Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: vlad1m1r on June 16, 2012, 03:06 pm
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Dear all,
After tentatively making enquiries to see if anyone was interested in using a private Tor bridge I plan to set up in Belize for a small fee I received a few messages asking for further info about bridges in general.
If you want an in depth explanation I suggest you take a look at the information and video on the Tor Project site : https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges
TLDR : Although Tor does its best to mingle itself in with your regular SSL traffic, the data packets are apparently quite easy to detect (I've not done this myself but have some learned friends!).
Bridges are Tor Relays which are not listed in the main Tor directory. As such connecting to them make it much more difficult for your ISP or sinister government organisations to filter your Tor traffic.
You might need to use bridges if :
- You live in a country where ISPs are required to block Tor traffic.
- Your ISP blocks Tor traffic anyway.
- You live in a place where not many people use Tor/The internet and don't want to be traced due to being one of the few IP addresses in this area. (This is the reason I use bridges).
- You live in a country like the UK where ISP's are required to record certain parts of your internet traffic such as IP's to which you've connected and you don't want it revealed you were using Tor at a later date in case it's used against you in court e.g you try to deny that you knew a package you accepted into your home contained drugs and want your internet activity not to show you've been using Tor hidden services.
You can view the latest publicly available bridges by going to https://bridges.torproject.org/ - please note that these are not as secure as private bridges as in the nature of things more people know about them - for instance the Police could write these down every day for all we know! This is the reason I was asking about interest in a private bridge but the jury is still out on that one!
Once you have your list, go to Vidalia and click Settings. Next click 'Network' and check the box which says 'My ISP blocks connections to the Tor network.
You can then enter the details of the bridges below to begin using them. Just copy and paste them one at a time from the https://bridges.torproject.org/ page e.g 87.105.190.103:444 - press the '+' button each time to add each bridge.
Your connection is more secure the more bridges you use so make sure you update your list of bridges regularly.
As I said the most secure solution is to use a private bridge but naturally you need to make your own arrangements to set this up. If anything comes of my offshore bridge plan I will let you all know.
All the best,
V.
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If setting up a bridge you may as well set it up to use obfsproxy...
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If setting up a bridge you may as well set it up to use obfsproxy...
That's all well and fine if you're setting up a bridge for others to use - but finding a private bridge to use yourself using obfsproxy is a different story altogether. I am hoping to offer this service very soon but need to make sure the service is reliable first!
All the best,
V.
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You might need to use bridges if :
- You live in a place where not many people use Tor/The internet and don't want to be traced due to being one of the few IP addresses in this area. (This is the reason I use bridges).
- You live in a country like the UK where ISP's are required to record certain parts of your internet traffic such as IP's to which you've connected and you don't want it revealed you were using Tor at a later date in case it's used against you in court e.g you try to deny that you knew a package you accepted into your home contained drugs and want your internet activity not to show you've been using Tor hidden services.
I have been thinking about this lately and while I am all in favour of bridges to add a further layer of difficulty to anyone trying to figure out my position it occurs to me that using TOR in and of itself is not proof of anything. Certainly tor hosts services like the silk road but it also hosts perfectly legitimate services like tormail and even elements of SR. So if the police can link you to tor I would have thought that is no more incriminating that being linked to the internet? I could well be wrong here so please point out if I am, I don't want to be complacent.
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Nobody should use your bridge. That would mean that you know their IP addresses.
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You might need to use bridges if :
- You live in a place where not many people use Tor/The internet and don't want to be traced due to being one of the few IP addresses in this area. (This is the reason I use bridges).
- You live in a country like the UK where ISP's are required to record certain parts of your internet traffic such as IP's to which you've connected and you don't want it revealed you were using Tor at a later date in case it's used against you in court e.g you try to deny that you knew a package you accepted into your home contained drugs and want your internet activity not to show you've been using Tor hidden services.
I have been thinking about this lately and while I am all in favour of bridges to add a further layer of difficulty to anyone trying to figure out my position it occurs to me that using TOR in and of itself is not proof of anything. Certainly tor hosts services like the silk road but it also hosts perfectly legitimate services like tormail and even elements of SR. So if the police can link you to tor I would have thought that is no more incriminating that being linked to the internet? I could well be wrong here so please point out if I am, I don't want to be complacent.
It really depends where you live.
Examples:
A) Iran - The government currently blocks all traffic going to and from the Tor network, they do this by various means, but mainly by blocking traffic to known Tor servers. This is incredibly easy for them and means anyone who wants to connect to Tor and get completely free internet needs to use a private or unknown bridge of some kind. They also need to use traffic ghosting techniques, such as making Tor traffic look like an MSN chat or email.
B) UK in 2013 - The government is currently passing legislation meaning all internet activity will need to be kept recorded for at least 1 year. This will go through in 2013. This means that from then onwards, the police, hell even the NHS or your council will be able to look back if they want to at your internet traffic records and see that 11months 6 days ago at 14:03 you were connected to the Tor network. This could be used against you in a court of law if you were found with illegal materials in your house, such as the anarchists cook book or use your imagination...
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the uk in 2013 is going to be a scary place!
Sorry if I am being dense here but even if the police kick down the door and find illegals under my bed what has that got to do with my internet access? I may well have been using tor at 14.03 but they sure as hell don't know what I was doing (unless they have cracked tor and are keeping schtum about it?). Proving I used tor is a long way from linking me to ordering drugs, worse case scenario is posession. Or am I missing something obvious?
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the uk in 2013 is going to be a scary place!
Sorry if I am being dense here but even if the police kick down the door and find illegals under my bed what has that got to do with my internet access? I may well have been using tor at 14.03 but they sure as hell don't know what I was doing (unless they have cracked tor and are keeping schtum about it?). Proving I used tor is a long way from linking me to ordering drugs, worse case scenario is posession. Or am I missing something obvious?
Hi Bogben,
Many thanks to you and OZ for enlightening us regarding new legislation. My feeling is that we should be making preparations for 2013 here and now as no doubt ISP's will be setting up systems for deep packet monitoring etc. this year to try them out, if they haven't done so already...
Anyway, you're absolutely right in saying if your home is raided and you're found in possession of controlled drugs this in itself would be the crime and whether you used Tor or not wouldn't make a difference to your sentence. However, if you receive a package to your home containing illegal goods and are arrested for it and subsequently try to claim that you had no idea what was inside it, the fact that you used Tor could be used as evidence against you.
Moreover as the Silk Road gains in popularity I wouldn't be surprised if LEO start to single out people using Tor for extra surveillance which will now be possible thanks to this rather draconian legislation.
All of this underpins the need to use a bridge - public ones if you must but any level of protection is better than none at all!
V.
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don't take this the wrong way, it sounds like you know a lot about finance but leave the security stuff to security pros. :)
Why should I take this the wrong way? You've only joked about me being a cop (You're a real hoot) then used the hefty weight of your half dozen posts so far to comment on my knowledge of IT Security.
I don't claim to be an expert but I'm pretty certain the public bridges aren't safer as you claim. I also wasn't saying that it was possible to prove someone had visited "location specific" tor hidden services but that through using a bridge it would be possible to mask your Tor traffic from detection in the first place.
As for buying your own server, how would you do this except using a traceable method like a credit card? You see the dilemma? This is why I am toying with the idea of offering an offshore server which I have been able to obtain through anonymous means. I would share these with you but I doubt you're familiar with the ins and outs of incorporating companies and it has little to do with the thrust of this thread.
I will leave OscarZulu to decide whether your understanding of node enumeration attacks is correct.
In the mean time sweetheart my own advice is for you to keep your head down until you've cut your teeth a little on here, I'd be more than happy to give you any information you need.
V.
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the uk in 2013 is going to be a scary place!
Sorry if I am being dense here but even if the police kick down the door and find illegals under my bed what has that got to do with my internet access? I may well have been using tor at 14.03 but they sure as hell don't know what I was doing (unless they have cracked tor and are keeping schtum about it?). Proving I used tor is a long way from linking me to ordering drugs, worse case scenario is posession. Or am I missing something obvious?
OK quick scenario:
1) Police catch on about Silk Road, some networking fuck who works for them tells them it's very easy to catch people, particularly in rural areas.
2) Not many people in the UK use Tor, all you have to do is capture the IP's of all the people connecting to Tor servers in the UK. If you go round to those IP's houses, you've got a much higher rate of finding something than a random house.
3) Police profit!!
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Why should I take this the wrong way? You've only joked about me being a cop (You're a real hoot) then used the hefty weight of your half dozen posts so far to comment on my knowledge of IT Security.
I don't claim to be an expert but I'm pretty certain the public bridges aren't safer as you claim. I also wasn't saying that it was possible to prove someone had visited "location specific" tor hidden services but that through using a bridge it would be possible to mask your Tor traffic from detection in the first place.
I will leave OscarZulu to decide whether your understanding of node enumeration attacks is correct.
V.
who gives a fuck what oscarzuluthinks, he's a technobabble spouting idiot anyway. in fact you shouldn't give a fuck what i think either, after all i'm just some asshole on an anonymous forum. what you should do is read academic research on tor - http://freehaven.net/anonbib/ and http://www.onion-router.net/Publications.html are good starting points - and you'll see that i'm right. leo docs against internet criminal networks are also useful but i'm a lazy fuck and don't feel like finding them. many people have posted them in this forum though with an "[intel]" tag in the title.
by the way using a bridge doesn't do shit to mask your actual tor traffic, it only prevents an adversary from enumerating a list of tor entry nodes and seeing if you connected to them. tor packets stick out like a sore thumb and an le trap-and-trace that employs deep packet inspection will identify traffic to bridge nodes as tor traffic as well.
"Jacob] Appelbaum and his fellow Tor project members had a plan: a new obfuscated bridge (obfsproxy) that makes encrypted traffic appear to be regular traffic. Obfsproxy was an “ace up our sleeve,” as Appelbaum described it, and Tor put it into action over the past few days despite its user interface being a bit rough…
On Friday, Appelbaum put out the call to the Tor community to start running obfsproxy bridges. He warned that the software is not easy to set up, that it might be effective for only a few days “at the rate the arms race is progressing,” and that people who set up bridges need to either contact the Tor Project or share the bridge addresses directly with users who need them."
Source : http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/02/14/tor-offers-way-for-iranians-to-beat-new-censorship-clampdown/?mod=google_news_blog
So can I take it from this that using an obfuscated bridge encrypted traffic does appear to be regular traffic or does Applebaum have it wrong?
As for people sharing these bridges it seems to be positively encouraged.
As for OZ, he has a Masters in IT Security. You call him a "technobabble spouting idiot" - a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black in humble opinion but let's not dwell on it...
V.
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anyway you might be wrong about the exact reasons why but yes, everybody should be using bridges, ideally one that they control in conjunction with a protocol obfuscation tool.
Then again Mr. Applebaum and I might be right and you might be wrong - let's see what OZ has to say, I'd prefer a considered opinion of an expert if it's all the same to you :-)
V.
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who gives a fuck what oscarzuluthinks, he's a technobabble spouting idiot anyway. in fact you shouldn't give a fuck what i think either, after all i'm just some asshole on an anonymous forum. what you should do is read academic research on tor - http://freehaven.net/anonbib/ and http://www.onion-router.net/Publications.html are good starting points - and you'll see that i'm right. leo docs against internet criminal networks are also useful but i'm a lazy fuck and don't feel like finding them. many people have posted them in this forum though with an "[intel]" tag in the title.
by the way using a bridge doesn't do shit to mask your actual tor traffic, it only prevents an adversary from enumerating a list of tor entry nodes and seeing if you connected to them. tor packets stick out like a sore thumb and an le trap-and-trace that employs deep packet inspection will identify traffic to bridge nodes as tor traffic as well.
Shannon there's no need to be rude about Vlad1m1r or myself, you've done nothing but bitch whine and critise without actually offering any simple, applicable and meaningful solutions yourself for the everyday IT novice user of this forum. Just because Vlad1m1r or myself choose not to post academic research papers and use the proper technical language does not mean we are talking "technobabble", just understandable terms.
You are correct however that simply using a bridge does not hide the type of traffic you are using from the government, and since Tor uses SSL by default it would be easy for a government to block it by simply blocking all SSL traffic, but this isn't going to happen as too much normal SSL traffic happens every day here in the UK and US. Maybe the Iranian government doesn't care but I don't care about them either.
I suppose it's not bad advice to tell people to use a protocol obfuscator like obfsproxy which you can get from the Tor site in a bundle with the rest of Tor, if they want to be extra paranoid, but people should be aware that this is an experimental bundle and other things in there, such as the Firefox aren't up to date and pose a security risk, so you're better off running obfsproxy alone and learning how to do it by yourself, although I think this is too technical and unnecessary for the average Silk Road user unless they're buying drugs in North Korea or Iran.
I do however disagree with:
wrong, you are more vulnerable to endpoint timing correlation with every additional bridge you use. the best choice is to pick two or three bridges on port 443 or 465 and use them for a while.
If someone was to configure only a few bridges, which lets get real, most people here will do, then forget about it and only be left with one working until that dies which is when they will reconfigure it again as they will realise their Tor isn't working, well from my perspective (having done it before) someone using only one bridge is like a godsend to pinpointing someone using endpoint timing correlation.
the public bridges are actually safer since they've been selected from the total available consensus.
To an extent this is true, personally I think Silk Road needs to set up a private bridge for us all to use which we can trust as it would be self defeating for them to allow it to be breached. Although then again there's nothing stopping law enforcement from joining Silk Road and using that private bridge too making the whole damn thing pointless.
The best option would be for everyone to have their own private bridge, but that's not going to happen. Or make some kind of absolutely trusted club.
this is actually really great advice but there's no way for anybody to detect that you've been visiting location hidden services on tor, in fact the majority of tor usage in us/eu is people looking at legal pornography.
It doesn't matter, a jury in court won't see it like that, and all the prosecution have to do is haul you up infront of a jury, whip open a laptop, connect to Tor and open Silk Road, show them some coke, then some kiddie porn websites and the old grandma's and mothers will have heart attacks and you're going down.
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Another issue I just though of with protocol obfuscators like obfsproxy, although this wouldn't really affect the UK or US, but may affect places like Iran or Morocco, is that you may cause suspicious spikes and volumes of traffic in protocols that are rarely used in your country or area, highlighting yourself to the government more not less. This is be particularly prevalent if you were a novice user and didn't know which options to choose properly in obfsproxy and chose something you thought sounded random, but really puts you in more risk.
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the uk in 2013 is going to be a scary place!
Sorry if I am being dense here but even if the police kick down the door and find illegals under my bed what has that got to do with my internet access? I may well have been using tor at 14.03 but they sure as hell don't know what I was doing (unless they have cracked tor and are keeping schtum about it?). Proving I used tor is a long way from linking me to ordering drugs, worse case scenario is posession. Or am I missing something obvious?
