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FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

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Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#231

Post by dllthomas »

twoodfin wrote: post #229
atmosx wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FBI as every state organization is a position of power give by the state and it's citizen to protect them from illicit activities. All of them, not some of them . When the FBI engages in unethical and illicit practice, it's like stating that rules do not apply for them. Given for granted that they are in a position of power a priori, it's hard for me to see how this is good thing and how accountability can be hel…

It is unethical or illicit for me to tap someone's phone or install malware on their computer. That doesn't mean it's illicit or unethical for the FBI to do so. The whole point of having a state is to trust it with powers that individuals should not exercise on their own authority.

"The whole point of having a state is to trust it with powers that individuals should not exercise on their own authority."

Also to address collective-action problems (like defense).

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#232

Post by mhurron »

vacri wrote: post #115
mhurron wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Point out Anonymous. Ya, you were being cute, but Lulzsec was Sabu and his group. Anonymous is whatever a random group of people decided to that day and call themselves Anonymous. Tomorrow it will be a different group of people with a different and potentially conflicting cause.

Point out God. It's still a proper noun relating to a specific group of people. It's like a team name - just because the roster of the Steelers change over the years doesn't mean that 'Steelers' is not a name. Edit: 'Anonymous' is a team name, I mean, not 'God' :)

> Point out God

God is an idea that makes people feel better about themselves and to put themselves on a moral high ground over others.

What makes the Steelers the Steelers is not the roster, it is the paid position of the Coach and the owner of a legal entity and a defined goal and purpose. Anonymous is none of that.

Anonymous is anyone. It could be a bunch of people protesting Wall Street today. Tomorrow a group could call themselves Anonymous and protest Westboro Baptist. The day after a group calling itself Anonymous might break into Sony's systems. They might be all the same people, some of the same people or none of the same people. Each group might be made of people that agree with the others or vehemently disagree. It is not a specific group of people, it is not eve a coherent group of people.

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#233

Post by a3n »

sigkill wrote: post #202
a3n wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with a warrant. I'm not worried about this happening, because it doesn't. Spend a little time in here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warrant+no+knock+raid+mistake&t=ca... Or here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=warrant++raid+mistake+death&t=cano... Or here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-t... I'm still waiting for the scandal.

Is there a difference between ddg and startpage.com principles? Because I find startpage to be more in-line with the results I want to see.

startpage serves you google results, anonymized. It's sort of like scroogle was, I suppose.

ddg, I think, does their own spidering and also serves bing and other results (but not google), but that's from dusty memory and it could be wrong or changed. ddg will however forward your request to google if you want, and you'll get a results page from google itself. In fact I use ddg as a front end for google when I want to use google.

startpage is Dutch/American, ddg is American.

https://startpage.com/eng/company-background.html

https://duckduckgo.com/about http://dontbubble.us/

ddg's Gabriel Weinberg posts here on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=epi0Bauqu

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#234

Post by seandhi »

signed0 wrote: post #218
jacquesm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if your bank does not do 2 factor authentication switch to another bank.

Which banks actually do this? I've never encountered one.

Chase requires two factor authentication.

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#235

Post by joshmlewis »

belorn wrote: post #125

The use of malware in police enforcement is truly a unique event in society. At what other point in history has police distributed a completly illegal tool onto unsuspected and non-targeted civilians? It feels like a total unexplored area of liability laws, so I look with excitement to when the first lawsuit starts. Some people have compared malware with guns. This is to me a very bad comparison, since guns actually…

> It has to my knowledge never happen, but it would be interesting to know if the cop could be held liable if someone dies from a overdose from those drugs.

From some quick researching, it seems the government in the US is more and more prosecuting the dealers, or even the person who gave someone the drugs if there is a death. You give your friend Bob some methamphetamine, and Bob dies, you're more than likely getting charged with second degree murder if they can prove you are the source.

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#236

Post by AnthonyMouse »

skrebbel wrote: post #220
tptacek wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use a machine that is used for absolutely nothing else.

Wow, really good idea. Is a VM that is used for absolutely nothing else good enough?

How do you define "good enough"?

The general idea is to use a machine which has minimal opportunity to be compromised through other activities. There have been known to be exploits that allow a compromised VM guest to compromise the host, and obviously if you compromise the host you can compromise all the other guests.

Using a separate VM is worse than using a separate physical machine and better than doing nothing. Whether it's "good enough" depends on who you are. Who are the plausible attackers? What do you stand to lose if it goes wrong?

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#237

Post by unclebucknasty »

skwirl wrote: post #94
alan_cx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you assume that the techniques used for something most would assume to be reasonable will not ever be used in less desirable ways?

Police "techniques" involve guns, tear gas, helicopters, etc. At any time the police could in theory fly to your house, launch tear gas into your windows, and shoot you in the head as you run out. And I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly worried about that happening to the point where I want to take guns, tear gas, and helicopters away from the police. This is the FBI taking down criminals engaging in a clear…

>I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly worried about that happening to the point where I want to take guns, tear gas, and helicopters away from the police.

If we were to learn that they found it to be acceptable practice to use these weapons indiscriminately on innocent people in their efforts to catch the bad guys, I might want to take away their guns, tear gas, and helicopters.

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#238

Post by telephonetemp »

Tomte wrote: post #197
bashinator wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of them actually do?

Germany's best-selling PC magazine c't periodically distributes "Bankix" on their CD. It's a Linux live system (with permanent storage on a USB stick) geared specifically towards online banking. I believe that quite a few people actually use it. Of course the hardware is the same, but you get a clean single purpose software system.

> Germany's best-selling PC magazine c't periodically distributes "Bankix" on their CD.

>I believe that quite a few people actually use it.

That sounds like a great attack vector. How secure are factories where discs are pressed? Even without access to the factory you could buy a bunch of magazines and repackage them with compromised CDs.

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#239

Post by richardwhiuk »

greenyoda wrote: post #174
noselasd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At what other point in history has police distributed a >completly illegal tool onto unsuspected and non-targeted >civilians? For quite a while. Law enforcement have installed physical surveilance and tracking devices since as long as they have existed - and unsuspecting innocents have been caught on those tapes and recorders. It's also a question of whether those tools are illegal - there may be laws against them ,…

For a wiretap, they'd definitely need a warrant. And I think there was a recent court decision that says that police need a warrant to put a GPS tracker on someone's car. What they did here was to install malware on thousands of machines, without any probable cause to believe that any specific machine owner was involved with child porn. If I understand the law correctly, they would need to obtain a specific warrant f…

That's a pretty poor analogy.

A better one would be 'Would a judge give a warrant to allow the FBI to place a GPS tracker automatically on everyone who visited a store that was known to sell child porn?'

The answer to that might be yes.

Re: FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

#240

Post by superuser2 »

skidoo wrote: post #188
superuser2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also plenty of research that these don't actually work, or at least not nearly as well as you think they do.

Oh, I don't have much faith in the inner fortitude of my fellow man. The unwashed masses are still watching reality television, ya know.

Effectiveness of subliminal messaging (i.e. visual and audible signals which are so quick/quiet/subtle that they're available only to your unconscious mind) is not that hard to test in a laboratory, and studies are pretty conclusive that it it doesn't influence decisions unless the stimulus is presented within a few seconds of making the decision (i.e. grocery store aisle).

People are definitely swayed by overt, liminal signals in subtle ways, but subliminal messaging specifically was created by an ad agency and the science was pretty well debunked.

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