing laws. But I get the sense that even that would not be enough for you only because you so casually espouse extremism with words like enslavement, oppression, fascism and the whole Nazi/Jew thing. I fear you're a radical zealot now. That you will never look at the over-all big picture or integrate into a system that encourages your participation. You will only be satisfied when people die, or when only your vision is imposed on everyone else. Go ahead and wish for your magic button.

Hell maybe I should campaign to eliminate or alter the existing unconstitutional freedom restricting uneducated ill founded CP laws. the war on drugs is a tragedy but the war on people who view CP is even worse as they are given life long sentences and labels and it is just as completely fucking baseless and propagandized as the war on drugs is. Campaigning to end the war on drugs or the war on CP viewers is borderline a waste of time for all of the reasons I already stated, not to mention the largest groups of people who would support me are BANNED FROM VOTING. You are essentially saying that I should rally for changes in laws that if people break they are BANNED FROM VOTING. Do you get that? People with felony drug charges CANNOT VOTE IN THE MAJORITY OF THE USA, SOMETIMES FOR LIFE. You say that we are free to campaign and get the laws changed, sorry as soon as we are drug felons we cannot do shit to directly influence politics. I am not espousing extremism I am espousing the simple fucking facts of the matter. We are enslaved, we are oppressed, the government is totalitarian and totalitarian governments lead to situations where Nazis exterminate the fucking Jews.

Why are you so sure that in your libertarian system the "defenders of liberty" will try their best to stomp out corruption? I mean if there are no laws how can somebody be corrupt?

Fine, if not corrupt then criminal. There are still criminals in a libertarian society. The difference is that they have actually caused harm to somebody.

If we all have absolute freedom to do whatever it is that we want to do, who are you to tell me that my actions are corrupt?

Nice stawman, no libertarians say that anybody should have absolute freedom to do whatever it is they want to do. Libertarians only say that people should have absolute freedom to do whatever it is they want to do provided they initiate no *DIRECT* force against others in doing so.

If there is no governing body that we all recognize, that has the ability to pass binding laws that we all respect, then how will we ever agree on what constitutes good and bad for the greater good of the people? Actually you may be onto something, I'd live in this society, BUT only if I had substantial control over whatever it was that we agreed was currency. I could do pretty much whatever I wanted. My opposition would call me a feudal tyrant, but I would just know better.. now where is my magic button ..   

LOL in a free market libertarian society there is not likely to be something like the Dollar. The things used as currency will likely be backed by gold or mathematically ensured scarcity such as Bitcoin. These things would already be major competition to the dollar if not for the fact that the US government demands its protection money be paid to it in dollars, and makes life difficult as fuck for anybody who has any financial instrument that it cannot easily control.

I don't actually ask for permission when I smoke a blunt. I just do it. This is where things aren't as black and white as you want. I respect the majority of laws but I still smoke contraband. I know that it's illegal and I also know that if I get caught I won't be 'enslaved' or 'oppressed', no terrorist or Nazi is going to exterminate me.

Really? If I am caught smoking a blunt I could very well go to jail for several months, during which time I will not be free to go about my life, which to me seems to pretty clearly indicate that I will be fucking enslaved. I will be told what to eat, when to wake up and what to do all day. Additionally, I will need to pay fines and pay to attend all kinds of classes that I don't want to go to (propaganda classes...or should I say "forced awareness and advertising classes"), which means I will be robbed and kidnapped and enslaved if I am caught smoking a blunt. This is oppressive and it is not a stretch to compare my oppressors in this scenario to Nazis, sure they are not quite on the same level of monstrosity but they are just a skip and a hop away. In the case of CP viewers the government is much closer to Nazi as CP viewers are often sentenced to prison where they are tortured, raped and sometimes killed.

This just illustrates your single-minded blanket approach to everything you don't like. Its all extreme. I will agree with you that throwing drug offenders in jail is extreme also, however these laws and punishments can be undone. Killing people cannot be undone.

1. You cannot undo the mental damage caused to somebody by locking them up in a small cell with hardened criminals for months or years, and that you think this can be undone just shows your complete fucking naivety

2. Who wants to undo the killing of the Nazi soldiers? I sure as hell don't.

Your proposed libertarian system has all the hallmarks of oppression inherently built right in. Who polices the overwhelmingly wealthy who will do anything they wish in a lawless land.You seem to think that private 'security' firms will take care of that. What's to stop these firms from collusion? Now you have to pay 'protection' money to the strongest, most armed force. Furthermore, in the current system, not one person has ever been sentenced to death because of drug dealing. There is no 'massacre' or 'slaughter' of peaceful pro-drug protestors. There certainly have been miscarriages of justice whereby some psycho DEA agents have wrongfully killed people while raiding them. No one disputes this is wrong, public opinion is on your side here. 

Good god dude you are so fucking naive that it literally hurts me. What is to stop the current police agencies from collusion? Do you think that the FBI, DEA, IRS, ICE and all of the local police forces are not already cooperating with each other and colluding? We already have to pay fucking protection money to the strongest, most armed force, it is called taxation by the United States government. But oh when THEY do it then it is not paying protection money to the strongest force, but if we live in a libertarian world then it totally is! God your inconsistency is truly pitiful and shows that you are completely unprincipled. But of course you can just make shit up to paint a picture however you like it, so that you can always be right, just like the Supreme Court did when they said viewing CP is not protected by the constitution. There is indeed systematic slaughter of drug users by the proponents of the war on drugs. Every time somebody overdoses on PMA mislabeled as MDMA it is a death attributable to the lack of regulation caused by the prohibition of drugs, and therefor it is equal to chemical warfare against drug users. Every time somebody gets infected with HIV because of outlawed needle exchanges, it is biological warfare against drug users. Not to mention the drug users and innocent bystanders who are raided by the paramilitary drug enforcement troops and shot to death with bullets. We are captured and sent to die in prisons, we are under chemical and biological attack and we are stormed by soldiers and shot at on a regular basis. They don't call it the WAR on drugs for no reason. But because we are so largely pacifists it is not a WAR on drugs rather it is a MASSACRE OF DRUG USERS AND INNOCENTS. TENS OF THOUSANDS OF US ARE BEING KILLED EVERY YEAR, IT IS FUCKING MASS EXECUTIONS, BY PROXY AND DIRECTLY. AND YOU WANT US TO WRITE LETTERS TO OUR ATTACKERS ASKING THEM TO STOP! IT IS FUCKING INSANITY!

You and your magic button again. Presumably if this existed than it would be available to your opposition as well. Through fear, paranoia and hate, magic buttons would kill us all. You don't seem able to grasp this either, that violence breeds violence. If we all had nuclear weapons, there would be someone who would detonate theirs first if only so someone else couldn't get their way. That person would justify their action as righteous and good. They would use extreme radical words like 'oppression' and 'tyranny'. That person is you.

YOU are the one who doesn't seem to grasp that violence breeds violence! THEY ARE USING VIOLENCE AGAINST US AND YOU ARE SAYING WE SHOULD NOT USE VIOLENCE AGAINST THEM!