OK quick scenario:
1) Police catch on about Silk Road, some networking fuck who works for them tells them it's very easy to catch people, particularly in rural areas.
2) Not many people in the UK use Tor, all you have to do is capture the IP's of all the people connecting to Tor servers in the UK. If you go round to those IP's houses, you've got a much higher rate of finding something than a random house.
3) Police profit!!
lol! very true. An easy way for the police to bump up their arrest quota. I'm not sure how sound the evidential link is between using tor and using an illegal service on tor, I would hope a lawyer would detroy that utterly as the bunkum it is, however the shocking level of ignorance in the general public may well be your undoing with regards to SR.
What sort of traces does SSH tunneling leave? Would tunneling through to a bridge be as obvious (or through a VPS to a bridge) as simple tor use? Would something like deep packet inspection reveal such a thing?
The only silver linings of this tyrannical legislation is that from what I have seen they seem to have very little idea how to make use of the vast amount of information this will generate
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lol! very true. An easy way for the police to bump up their arrest quota. I'm not sure how sound the evidential link is between using tor and using an illegal service on tor, I would hope a lawyer would detroy that utterly as the bunkum it is, however the shocking level of ignorance in the general public may well be your undoing with regards to SR.
It doesn't really matter, the police only need to see you use Tor as a flag for your house, then they go round and hope they find drugs under your bed or porn on your laptop titled "Fit teen chicks" which they will get you on. The level of ignorance amongst the public would be what gets you sent down in court with a jury.
With regards to SSH tunneling, read above regarding obsfproxy and look up how it works on Tor, then you'll instantly understand a whole lot more.
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IDGAF about moroccans, i care about not going to prison. :)
Yes, by the looks of things I doubt you'd fit in :-)
V.
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Your connection is more secure the more bridges you use so make sure you update your list of bridges regularly.
wrong, you are more vulnerable to endpoint timing correlation with every additional bridge you use. the best choice is to pick two or three bridges on port 443 or 465 and use them for a while..
I read this before from Kmf, but I don't understand why is it better to use just 1 (or 3) bridges than to use more, can someone elaborate?
I'm in a country where my ISP already keep the logs for a year.
There is an usual scenario where bridges won't save me.
For example: I write 3 e-mails on different dates using Tor. Half year later feds check what IPs was I connected on those dates, and try to use those IP's as Tor bridges. If the bridges are still alive, they can prove that I was connected to the Tor network on the same dates when the emails were sent. This is more than enough in this country to prove that I'm guilty.
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After tentatively making enquiries to see if anyone was interested in using a private Tor bridge I plan to set up in Belize for a small fee I received a few messages asking for further info about bridges in general.
private bridge? nice try fed. i kid, i kid. ;)
TLDR : Although Tor does its best to mingle itself in with your regular SSL traffic, the data packets are apparently quite easy to detect (I've not done this myself but have some learned friends!).
bridges don't protect against this, protocol obfuscators like obfsproxy do.
- You live in a place where not many people use Tor/The internet and don't want to be traced due to being one of the few IP addresses in this area. (This is the reason I use bridges).
- You live in a country like the UK where ISP's are required to record certain parts of your internet traffic such as IP's to which you've connected and you don't want it revealed you were using Tor at a later date in case it's used against you in court e.g you try to deny that you knew a package you accepted into your home contained drugs and want your internet activity not to show you've been using Tor hidden services.
this is actually really great advice but there's no way for anybody to detect that you've been visiting location hidden services on tor, in fact the majority of tor usage in us/eu is people looking at legal pornography.
You can view the latest publicly available bridges by going to https://bridges.torproject.org/ - please note that these are not as secure as private bridges as in the nature of things more people know about them - for instance the Police could write these down every day for all we know!
the public bridges are actually safer since they've been selected from the total available consensus.
Your connection is more secure the more bridges you use so make sure you update your list of bridges regularly.
wrong, you are more vulnerable to endpoint timing correlation with every additional bridge you use. the best choice is to pick two or three bridges on port 443 or 465 and use them for a while.
As I said the most secure solution is to use a private bridge but naturally you need to make your own arrangements to set this up.
key disclaimer there, you should be setting up your own bridge on a bulletproof webhost like 2x4.ru, not using a bridge somebody else is giving to you.
don't take this the wrong way, it sounds like you know a lot about finance but leave the security stuff to security pros. :)
Private bridges are safer than public bridges, but using private bridges that people on SR are running is stupid as you are giving them your IP address and they already know where some of your traffic is going to.
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I will leave OscarZulu to decide whether your understanding of node enumeration attacks is correct.
I would be hesitant listening to oscarzulu, some of what he says is correct but he gets a lot of things wrong too. I highly doubt that he has a masters in IT security considering some of the extremely stupid shit he has said, like it being possible to brute force 13 character passwords in minutes, or BSD being a type of Linux (for two examples). Most of what Shannon said is correct. One thing I disagree with, public bridges are not safer than private bridges. However, it is an extremely bad idea to use private bridges that you get on an illegal forum like silk road, and using public bridges would be better than using such a private bridge. Not only do you give your IP address to the person running the bridge, you also give your IP address to anyone who monitors the bridge after determining its IP address. Normally it wouldn't matter that the person running the bridge knows your IP address, but if they know who you are and the illegal sites you visit then you pretty much are deanonymizing yourself to them and any potential feds that learn the 'private' bridges IP address. Also, I know you mean well, but it is not that offensive for Shannon to point out that feds have engaged in similar tactics many times in the past, running private VPNs only advertised on carder forums in order to scoop up IP addresses of the people who visit carder forums.
Shannon is correct in saying that you should use less bridges. For someone in China, more is better. Because they want to have one that is not blocked at all times, and the more they have the less likely all of them will be blocked. They use bridges for censorship evasion. We use bridges for membership concealment. The more bridges you use, the more likely one of them will be owned by an attacker, and thus the more likely the attacker will be able to determine your IP address is using the Tor network. Additionally, using more than three bridges at a time makes you significantly weaker to end point timing attacks than using Tor without bridges and with the standard number of entry guards selected (3).
The reason to use bridges is indeed what oscar said (wow I guess even a broken clock can be right sometimes). Let's say a vendor lives in a remote rural area. They leak their rough geolocation to customers every time they ship a package. If they ship to law enforcement and law enforcement can get a list of Tor client IP addresses (numerous ways to do this), then they can come to the conclusion that the one Tor client in the middle of nowhere is probably the vendor who just sent them drugs from the middle of nowhere. Even if you live in a more densely populated area, law enforcement could still narrow you down to maybe a few hundred IP addresses. Pretty much any crowd size reduction is bad, and should be avoided. You want to use protocol obfuscators because they strongly compliment bridges, bridges can hide the fact that you are connecting to Tor relays based on IP addresses, but it can not hide that the traffic you are sending has a fingerprint that is consistent with Tor traffic.
Also you misunderstood Shannon when he/she pointed out that a bridge doesn't hide Tor traffic patterns. It is true that bridges do not hide Tor traffic patterns. This is why they made obfsproxy. Obfsproxy hides Tor traffic patterns, and is used IN ADDITION to bridges which hide that you are connecting to Tor relay IP addresses.
If someone was to configure only a few bridges, which lets get real, most people here will do, then forget about it and only be left with one working until that dies which is when they will reconfigure it again as they will realise their Tor isn't working, well from my perspective (having done it before) someone using only one bridge is like a godsend to pinpointing someone using endpoint timing correlation.
Another example of Oscar saying stupid shit. Oscar, end point timing correlation requires the attacker to be able to monitor entry and exit of traffic. If you use multiple entry points you are increasing your exposure. In fact, using two entry points instead of one doubles the risk of being pwnt by an end to end correlation attack. Regular Tor used three entry points which rotate every month to two months, I believe that you should configure bridges in a similar way (use three at a time, and change them every month to two months).
To an extent this is true, personally I think Silk Road needs to set up a private bridge for us all to use which we can trust as it would be self defeating for them to allow it to be breached. Although then again there's nothing stopping law enforcement from joining Silk Road and using that private bridge too making the whole damn thing pointless.
More stupid bullshit from Oscar. Yes let's concentrate all of our IP addresses to a "private" SR run bridge! Then anyone can monitor a single point on the internet to deanonymize all of us! Most fucking god damn stupid shit ever, the school that gave you a masters should be ashamed of themselves lol (oh wait you don't really have a masters in IT security). Go read about shadowcrew if you think this idea is even remotely good, that is how they were pwnt (by being stupid enough to all use a VPN run by the feds).
i missed this initially, but if you're setting up companies to buy anonymous webhosting you're doing way too much work. there's plenty of hosts operated by russian organized crime which accept bitcoin, pecunix, liberty reserve, and other digital currencies which can be cashed into anonymously, then obscured through multiple offshore exchangers or converted to bitcoin, mixed, and converted back again. some hosts don't even require a referral to purchase a server from them, in fact i posted one in this thread. :)
True dat. There is absolutely no reason to set up a fake company to get a server.
Another issue I just though of with protocol obfuscators like obfsproxy, although this wouldn't really affect the UK or US, but may affect places like Iran or Morocco, is that you may cause suspicious spikes and volumes of traffic in protocols that are rarely used in your country or area, highlighting yourself to the government more not less. This is be particularly prevalent if you were a novice user and didn't know which options to choose properly in obfsproxy and chose something you thought sounded random, but really puts you in more risk.
Nothing sticks out more than streams of 512 byte cells, and that is what Tor traffic looks like if you don't use a protocol obfuscator.
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One thing I disagree with, public bridges are not safer than private bridges.
nah that is what i meant, i just kinda explained it like a retard.
I would be hesitant listening to oscarzulu, some of what he says is correct but he gets a lot of things wrong too. I highly doubt that he has a masters in IT security considering some of the extremely stupid shit he has said
i think there's a 50% chance he doesn't know anything and is suffering from illusory superiority, and a 50% chance that he's a fed spreading misinformation to make sr users more susceptible to deanonymization. not like feds don't do that already: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382/MR1382.ch3.pdf
It is also possible to initiate internal attacks on criminal networks, however, where the objective is to create dysfunctional relations that seriously degrade the capacity of the network to function effectively. One option, for example, might be to destroy trust through misinformation and actions designed to create suspicion and acrimony. One way of doing this would be to identify some of the network crossovers and, rather than remove them, use them to feed misinformation into the network. Not only could this have a corrosive internal effect, but also it could encourage the criminals to move in directions that make them increasingly vulnerable to external attack.
I agree. The fact that he says some true things and some bullshit & dangerous things also leads me to think he may be a clever disinformation agent. A troll would have no reason to say some things that are true with a few well placed dangerous pieces of misinformation. I also doubt that he suffers from delusions of having any idea wtf he is talking about, because he claims to have a masters in IT security...this makes it seem like he should know what he is talking about to people who are not very tech savvy, but is also obviously a lie (or if it is true, is pretty solid proof that he is intentionally spreading disinformation). So my money is on disinformation agent.
for example, allow me to translate one thing he said:
personally I think Silk Road needs to set up a private bridge for us all to use which we can trust as it would be self defeating for them to allow it to be breached.
that is essentially equivalent to saying "Silk Road should be a clearnet website, and people should use no anonymization technology to connect to it" , however the way he words this very dangerous idea makes it sound like it is advantageous to security, and could fool a lot of people who don't 'speak technical security' well enough to 'translate' it
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As for buying your own server, how would you do this except using a traceable method like a credit card? You see the dilemma?
First of all, the bridge knows your IP address so there really may not be a huge point in getting it anonymously if you just use it yourself (I would still opt to get it anonymously though. I would also consider sharing it with some people, anonymous and OUTSIDE of SR, to have a bit of a crowd to blend into). Second of all, there are tons of anonymous ways to get a server. Several hosts accept E-currency like Pecunix and Liberty Reserve. A few hosts accept Bitcoin. Many hosts accept money wires such as WU or bank wires. You can send bank wires and money wires anonymously by using exchangers, for example buying bitcoins, mixing them and then converting them to pecunix and cashing it out via an exchanger for a western union or bank wire to the name / account of the hosting provider. Of course the entire time you pretend that the exchanger is you to the host and that the host is you to the exchanger. Additionally, pretty much every host accepts credit cards and there are virtual credit card services that can be funded with various E-currencies. These services issue you credit card information that can be used at merchants online, but they do not give you a physical card. Unlinq was one popular provider but they have shut down, I am sure there are still several virtual credit card providers though. Here is one place offering virtual credit card, I have NO IDEA if they are scammers or not though: http://ptclub.com/virtual_cc.html ... here is another that I also have no idea about the legitimacy of .... http://yacgplus.com/virtual-credit-cards/
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you can try, but I doubt is any one will use it. more easy to subscribe to some VPN service run by Russians or Ukrainians and for $15 per months you will have 10 vpn servers in different countries to rotate. and traffic not TOR.
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I have a few questions, seeing as though there are quite a few knowledgeable people in this thread. :-)
If I am using TOR, which you say is quite visible to my ISP, would it prompt the local LE to investigate my TOR usage further? Or is it only after a delivery of mine has been intercepted that they then look into these areas to gather evidence?
Before I got here and read about various security measures that should be taken, in regards to anything SR related, I searched alot about SR and Bitcoins on the clearnet. Would this put me at risk of being monitored for anything arriving in the mail?
I noticed that Vlad1m1r posted a recommendation to use Shellmix a few pages back to access exchanges such as Mt Gox and the like. Could it be possible to tunnel my TOR traffic through Shellmix to hide the fact that I'm using TOR?
What if it is a particularly sunny day and the light is bouncing off my tinfoil hat, sending a beam of light into the sky and notifying the LE of my overly paranoid disposition. Would that cause my address to be flagged?
Just waiting on my first batch of BTC to arrive and will be ordering soon. So forgive me if I am asking overly paranoid and stupid questions :-)
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[/quote]
As for OZ, he has a Masters in IT Security.
V.
[/quote]
thats going straight into the profile folder............
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okay all i want to knows is the pro's vs cons of useing on of the public tor bridges?
is it safer to do so than just useing tor?
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It is possible to buy in the UK 3G USB PAYG dongles. Are these safe to use? You can get them without registering on a variety of different networks and just top them up with a voucher. Any thoughts?
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Just set up your own bridge. Purchase shell access/VPS on some offshore server using e-currency or a prepaid credit card, then install a tor bridge on port 443. Keep changing servers and/or use VPNs to connect to tor, and mix in a few public bridges along with the private one from time to time. Don't do anything at regular intervals; keep shit random! Also, open wifi FTW!!! <--- don't forget to randomize your MAC addresses if using wifi!!
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It is possible to buy in the UK 3G USB PAYG dongles. Are these safe to use? You can get them without registering on a variety of different networks and just top them up with a voucher. Any thoughts?
You can, but they can still be used to accurately identify your location due to the way basic triangulation and trigonometry in maths between signal masts works.
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
Second... There seems to be some misunderstanding on Private Tor Bridges, Public Tor Bridges, and Entry Guards.
