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A Tor of the Dark Web

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Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#81

Post by pdsull »

naner wrote: post #66
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, bu…

The feds conduct ongoing child porn investigations, not just passive enforcement. Once someone with CP is found, the feds often try to seize the provider in order to collect information on other offenders, which in turn leads to further arrests/prosecutions. And the cycle continues. I used to think Child Porn was rare. I was wrong.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#82

Post by telecuda »

qw wrote: post #69
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

There's plenty that can be done that never involves having to look at an image yourself.

For instance, if I gave you a specific file name/size/hash (but not showing you the actual image), could you find out who possesses it, is distributing it, and anything about their location or identity that would aid law enforcement in catching the bandit?

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#83

Post by chimeracoder »

throwaway64 wrote: post #15
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) yes, in fact more so, because they rely upon no fixed keys 2) there is zero reassurance, there is also zero reassurance gmail isnt sending all your mail to the NSA, etc. TOR helps you ensure you can keep you tormail and your clearnet identities as separate as possible, alternatively, run your own service.

As stated in a comment above, using PGP/GPG could help. If those emails are encrypted, that adds an extra layer of security around the contents of those emails.

(Of course, that rests on the security of prime-number encryption, which may not be the best assumption when dealing with the NSA, but that's another discussion.)

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#84

Post by telecuda »

jmaygarden wrote: post #78
telecuda wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you avoid prosecution? Being in possession of child pornography is a crime. If you personally identified these torrents, then you are essentially confessing. There is an interesting story in "Three Felonies a Day" where an employer discovers child pornography on an employee's computer. They contact their attorney, and the lawyer deletes the offending contact to protect the company. He then alerts authorities t…

I did/do not personally identify them. I describe that law enforcement has tools to do so, but limited resources (and difficulties with ISP cooperation) to go after all of them.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#85

Post by klearvue »

zalew wrote: post #51
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…

How governments have tried to block Tor [28C3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwMr8Xl7JMQ

thanks so much for that video, inspired me to make a resolution to volunteer for Tor

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#86

Post by runn1ng »

naner wrote: post #66
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, bu…

China is blocking Tor outright and pretty effectively.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/OONI/censo...

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#87

Post by telecuda »

jmaygarden wrote: post #78
telecuda wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you avoid prosecution? Being in possession of child pornography is a crime. If you personally identified these torrents, then you are essentially confessing. There is an interesting story in "Three Felonies a Day" where an employer discovers child pornography on an employee's computer. They contact their attorney, and the lawyer deletes the offending contact to protect the company. He then alerts authorities t…

After re-reading: you avoid prosecution by not being a large enough offender, or by offending in a jurisdiction where law enforcement is not trained to catch you. Not all that different than avoiding prosecution as a recreational drug user when the cops are too busy going after bigger fish.

There's a lot of time and resources spent in between the time of identifying that an IP address is broadcasting CP to having all the information you need to bust down the right door and lock up the guy for a long time.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#88

Post by nikcub »

dfc wrote: post #70
nikcub wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

the FBI played 33 bits and 1 of the bits was Tor use

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#89

Post by telecuda »

ZoFreX wrote: post #79
telecuda wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privileged law enforcement information. Sorry but I cannot say more.

Can I ask how one gets into that gig?

Professionally? Contact your Sheriff's Office and ask to speak with someone from their internet crimes or child crimes/exploitation unit. They're always looking for talented people in those areas.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#90

Post by mynameishere »

nsmartt wrote: post #45
mynameishere wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

freely allowed to say really anything Well, that's allowed on the normal internet for the most part.

That is utter nonsense. I don't even know where to begin. Technically, you can say whatever you want, but you cannot expect to avoid persecution (or prosecution) if you do.

You can begin wherever you like, but you aren't going anywhere. If it was nonsense, it wouldn't be happening non-stop on 4chan and lots of other places. The only people iirc who've gotten in trouble there are those who've confessed to actual crimes. For instance, the kid who broke into Sarah Palin's yahoo account, or the guy who stood in a box of burger king lettuce. It's easy to track people down, but simply doesn't happen (yet) for speech "violations".

Maybe you're in Canada or some more oppressive place though.

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