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The FBI Identified a Tor User

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Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#161

Post by AlbertCory »

hinata08 wrote: post #146
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really any way to hide from a motivated state actor? Asking about it on HN is definitely not one. Relevant xkcd: 538 [1] [1] https://xkcd.com/538/

it depends on what you're doing (as far as I understand as a criminal news nerd) the police-justice system is usually broke for commoners. So yeah, if you're not doing a serious offense, they will never catch you. Where I live, you can buy weed. Even if the government says they're motivated to stop it, they don't have the resources to plant police everywhere. If your home was 'visited' by burglars, they would just ta…

> three people could only keep a secret if 2 are dead

Exactly. Which is why, not to start a JFK war, I think the Mafia killed JFK. If it were the CIA, or LBJ, someone would have talked. Anyone who knew what happened got whacked.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#163

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

adenozine wrote: post #83

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 integri…

My take on it: He's sending out a reminder that Gov retains ability to extract people it wants from encrypted comms. He may have noticed a downturn in similar news stories.

That we don't know the methods used here, this seems to emphasize the old reasons to live in caution.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#164

Post by bostik »

jdfellow wrote: post #153
notch656c wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol if you don't want to be fucked with by the government, just don't break the law! Unfortunately that doesn't work. Sometimes legal activities are best kept under wraps. I have a signed and executed federal search warrant in my drawer. I was tossed in a cell. I was dragged to a hospital. I was sent the bill for the "search" and am currently being hounded by debt collectors. Nothing was found and I did nothing wrong…

Wait, there's bills for search warrants, like in Brazil (the movie)?

Oh, that's an old and well established practice.

The Spanish Inquisition charged procedural costs for their ... administrations. Usually on the subject's family, because of high mortality rate. Terry Gilliam has even said that this particular practice was one of the big drivers for doing Brazil in the first place.

Modern governments have learned from the history, and chosen to repeat it.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#165

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #98
causi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

McDonald's has video cameras pointing at every inch of their property 24/7. All they need is a timestamp from the AP and they'll go find your license plate in the parking lot on the surveillance tapes.

A guy on my street grabbed a nearby box store's WiFi and repeated it over an overamp'd, open AP.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#166

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

AlbertCory wrote: post #161
hinata08 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it depends on what you're doing (as far as I understand as a criminal news nerd) the police-justice system is usually broke for commoners. So yeah, if you're not doing a serious offense, they will never catch you. Where I live, you can buy weed. Even if the government says they're motivated to stop it, they don't have the resources to plant police everywhere. If your home was 'visited' by burglars, they would just ta…

> three people could only keep a secret if 2 are dead Exactly. Which is why, not to start a JFK war, I think the Mafia killed JFK. If it were the CIA, or LBJ, someone would have talked. Anyone who knew what happened got whacked.

But doesn’t that mean there was someone coordinating the whacking of those in the know? If so, wouldn’t THAT person know the truth?

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#167

Post by tinus_hn »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #95

I have second hand knowledge of lawsuits that have been dropped by the FBI during discovery because it would require them revealing zero days they have on Tor. Recently this has started getting increasing levels of press exposure[1] including in CSAM cases. The FBI has also continued to run CSAM websites after takeover to collect intel, and likely run honeypots for other content. If your adversary is a state actor, p…

Could also be like Freenet where they can say it’s likely someone browsed a bad site, but they can’t actually prove it.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#168

Post by advisedwang »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #114
takoid wrote: post #3

Original article this is referencing: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z34dx3/fbi-wont-say-hacked-d... And the relevant court document: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23569961-motion-to-r...

Even leaving aside the question of whether the FBI actually compromised Tor, or just did something way more mundane like infect the defendant's PC with malware, the linked court document is really interesting. Not only does the FBI decline to say how they determined what IP address the defendant used to access the Tor hidden service, but they're also trying to hide the fact that the defendant asked to see that inform…

If becomes widely known that the government can de-cloak Tor users, that will change the behaviour of their targets and so hurt their surveillance, so it's fairly common that the government wants to hide this fact. (same with stingrays, for example).

But just wanting to keep it secret is not enough. So they will claim that this has national security implications, saying some targets are terrorists. And courts defer very heavily to the government in this area, so the FBI might be successful.

Because just knowing that there is a break is enough to tip someone off, the FBI can and courts likely would classify a request for details as well as the details themselves.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#169

Post by charcircuit »

It's very important to note that according to this document the FBI was able to both

- Obtain the person's IP

- Decrypt the person's traffic to see what pages they visited

I honestly do not believe the second is possible so it makes me question the validity of the first. I have a feeling Tor itself wasn't the issue, but rather something else.

Re: The FBI Identified a Tor User

#170

Post by kerpotgh »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #99
r3trohack3r wrote: post #95

I have second hand knowledge of lawsuits that have been dropped by the FBI during discovery because it would require them revealing zero days they have on Tor. Recently this has started getting increasing levels of press exposure[1] including in CSAM cases. The FBI has also continued to run CSAM websites after takeover to collect intel, and likely run honeypots for other content. If your adversary is a state actor, p…

Is there really any way to hide from a motivated state actor? Asking about it on HN is definitely not one. Relevant xkcd: 538 [1] [1] https://xkcd.com/538/

Probably. If you use a laptop once, on a public Wi-Fi hundreds of miles from where you live, while not being caught on surveillance, while using a stripped down privacy based OS, and then route yourself through Tor, you might be okay.
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