A Tor Bridge is a method of entering the Tor Network via non-standard methods... The original point of Tor Bridges was to let people in repressive countries like China get on Tor... Since the repressive regimes had lists of the standard nodes (IP points of entry) on the Tor network, they blocked the published Tor IPs and ports, and thus, their population could not get on Tor.
Tor Bridges were intended as a way around this censorship, not as a method of increasing anonymity or concealing membership. Tor Bridges are thus a 'non-published' list of points of entry into Tor.
In terms of the two types, Public Tor Bridge vs Private Tor Bridge...
A Public Tor Bridge is a method of circumventing censorship and getting on Tor... it is published in the Tor Bridge email directory, and can be given out to users who request access. It is less public than the list of Tor exit nodes, but it is still available.
A Private Tor Bridge is the exact same thing, the only difference being that it is NOT published in any directory. The only way people can use a private Tor bridge is if they are told about it , and know the specific IP address, port, and fingerprint.
NOW HERE IS THE CATCH: If you use a Tor bridge to get on Tor, ONE LAYER OF THE ONION IS REMOVED. IF YOU USE A TOR BRIDGE, YOU DO NOT GET ENTRY GUARDS. You still only get 3 onion hops to your destination.
In Tor Default configuration, your circuit to an internet site looks like this:
You -> Entry Guard -> Onion Router -> Exit Node-> Destination On Internets
When you use a Tor Bridge, it looks like this:
You -> Tor Bridge -> Onion Router -> Exit Node -> Destination On Internets
Currently, the use of Tor Bridges should be avoided for purposes of increasing anonymity. They do not increase your anonymity except under very specific circumstances.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, folks, but this is my understanding of it.
---***---
1) If you use Tor Bridges to enter the Tor network, you do not get the security benefit of Entry Guards.
2) Whatever Tor Bridge (or Bridges) you choose to use get your IP as the first hop into the network.
3) You do not get the security benefits of 30-90 day Entry Guard rotation that is in the default Tor protocol. There are no Entry Guards if you use Bridges to get on Tor.
Realistically, the only 'safe' way to use a Tor Bridge is to set up multiple anonymous (and PRIVATE) ones for yourself via an anonymous hosting provider , and then use those. NEVER use a Tor Bridge or Entry Guard suggested to you by someone on the forums , or SR.
Hopefully in future releases of the Tor protocol , it will support the use of private bridges and entry guards together to increase security.
You -> Private Bridge -> Entry Guard -> Onion Router -> Onion Router -> Destination on Internets
Until then, and unless you have set up you own anonymous private bridges, you are better off using default Tor config.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
..Saying the same thing with a different account isn't going to convince anyone Sweetheart. Who honestly believes that I am with the Police? I've expressed a certain respect for the work they do keeping innocent people safe in the past but there the extent of my sympathies end - as for having a Tor bridge I was simply trying to find some use for a server I will never need - no one has a gun to your head!
V.
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
..Saying the same thing with a different account isn't going to convince anyone Sweetheart. Who honestly believes that I am with the Police? I've expressed a certain respect for the work they do keeping innocent people safe in the past but there the extent of my sympathies end - as for having a Tor bridge I was simply trying to find some use for a server I will never need - no one has a gun to your head!
V.
Not trying to say your LE or something like that V, but when offering a private bridge (which could be a good think to my knowledge) you should warn people that you would have access to their IP's right?
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
..Saying the same thing with a different account isn't going to convince anyone Sweetheart. Who honestly believes that I am with the Police? I've expressed a certain respect for the work they do keeping innocent people safe in the past but there the extent of my sympathies end - as for having a Tor bridge I was simply trying to find some use for a server I will never need - no one has a gun to your head!
V.
Not trying to say your LE or something like that V, but when offering a private bridge (which could be a good think to my knowledge) you should warn people that you would have access to their IP's right?
Surely no more than you would if you set your Vidalia client to run as a bridge? Indeed any fool with access to your ISP's records can know your connection is Torified - apparently the data packets are unmistakeable. What's important is that they're encrypted - I understand it is possible in theory to fingerprint certain hidden services through analysing encrypted packets but will leave that to more gifted forum users to comment on.
V.
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
..Saying the same thing with a different account isn't going to convince anyone Sweetheart. Who honestly believes that I am with the Police? I've expressed a certain respect for the work they do keeping innocent people safe in the past but there the extent of my sympathies end - as for having a Tor bridge I was simply trying to find some use for a server I will never need - no one has a gun to your head!
V.
Not trying to say your LE or something like that V, but when offering a private bridge (which could be a good think to my knowledge) you should warn people that you would have access to their IP's right?
Surely no more than you would if you set your Vidalia client to run as a bridge? Indeed any fool with access to your ISP's records can know your connection is Torified - apparently the data packets are unmistakeable. What's important is that they're encrypted - I understand it is possible in theory to fingerprint certain hidden services through analyzing encrypted packets but will leave that to more gifted forum users to comment on.
V.
Sure you can! but nobody offered to run a private bridge without telling the risks involved (once again I'm not making assumptions just discussing). In my opinion if a person offers a service like that should inform about the pros and the cons. But not all people work the same way and you could even think everybody should know that.
Can't we use a VPN to hide the fact we are using Tor in first place?
How can they see you are accessing for example SR if it's encrypted?
If you use a VPN service to connect to Tor, then yes they will have your IP and could see you connect to a Tor IP. This isn't an issue if you create your own VPN. My thinking on this is you can change your IP often, on the fly with a socks proxy, so if LE did get your ISP to provide information, they wouldn't see an IP pattern and would have to go through every IP you connect to 1 by 1? Not likely, but the first thing they would likely do is look and see if you connected to any Tor IP's.
Here's a post from tor-talk that is very similar to my setup:
Setup your own Tor VPN. Similar like JanusVM. Really create your own Tor VPN as JanusVM is closed source, unsecure and unmaintained. One virtual machine running Linux will provide a VPN server and forward all traffic trough Tor. Then use another virtual machine which has no direct internet access but lan-only access to the Tor VPN virtual machine. And connect the VPN. After the VPN is running you can add a proxy to firefox. I tested that myself and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately I tested it with JanusVM and not my own Tor VPN, I am still working on that. This setup could be great, Tor is hiding your ass, Tor Browser is well configured, https everywhere helps a bit to stop eavesdropping of exit servers and proxy servers and you might be even able to use the firefox addon steatlhy to comfortable turn on/off some untrusted extra proxy.
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Fingerprinting is basically that they can see the encrypted traffic and while they can't see the contents, they can see the size of the contents. So if connecting to SR login page is a specific size file transfer each time, and your IP had the same size file transfer, they can assume you connected to SR. I don't know for sure, but I don't believe this has ever been used to convict anyone since it's conjecture and would be difficult to prove beyond all doubt.
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Not trying to say your LE or something like that V, but when offering a private bridge (which could be a good think to my knowledge) you should warn people that you would have access to their IP's right?
Surely no more than you would if you set your Vidalia client to run as a bridge?
V.
If I set Vidalia to run as a bridge then anyone can use it, I will see IP-s but don't know anything about them.
If you set up a private bridge and sell it on SR, you will know the IP and the nick name of the person who bought it from you. If I use a different account to buy it, you will still know that anyone who's using your bridge also has an account on SR.
So every IP will worth a closer look (hack), because there must be some Bitcoins involved, along with shady business on SR, intel, blackmail, whatever.
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Not trying to say your LE or something like that V, but when offering a private bridge (which could be a good think to my knowledge) you should warn people that you would have access to their IP's right?
Surely no more than you would if you set your Vidalia client to run as a bridge?
V.
If I set Vidalia to run as a bridge then anyone can use it, I will see IP-s but don't know anything about them.
If you set up a private bridge and sell it on SR, you will know the IP and the nick name of the person who bought it from you. If I use a different account to buy it, you will still know that anyone who's using your bridge also has an account on SR.
So every IP will worth a closer look (hack), because there must be some Bitcoins involved, along with shady business on SR, intel, blackmail, whatever.
Yep that's what i thought too. But I believe those were not Vlad's intentions. I believe the objective was security and not the contrary.
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Indeed any fool with access to your ISP's records can know your connection is Torified - apparently the data packets are unmistakeable. What's important is that they're encrypted - I understand it is possible in theory to fingerprint certain hidden services through analysing encrypted packets but will leave that to more gifted forum users to comment on.
V.
Are the sizes of the data packets logged by the ISP?
Anyway there are other methods to check if a person was connected to Tor, like trying to use the IP (the client was connected to) as a bridge. The bridge might be dead by then though.
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Indeed any fool with access to your ISP's records can know your connection is Torified - apparently the data packets are unmistakeable. What's important is that they're encrypted - I understand it is possible in theory to fingerprint certain hidden services through analysing encrypted packets but will leave that to more gifted forum users to comment on.
V.
Are the sizes of the data packets logged by the ISP?
Anyway there are other methods to check if a person was connected to Tor, like trying to use the IP (the client was connected to) as a bridge. The bridge might be dead by then though.
This is why I've been saying all along the only REAL form of security is creating and using your own private bridge. It's very cheap to do, only a few dollars a month, very fast and easy to set up with many many guides. Tor even tell you how to do it on their site. All you do is then block all incoming IP's other than your own and make sure you pay for it anonymously.
I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
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Sure you can! but nobody offered to run a private bridge without telling the risks involved (once again I'm not making assumptions just discussing). In my opinion if a person offers a service like that should inform about the pros and the cons. But not all people work the same way and you could even think everybody should know that.
Can't we use a VPN to hide the fact we are using Tor in first place?
How can they see you are accessing for example SR if it's encrypted?
Yup: Just set up your own bridge. Purchase shell access/VPS on some offshore server using e-currency or a prepaid credit card, then install a tor bridge on port 443. Keep changing servers and/or use VPNs to connect to tor, and mix in a few public bridges along with the private one from time to time. Don't do anything at regular intervals; keep shit random! Also, open wifi FTW!!! <--- don't forget to randomize your MAC addresses if using wifi!!
:P
If you use a VPN service to connect to Tor, then yes they will have your IP and could see you connect to a Tor IP. This isn't an issue if you create your own VPN. My thinking on this is you can change your IP often, on the fly with a socks proxy, so if LE did get your ISP to provide information, they wouldn't see an IP pattern and would have to go through every IP you connect to 1 by 1? Not likely, but the first thing they would likely do is look and see if you connected to any Tor IP's.
If you're using an offshore, privacy-oriented VPN then I'm sure your tor traffic will blend in with the other (justly) paranoid users connecting to tor through that service. Better yet, you can just set up your own VPN or SSH tunnel.
Here's a post from tor-talk that is very similar to my setup:
Setup your own Tor VPN. Similar like JanusVM. Really create your own Tor VPN as JanusVM is closed source, unsecure and unmaintained. One virtual machine running Linux will provide a VPN server and forward all traffic trough Tor. Then use another virtual machine which has no direct internet access but lan-only access to the Tor VPN virtual machine. And connect the VPN. After the VPN is running you can add a proxy to firefox. I tested that myself and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately I tested it with JanusVM and not my own Tor VPN, I am still working on that. This setup could be great, Tor is hiding your ass, Tor Browser is well configured, https everywhere helps a bit to stop eavesdropping of exit servers and proxy servers and you might be even able to use the firefox addon steatlhy to comfortable turn on/off some untrusted extra proxy.
^This is one approach to creating a custom VPN. Just don't use the same service/server for too long, otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose.
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I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
Wow dude, so my real IP can get on a list of SR users and all these for free? WOOT
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I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
Wow dude, so my real IP can get on a list of SR users and all these for free? WOOT
I wouldn't know what exit node you connect to.... a bridge is just a bridge....
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I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
Wow dude, so my real IP can get on a list of SR users and all these for free? WOOT
I wouldn't know what exit node you connect to.... a bridge is just a bridge....
A bridge "for all the Silk Road users" in not just a bridge.
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I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
Wow dude, so my real IP can get on a list of SR users and all these for free? WOOT
I wouldn't know what exit node you connect to.... a bridge is just a bridge....
A bridge "for all the Silk Road users" in not just a bridge.
Of course it is. It doesn't provide any kind of evidence that could be used in a court of law.
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I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
Wow dude, so my real IP can get on a list of SR users and all these for free? WOOT
I wouldn't know what exit node you connect to.... a bridge is just a bridge....
A bridge "for all the Silk Road users" in not just a bridge.
Of course it is. It doesn't provide any kind of evidence that could be used in a court of law.
It might not be a proof in itself, but it reveals every SR users true identity to the bridge operator.
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
..Saying the same thing with a different account isn't going to convince anyone Sweetheart. Who honestly believes that I am with the Police? I've expressed a certain respect for the work they do keeping innocent people safe in the past but there the extent of my sympathies end - as for having a Tor bridge I was simply trying to find some use for a server I will never need - no one has a gun to your head!
V.
i'm sure you mean well but at somebody else pointed out i don't think it's offensive to mention that this is a tactic that's been used multiple times by the feds. shadowcrew got pwnt by feds selling them private vpns. some carder.su peeps got pwnt the same way, people on the drug forum dzf got pwnt the same way too. well, dzf was a sting forum set up by the fbi which banned members from viewing the forums though tor, but my point stands. :)
I don't mean to blow my own trumpet but anyone who searches for my previous posts will see that my concern overwhelmingly is focused on security, particularly for newer users. The very nature of an offshore jurisdiction precludes such information being shared with law enforcement - there are extremely strict laws setting up a partition between financial service providers and the government - this is something I can talk about at length(!)
I really, really don't want to sound like a dick or oversensitive but I like to think I've worked hard on building a reputation for trustworthiness on here - people send me thousands in cash every week after all and I've not shortchanged anyone by so much as a penny. While it may be generally true that Law Enforcement may want to trap users on here, it doesn't have anything to do with the offer I was making, I simply am going to be inheriting a server for which I have no use.
After reading OZ's post it would seem that the best solution in terms of privacy is indeed to set up one's own bridge - if this is indeed the case I will attempt to put a guide together for other users on how to do this for themselves. If anyone wants to offer to help, that would be much appreciated.
V.
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This is why I've been saying all along the only REAL form of security is creating and using your own private bridge. It's very cheap to do, only a few dollars a month, very fast and easy to set up with many many guides. Tor even tell you how to do it on their site. All you do is then block all incoming IP's other than your own and make sure you pay for it anonymously.
Re-read what I wrote. You lose the benefit of Entry Guards if you use your own private bridge... There is one less layer in the circuit to De-obfuscate. Furthermore, this puts you closer to the Rendevous Point and ultimately the hidden service your are accessing.
I do not think running a private bridge is a good idea from a security standpoint until there is some form of entry guards added to it's connection into the larger tor network, otherwise you are just replicating the standard problems that caused the addition of Entry Guards to the Tor protocol in the first place. The real solution here is to update the Tor protocol to address these attacks.
