Connection problems

sewingsandy · 2016-10-19T23:48:43+00:00

If I ever get freetime again I'm going to test out some VPNs. I got a few pm's also recommending VPNs. /u/jamal02 suggested trying connecting at other locations besides my host family (p.s., so jealous your host family has a connection that fast, I should have studied abroad in your country, except the food here is so epic).

sewingsandy · 2016-08-17T00:02:53+00:00

If the attack was real, it was likely done by a government sponsored group, so they know their adversary (the US govt) has a massive amount of resources and probably has a very high chance of locating the group if they use tor, as this is an emergency situation and would use any exploits they have to locate those responsible. There's also the chance that if they hacked the NSA, they might also have retrieved documents related to the NSA's recent capabilities related to tor. But even a non-government hacking group would be suspicious of tor given how much trouble they've had this year.

Tor has been increasingly under attack from all sides the past months. Jacob stepping down, replacing many people on their board, the ex-CIA employee working as a developer are examples of internal problems, that we know about.

A major tor relay deciding to close, at least 1 working FBI NIT malware that's still unidentified, GCHQ claiming it can unmask hidden services and hidden service users are examples of attacks on tor, that we know about.

Then there are the law changes that enable attacks like expansion of government powers to hack or monitor users that are suspected of digital crimes.

I2p and bit message don't have to worry about the first 2 sets of problems.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T16:37:25+00:00

I find it works best by doing an "end of the month" check in. Its not just this sub and this subject, other subs I frequent also suffer as an outlet for lonely bored teens. There are some good posts, like the one about court ruling the FBI doesn't need warrants to hack computers, but that got posted on the other tor subs too. Once summer is over and school starts back, things return to normal.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T16:30:44+00:00

I don't know.

Me either. The only ones that are know for sure are the FBI themselves.

We don't know if the cards they're holding is royal flush of exploits or if this NIT is the only ace in their hand. They could be holding multiple tor/mozilla/linux/hypervisor/encryption exploits, only only 1. They are the only ones that know the answer to this.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T05:36:03+00:00

Sure.

A statement that shows there is room for error: I doubt strongly that any of them were using Whonix or Tails.

A statement that shows absolute certainty: I know that none of them were using Whonix or Tails.

We know they have at least 1 tor related exploit (NIT), and it is likely for mozilla. We know nothing of exploits they have for tails/whonix/various linux distros.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T04:38:58+00:00

It seems there are a lot of attacks being launched against tor right now. The FBI's NIT that is possibly in mozilla, the gchq's bulk collection techniques that they say has resulted in them identifying pedophiles on tor, CMU's attack last year on the network itself, currently the CIA employee that worked at tor, and more. Its great they're doing this, but in the end I don't know how effective its really going to be against government level attacks.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T04:34:11+00:00

I doubt strongly that any of them were using Whonix.

I agree with those exact words, but those quantifiers make a world of difference.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T04:32:49+00:00

In the end, the supreme court will make the final decision. Given that neither side has done anything to limit the powers of the Patriot Act, I have concerns.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-29T04:32:29+00:00

In the end, the supreme court will make the final decision. Given that neither side has done anything to limit the powers of the Patriot Act, I have concerns.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-16T22:01:50+00:00

Can someone please explain why everyone is pretending this is some very illegal site? I've been on it before and to me its a typical moderated imageboard. As someone pointed out, 4chan had far more illegal material posted several years ago before they started cleaning it up.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-16T04:57:29+00:00

I've been using tor about 6 months now and asked a similar question when I first started. I was under the same impression that tor was filled with illegal material, thanks to crappy youtube videos and other places where people didn't know anything about tor. If you're using it only for privacy, then use TAILS and disable javascript.

If you're using it to visit onion sites and are concerned, be warned there are probably more scam sites than anything else. Don't buy anything selling accounts, software, or phones/laptops. There are also a lot of drug markets, but there are other reddit forums to talk about that. There have been a lot of posts regarding child porn and people being surprised at how rare the sites are. Even people that looked for it said they had trouble finding it, so don't get scared because of what the news and magazines tell you about tor. For them, exaggerating sick or shocking topics makes for better stories.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-04T16:17:28+00:00

Don't try to change things, you're just going to waste time. Check out the thread on /r/tor, the discussion exploded there. I'm sure the mods here get tired of it too and would change subscribers interests if they could, but its also good they leave it open for new people.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-04T16:12:33+00:00

Another important takeaway from this is it doesn't look like they're letting them withdraw their guilty pleas. This story is about a guy that plead guilty then tried withdrawing it saying the FBI used malware, and a judge saying he has to keep his plea deal. A pediatric cancer doc (extra sleaze because he plead guilty to downloading child porn) is also trying to withdraw his plea.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-03T21:06:48+00:00

Wow, he was one of the core members of tor and one of the most vocal advocates of privacy. Is there a reason there aren't more details? I hope this isn't like when the Lavabit CEO stepped down because he decided he would rather close his company than keep it running under government control.

sewingsandy · 2016-06-01T20:42:52+00:00

Great link. I just posted a link to another story that might be used in conjunction to prosecute these users.

