Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
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Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#2Comforting to see my own privacy stack is almost exactly the same:
Tails running specially configured Tor (five hop circuit, permanent guard nodes, and routes through countries unlikely to cooperate with one another), GPG for email, OTR for IM, Signal for mobile, and True Crypt + Apple disk encryption.
Funny thing is, I don't even have any particular use for it other than kicking around vulnerability and security discussions with friends and colleagues that I highly doubt anyone is even trying to intercept. But it is very comforting to know that it's the same set of tools relied upon by those with something highly significant at stake.
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#3Comforting to see my own privacy stack is almost exactly the same: Tails running specially configured Tor (five hop circuit, permanent guard nodes, and routes through countries unlikely to cooperate with one another), GPG for email, OTR for IM, Signal for mobile, and True Crypt + Apple disk encryption. Funny thing is, I don't even have any particular use for it other than kicking around vulnerability and security dis…
Do you run those nodes you hop through? Also.. congrats on finding people to communicate with securely-as-possible.
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#4Comforting to see my own privacy stack is almost exactly the same: Tails running specially configured Tor (five hop circuit, permanent guard nodes, and routes through countries unlikely to cooperate with one another), GPG for email, OTR for IM, Signal for mobile, and True Crypt + Apple disk encryption. Funny thing is, I don't even have any particular use for it other than kicking around vulnerability and security dis…
Do you run those nodes you hop through? Also.. congrats on finding people to communicate with securely-as-possible.
Thanks, it's mostly security nuts like me about security related topics.
Hopping through my own Tor nodes could be a bit counter-productive, as it would make attribution of my circuit quite a bit easier.
I use an extended hop relay with hand-selected nodes, which allows me to use five hops instead of the standard three, and hand-select fast relays that are in nations which are unlikely to share information readily. There's a few more tricks I use to counter e.g. stream watermarking, but at a certain point you reach diminishing returns, as the browser is only so secure.
If I was running a drug cartel, it'd be appropriate COMSEC, but for me its really more of an experiment than anything else.
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#5Oh hey look, TrueCrypt.
Despite the more vocal members of the security industry basically hating the software, it turns out to be one of the few tools folks have successfully used to maintain their privacy.
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you run those nodes you hop through? Also.. congrats on finding people to communicate with securely-as-possible.
Thanks, it's mostly security nuts like me about security related topics. Hopping through my own Tor nodes could be a bit counter-productive, as it would make attribution of my circuit quite a bit easier. I use an extended hop relay with hand-selected nodes, which allows me to use five hops instead of the standard three, and hand-select fast relays that are in nations which are unlikely to share information readily. T…
Well, there are many uses. Impopular speech is in theory protected by free speech laws, but in practice you are only safe doing popular speech. Anyone that says something impopular should use COMSEC. It might not be needed today, but I'd use it to be safe tomorrow.
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#7Oh hey look, TrueCrypt. Despite the more vocal members of the security industry basically hating the software, it turns out to be one of the few tools folks have successfully used to maintain their privacy.
Did it? Seems like a claim that could use some elaboration. In what way would her privacy have been compromised by not using truecrypt? How do we know her privacy wasn't compromised despite using truecrypt?
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#8Comforting to see my own privacy stack is almost exactly the same: Tails running specially configured Tor (five hop circuit, permanent guard nodes, and routes through countries unlikely to cooperate with one another), GPG for email, OTR for IM, Signal for mobile, and True Crypt + Apple disk encryption. Funny thing is, I don't even have any particular use for it other than kicking around vulnerability and security dis…
How do you use these things in the wild? Privacy stacks generally require that they are installed on both ends of the message. Trying to get my friends and family to exchange encrypted texts or OTR IMs is basically impossible.
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#9Comforting to see my own privacy stack is almost exactly the same: Tails running specially configured Tor (five hop circuit, permanent guard nodes, and routes through countries unlikely to cooperate with one another), GPG for email, OTR for IM, Signal for mobile, and True Crypt + Apple disk encryption. Funny thing is, I don't even have any particular use for it other than kicking around vulnerability and security dis…
1. How do you configure tor to use more than three hops? It's not in the manual [1].
2. Do you only use the EntryNodes, ExitNodes and ExcludeNodes to shape the Tor path (country to country), or something else?
Working on an open source project that could benefit. Thanks!
Re: Laura Poitras on the Crypto Tools That Made Her Snowden Film Possible
#10Oh hey look, TrueCrypt. Despite the more vocal members of the security industry basically hating the software, it turns out to be one of the few tools folks have successfully used to maintain their privacy.
Did it? Seems like a claim that could use some elaboration. In what way would her privacy have been compromised by not using truecrypt? How do we know her privacy wasn't compromised despite using truecrypt?
The same way we know unicorns aren't real -- we have no evidence to think so.