YMMV, if you can back up your assertion that it is more secure, then be my guest, but for the vast majority of users here, they will be much more secure using a persistent Tor connection with slowly rotating Entry Guards than they will be using a Private Tor Bridge.
The ONLY way running your own private bridge would be safe, would be if the private bridge was 100% anonymous, untraceable, and was not under surveillance.
Even a private bridge still has to deal with the problem of potentially compromised or malicious nodes, which is the fundamental problem on the Tor network, along with timing attacks.
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Vlad: you might have a good reputation here, as a matter of fact I bookmarked your new posts, and read them every day.
But what if feds get onto you and you yield? Or what if feds got intel about a brigde that is solely used by SR users? They might root it, you might give it up etc
A private bridge for SR users is not useful in any way, it's more like a security concern.
Even a random public bridge is better than a private bridge like that, so why would you do it then.
shannon: Thanks for pointing that out, I just try to countervail FUD
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"Even a private bridge still has to deal with the problem of potentially compromised or malicious nodes, which is the fundamental problem on the Tor network, along with timing attacks."
1. How to solve malicious nodes?
2. What are timing attacks?
"i'm not sure you're correct about the lack of entry guards, off the top of my head i think you are correct but i'll have to reread the tor whitepapers to make sure. assuming you're right, the hit is still one i'm willing to take in exchange for the massive increase in membership concealment i'll gain."
make the exchange to enter private bridge vs lack entry guards?
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well, dzf was a sting forum set up by the fbi which banned members from viewing the forums though tor, but my point stands. :)
I can't find anything about this with google, can anyone help me out?
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1. How to solve malicious nodes?
If I knew how, I'd anonymously email the suggestion to the Tor project developers. This is a very difficult problem, which is why the Tor project refers to it as an 'Arms Race' in terms of technology (Anonymizing technology vs Tracking technology).
Entry Guards were one way of solving a very specific attack on Tor , an attack where a malicious actors flooded the network with malicious nodes and conducted timing attacks. Entry Guards makes this attack much more difficult, since you keep the same Entry Guards for 30 to 90 days , so the flooding is less effective since it would have to be 'long term'. This means in the best case it would takes multiple months to trace, rather than a matter of hours or days.
2. What are timing attacks?
I don't want to make this easy for the feds reading, sorry. They are gonna have to pay out the nose for the talent to do this.
make the exchange to enter private bridge vs lack entry guards?
Yes, that what's he's saying. He's saying he prefers the trade-off in terms of security risks, and in his case, it favors the use of his own Private Bridge to get on Tor rather than using Entry Guards.
P.S. To Poster who using an anonymous Private Bridge mentioning the whitepapers... Yes, I know for a fact that you lose Entry Guards if you hop on a Private Bridge. The Private Bridge connects directly to the second hop of the onion on in the Tor Network (followed by the last hop, the exit node if accessing the clearnet, or another hop, then the RP if accessing a hidden service). The Tor project developers are discussing ways around the path/security reduction of Tor Bridges -- one way they discussed was to increase the path to 4 hops, but this presented its own set of problems. These issues are discussed over the last 18 months or so on the Tor blog.
In my opinion, the only way using Private Bridges instead of Entry Guards is acceptable is if you have set up and purchased your Private Bridge anonymously (perhaps by buying a secure VPS using cleanly washed bitcoins), where the bridge is located in an Western-unfriendly country (Russia, on RBN or something, etc) , and the paper trail for the bridge's billing cannot be traced back to you. You'd have to also be pretty sure your VPS provider didn't keep detailed logs, do DPI, of keep track of what was going in and out of their netblock... And if they did keep such logs of your VPS, you'd have to be pretty sure they wouldn't give these logs up if they received an email on their netblock's abuse account. Hence, your best bet is something related to the Russian mafia.
Then you'd add this Private Bridge to your Tor bridges list , specifying the Private Bridge IP, the port you are running the Tor listener on, and the cryptographic fingerprint of the bridge. Your Tor client will then always connect through this specific bridge to hop on their Tor network rather than using Entry Guards.
You lose the benefit of Entry Guards via this method (Private Bridge), and you lose one-hop in the connection (you only get 3 hops through Tor regardless of what you use), but this tradeoff is probably worth it if your Private Bridge is untraceable and secure. Basically what you gain (by losing Entry Guards) is the 100% GUARANTEE that your first hop into the network is NOT a malicious node. This says nothing of packet monitoring/DPI surrounding your anonymous Private Bridge, and Yes, they'd be able to see you were on Tor with DPI, but there would be no logs on the machine itself, and there would not be the same level of risk that your Entry Guard is malicious.
This is the trade-off... By using your own anonymous Private Bridge , you lose Entry Guards, and You lose a bit of path obfuscation -- but you gain the near-100% certainty that your Entry Point into Tor is not a malicious actor. You also lose the benefit (and risks) of 'rotation'.
I think it would also be risky to use a SINGLE private bridge to always enter the Tor network (I do not know enough about this). I think it would be safer to have two or three anonymous Private Bridges under your control, where you add each one to the Videlia private bridge list with the IP, port, and fingerprint. Maybe someone else can comment on the security risks about always using only ONE private bridge to get on Tor, where that Private Bridge does not change for extended periods of time (30 - 90 days).
I do not recommend using a Private Bridge for most people (90% of the people on the forums), because there is a high technical level of skill required. You cannot simply ask on SR or the Forums for a "safe private bridge" because that would break your security if you trusted the wrong person.
You'd need to set it up yourself. Anonymously. And Securely. And I think you'd probably need more than one Private Bridge, but I'm not sure about that.
The only way to have a "safe private bridge" is to set it up yourself, using anonymous payment methods, locating it in a far-off country, and only using it yourself, (or sharing it with a very select group of trusted people , that you trust 100%.)
You'd also have to ensure that not only was the Private Bridge not publishing itself on the Tor Bridge list, but I believe this is just a binary option in torrc.
You'd have to make sure that the Operating System running your Private Bridge was secure and hardened, and difficult to break into. You'd have to make sure your Private Bridge wasn't keeping any log files of your source IP when you SSH into it to administer it, or when you log into the VPS control panel. You'd need to make sure it was actually private, and not publishing a descriptor in the Tor list, as mentioned.
So you'd have to completely disable logging on the machine, as well as probably have it wipe free disk space every night. This would begin to approach really nice security, especially if you had multiple Private Bridges on different netblocks / different countries.
If you understand and can implement what I've just written , you may want to consider the security benefits of an anonymous private bridge(s). Otherwise, you are better off using standard Entry Guard methods, with the entry guards stored in the Tor data files, coupled with storing your Tor installation on an encrypted partition or encrypted USB stick.
Then cross your fingers that your Entry Guards are not malicious.
Entry Guards do kind of suck , but they are better than using a new (potentially malicous) entry point into the network every single time you start Tor.
One last comment, is that if you are running Tor off Tails or Liberte , without persisting the Tor State information, you are putting yourself at risk . You need to have an encrypted partition, either on a hard drive or USB stick , where you can persist the Tor State information of your Entry Guards, so that you are not constantly rotating to new ones on a daily basis (rather than the intended 30-90 day basis)
The way you do this (persist Tor state information if using Tails, Liberte, or encrypted USB stick) is to unzip the Tor Browser Bundle to your encrypted partition / USB stick. When you need to get on Tor, mount the encrypted partition, file container , or usb drive, and run Tor Browser ("start-tor-browser") from the encrypted subdirectory. Doing this will save the Tor state information, Entry Guards and all, on the encrypted drive. Tor will automatically rotate your Entry Guards over approx 30-90 day periods each time your run it. When you are done surfing over Tor, click Stop Tor on Videlia Control Panel, then dismount the encrypted folder.
Hope this helps
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Just an added comment, something I didn't realize previously....
Part of my criticism of using private Tor Bridges , (in particular one you set up yourself anonymously), was that you lose the functionality of "Entry Guards". This is not the main issue though... the main issue is the _practical reduction in total hops in the circuit path_. A Private Tor Bridge hops directly onto the Tor network, thus , still only gives you 3 hops total (including the Private Bridge!). My contention was that this decrease in realized path (still only 3 hops!) increased your proximity to your target (whether on the clearnet or as a hidden service), and thus, decreases your security on one metric.
What I didn't realize was that Tor lets you configure the default number of hops. My first inclination knowing what I know , would be to encourage those using their own Private Bridges (and even those in censorship countries using Public Bridges) , I'd encourage these people to consider INCREASING their circuit path to 4 hops (rather than the default 3).
You would take a performance hit, but I think that this would increase your security, since your first hop into the network (the private bridge) is not really a Tor node per-se , since it is controlled by you, and more or less only routes YOUR traffic, and your traffic alone.
As such , I think it probably makes sense to increase your default circuit path to 4 to make up for this, ESPECIALLY if you are only using a single anonymous Private Bridge (of course, under your control) to access Tor. But this probably also applies to anyone using a private Bridge as a method of membership-concealment.
The only method I am aware of, to increase your default number of hops (must be done on your Tor client), is to recompile the Tor client source code.
Download the source code, and edit the C header file "src/or/or.h" using your favorite text editor. Change the line that says
#define DEFAULT_ROUTE_LEN 3
to
#define DEFAULT_ROUTE_LEN 4
Or modify it to the preference of your choice. Then recompile. I think 4 makes logical sense if you are using an anonymous private bridge, since your first hop is not really a Tor node per se (it's your own machine). Input is welcome on this issue, but this is just my take on the security here. The Tor developers admit they aren't sure of the correct number, which is why the left it hardcoded at 3 hops (tradeoff between speed and security). However, for someone who is using an anonymous Private Bridge as their first hop, I think there is a strong argument that can be made for increasing the total circuit length to 4 in this case.
If I was using a single anonymous Private Bridge, I'd probably recompile my Tor client to use 4 hops by default. There is not torrc option (as far as I know) , so if you want to increase your path length, you have to recompile your client.
Here is what the Tor developers say.
Q: You should let people choose their path length.
A: Right now the path length is hard-coded at 3 plus the number of nodes in your path that are sensitive. That is, in normal cases it's 3, but for example if you're accessing a hidden service or a ".exit" address it could be 4.
We don't want to encourage people to use paths longer than this -- it increases load on the network without (as far as we can tell) providing any more security. Remember that the best way to attack Tor is to attack the endpoints and ignore the middle of the path.
And we don't want to encourage people to use paths of length 1 either. Currently there is no reason to suspect that investigating a single relay will yield user-destination pairs, but if many people are using only a single hop, we make it more likely that attackers will seize or break into relays in hopes of tracing users.
Now, there is a good argument for making the number of hops in a path unpredictable. For example, somebody who happens to control the last two hops in your path still doesn't know who you are, but they know for sure which entry node you used. Choosing path length from, say, a geometric distribution will turn this into a statistical attack, which seems to be an improvement. On the other hand, a longer path length is bad for usability. We're not sure of the right trade-offs here. Please write a research paper that tells us what to do.
My take here is that 3 hops is fine as a general case, 4 is preferred for those entering the network via their own anonymous private bridges, and that really the solution here is to follow a geometric distribution of hops to improve security at the expense of usability . YMMV.
Lastly, for those who are NOT using Private Bridges (but are instead using the default method of Entry Guards), especially those who are concerned about connecting directly to Tor from home, such as in proto-fascist countries such as the UK, you can increase your security by purchasing an anonymous HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4, or SOCKS5 proxy in a different country. Preferably a proxy that doesn't keep logs. Tor lets you tunnel your connections through this proxy. Thus, your ISP would not know you are connecting to Tor unless they conducted DPI . If they logged your outgoing IPs and kept them for a year, they would just see you connecting to a secure proxy. They can't prove you are accessing Tor, not yet anyway. Just add one of the following options to your Tor Config File (torrc), and/or edit your setting in Videlia Control Panel to connect to Tor through a proxy.
HTTPSProxy host[:port]
Tor will make all its OR (SSL) connections through this host:port (or host:443 if port is not specified), via HTTP CONNECT rather than connecting directly to servers. You may want to set FascistFirewall to restrict the set of ports you might try to connect to, if your HTTPS proxy only allows connecting to certain ports.
HTTPSProxyAuthenticator username:password
If defined, Tor will use this username:password for Basic HTTPS proxy authentication, as in RFC 2617. This is currently the only form of HTTPS proxy authentication that Tor supports; feel free to submit a patch if you want it to support others.
Socks4Proxy host[:port]
Tor will make all OR connections through the SOCKS 4 proxy at host:port (or host:1080 if port is not specified).
Socks5Proxy host[:port]
Tor will make all OR connections through the SOCKS 5 proxy at host:port (or host:1080 if port is not specified).
Socks5ProxyUsername username
Socks5ProxyPassword password
If defined, authenticate to the SOCKS 5 server using username and password in accordance to RFC 1929. Both username and password must be between 1 and 255 characters.
http://www.torproject.us/docs/tor-manual.html.en
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k+ Thank you zer0cool and Shannon you made it really clear for me.
Well as a buyer I think setting a private bridge for me would be too much of an hassle as I don't have the technical skills for it.
What would be the pro / cons of using for example a wireless hotspot? They wouldn't be able to trace you but what about the person who controls the network?
I was going to ask for secure proxys who do not keep logs but I realized that is a stupid question to make on a forum like SR....
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What would be the pro / cons of using for example a wireless hotspot? They wouldn't be able to trace you but what about the person who controls the network?
This is fine if it's say a coffee shop , open wireless, or something like that. Obviously avoid cameras , avoid using your credit card at the shop, etc , especially if you are utilizing their open wireless for anything sketchy.
HOWEVER simply connecting to Tor at a coffee shop , is really not a big deal in and of itself. I wouldn't sweat it. The operator of the open wireless cannot see what Tor sites you are going to. All they can see is that you are connecting to Tor, the IPs of your entry guards, and perhaps the size of your encrypted data packets...and trust me, most of them wouldn't even get that far. That would be some next-level shit.
I'd sat at least 90% of open wirelesses don't even bother to check where their customers are going, so this is a non-issue if you are worried about getting on Tor from public Wifi.
The only thing you'd need to think about is using Phone Company "Hotspots" . These are a bit more of a problem , since some of them do censorship. T-mobile is the worst offender -- they block anonymous access to Tor entirely.
So yeah generally open wireless is fine, just avoid cameras and Tmobile hotspots.
Lastly, connecting to Tor from your home is not a super-big deal, but if you are concerned about malicious entry guards, ISP logs, and so forth, and want to increase your security, your best bet is simply to purchase a proxy , like I mentioned earlier. You want one that supports either SOCKS5 or HTTPS.
Many proxy services claim to "keep no logs" , are "100% anonymous" and so forth, but for the most part this is bullshit. A service called "hidemyass.com" based in the UK said they kept no logs, but as it turned out they did, and that's how they busted the guy that hacked Apple.
Using a proxy is not 100% solution, but rather it just increases your security, which is along a threshhold. Security not black or white, it's shades of grey.