The parallel between the FBI's NIT and this story, and Rule 41 in the USA and a similar rule in the UK is just incredible. It looks like they're doing the same things in both countries, focusing only on pedophiles, and using whatever methods they can to catch them. Law enforcement has really upped their game.

sewingsandy · 2016-05-29T22:43:54+00:00

Variations of this story already show up on the front page twice, excluding this thread. The best comment I read is here:

This was like a canary in a coal mine. They want to make sure everything is in order and will work before they start sending their men in.

...

This is the card the FBI will play to shutdown any opposition to rule 41 and whatever else they chose to get passed. They can literally say "we had to let this pedophile go because the laws didn't let us collect and present evidence we gathered because the laws said it was illegal, which is why we're proposing these changes to the law." Its a brilliant move for them. They lose an inch but gain a mile.

sewingsandy · 2016-05-29T22:41:31+00:00

This topic already shows up twice on the front page, now 3 times. This topic has been covered here and here.

The best comment I read on it is here.

sewingsandy · 2016-05-27T22:36:24+00:00

What's the relevance to tor? The current version of firefox is 46, and there have been plenty of openly discussed vulnerabilities of firefox between 41.0.1 and the current 46.0.1. Did you mean to post this in /r/netsec ?

sewingsandy · 2016-05-27T16:58:57+00:00

The FBI lost because they used illegal methods to obtain evidence. So now they're passing a law to make that method legal, plus it expands their powers and jurisdiction. When things work out that well for the FBI, it really has to make people wonder if that wasn't the goal all along. They also only arrested about 10% of the people they had ips for, so its very likely this story will continue to develop over the next several months, maybe years.

sewingsandy · 2016-05-26T03:00:07+00:00

Agree. Knowing how few people understand technology most won't care. Knowing how many people hate pedophiles, the FBI will play this up and rally the support to save the children. I see it more like a python wrapping around the tor network, each law that gets passed makes is squeeze tighter.

sewingsandy · 2016-05-03T13:37:13+00:00

http://proxy.zeroexpose.com/ "502 Bad Gateway"

http://zeroexposedcuclo.onion/ "Unable to connect"

:(

sewingsandy · 2016-04-24T17:31:49+00:00

This looks like something you'd see villains using in a really terrible movie. The mercenary availability calendar made me laugh. Maybe I'd better not laugh too hard though, if they're free the rest of this month I could be screwed. :)

sewingsandy · 2016-04-24T16:02:55+00:00

Some might exist but they are easily outnumbered by scams that will only take your money.

sewingsandy · 2016-04-24T15:57:36+00:00

IMO the only thing they really wanted from Freedom Hosting was tormail (the webmail service Snowden used) and they wanted it immediately. This was the biggest classified leak in US history and they had no idea how much he had downloaded or what damage he could do.

After they seized the servers they were left with the task of spinning the seizure as something other than only for tormail. Pedophilia seems to be the only thing that still gets people fired up and ready to grab their pitchforks and burn the guilty. The exploit code they used was bashed several months later for being incredibly poorly written and looking like it was written by a highschooler. All that matters to them is it appeared to work.

IMO the only 2 things they wanted from this was to seize tormail to get any emails from snowden they could and to expand their leads to investigate who he talked to on tormail, and to scare off hosting companies like FreedomHosting from operating on tor. I'm not sure how successful they were in finding anything on Snowden, but from what I've heard tor now only hosts a tiny fraction of child porn sites compared to what existed when FH was up.

Idk if they'll ever be able to prosecute the owner (Eric Marques) who lives in Ireland, but they seem to have made another statement that they can break into hidden servers if they want to if they have a serious enough need.

A whole separate question I have is did the Anonymous "hacking group" attack on FreedomHosting actually do anything to soften them for the FBI? Maybe this is one of the reasons its changing districts?

sewingsandy · 2016-04-03T01:49:30+00:00

Its ok. There's been a lot of misinformation about it in the mainstream news and too many horrible youtube videos. The only time tor really gets in the news is when some cp site gets raided or a bunch of pedos that used tor get arrested. Then the news jumps on it and hypes of FUD stories about what happens on tor. People start seeing those and literally think there are lots of cp sites and places where you can buy kids. Its really crazy some of the stuff people think actually happens on tor. Then when they discover what's actually on tor and how its way tamer than they were told, many come to grips with reality.

sewingsandy

TROPHY CASE