Silk Road forums
Market => Product offers => Topic started by: vlad1m1r on June 16, 2012, 12:52 pm
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Dear all,
In my continuing bid to keep Big Brother off our banks I have recently been making use of the publicly available bridges from the Tor website.
For those who don't know bridges are a useful way of disguising your Tor traffic in such a way that it's not possible for your ISP to tell that you're using it in the first place. (Please see : http://tor.zuo.la/docs/bridges.html.en for more info).
This can be particularly useful in countries like the UK where ISP's are now being asked to record traffic data and even practise "deep packet" analysis in some cases.
A friend of mine who has been advising me about setting up bank accounts offshore has helped me to establish a dummy company in an offshore location - part of the deal is that I receive some virtual office space for a monthly fee including a dedicated server and I'd be happy to share this with other SR users in exchange for a small fee for my bandwidth - would this be worth one or two Bitcoins a month to anyone? Needless to say I've found the server is fast and operates 24 hours a day.
The advantage as I said is that it would be near impossible through traffic analysis alone to tell you're running Tor.
I should say in fairness that there are publicly available bridges but by their very definition they're not as secure and they're also not guaranteed to work 100% of the time.
I also don't want anyone to think I'm scaremongering ; the chances of you being caught through traffic analysis alone are slim but if you do live in a remote location or you have some sensitive materials/information in your home then this might be worth considering.
I'd be more than happy to grant anyone a trial period to test the speed before going ahead. Please let me know what you think!
V.
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Then this gives you access to all of our REAL IP addresses(Of course, you could always use a VPN, but I am no expert in security and am unsure how well this would work together). Regardless of who you are, I would never trust ANYONE on this website with that kind of information.
Depending on your situation (and there are some where a bridge would be MORE useful), using random wifi where it does not matter if you are detected on TOR is usually the best option. Now, in rural areas where you could be the only TOR user for 20-50 miles, that isn't an option and using TOR is a vulnerability. In a case like this, I can see a bridge being of more use.
Now, I don't know all that much, but I like reading your post and responses vlad1m1r. So I am sure you can educate me further :P
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Then this gives you access to all of our REAL IP addresses(Of course, you could always use a VPN, but I am no expert in security and am unsure how well this would work together). Regardless of who you are, I would never trust ANYONE on this website with that kind of information.
Depending on your situation (and there are some where a bridge would be MORE useful), using random wifi where it does not matter if you are detected on TOR is usually the best option. Now, in rural areas where you could be the only TOR user for 20-50 miles, that isn't an option and using TOR is a vulnerability. In a case like this, I can see a bridge being of more use.
Now, I don't know all that much, but I like reading your post and responses vlad1m1r. So I am sure you can educate me further :P
I had been under the impression that using an obfsproxy bridge would circumvent this issue by disguising one's traffic? (https://blog.torproject.org/blog/obfsproxy-next-step-censorship-arms-race) but I see your point. Surely if the server was located somewhere offshore where American/European LEO has no jurisdiction there'd be no danger of any information about the real IP addresses being leaked to them though? Also wouldn't using a single, private bridge reduce the chance of using a LEO run "poisoned" Tor node which would harvest IP addresses in the way you describe?
It was my impression that using an obfsproxy bridge encrypted that first "hop" Vidalia makes when connecting to the Tor network so it's near impossible to determine that they're are in fact using onion routing at all, let alone visiting a specific website but I could be wrong!
I have never been too sure about using free Wifi networks as they seem to be something of a two edged sword. A good alternative might be to use pay as you go internet with 3G but of course it would make it fairly easy to locate you geographically if you live somewhere more remote. I live in a very small island so it's a necessity for me but perhaps the need isn't so great for people in densely populated areas.
There is also the option of using free publicly available bridges of course but I understand these don't offer the same level of safety as the addresses are publicly available.
V.
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when i read the post headline i thought it was for a real bridge lol. I was like holy crap you can rent a fricking bridge on SR, what doesnt the website have!
then i laid down the bong and realized it was some computer internet thing that is way above my head. sounds cool though
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when i read the post headline i thought it was for a real bridge lol. I was like holy crap you can rent a fricking bridge on SR, what doesnt the website have!
then i laid down the bong and realized it was some computer internet thing that is way above my head. sounds cool though
I have one for sale in Brooklyn if you're interested :-D
V.
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I'd be more interested in the offshore advice. Been looking into it myself but having some more info is always a good idea from someone that has actually done it. Most seem to want 1000 euro to open the account with you needing to actually go to the bank overseas to sign the papers. I know there are a few companies that will help you set things up out there. Will have to get back into looking at this.
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I'd be more interested in the offshore advice. Been looking into it myself but having some more info is always a good idea from someone that has actually done it. Most seem to want 1000 euro to open the account with you needing to actually go to the bank overseas to sign the papers. I know there are a few companies that will help you set things up out there. Will have to get back into looking at this.
Hi Enigmort,
Thanks for your message. Although I work in Finance I've not had any prior experience with setting up accounts overseas in these areas. I don't want to use SR users as Guinea Pigs so I'm going to give it a try myself, work out any bumps and see if there's a way this service could be of use to other people on the road first. In the mean time if you need help securing your funds I suggest you contact Limetless who does have experience with international banking.
V.
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Will do thanks for the reply V. I was possibly thinking about vending on here next year so it was mainly to filter funds via off shore as a safety net. There are so many levels of things to learn and think about. Feel like an extra in some corny gangland movie sometimes thinking about the things I do. Laundering, off shore accounts etc. But you really need to spread what you have about as much as possible and make is hard to trace. No point doing a 5 year stretch and having fuck all to come out to.
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Will do thanks for the reply V. I was possibly thinking about vending on here next year so it was mainly to filter funds via off shore as a safety net. There are so many levels of things to learn and think about. Feel like an extra in some corny gangland movie sometimes thinking about the things I do. Laundering, off shore accounts etc. But you really need to spread what you have about as much as possible and make is hard to trace. No point doing a 5 year stretch and having fuck all to come out to.
Wise words Enigmort +1
V.