What I'd suggest is look for a proxy service or VPS service that accepts bitcoins. This would be a start, as you can use bitcoins so they are not traceable back to you. This is a step up from using a credit card to pay, as this would be evidence that connects you directly to the proxy . I can't (and won't) endorse a specific service, which is a bad idea, but look around for proxy services that support either SOCKS5 or HTTPS, as well as bitcoins.
Then once you've got a list of these, narrow them down to the ones that have the best reviews, and where you might actually believe their claims about no logging. Look for ones based outside of fascist countries. The more honest services tell you they keep logs for some fixed period of time, say 7 days, or 30 days, in order to comply with the law as well as debugging. I'd be doubtful of any Western-country proxy service that claims to keep zero logs at all, but they do exist.
Just look for some compromise. Say you are in the UK. Using a proxy in a foreign country, that you paid for with a credit card, that keeps logs for 30 days, is definitely better than directly accessing Tor from your house because the UK has increasingly shitty data retention requirements.
Using bitcoins to pay for the proxy is even better. Using bitcoins for paying for a proxy that keeps no logs is even better still. Just make sure you configure your Tor client to properly build circuits through the proxy, and this will probably be more than enough security for most buyers. For now, anyway.
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Just did a quick read of today's posts here and for the most part, I concur with everything that's been said. Good info ITT.
If you're going to be accessing tor from open wifi, know that certain establishments do manage to block it somehow. I don't know if they use DPI or just ban the IPs of directory servers etc, but it is impossible to use "vanilla" tor in some of the bigger corporate chain places. This is where bridges will come in handy, and you don't need to worry about private bridges or anything like that. Just go to [https] bridges.torproject.org and copy down the ones running on port 443. Enter those into vidalia and you shouldn't have a problem connecting unless they use some crazy DPI, which probably won't be the case unless you somehow connected to their proprietary corporate WLAN instead of the public hotspot. lol
This was already brought up, but please don't get yourself on camera or use any form of plastic payment anywhere near the area of your open wifi. If possible, drive there and sit in the far corner of the lot or wherever there's no CCTV coverage. Don't look around or act nervous, just sit there and do your thing while sipping on a coffee. Remember, you're just catching up on some work...
High gain antennas are great for this, especially if you live in a city with plenty of hotspots. Combine this with bridge hoping and other forms of tor use concealment and you've got some pretty strong-ass security for general SR use.
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I usually use bridges. But then after a few days, Tor stops connecting until I remove them and let Tor connect regularly. Then I'll use new bridges and the process starts all over again. Anyone have any insight on this malfunction?
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I usually use bridges. But then after a few days, Tor stops connecting until I remove them and let Tor connect regularly. Then I'll use new bridges and the process starts all over again. Anyone have any insight on this malfunction?
can't say for sure why some bridges are going down but you can always get new ones and crop the ones your find dying by monitoring your message log.
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I usually use bridges. But then after a few days, Tor stops connecting until I remove them and let Tor connect regularly. Then I'll use new bridges and the process starts all over again. Anyone have any insight on this malfunction?
Nothing to worry about, bridges come and go that's all. You need to clean and update the list daily. You shouldn't use them for more than 1 day as by then most governments will have cottoned on to them and so using them is useless.
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Guys, first of all -- The guy who suggested we all use a private silk-road only tor bridge is obviously a fed or intelligence agent. Whoever connects to the Tor Bridge would be exposing their source IP address, as well as exposing themselves to timing attacks if the Tor Bridge is a hostile node. Bad idea.
And lastly, anyone that tells you to pool into any single Tor resource (like a "Silk Road" bridge, lol, what a joke) is either an idiot or a federalie.
..Saying the same thing with a different account isn't going to convince anyone Sweetheart. Who honestly believes that I am with the Police? I've expressed a certain respect for the work they do keeping innocent people safe in the past but there the extent of my sympathies end - as for having a Tor bridge I was simply trying to find some use for a server I will never need - no one has a gun to your head!
V.
i'm sure you mean well but at somebody else pointed out i don't think it's offensive to mention that this is a tactic that's been used multiple times by the feds. shadowcrew got pwnt by feds selling them private vpns. some carder.su peeps got pwnt the same way, people on the drug forum dzf got pwnt the same way too. well, dzf was a sting forum set up by the fbi which banned members from viewing the forums though tor, but my point stands. :)
I don't mean to blow my own trumpet but anyone who searches for my previous posts will see that my concern overwhelmingly is focused on security, particularly for newer users. The very nature of an offshore jurisdiction precludes such information being shared with law enforcement - there are extremely strict laws setting up a partition between financial service providers and the government - this is something I can talk about at length(!)
V.
Vlad what you are arguing for is called security by policy and it has been proven time and time again to fail. Security by design is a requirement.
Also, Oscar is almost certainly either a fed or trolling by pretending to be one.
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This is why I've been saying all along the only REAL form of security is creating and using your own private bridge. It's very cheap to do, only a few dollars a month, very fast and easy to set up with many many guides. Tor even tell you how to do it on their site. All you do is then block all incoming IP's other than your own and make sure you pay for it anonymously.
Re-read what I wrote. You lose the benefit of Entry Guards if you use your own private bridge... There is one less layer in the circuit to De-obfuscate. Furthermore, this puts you closer to the Rendevous Point and ultimately the hidden service your are accessing.
I do not think running a private bridge is a good idea from a security standpoint until there is some form of entry guards added to it's connection into the larger tor network, otherwise you are just replicating the standard problems that caused the addition of Entry Guards to the Tor protocol in the first place. The real solution here is to update the Tor protocol to address these attacks.
YMMV, if you can back up your assertion that it is more secure, then be my guest, but for the vast majority of users here, they will be much more secure using a persistent Tor connection with slowly rotating Entry Guards than they will be using a Private Tor Bridge.
The ONLY way running your own private bridge would be safe, would be if the private bridge was 100% anonymous, untraceable, and was not under surveillance.
Even a private bridge still has to deal with the problem of potentially compromised or malicious nodes, which is the fundamental problem on the Tor network, along with timing attacks.
It can really be argued both ways, and smart people take both opinions. There are clear advantages to using a private bridge:
It is far less likely to be in a given attackers list of known Tor bridges / nodes
It is far less likely to be under active surveillance than a random bridge or node, potentially making you much more secure from active timing attacks
there are clear disadvantages:
Most people don't use 'strict bridges' or private bridges. After enough time, several less than global passive attackers will probably be able to determine that some entity (you) is strictly using a private bridge. This makes you stick out from the crowd and may be cause for further investigation, possibly.
There is *no* crowding at the entry guard of a private bridge.
there are even some disadvantages to using bridges in general, for one using a bridge gives your anonymity a hit in order to give your membership concealment a big boost. For two, if the bridge fails at actually providing membership concealment it is worse than not having membership concealment in the first place, because now you stick out as someone who is using Tor who feels some need for membership concealment. In this respect, if using bridges is a very good or very bad idea depends entirely on your attackers ability to defeat the membership concealment properties of bridges.
It is actually a quite complex question and without having intelligence on the feds abilities it is not possible to come to a definitive conclusion.
Also a source of confusion seems to be the fact that bridges and entry guards serve so many roles. Looking at them from a censorship resistance perspective, Vlad is correct to suggest that you should use as many bridge nodes as possible. This is far more in line with a chinese citizens threat model than with ours though. Looking at them from a membership concealment perspective, you should use as few bridges as possible, however using less than two bridges creates serious security issues and it is probably best to use three. Looking at them as entry guards, it is clearly better to use less. It is probably best to treat them like regular entry guards, selecting no more than three at a time. Bridges used in this way become entry guards and thus you are not losing the protection of entry guards by using them.
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Also, Oscar is almost certainly either a fed or trolling by pretending to be one.
I've never denied I used to be a fed, I'm not any more however. Believe me a fed doesn't buy (look at my transaction history) and consume then write reports on various illegal substances, and then a fed doesn't tell people the weaknesses of other feds, such as a post about not being able to decrypt Android devices due to the lack of cold exploits currently available assuming you use a good encryption password for the FDE.
I also give tons of people advice, which has been useful I might add, in dealing with the police once arrested and charged as this happened to myself and led to me not being a fed anymore.
Also some of the stuff I intend to start selling here soon is going to make "herp derp encrypted tails memory stick" look like childs play. I'm struggling trying to do several things at once however.
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Also, Oscar is almost certainly either a fed or trolling by pretending to be one.
I've never denied I used to be a fed, I'm not any more however. Believe me a fed doesn't buy (look at my transaction history) and consume then write reports on various illegal substances, and then a fed doesn't tell people the weaknesses of other feds, such as a post about not being able to decrypt Android devices due to the lack of cold exploits currently available assuming you use a good encryption password for the FDE.
I also give tons of people advice, which has been useful I might add, in dealing with the police once arrested and charged as this happened to myself and led to me not being a fed anymore.
Also some of the stuff I intend to start selling here soon is going to make "herp derp encrypted tails memory stick" look like childs play. I'm struggling trying to do several things at once however.
Ah maybe you are not a troll then your advice seems to be about as intelligent as I would imagine coming from someone who learned about security as a fed.
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Ah maybe you are not a troll then your advice seems to be about as intelligent as I would imagine coming from someone who learned about security as a fed.
In what way does it seem "to be about as intelligent as I would imagine coming from someone who learned about security as a fed".
I didn't learn IT security from being a fed. Infact I was recruited to work for them after being arrested several times. Sometimes what I say may sound bat-shit-crazy, but perhaps that's because I know and have seen things you haven't yet. It's not in my interest to divulge the reasons I know everything I do, as I'm sure likewise for you.
How I know things, is more important than what I know, if that makes sense?
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It is actually a quite complex question and without having intelligence on the feds abilities it is not possible to come to a definitive conclusion.
QFT.
My advice is to just use public bridges in a casual, random manner. Don't follow any kind of rubric or plan as these are predictable, anticipated by your adversaries, and will help them track you down. Just make a nice big list of working bridges and choose them completely at random. The kind of people who need to worry about being traced through tor via poisoned nodes/bridges the second they connect are likely paying top-billed IT "guerrilla security experts" to take care of them and really shouldn't listen to us. lol
For the average SR user buying small amounts of drugs from US to US, connecting to a fed node/bridge once or twice at random (the realistic odds of this happening today) is way, way less of a problem than running one's mouth and getting caught that way, or simply having a package seized. Even if the feds suspect you're using SR and stake out your internet connection looking for tor activity, they will have a much harder time meeting their goal if you use public bridges--the majority of which are presumed to be legit ATM--than if you connect to tor directly. Believe me, the security of your local machine is going to more important IT-wise than worrying about tor. We don't have much control over tor anyway, plus it's much easier for feds to attack us directly via CIPAV and the like right now rather than try and somehow "break" tor to any significant degree.
BTW, enough of the fed hunting. Let's just presume everyone here that you are not doing business with (and even then) is LE. Communicate, but don't get all palsy-walsy with each other. Always keep that level of separation where you can share ideas and have fun, but not give away too much about who you are and how you think, type, etc. and not to where you take every bit of advice as gospel (remember tony76). NEVER, EVER trust one, single anonymous entity with your safety. That means no private SR tor bridges. No... just, no. Create your own private bridge but do not use someone else's. If that person is 100% legit today, that doesn't mean they can't become an informant tomorrow and basically screw everyone connecting to their bridge server. That's a far greater threat to SR than actual undercover federal agents, who are usually very good at what they do and very difficult to spot.
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Nobody should use your bridge. That would mean that you know their IP addresses.
Exactly. If you want to use a bridge, find a good VPS in sweden that takes bitcoins and set up a bridge there. Or just as good and probably cheaper is to just use a proxy to access tor. Jondonym is a pretty good one.
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Nobody should use your bridge. That would mean that you know their IP addresses.
Exactly. If you want to use a bridge, find a good VPS in sweden that takes bitcoins and set up a bridge there. Or just as good and probably cheaper is to just use a proxy to access tor. Jondonym is a pretty good one.
Then you stick out as someone using jondonym though. The goal of a bridge is to hide the fact that you are using any anonymizer.
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Ah maybe you are not a troll then your advice seems to be about as intelligent as I would imagine coming from someone who learned about security as a fed.
I was recruited to work for them after being arrested several times.
Wow....
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I'm getting so fed up about all the FUD written here I'm thinking about making a free one for all the Silk Road users tonight, but then again none of you should trust anyone including myself.
Wow dude, so my real IP can get on a list of SR users and all these for free? WOOT
I wouldn't know what exit node you connect to.... a bridge is just a bridge....
A bridge "for all the Silk Road users" in not just a bridge.
Of course it is. It doesn't provide any kind of evidence that could be used in a court of law.
Famous last words.
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Nobody should use your bridge. That would mean that you know their IP addresses.
Exactly. If you want to use a bridge, find a good VPS in sweden that takes bitcoins and set up a bridge there. Or just as good and probably cheaper is to just use a proxy to access tor. Jondonym is a pretty good one.
Then you stick out as someone using jondonym though. The goal of a bridge is to hide the fact that you are using any anonymizer.
Now THAT makes sense!
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Lesson learned: Choose your bridges far away from SR right?
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Also, Oscar is almost certainly either a fed or trolling by pretending to be one.
I've never denied I used to be a fed, I'm not any more however. Believe me a fed doesn't buy (look at my transaction history) and consume then write reports on various illegal substances, and then a fed doesn't tell people the weaknesses of other feds, such as a post about not being able to decrypt Android devices due to the lack of cold exploits currently available assuming you use a good encryption password for the FDE.
I also give tons of people advice, which has been useful I might add, in dealing with the police once arrested and charged as this happened to myself and led to me not being a fed anymore.
Also some of the stuff I intend to start selling here soon is going to make "herp derp encrypted tails memory stick" look like childs play. I'm struggling trying to do several things at once however.
I hear you bro, so many irons in the fire! I don't pretend to be a security guru but I have had the advice you've given me in the past verified by another of our experts, so I know who to trust. I was sorry to hear about your experience with the Police ; as much as I admire the ones who keep us safe most of them simply aren't that bright - sort of akin to a child burning ants with a magnifying glass.
V.
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This is why I've been saying all along the only REAL form of security is creating and using your own private bridge. It's very cheap to do, only a few dollars a month, very fast and easy to set up with many many guides. Tor even tell you how to do it on their site. All you do is then block all incoming IP's other than your own and make sure you pay for it anonymously.
Re-read what I wrote. You lose the benefit of Entry Guards if you use your own private bridge... There is one less layer in the circuit to De-obfuscate. Furthermore, this puts you closer to the Rendevous Point and ultimately the hidden service your are accessing.
I do not think running a private bridge is a good idea from a security standpoint until there is some form of entry guards added to it's connection into the larger tor network, otherwise you are just replicating the standard problems that caused the addition of Entry Guards to the Tor protocol in the first place. The real solution here is to update the Tor protocol to address these attacks.
