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The FBI Identified a Tor User

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Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#81

Post by frankfrankfrank »

h4n1 wrote: post #38
paulluuk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading Edward Snowden's autobiography (Permanent Record, great read), I feel like Tor, end-to-end encryption and similar solutions/products are basically a dagger through the heart of intelligence services. As such, I find it hard to believe that they knowingly gave the public such tools. And if they did, it sure as hell backfired on them.

If they run enough nodes to deanonymize users, it's a dagger through the heart of other intelligence services, but an absolute blessing for the NSA

Hmmm almost like whoever has a head start and unlimited finances and resources due to being the reserve currency could have done exactly that.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#82

Post by Ajedi32 »

nostrademons wrote: post #69
Ajedi32 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, will we get more detail? Presumably the FBI would need to reveal to somebody how they obtained this information in order for it to be admissible as evidence ("he did this, trust us" probably won't fly in court), but is there a legal means by which they could do that without revealing their exact methods to the general public? (I don't actually know what the law says on this subject.)

Parallel construction. They use their real methods to identify the user, then once they know the user, specifically target them with simpler known methods to build evidence for the case. In the court filing, they present evidence that they've gained through known methods which don't work all that well unless you already have a suspect, but they actually caught the suspect using methods that are not public (and won't…

But if they were using parallel construction, surely the criminal complaint wouldn't make claims they can't prove using the non-secret chain of evidence, right? Here the court filing alleges that the FBI knows what IP address the defendant used to visit a Tor hidden service. Don't they now have to prove that claim if they want the prosecution to succeed?

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#83

Post by adenozine »

From Bruce of all people, this is a wildly provocative, unsubstantiated claim about routine takedown behavior from the feds.

I mean, nobody hates the gov side of the cryptography wars more than me, but this type of article is well below table-stakes for discussion. Especially by legendary professionals of repute like Bruce.

It's very disappointing to me. The price of clicks truly deconstructs the modern man's integrity...

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#84

Post by maxlybbert »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #20
donkeyd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. That's not what he was charged for, it's just one piece of evidence in the case: > “From Mr. Al-Azhari’s attempt to acquire firearms through unlawful channels to his desire to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, it was clear Mr. Al-Azhari’s intention was to carry out an act of violence,” > According to the complaint, Al-Azhari was an ISIS supporter who planned and at…

I’m interested what the case law is for arresting someone for intent to perform a heinous act. I’ve heard a lot from stalking victims and the like that often times police will refuse to do anything until the stalker has assaulted or murdered the victim in question, despite clear indications the stalker is actively planning to do harm.

There are plenty of laws about, say, attempted murder. Also, it’s possible for somebody to be convicted of shoplifting even if they’re nabbed before they leave the store if it’s clear that they were in the process of stealing items ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempt ).

And when there isn’t a specific law, there is a general “conspiracy to commit” law ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conspiracy ), which is what I’m sure is involved in this case.

“Conspiracy” makes it sound funny, but the basic idea is that when multiple people (and “multiple” means “at least two”) have conversations about committing a specific crime and one takes concrete steps toward committing that crime, then all people involved can be punished for conspiracy. Of course, the ones who were undercover agents don’t get punished. And the fact that the plan wouldn’t work doesn’t matter. If the FBI sells fake explosives to somebody and that person plants them outside a building and tries to set them off, the fact that they were fake doesn’t help them beat the rap.

The issue with stalking is that there isn’t a law against being in the same area as somebody else (unless there’s a restraining order). So, unfortunately, the police can’t make an arrest until a law is broken or the potential stalker at least tries to break the law.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#85

Post by VLM »

generalizations wrote: post #4

I wonder if this is going to be confirmation that a large fraction of Tor nodes are in fact run by the FBI.

To catch every random person visiting a site you do need to control most of the Tor nodes which is probably affordable for the three letter agencies.

To catch one specific guy doing one action one time that he might do hundreds of times without getting caught but he only needs to get caught once to get punished, if you only need to succeed 0.1% of the time you only need to own 0.1% of the nodes, as a simplification.

There's also the incredibly valuable chilling effect that he's being found guilty in public opinion of having read the wrong website once. If millions of people read the "wrong" website a dozen times a day for decades, you only need one bust in a couple billion accesses to generate massive propaganda that reading uncensored badthink is and should be punishable.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#86

Post by rtkwe »

generalizations wrote: post #4

I wonder if this is going to be confirmation that a large fraction of Tor nodes are in fact run by the FBI.

I'm not sure, it's been known for a while that javascript can be used to deanonymize Tor users and unfortunately most websites need JS to even begin to function so there's an incentive to leave it on. If criminals were more tech savvy maybe needing JS would become a red flag for any criminal sites, but you'd still need the discipline to not visit any other sites.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#87

Post by noirscape »

xnorswap wrote: post #43
optimalsolver wrote: post #41

I keep saying this, but the inescapable fact about Tor is that its traffic patterns make you stand out prominently. Just the fact you’re using it automatically makes you interesting and worthy of a closer look. All well and good if you’re just maintaining a cookie recipe site on the dark web, but it’s rarely ever that, is it?

Is your intention in repeating that to keep Tor usage below the critical threshold where that remains true?

No offense but TOR is just too sluggish to be really useful unless you're a gay pirate assassin (or one of those three components)[0].

It has basically all the drawbacks a VPN has (most sites will distrust you on recaptcha, speed bumps, sometimes a connection gets timed out or dropped) whilst having a shitton of latency on top of that because y'know, it's free. There's always been more people willing to use TOR than the server space needed to prevent overburdening the network (in no small part because running the server space needed usually incurs significant legal risks since congrats, you've now become a target for law enforcement to bust your door down and ask why an IP you own a machine on is being used to upload CP to the clearnet - few people want to deal with this scenario for blatantly obvious reasons).

This isn't really something you can fix, it's just kind of an inherent issue with the protocol.

[0]: https://youtu.be/WVDQEoe6ZWY

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#88

Post by noirscape »

DougN7 wrote: post #61
xnorswap wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your intention in repeating that to keep Tor usage below the critical threshold where that remains true?

Realistically, what would need to happen for it to not be the case? How many millions or billions of people would have to use it before the government would give up and stop looking at you if you use it?

In order for that to happen you first need to convince people to either accept the hit in connection speed (which is terrible over TOR) or you need to significantly increase the amount of nodes on the network, the latter of which isn't going to happen because of the legal risks, which act as a chilling effect.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#89

Post by hinata08 »

causi wrote: post #42
LastTrain wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you did illegal things illegally. And who owned the public AP? Someone not as smart as you? You sure?

So you did illegal things illegally. Yep. I said I don't understand people who do illegal things over their own connection, i.e., stupidly. And who owned the public AP? McDonald's.

using such setup wouldn't prevent anyone from finding you if you did illegal things that really mattered, like donating to a terrorist organization

you can proudly use it to download torrents (because nobody cares and the feds won't triangulate a signal for torrents), but they can definitely do it for terrorism and intelligence matters. (check out all the stories of spies who had radios, from the 1914 to SOE to cold war)

As a bonus, you even post your story on HN, a site where analysts from all the governments and major companies of the planet meet to talk about tech...

this guy was probably more careful than you

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