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Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

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Re: Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

#111

Post by g-b-r »

thephyber wrote: post #100
g-b-r wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I now noticed that you mention a TOR exploit here too, as said at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23545331 I wasn't able to find references to that

I think I inferred what I said from this quote: > Several FBI field offices were involved in the hunt, and the FBI made a first attempt to hack and deanonymize him, but failed, as the hacking tool they used was not tailored for Tails. Hernandez noticed the attempted hack and taunted the FBI about it, according to the two former employees. No evidence that it was a TOR exploit, but I interpreted it that way because th…

I think it's more likely that they used something targeting the browsers, maybe with 0-days maybe not.

But it doesn't seem to me that the FBI put much effort into this whole thing, maybe it was more a concern for Facebook than for them.

As I understand it knowing that someone is using Tor is usually trivial, the exit nodes normally set a reverse DNS record that signals it and there are exit nodes blacklists

Re: Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

#112

Post by marci »

bawolff wrote: post #59
marci wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can install WebRTC enabled browsers in tails. Depending on how tech-savvy someone is, they could be motivated to install one of them.

The article specificly says the issue was in code that used to be in tails and isnt anymore. Additionally, the motherboard article describes the payload as a video file uploaded to dropbox, which doesnt sound like webrtc.

I wasn't saying that's how it happened (regarding the article). It was to expand on:

> and tails uses tor browser which doesn't support webrtc.

and how (in other instances than the situation in the article) the WebRTC flaw could be used. I wasn't specific enough.

Re: Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

#113

Post by thephyber »

g-b-r wrote: post #111
thephyber wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I inferred what I said from this quote: > Several FBI field offices were involved in the hunt, and the FBI made a first attempt to hack and deanonymize him, but failed, as the hacking tool they used was not tailored for Tails. Hernandez noticed the attempted hack and taunted the FBI about it, according to the two former employees. No evidence that it was a TOR exploit, but I interpreted it that way because th…

I think it's more likely that they used something targeting the browsers, maybe with 0-days maybe not. But it doesn't seem to me that the FBI put much effort into this whole thing, maybe it was more a concern for Facebook than for them. As I understand it knowing that someone is using Tor is usually trivial, the exit nodes normally set a reverse DNS record that signals it and there are exit nodes blacklists

> As I understand it knowing that someone is using Tor is usually trivial

Yeah, Facebook almost certainly receives a lot of attempted traffic from those relatively few TOR exit node IPs, so I'm sure part of their system is aware that they are effectively proxy IPs.

Re: Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

#114

Post by TheMblabla »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #30
cryptica wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook are masters when it comes to controlling the narrative (damage control is their expertise). There is almost certainly something else under the surface. I find it implausible that Facebook would care enough to go after a single individual. No matter how bad that individual was. If they did this for every criminal of that level who uses Facebook, they'd run out of money. They simply cannot do this. Whenever th…

Well, Facebook actively campaigns against privacy, and the FBI actively campaigns against encryption. This is great PR for themm to say that both privacy and encryption are bad and should be outlawed. Wouldn't be surprising at all if that's how they spin it.

>Facebook actively campaigns against privacy

Source? I know FB is pretty bad with the privacy of users of it's own services, but I'd be curious to see how they've campaigned against privacy.

Re: Facebook Helped Develop a Tails Exploit

#116

Post by torified »

I don't believe most of the technical details of this story and it sounds like parallel construction created to avoid revealing the technique.

How would they know he was running tails particularly?

And what a happy coincidence that the 0day was patched before they even had a moral obligation to notify anyone about it. Quelle chance!

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