YMMV, if you can back up your assertion that it is more secure, then be my guest, but for the vast majority of users here, they will be much more secure using a persistent Tor connection with slowly rotating Entry Guards than they will be using a Private Tor Bridge.
The ONLY way running your own private bridge would be safe, would be if the private bridge was 100% anonymous, untraceable, and was not under surveillance.
Even a private bridge still has to deal with the problem of potentially compromised or malicious nodes, which is the fundamental problem on the Tor network, along with timing attacks.
It can really be argued both ways, and smart people take both opinions. There are clear advantages to using a private bridge:
It is far less likely to be in a given attackers list of known Tor bridges / nodes
It is far less likely to be under active surveillance than a random bridge or node, potentially making you much more secure from active timing attacks
there are clear disadvantages:
Most people don't use 'strict bridges' or private bridges. After enough time, several less than global passive attackers will probably be able to determine that some entity (you) is strictly using a private bridge. This makes you stick out from the crowd and may be cause for further investigation, possibly.
There is *no* crowding at the entry guard of a private bridge.
there are even some disadvantages to using bridges in general, for one using a bridge gives your anonymity a hit in order to give your membership concealment a big boost. For two, if the bridge fails at actually providing membership concealment it is worse than not having membership concealment in the first place, because now you stick out as someone who is using Tor who feels some need for membership concealment. In this respect, if using bridges is a very good or very bad idea depends entirely on your attackers ability to defeat the membership concealment properties of bridges.
It is actually a quite complex question and without having intelligence on the feds abilities it is not possible to come to a definitive conclusion.
Also a source of confusion seems to be the fact that bridges and entry guards serve so many roles. Looking at them from a censorship resistance perspective, Vlad is correct to suggest that you should use as many bridge nodes as possible. This is far more in line with a chinese citizens threat model than with ours though. Looking at them from a membership concealment perspective, you should use as few bridges as possible, however using less than two bridges creates serious security issues and it is probably best to use three. Looking at them as entry guards, it is clearly better to use less. It is probably best to treat them like regular entry guards, selecting no more than three at a time. Bridges used in this way become entry guards and thus you are not losing the protection of entry guards by using them.
Kmfkewm,
We may have had our differences but I want to say thank you for providing a lucid summary - I have just received a similar query via PM from a new user and have pointed him in the direction of this message.
All the best,
V.
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Oscar, uglysurfer currently sells a herp derp encrypted USB stick for use with SR (with linux not tails though). Im guessing your in development for a rival product that allows portable, well physically hidden with no trace left on computer means of accessing SR? If so when will you be selling it, and how do i know you (or ugly surfer for that matter) havent placed some sort of spyware/keylogger/evil LE technology on there?
please forgive my ignorance if anything ive asked is overly stupid
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Oscar, uglysurfer currently sells a herp derp encrypted USB stick for use with SR (with linux not tails though). Im guessing your in development for a rival product that allows portable, well physically hidden with no trace left on computer means of accessing SR? If so when will you be selling it, and how do i know you (or ugly surfer for that matter) havent placed some sort of spyware/keylogger/evil LE technology on there?
please forgive my ignorance if anything ive asked is overly stupid
I am actually planning to sell something similar myself at the moment in conjunction with another seller - we're currently in the testing phase, watch this space! :-)
V.
p.s The short answer when it comes to Virtual Machines is you can't know that there isn't any malware on them unless you've created them yourself.
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Oscar, uglysurfer currently sells a herp derp encrypted USB stick for use with SR (with linux not tails though). Im guessing your in development for a rival product that allows portable, well physically hidden with no trace left on computer means of accessing SR? If so when will you be selling it, and how do i know you (or ugly surfer for that matter) havent placed some sort of spyware/keylogger/evil LE technology on there?
please forgive my ignorance if anything ive asked is overly stupid
I am actually planning to sell something similar myself at the moment in conjunction with another seller - we're currently in the testing phase, watch this space! :-)
V.
p.s The short answer when it comes to Virtual Machines is you can't know that there isn't any malware on them unless you've created them yourself.
thanks vladimir
so if i buy yours,oscars or ugly surfers product there is no way i could scan them? Also i thought these all in one boot from USB products were different to virtual machines?
-
Oscar, uglysurfer currently sells a herp derp encrypted USB stick for use with SR (with linux not tails though). Im guessing your in development for a rival product that allows portable, well physically hidden with no trace left on computer means of accessing SR? If so when will you be selling it, and how do i know you (or ugly surfer for that matter) havent placed some sort of spyware/keylogger/evil LE technology on there?
please forgive my ignorance if anything ive asked is overly stupid
I am actually planning to sell something similar myself at the moment in conjunction with another seller - we're currently in the testing phase, watch this space! :-)
V.
p.s The short answer when it comes to Virtual Machines is you can't know that there isn't any malware on them unless you've created them yourself.
thanks vladimir
so if i buy yours,oscars or ugly surfers product there is no way i could scan them? Also i thought these all in one boot from USB products were different to virtual machines?
Yes, you're correct in that a virtual machine can reside on the hard drive of your computer whereas a bootable operating system like Liberte can be based entirely on a USB stick. Having said this buying one from a vendor does have the risk you've stated which is that it's been tampered with in some way.
There's no harm in telling you that my friend and I are working on selling low cost Android Tablets which will be delivered sealed in the box. Our plan is to write a simple step by step guide on how to secure the tablet and install the applications you'll need to use Silk Road and the forums. The advantage is that you have a separate secure device for all SR related activity with an "air gap" between your normal internet activities and your more private ones :-)
The tablets will be shipped straight from the manufacturer to you so you'll be able to see the box is sealed yourself. The first step in the guide will encourage you to do a factory reset also so that you start with a blank slate.
At this stage we're ordering a couple of samples to check delivery times and that the tablets are suitable for the purpose, as well as writing the guide, I'm hoping we can launch within the next few weeks. We'll be looking for people to test the devices and will be selling the units at cost i.e no mark up for this purpose so if you're interested do send me a message. I'll also be asking some of more experienced members, OZ included to evaluate the guide so we know all the information in it is correct.
All the best,
V.
-
Oscar, uglysurfer currently sells a herp derp encrypted USB stick for use with SR (with linux not tails though). Im guessing your in development for a rival product that allows portable, well physically hidden with no trace left on computer means of accessing SR? If so when will you be selling it, and how do i know you (or ugly surfer for that matter) havent placed some sort of spyware/keylogger/evil LE technology on there?
please forgive my ignorance if anything ive asked is overly stupid
I am actually planning to sell something similar myself at the moment in conjunction with another seller - we're currently in the testing phase, watch this space! :-)
V.
p.s The short answer when it comes to Virtual Machines is you can't know that there isn't any malware on them unless you've created them yourself.
thanks vladimir
so if i buy yours,oscars or ugly surfers product there is no way i could scan them? Also i thought these all in one boot from USB products were different to virtual machines?
Yes, you're correct in that a virtual machine can reside on the hard drive of your computer whereas a bootable operating system like Liberte can be based entirely on a USB stick. Having said this buying one from a vendor does have the risk you've stated which is that it's been tampered with in some way.
There's no harm in telling you that my friend and I are working on selling low cost Android Tablets which will be delivered sealed in the box. Our plan is to write a simple step by step guide on how to secure the tablet and install the applications you'll need to use Silk Road and the forums. The advantage is that you have a separate secure device for all SR related activity with an "air gap" between your normal internet activities and your more private ones :-)
The tablets will be shipped straight from the manufacturer to you so you'll be able to see the box is sealed yourself. The first step in the guide will encourage you to do a factory reset also so that you start with a blank slate.
At this stage we're ordering a couple of samples to check delivery times and that the tablets are suitable for the purpose, as well as writing the guide, I'm hoping we can launch within the next few weeks. We'll be looking for people to test the devices and will be selling the units at cost i.e no mark up for this purpose so if you're interested do send me a message. I'll also be asking some of more experienced members, OZ included to evaluate the guide so we know all the information in it is correct.
All the best,
V.
sounds good V however i would prefer a USB as it is much easier to hide/disguise and only plug it in and boot it up when i need to use SR.
say i brought a laptop with cash, a wireless USB(for prepaid net access)under a fake name with cash and booted only used the SR/truecrypt etc USB and wireless net USB when accessing SR, would i be almost untraceable? or could the wireless internet USB be triangulated/GPS located etc? (after they break through tor/bridge yada yada yada etc) just curious as this would seem like way too much work just to catch someone accessing silk road
if any the technies could answer this would be great
sorry for derailing the thread
sorry again for any ignorance
-
Oscar, uglysurfer currently sells a herp derp encrypted USB stick for use with SR (with linux not tails though). Im guessing your in development for a rival product that allows portable, well physically hidden with no trace left on computer means of accessing SR? If so when will you be selling it, and how do i know you (or ugly surfer for that matter) havent placed some sort of spyware/keylogger/evil LE technology on there?
please forgive my ignorance if anything ive asked is overly stupid
I am actually planning to sell something similar myself at the moment in conjunction with another seller - we're currently in the testing phase, watch this space! :-)
V.
p.s The short answer when it comes to Virtual Machines is you can't know that there isn't any malware on them unless you've created them yourself.
thanks vladimir
so if i buy yours,oscars or ugly surfers product there is no way i could scan them? Also i thought these all in one boot from USB products were different to virtual machines?
Yes, you're correct in that a virtual machine can reside on the hard drive of your computer whereas a bootable operating system like Liberte can be based entirely on a USB stick. Having said this buying one from a vendor does have the risk you've stated which is that it's been tampered with in some way.
There's no harm in telling you that my friend and I are working on selling low cost Android Tablets which will be delivered sealed in the box. Our plan is to write a simple step by step guide on how to secure the tablet and install the applications you'll need to use Silk Road and the forums. The advantage is that you have a separate secure device for all SR related activity with an "air gap" between your normal internet activities and your more private ones :-)
The tablets will be shipped straight from the manufacturer to you so you'll be able to see the box is sealed yourself. The first step in the guide will encourage you to do a factory reset also so that you start with a blank slate.
At this stage we're ordering a couple of samples to check delivery times and that the tablets are suitable for the purpose, as well as writing the guide, I'm hoping we can launch within the next few weeks. We'll be looking for people to test the devices and will be selling the units at cost i.e no mark up for this purpose so if you're interested do send me a message. I'll also be asking some of more experienced members, OZ included to evaluate the guide so we know all the information in it is correct.
All the best,
V.
sounds good V however i would prefer a USB as it is much easier to hide/disguise and only plug it in and boot it up when i need to use SR.
say i brought a laptop with cash, a wireless USB(for prepaid net access)under a fake name with cash and booted only used the SR/truecrypt etc USB and wireless net USB when accessing SR, would i be almost untraceable? or could the wireless internet USB be triangulated/GPS located etc? (after they break through tor/bridge yada yada yada etc) just curious as this would seem like way too much work just to catch someone accessing silk road
if any the technies could answer this would be great
sorry for derailing the thread
sorry again for any ignorance
Hi Ben,
In my opinion using prepaid 3G which you've obtained anonymously with a properly secured OS would be safer than using your home internet connection or free Wifi zone however opinion seems to be divided on this point - I'll leave it to OZ and Kmfkewm to answer this in depth.
Thanks,
V.
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what if the OS was also obtained anonymously and the only thing it is used for is the dodgy stuff?
and only use the net in a high congestion area i.e an apartment block
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/me thinks about selling a spyware infested "secure USB!" configuration and making pop ups come up on customers screen questioning why they were so stupid to trust a product they bought on SR
fully open source, full tutorial on how it is configured step by step, or gtfo
vlad you seem more and more sketchy to me with your assortment of plans to offer products that could be used to deanonymize people, 3G dongles from you, private tor bridges from you, USBs from you, tablets from you.....why suddenly the interest in selling such things? Nothing like this is good for people to buy here, especially bridges tablets or dongles. I really don't think you mean any harm, but it strikes me as strange to see your sudden plans to offer such things. Also
To anyone selling preconfigured live OS: unless your preconfigured live OS or other software is open source and step by step details for configuring them are released for everyone to audit, then only idiots will buy it. There are already free security oriented distros out there made by professionals why the fuck would anyone buy one made by somebody with little experience and sold on an illegal forum for profit (profit here implying that it will not be open to public audit)? , leave configuring security oriented operating systems to professionals. If you don't know what mandatory access controls are, you have no place in selling pre-configured live operating systems. I have studied security for years and have years of linux and BSD experience and still do not consider myself properly qualified to offer a truly hardened OS (then again, I don't consider tails or liberte to be truly hardened OS distros either) .
It is nice to see people with interest in security and wanting to offer products, but if you don't have extensive study of such things you will fuck up enormously without being aware of it . The only way around this is to gain experience or to have a lot of support from people with such experience who are willing to audit your products. If you don't follow an open source publicly audited model for making products available you will never be trusted by anyone with a brain. My suggestion is make it open source and free, document every single step and ask for donations from your users, that is the only way any system from you or anyone else will ever be considered trustworthy.
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But hey, what if Vlad's partner is the best security expert around here, who can crack any passwords with the cloud and even worked for the feds.
That would be different!
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/me thinks about selling a spyware infested "secure USB!" configuration and making pop ups come up on customers screen questioning why they were so stupid to trust a product they bought on SR
vlad you seem more and more sketchy to me with your assortment of plans to offer products that could be used to deanonymize people, 3G dongles from you, private tor bridges from you, USBs from you, tablets from you.....why suddenly the interest in selling such things? Nothing like this is good for people to buy here, especially bridges tablets or dongles. I really don't think you mean any harm, but it strikes me as strange to see your sudden plans to offer such things. Also
..Do you think people should cosy up to the man who wants to legalise kiddy porn and murder police officers instead?
I've said it before and I'll say it again : I do NOT need your approval to be a vendor on here, my record speaks for itself, there's a link to it at the bottom of this message if you want to see testimonials from people who have purchased their Bitcoins safely using cash through my service.
I don't have to justify myself to you but in case anyone else was wondering I am planning on offering a way which will increase people's security through using SR not reducing it. I have been transparent about my plans and since I won't even be handling the products in question I fail to see how I could tamper with them. As I said I'm in the process of writing a guide in conjunction with another seller (who is based in the US) to show people how to access SR safely from their Android devices. I have asked OZ and two other more established members on the forum to edit the guide once the first draft is ready and you're welcome to read it yourself to verify it is simply a way to help people to secure their own device from being monitored through installing a Tor browser, enabling full device encryption and so on.
As for selling USB devices and 3G dongles, I seem to remember saying that when I first started selling on SR I suggested this as the ones already available were far too expensive but as I stated above, there's too much of a risk that the setup will not be secure which is why I did not follow through on this - I'm not exactly sure how someone could interfere with a 3G dongle in that way but of course you know best as always.
You may not agree that my plan to sell secure Android Tablets for SR users this is a good idea - here's a newsflash for you, I don't give a damn.
