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A Tor of the Dark Web

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Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#61

Post by coderintherye »

fatbird wrote: post #46
anonymous wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As wrong as it sounds, maybe it's for the better to have a forum where pedophiles can aggregate knowledge on how to safely (physically speaking) molest children. Also, I have to say that while I find the idea of sex with children repulsive, having a place where you can discuss the topic should be 100% ok. Child rape is awful, talking about child rape is unsettling, but having someone proactively monitor my communicat…

You don't think that enabling them to discuss it, enables them to carry it out? Who's the more effective child predator: the one who does it alone, with little guidance or feedback from others; or the guy who spends time discussing it with a supportive peer group and perhaps carrying out predation with their help? The only value to such a forum is for monitoring and catching them. If by definition the forum isn't use…

I'm not sure you have a basis to make the assumption that the forum leads to more predation. What if it works the opposite? We know that violent movies lead to lower violent crime rates, because the criminals who would be out committing violent crimes are instead enjoying going and seeing this movie. The same could be true of people who might otherwise act on their intentions for predation, but are instead satisfied by just living vicariously through others on the forums.

I agree with you that I'd like nothing better than to round all these predators up, but it's only through rational thought and discussion that we can figure out the best way to do that.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#62

Post by ZoFreX »

jchrisa wrote: post #44
runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

I didn't click through the links described (or even have time to install Tor), but it occurs to me that one may be able to find these guys via statistical analysis of writing style. Spider the web and then correlate less-anonymous writings with the stuff the ringleaders are saying on the Darknet.

Oh, you could catch them much more directly than that. There are technical means through which you can very easily track them down, if they make certain mistakes in their setup. On a non-technical side, it's often quite easy to social engineer people into giving you just enough information to track them (a kind of social equivalent to privilege escalation).

As part of another gig I worked on ways to track people, or more commonly to work out if two distinct users were actually the same human, and I'm almost salivating at the thought of all the potential ways authorities could bring some of these people to justice.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#63

Post by [deleted] »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #22
corin_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, Tor has CP, but I didn't look for it so I didn't find it. Same with all manner of other illegal content, pretty sure it's there. My assumption is that the open web has it too - but given tor isn't a single place with a directory to everywhere, I don't see how you could stumble on it accidentally at all.

Well, since Tor's anonymous, (secure enough) directories with legitimate sites also have illegitimate sites. Also, yes, I think the open web probably has CP too, but Tor's anonymity means that CP is probably up for longer there, I suppose. I've never visited any such sites, this is mostly speculation.

[deleted]

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#64

Post by ZoFreX »

telecuda wrote: post #56
Wohlf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are more households sharing CP in your community than there are bus stops. Sorry if I'm wrong, but I find that hard to believe. Any amount of CP is a problem IMO, but I don't think it's that bad. In my metropolitan area there's around 1,671,683 people, and I'd be surprised to learn there's 1000 honest-to-god pedos.

I live in a metropolitan area of around 500,000 and there are close to 200 markers indicating an IP address that's advertising CP availability. We have methods of rating each marker (e.g. how many CP files, how many are teen, child, nudity vs. intercourse, etc). Of those 200, there are a handful of the worst offenders that law enforcement will use resources to pursue, a group in the middle that have downloaded a larg…

Where are you getting this data from?

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#65

Post by patrickgzill »

runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

How many are Feds, on the site you mention? Something you did not take into consideration.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#66

Post by naner »

runn1ng wrote: post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

...just shows that Tor is really anonymous and safe.

It shows that the groups who go after and prosecute these people don't have the resources or motivation to get to all of them.

When you have a very significant target of the US (near the wanted level of Bin Landen) or China talking freely on Tor without getting caught, then perhaps you can rule it as being seriously anonymous.

I don't know about other countries, but in the US I generally only hear about people getting prosecuted for CP and similar crimes when they are caught in the act or when somehow the computer files get accidentally discovered or reported by some 3rd party.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#67

Post by ZoFreX »

mcantelon wrote: post #13
molo wrote: post #4

A couple questions. 1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected? 2. What reassurances are there that tormail is not a honeypot?

>1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected? An .onion server, AFAIK, might have the IP of the end point your traffic ended up going through to reach the .onion server, but not of the point of origin. The vulnerability with Tor, as a user, comes from folks operating the Tor nodes. Adrian Lamo, the guy that sold out Bradley Manning, was running Tor nodes a…

> An .onion server, AFAIK, might have the IP of the end point your traffic ended up going through to reach the .onion server, but not of the point of origin.

Correct. All any tor node gets with any traffic is the immediate node that it came from, and the immediate node that it is going to - only one hop in each direction.

If you get a packet from node C, to give to node E, that packet will be encrypted so that only E can decrypt it. They then "unwrap it" (like pass the parcel, or an onion) to reveal its next destination, F - and this unwrapped one is encrypted so that only F can read it.

(note: precise technical details almost certainly incorrect, but the principle is accurate)

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#68

Post by ZoFreX »

molo wrote: post #4

A couple questions. 1. Are users of .onion services protected from the server just as well as the hidden service is protected? 2. What reassurances are there that tormail is not a honeypot?

2. You can't ever know for sure but doesn't necessarily matter. The point of tor is NOT to keep your activities secret (for example, your exit node would be able to read any plaintext traffic you send, such as regular HTTP, or IRC, and also know your patterns of access - which IPs, how much data, etc) - it is to disconnect the ownership of those activities from your "real life" identity.

Assume anyone can read those emails you're sending on Tor, and act accordingly (i.e. no information that could identify you).

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#69

Post by qw »

telecuda wrote: post #41

I wish there were a simple way to communicate how large and widespread CP is, and how much law enforcement could use your smarts to go after these guys. There are more households sharing CP in your community than there are bus stops. (We can roughly map IPs of known CP files advertised over torrent networks.) There are too few innovators in this space because specifics on CP networks are privy to law enforcement, and…

> There are too few innovators in this space

I don't know much about US law, but in my country it's illegal to even look at an image, even if it is part of a private investigation.

I'm sure that many would volunteer to help, but not while they'd risk jail time themselves

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#70

Post by dfc »

nikcub wrote: post #38
klearvue wrote: post #14

A word of advice for those living under truly oppressive governments - do not connect to Tor directly (nor to a Tor bridge, to be on the safe side). Get a cheap VPS/EC2 abroad and use SSH tunnel to connect to that and from then onwards - to a Tor bridge. The reason is that, if connecting to Tor directly, security services will be able to figure out you are using Tor (although not what you are using it for) and may ta…

Jeremy Hammond, aka. 'Anarchaos', the Lulzsec member from Chicago, who was raided and arrested[1] by the FBI used Tor and it is mentioned in his indictment as one of the points that lead to his identification. [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/03/stakeout-how-the-... [2] http://www.scribd.com/doc/84134934/Hammond-Jeremy-Complaint - Tor info starts at sec 37.

First of all the discussion of TOR starts at section 39. The FBI did not identify Anarchaos traffic coming out the other end of the TOR network. The FBI did not identify Anarchaos because of TOR. The complaint mentions that Anarchaos had previously mentioned the use of TOR and that one of the devices (Mac laptop) on the network under surveillance connected to a known TOR router. The complaint goes on to correlate traffic from the laptop to the TOR network with Anarchaos's presence in his residence.

They already knew who he was before they found the TOR traffic. Thats why they had a PEN/TRAP warrant, and wireless and physical surveilance in place.

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