I already made it clear when you advocated murdering Police Officers that I don't want to do business with you. You are a pathetic, twisted individual and frankly I think you're giving us Brits a bad name on here.
V.
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But hey, what if Vlad's partner is the best security expert around here, who can crack any passwords with the cloud and even worked for the feds.
That would be different!
OZ is not my business partner, the other seller with whom I'm working is based in the US.
I have asked OZ as an expert in IT to review a guide I am currently writing on securing Android devices to the extent they're suitable for using on Silk Road. This would have a number of advantages not in the least as I said above a real "air gap" between your SR related activities and your normal web browsing. The devices are compatible with 3G also and instructions to do this may be included with the guide but I'm not sure if this would be as anonymous as using your home internet connection.
The alternative would be to set up the devices ourselves but we do not want to do this as there'd be no way for the end user to know that they hadn't been tampered with and it's also important to stress people take responsibility for their own security as far as possible.
OZ is just one of the people I have been speaking to, to edit the guide and when the time comes as I already said the first step will be to reset the device to factory conditions as soon as it arrives.
Anyone who doubts my motives in wanting to provide an affordable and easy way for people to access SR is welcome to read the guide and check that this indeed a much better way of doing things.
V.
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what's wrong with murdering state agents who intend to effectively end your life?
That is a loaded question - that's not what's at stake, nor would they necessarily deserve to die if it was.
oz is an obvious PSYOP agent, when multiple people who know what the fuck they're talking about tell you this, you should probably listen. btw if a device has any communication capabilities with the outside world besides a keyboard/mouse, it can no longer provide effective airgap security.
Your concern for my welfare is very touching(!) but so far OZ has proven himself to be correct on every point I've asked him. I know this because believe it or not he's not my only friend on SR and I have run security related answers to questions I've asked him past others over the past few weeks.
If you want to review the guide after OZ has, you're more than welcome. If you have any comments to make on the *technical* side of the advice given, then I'm sure the SR community will be grateful.
The "air gap" I was referring to was between an Android Device and your home computer - I appreciate this isn't the common understanding of the phrase, how would you best describe it? "Physical gap", "Air partition" - the point remains no fingerprints of browsing activity can remain on your home machine if you're using a different device altogether - even a technology Luddite like myself can see that. I also can't a conventional "cold boot attack" being effective against a tablet although the entire device can be encrypted.
The only vulnerabilities I can see is from other applications not "Torifying" the connection thereby giving the user away. Naturally this is a point I want to address in the guide you just read about - it seems your options including removing all such applications besides the Tor browser itself, configuring them correctly or rooting the device to force it always to use the Orbot application to access the net.
If you want to be part of the solution, believe me, you're more than welcome!
V.
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The "air gap" I was referring to was between an Android Device and your home computer - I appreciate this isn't the common understanding of the phrase, how would you best describe it? "Physical gap", "Air partition" - the point remains no fingerprints of browsing activity can remain on your home machine if you're using a different device altogether - even a technology Luddite like myself can see that. I also can't a conventional "cold boot attack" being effective against a tablet although the entire device can be encrypted.
i'd describe it as just another device you do your stuff on, it offers no inherent security advantages or disadvantages versus using a different device that's configured properly (except for the inherent disadvantage of spreading your dirt across multiple devices). fwiw i would never use gpg on a device that has any sort of internet connectivity, that is proper airgap security since the only way to steal your shit from that device would be a SIGINT attack from outside your home, or a raid on your home.
Remember my earlier quote:
Like all revolutionary new ideas, the subject has had to pass through three stages, which may be summed up by these reactions: (1) 'It's crazy --- don't waste my time.' (2) 'It's possible, but it's not worth doing.' (3) 'I always said it was a good idea.' -- Arthur C. Clarke. "Next---The Planets!", Report on Planet Three. 1972
So we're on to stage two now, all well and good, getting up there! :-)
To clarify, what I had in mind was using a device solely for accessing SR - I agree that having your GPG private keys on a device with connectivity to the internet is a risk but do you have much of a choice unless you want to ferry encrypted data back and forth on a USB stick between devices? Wouldn't you need an extra device to do this in any case?
I already mentioned the advantages of a conventional cold boot attack not being possible as far as I can see? I mean plugging in a USB stick with bootable OS wouldn't work against the full device encryption now available on tablets surely? A tablet would also be far easier to conceal and destroy than a laptop or home computer in the case of a raid.
I also think a tablet wouldn't give off the same kind of EM emissions as a regular monitor/keyboard which could be picked up by the kind of SIGINT spying. There's also the fact it's far less susceptible to malware given that there's appreciably more viruses out there for other Operating Systems (admittedly that's changing!).
There's also surely the advantage of portability - more so even than a laptop, with all the necessary functionality. I originally conceived this as an idea for people to check the balance of their wallet if buying BTC in cash but have since been persuaded that using such devices with 3G/Public Wifi is potentially dangerous.
I'm also hoping to set the cost of these devices well below the price of acquiring another laptop or home computer.
So to my count that's five advantages and one potential advantage i.e slightly higher resistance to malware due to smaller number of viruses that this would have over using a separate computer/laptop.
Are we still at Stage two or can we move on to stage three yet? :-)
V.
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You are a pathetic, twisted individual and frankly I think you're giving us Brits a bad name on here.
Or in one word: rational.
It's still hard for me to admit, but what he say is more rational than what I was thinking about the 2 topics mentioned above.
But it doesn't matter what you call Kmfkewmw, because we are talking about your wares, not him. He can be a homo pedo mass killer but still can shed some light on something very important.
Private bridges, 3G dongles, Secure USB-s and Android Tablets bought on SR can expose buyers, especially to the seller.
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You are a pathetic, twisted individual and frankly I think you're giving us Brits a bad name on here.
Or in one word: rational.
It's still hard for me to admit, but what he say is more rational than what I was thinking about the 2 topics mentioned above.
But it doesn't matter what you call Kmfkewmw, because we are talking about your wares, not him. He can be a homo pedo mass killer but still can shed some light on something very important.
Private bridges, 3G dongles, Secure USB-s and Android Tablets bought on SR can expose buyers, especially to the seller.
I'm more than happy to discuss my wares mooshroom - what's been questioned is my integrity, and not for the first time either by a person advocating murder and baby rape. If you read my posts you'll see I'm passionately interested in protecting users' privacy - I run a cash to BTC service for goodness' sake! I admit I make a small profit out of it but it was always my plan to expand into new areas and one of those is providing an affordable and convenient solution for users to access SR safely. I often speak to new users who tell me about the difficulty they have had understanding some of the advice given and it beggars belief that some of the set ups I've heard about on here would be better than a secured Android device - most people just download and install the Tor browser after all. Perhaps this is a discussion for another time but there's definitely a demand for this kind of service.
As for exposing one's privacy, an Android Tablet properly configured can be every bit as secure as any other device, if not more so as I've already mentioned above. It's true the people buying them might have to give out an address where they can receive it but that risk is surely lesser than having class A drugs delivered to their own home considering the product is legal?
Apparently using Pay as you Go 3G isn't as secure as using your home internet connection to access SR - I'm not exactly sure why but I made the offer to sell dongles in good faith but was told it wasn't a good idea. How many 3G dongles have you seen for sale on my vendor page since that time?
I rest my case.
V.
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I was told by sec expert IRL that android/iOS phones/tablets are everything but secure. Also they are not built thinking about the privacy of the user but quite the opposite so I don't know if we should trust them even with all connection torrified etc..
I cannot justify my affirmation or give some credit to it. Just an opinion that was passed onto me.
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I was told by sec expert IRL that android/iOS phones/tablets are everything but secure. Also they are not built thinking about the privacy of the user but quite the opposite so I don't know if we should trust them even with all connection torrified etc..
I cannot justify my affirmation or give some credit to it. Just an opinion that was passed onto me.
It's certainly true that until recently there wasn't an easy way to use full device encryption on Android phones/tablets. Non "rooted" devices also can't have an across the board policy of torifying all connections.
Fortunately the tablets we'll be selling will have the new Android OS which does support device encryption. I would like to give people the choice about rooting the device through the guide. Certainly it's not necessary to do this if you just want to use Orbot + Orweb but some users might feel more comfortable about making sure every application is run through Orbot.
V.
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So anyone who buys the tablet or the private bridge have to entirely trust you with their data and/or identity, but since you sell bitcoins for cash, and write posts in a proper manner, it's all OK, you will never sell them out?
There are numerous ways to exploit these systems, for example the tablet or the sd card might have a spyware (or does it really ships straight from the moon, unopened?), the final guide might be different as the reviewed one, and who knows what's running in those tablets anyway, remember: these are from Google, the Big Brother.
It might be shipped with a backdoor straight from the factory, and the seller already knows it's gonna be used by xy on SR.
There is plenty of tax money for things like this.
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So anyone who buys the tablet or the private bridge have to entirely trust you with their data and/or identity, but since you sell bitcoins for cash, and write posts in a proper manner, it's all OK, you will never sell them out?
If you'd taken the time to read the posts here you'll see I've offered to help people set up their own private bridge instead of offering my own server. I'll keep that for personal use.
As for trusting me with their personal data or identity, they need do neither. It's f facetious question and you're obviously trying to get a rise out of me. I've already explained this will work in such a way that the user can secure the device themselves without me or my business partner even seeing it.
As for guarantees about someone's integrity, yes I do believe my previous posts and the fact I haven't shortchanged any of my customers does count for something; I have dealt fairly and honestly with fellow users since I first started using the road, what do we know about your integrity exactly for that matter? Frankly I think if there were LEO members on the forum they'd be dead against this idea as it would make their lives much harder - how do we know you're not one of them? You see the dilemma? I've yet to see any evidence what you have to say is reliable or trustworthy - perhaps you will make more of a name for yourself given time, we'll see.
There are numerous ways to exploit these systems, for example the tablet or the sd card might have a spyware (or does it really ships straight from the moon, unopened?), the final guide might be different as the reviewed one, and who knows what's running in those tablets anyway, remember: these are from Google, the Big Brother.
It might be shipped with a backdoor straight from the factory, and the seller already knows it's gonna be used by xy on SR.
There is plenty of tax money for things like this.
The tablet won't be shipped with an SD card for exactly the reason you say. It will be shipped unopened from the manufacturer.
If your that cut up about the user guide being different to the published one I'd be happy to publish it in the SR wiki so people can edit it. Shannon has already suggested we do this for the sake of openness and transparency.
As for a backdoor, this is a common theme I hear time and again and we're going to nail this one on the head, here is where you can download the source code:
http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html
For the benefit of everyone here please provide the exact location of said back door and I will not sell devices running the Android 4.0 OS
Otherwise the product launch goes ahead as planned in 2 - 3 weeks' time.
V.
-
So anyone who buys the tablet or the private bridge have to entirely trust you with their data and/or identity, but since you sell bitcoins for cash, and write posts in a proper manner, it's all OK, you will never sell them out?
If you'd taken the time to read the posts here you'll see I've offered to help people set up their own private bridge instead of offering my own server. I'll keep that for personal use.
As for trusting me with their personal data or identity, they need do neither. It's f facetious question and you're obviously trying to get a rise out of me. I've already explained this will work in such a way that the user can secure the device themselves without me or my business partner even seeing it.
As for guarantees about someone's integrity, yes I do believe my previous posts and the fact I haven't shortchanged any of my customers does count for something; I have dealt fairly and honestly with fellow users since I first started using the road, what do we know about your integrity exactly for that matter? Frankly I think if there were LEO members on the forum they'd be dead against this idea as it would make their lives much harder - how do we know you're not one of them? You see the dilemma? I've yet to see any evidence what you have to say is reliable or trustworthy - perhaps you will make more of a name for yourself given time, we'll see.
There are numerous ways to exploit these systems, for example the tablet or the sd card might have a spyware (or does it really ships straight from the moon, unopened?), the final guide might be different as the reviewed one, and who knows what's running in those tablets anyway, remember: these are from Google, the Big Brother.
It might be shipped with a backdoor straight from the factory, and the seller already knows it's gonna be used by xy on SR.
There is plenty of tax money for things like this.
The tablet won't be shipped with an SD card for exactly the reason you say. It will be shipped unopened from the manufacturer.
If your that cut up about the user guide being different to the published one I'd be happy to publish it in the SR wiki so people can edit it. Shannon has already suggested we do this for the sake of openness and transparency.
As for a backdoor, this is a common theme I hear time and again and we're going to nail this one on the head, here is where you can download the source code:
http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html
For the benefit of everyone here please provide the exact location of said back door and I will not sell devices running the Android 4.0 OS
Otherwise the product launch goes ahead as planned in 2 - 3 weeks' time.
V.
Hey V,
Why can't the user buy the android from the store and should order from you? What are the differences if the guide will be out for us to take all the steps ? (root, etc..)
-
So anyone who buys the tablet or the private bridge have to entirely trust you with their data and/or identity, but since you sell bitcoins for cash, and write posts in a proper manner, it's all OK, you will never sell them out?
If you'd taken the time to read the posts here you'll see I've offered to help people set up their own private bridge instead of offering my own server. I'll keep that for personal use.
As for trusting me with their personal data or identity, they need do neither. It's f facetious question and you're obviously trying to get a rise out of me. I've already explained this will work in such a way that the user can secure the device themselves without me or my business partner even seeing it.
As for guarantees about someone's integrity, yes I do believe my previous posts and the fact I haven't shortchanged any of my customers does count for something; I have dealt fairly and honestly with fellow users since I first started using the road, what do we know about your integrity exactly for that matter? Frankly I think if there were LEO members on the forum they'd be dead against this idea as it would make their lives much harder - how do we know you're not one of them? You see the dilemma? I've yet to see any evidence what you have to say is reliable or trustworthy - perhaps you will make more of a name for yourself given time, we'll see.
There are numerous ways to exploit these systems, for example the tablet or the sd card might have a spyware (or does it really ships straight from the moon, unopened?), the final guide might be different as the reviewed one, and who knows what's running in those tablets anyway, remember: these are from Google, the Big Brother.
It might be shipped with a backdoor straight from the factory, and the seller already knows it's gonna be used by xy on SR.
There is plenty of tax money for things like this.
The tablet won't be shipped with an SD card for exactly the reason you say. It will be shipped unopened from the manufacturer.
If your that cut up about the user guide being different to the published one I'd be happy to publish it in the SR wiki so people can edit it. Shannon has already suggested we do this for the sake of openness and transparency.
As for a backdoor, this is a common theme I hear time and again and we're going to nail this one on the head, here is where you can download the source code:
http://source.android.com/source/downloading.html
For the benefit of everyone here please provide the exact location of said back door and I will not sell devices running the Android 4.0 OS
Otherwise the product launch goes ahead as planned in 2 - 3 weeks' time.
V.
Hey V,
Why can't the user buy the android from the store and should order from you? What are the differences if the guide will be out for us to take all the steps ? (root, etc..)
Well for one thing I'm sourcing them straight from a wholesaler back from when I used to run an online business so they should cost a good deal less than in the stores! It's also more anonymous than ordering from Amazon.
Also the guide will be tailored to this specific device running this OS (which will be 4.0.3) but yes when the guide is available there's no reason why you couldn't use your own Android device if you wanted to. Of course I might be more inclined to provide more post sales support if a user has purchased from my store personally but if anyone does decide to get their own device and adapts the guide to their needs they can always post about it on here too.
V.
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I've already explained this will work in such a way that the user can secure the device themselves without me or my business partner even seeing it.
That is my point point, and the bottom line of this conversation: there is no way that the user can secure the device themselves without you or your business partner.
If you name a couple of android tablets, and put up a guide that anyone can read, than that would be secure.
But if the buyer have to trust you when you say it's shipped straight from an official trader (easily faked), unopened (easily faked), may it have been tampered with, the buyer is fucked. All his data, BTC, personal details, buyers name etc falls in the hands of the seller, you.
If you'd taken the time to read the posts here you'll see I've offered to help people set up their own private bridge instead of offering my own server. I'll keep that for personal use.
Let me quote you:
After tentatively making enquiries to see if anyone was interested in using a private Tor bridge I plan to set up in Belize for a small fee
Do I have to say more?
But you cleverly state at the end of the post:
As I said the most secure solution is to use a private bridge but naturally you need to make your own arrangements to set this up. If anything comes of my offshore bridge plan I will let you all know.
So you do know a private bridge needs to be set up by the user to be secure, but someone who you consider a security expert and trust him, doubted that obvious fact (OZ). It was Kmfkewm among others who pointed out the problems with that.
Even if everything I said before is bullshit and the only thing that remains in this equation is that you still trust OZ makes you sketchy in itself.
It doesn't even matter if you are that blind, or involved, does it.
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That is my point point, and the bottom line of this conversation: there is no way that the user can secure the device themselves without you or your business partner.
If you name a couple of android tablets, and put up a guide that anyone can read, than that would be secure.
But if the buyer have to trust you when you say it's shipped straight from an official trader (easily faked), unopened (easily faked), may it have been tampered with, the buyer is fucked. All his data, BTC, personal details, buyers name etc falls in the hands of the seller, you.
What is your "point point" exactly? The tablets are being sourced from the supplier in Hong Kong, do you think I'm going to fly over there and tamper with them while twiddling my moustache?
The bottom line is you've not read what I've said. I've already mentioned twice now the guide will be published publicly after being reviewed by more experienced SR users.
Their "personal details" as you put it are no more in danger than they are from any other SR vendor, less so in fact when you consider the product isn't even illegal!
Let me quote you:
After tentatively making enquiries to see if anyone was interested in using a private Tor bridge I plan to set up in Belize for a small fee
Do I have to say more?
Yes, you do have to say more - I asked if people would be interested, they said Yes, then I was told it was more secure to do this yourself, what exactly is your point?
Even if everything I said before is bullshit and the only thing that remains in this equation is that you still trust OZ makes you sketchy in itself.
It doesn't even matter if you are that blind, or involved, does it.
Aww, don't you like my friends? If it comes to that as I've said (I think for the third time), OZ will not be the only person reviewing the guide and in any case I don't really see what difference this makes to people setting up their own bridges. They can do this themselves from home and then access it using the Orbot application from the Android tablet.
As for being sketchy, who the hell are you like I said? We know nothing about you - are you even a vendor yourself? What contributions have you made to the forum to help improve SR users security?
For instance have you published a guide on how to run a Bitcoin wallet securely from an encrypted USB stick for the benefit of newer users? Have you given people advice on how to encrypt their data using Truecrypt using keyfiles as I have countless times? When I wrote a guide about how to construct a brain wallet allowing people to literally carry their private key to their Bitcoins inside their head, where were you exactly?
Who in the hell are you, someone who's been a member what all of a week to judge my integrity? Or are you an established member on SR and are hiding behind another identity - are these the actions of someone who wants to be trusted?
V.
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mmmkay than.
My point point is that there's a chance for you to get to know my real identity, or expose me in other ways with this plan.
The tablet might be bugged, back doored, the supplier in Hong Kong might be working with you, and who know what else can be exploited in a product like this.
Whatever you say, there is a chance for this.
You might have good reputation here as a BTC vendor, and as a noob helper as well. Helping noobs is good for business I guess, so it's not entirely unselfish, but it doesn't matter I give you that.
I might even trust you with my cash and buy some bitcoins from you, BUT I WOULD NOT TRUST YOU WITH MY REAL IDENTITY, NOR ALL MY BTC, MY SR AND EMAIL ACCOUNTS AND PASSWORDS.
Even if the chance is small, you can still fuck my life up with a dodgy tablet, so why the fuck would I take it? Do I need it so badly that I'd jeopardize everything for it? Is it so much cheaper or safer than not using it or what?
A cheap notebook with Tails bought from anywhere but SR is far better option than this, because there is no chance it was bugged just to expose an SR user.
Setting up a secure system on android, writing a tutorial on it, testing it extensively, pointing out some compatible devices are OK, and great, but selling a device that MIGHT be bugged, even if there is only a small chance for that, is not OK at all.
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mmmkay than.
My point point is that there's a chance for you to get to know my real identity, or expose me in other ways with this plan.
The tablet might be bugged, back doored, the supplier in Hong Kong might be working with you, and who know what else can be exploited in a product like this.
Whatever you say, there is a chance for this.
You might have good reputation here as a BTC vendor, and as a noob helper as well. Helping noobs is good for business I guess, so it's not entirely unselfish, but it doesn't matter I give you that.
I might even trust you with my cash and buy some bitcoins from you, BUT I WOULD NOT TRUST YOU WITH MY REAL IDENTITY, NOR ALL MY BTC, MY SR AND EMAIL ACCOUNTS AND PASSWORDS.
Even if the chance is small, you can still fuck my life up with a dodgy tablet, so why the fuck would I take it? Do I need it so badly that I'd jeopardize everything for it? Is it so much cheaper or safer than not using it or what?
A cheap notebook with Tails bought from anywhere but SR is far better option than this, because there is no chance it was bugged just to expose an SR user.
Setting up a secure system on android, writing a tutorial on it, testing it extensively, pointing out some compatible devices are OK, and great, but selling a device that MIGHT be bugged, even if there is only a small chance for that, is not OK at all.
If anyone wanted your real name and address all they'd have to do is post an illegal product and wait for you to order it, then watch your mail, it really is that simple. You don't need a bugged Android tablet to do it.
As I've explained the tablets themselves will not be shipped by me so I fail to see how I could tamper with them. Of course I could have set up a factory in Hong Kong just to create malware infected devices but it just strains credibility that LEO would go to these lengths - It also strains credibility that I'd be inclined to do anything for them considering the lengths I have gone to in the past to allow people to use SR safely.
You might say, "Ho ho, but if you are a cop you would say that wouldn't you?" but I could equally say the same thing to you - it would be a nightmare for law enforcement if users started employing more portable more secure devices to access SR, so are we supposed to believe your motives in questioning this are entirely noble?
As I said the guide will contain instructions on how to wipe the device before installing any apps but I'd be happy to include instructions on flashing the memory to install the Cynaogen Mod OS if that will abate anyone's paranoia. I assume you wouldn't be naive enough to use a netbook you'd bought out of a store out of the box and format the hard drive first before using it for anything nefarious, this will be the same.
Still if you don't feel confident about wiping an Android device before using it, then don't buy one, there are plenty of users out there who can!
V.
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/me thinks about selling a spyware infested "secure USB!" configuration and making pop ups come up on customers screen questioning why they were so stupid to trust a product they bought on SR
vlad you seem more and more sketchy to me with your assortment of plans to offer products that could be used to deanonymize people, 3G dongles from you, private tor bridges from you, USBs from you, tablets from you.....why suddenly the interest in selling such things? Nothing like this is good for people to buy here, especially bridges tablets or dongles. I really don't think you mean any harm, but it strikes me as strange to see your sudden plans to offer such things. Also
..Do you think people should cosy up to the man who wants to legalise kiddy porn and murder police officers instead?
I've said it before and I'll say it again : I do NOT need your approval to be a vendor on here, my record speaks for itself, there's a link to it at the bottom of this message if you want to see testimonials from people who have purchased their Bitcoins safely using cash through my service.
I don't have to justify myself to you but in case anyone else was wondering I am planning on offering a way which will increase people's security through using SR not reducing it. I have been transparent about my plans and since I won't even be handling the products in question I fail to see how I could tamper with them. As I said I'm in the process of writing a guide in conjunction with another seller (who is based in the US) to show people how to access SR safely from their Android devices. I have asked OZ and two other more established members on the forum to edit the guide once the first draft is ready and you're welcome to read it yourself to verify it is simply a way to help people to secure their own device from being monitored through installing a Tor browser, enabling full device encryption and so on.
As for selling USB devices and 3G dongles, I seem to remember saying that when I first started selling on SR I suggested this as the ones already available were far too expensive but as I stated above, there's too much of a risk that the setup will not be secure which is why I did not follow through on this - I'm not exactly sure how someone could interfere with a 3G dongle in that way but of course you know best as always.
You may not agree that my plan to sell secure Android Tablets for SR users this is a good idea - here's a newsflash for you, I don't give a damn.
I already made it clear when you advocated murdering Police Officers that I don't want to do business with you. You are a pathetic, twisted individual and frankly I think you're giving us Brits a bad name on here.
V.
Nice argumentum ad hominem, have fun carrying on like a fed. Anyone who uses USB dongles, hardware or bridges or VPNs from you or anyone else is fucking retarded, end of story.
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You are going to have OZ audit it well that is a good move, OZ is probably a fucking fed and is certainly a troll who doesn't have the slightest idea what he is talking about. It would be stupid to buy a security product audited entirely by someone who thinks BSD is a type of Linux even if it wasn't created by someone whose sole security experience comes from reading a single Schneier book, let alone the fact that these products are being sold on an illegal forum by the same person who tried to get people to give him their IP addresses with the guises of offering a private bridge / 3G WiFi dongles. I don't give a damn if you don't give a damn what I think, I am just warning people that buying those services/products from you would be fucking retarded, it is the same type of shit that feds do.
PS: Since we play argumentum ad hominmen, I couldn't give a fuck less about the opinion of someone who wants to murder people for looking at pictures and suck the dick of the cops who want to put us in prison for using drugs.
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our concern for my welfare is very touching(!) but so far OZ has proven himself to be correct on every point I've asked him. I know this because believe it or not he's not my only friend on SR and I have run security related answers to questions I've asked him past others over the past few weeks.
OZ was wrong about what secure virtual memory is, he was wrong about Linux being a type of BSD, he suggested that SR have a private bridge for all of its users to directly connect to, he said not to use Truecrypt because it has backdoors, he is a fucking retard if not a fed and you are the only one I see who is supporting him as anything else.
The "air gap" I was referring to was between an Android Device and your home computer - I appreciate this isn't the common understanding of the phrase, how would you best describe it?
An airgap (which you probably learned about from me) is a *total* disconnecting from the internet of a device that handles security critical operations.
unless you want to ferry encrypted data back and forth on a USB stick between devices
That would break the airgap, see if you actually knew about security you would realize that ferrying encrypted data back and forth on USB entirely defeats the purpose of using an airgap. If you don't believe me just look at how stuxnet got to its target.
I already mentioned the advantages of a conventional cold boot attack not being possible as far as I can see?
The RAM of a tablet can be frozen and dumped in exactly the same way as the RAM of a laptop or desktop, it might slow the attackers process of obtaining the RAM down enough to be helpful but you can use encapsulation material to do the same things with desktop.
I also think a tablet wouldn't give off the same kind of EM emissions as a regular monitor/keyboard which could be picked up by the kind of SIGINT spying. There's also the fact it's far less susceptible to malware given that there's appreciably more viruses out there for other Operating Systems (admittedly that's changing!).
Think think think, you should talk about things you know, ask questions or shut the fuck up. You are not even right about what signals intelligence is, that is a measurement and signature intelligence attack. Tablets are not any more resistant to malware than anything else, you should learn the difference between a targeted attack and a dragnet attack. I don't know how susceptible a tablet screen is to TEMPEST attacks, I would *guess* about as much as a laptop display.
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a person advocating murder and baby rape.
"Murder and baby rape" is my new favorite reverse euphemism for freedom.
I run a cash to BTC service for goodness' sake!
Yes this is the only service I know of you offering that isn't inherently sketchy as fuck. It is rather strange that you manage to obtain cash in the mail to supply bitcoins specifically for use on SR without being arrested, but maybe you have worked out some way to pull this off. Anyway, that is a risk on you not your customers.
I admit I make a small profit out of it but it was always my plan to expand into new areas and one of those is providing an affordable and convenient solution for users to access SR safely.
Yes there are such things already that don't involve giving your IP address to someone on silk road, or using potentially bugged hardware from someone on SR. I wasn't so much calling your credibility into question as I was pointing out that what you are doing is not beneficial for the security of end users. You strongly advocate for security by policy, and often it is you who is setting the policy. So you advocate for security via trusting you. This in itself is bad, but you also don't have the technical understanding to realize that even if you are legitimate some of your ideas are fucking all around bad for security, for example concentrating SR users to an identifiable bridge.
Apparently using Pay as you Go 3G isn't as secure as using your home internet connection to access SR - I'm not exactly sure why but I made the offer to sell dongles in good faith but was told it wasn't a good idea. How many 3G dongles have you seen for sale on my vendor page since that time?
No it is better to use anonymous dongles than to use home internet, as I explained before. What is not better is to use anonymous dongles that you buy for the explicit purpose of remaining anonymous while engaging in illegal activity, from someone on an illegal forum. I suggest you read about how shadowcrew was taken down to learn why what you are doing is sketchy as hell.
It's also more anonymous than ordering from Amazon.
It is more anonymous to be in the set size of people who ordered tablets from someone on silk road, for the explicit purpose of doing illegal things on silk road, than it is to be in the set size of people who bought an android tablet at any official store in the entire world? You better get local security expert OZ to back that up because it doesn't seem like it makes any sense at all to me.
That is a loaded question - that's not what's at stake, nor would they necessarily deserve to die if it was.
Vlad please tell everyone I know in prison facing life behind bars for drug charges that life is not at stake. They want to ruin our lives. Even if you are a small customer they want to severely hamper your life. They have no reason to do this other than greed and power. Each of them, deserves to be beaten to a pulp and shot through the fucking head. To say that someone who wants to effectively end your life, and is trying their damndest to end your life, does not deserve to die, is more similar to how some Buddhist monks think than how I do.
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no mere thoughts on this on the bridges?
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when I click on Find Bridges Now on Tor it says "Can't download bridges: SSL handshake failed" what does that mean?
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I'm having the same issue.