ars technica
Malware planted on the servers of Freedom Hosting—the "hidden service" hosting provider on the Tor anonymized network brought down late last week—may have de-anonymized visitors to the sites running on that service. This issue could send identifying information about site visitors to an Internet Protocol address that was hard-coded into the script the malware injected into browsers. And it appears the IP address in question belongs to the National Security Agency (NSA).
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/researchers-say-tor-targeted-malware-phoned-home-to-nsa/
From the article:
The use of a hard-coded IP address traceable back to the NSA is either a strange and epic screw-up on the part of someone associated with the agency (possibly a contractor at SAIC) or an intentional calling card as some analyzing the attack have suggested. One poster on Cryptocloud’s discussion board wrote, "It’s psyops—a fear campaign… They want to scare folks off Tor, scare folks off all privacy services."
That comment at the bottom seems the closest to the truth to me: make privacy services seem even more dangerous than just leaving all your stuff openly available. More dangerous in the sense that it will call increased scrutiny and attention to your activities.
It feels good to be running from the devil
Another breath and I'm up another level
It feels good to be up above the clouds
It feels good for the first time in a long time now
Nice catch! Now that the NSA is going after Tor hidden services it is a good time to move away from Windows if you have to use Tor. Consider using a Tails CD at the least, better to use a laptop running linux.
Nice catch! Now that the NSA is going after Tor hidden services it is a good time to move away from Windows if you have to use Tor. Consider using a Tails CD at the least, better to use a laptop running linux.
or run Linux from a flash drive, and do all your browsing from it.
It feels good to be running from the devil
Another breath and I'm up another level
It feels good to be up above the clouds
It feels good for the first time in a long time now
It’s probably better not to use TOR at all. TOR was developed by the government in the first place, and they can easily run their own exit nodes, relays, etc. That’s enough to scare me away from running it on any platform.
So I’ve been thinking (lulz) and cannot seem to understand the complete consequences of this. Someone care to help out?
Here is where I am stuck,
– They load up this exploit and hit everyone that tries to access any domain hosted within FH servers.
– People begin to access these domains
– They have huge lists of IP addresses that tried to access ‘x’ servers.
* Do they distinguish the domains that were accessed?
I would imagine so.
So, all of you fucks accessing C.P are filtered from the sites with completely irrelevant content to that (which is why they said they did this).
IDC about them, so let’s move on.
You have all of these other underground sites only accessed by onion that they have your IP from accessing.
Let’s use infamous tormail for example here, and say they got this list of IP addresses.
Logins and passwords were not accepted at the time, only maintenance pages.
No relation to any accounts here, but of course they have a narrowed down list of IPs that frequently use these domains.
Hell, there could even be a shit ton of people just finding out about them and trying to log on. Small fraction though, but you get the point.
What would they do with these IP addresses? Start trial and error with law records, bank accounts, phone logs, and possibly even a meet-n-greet?
I just can’t really see the whole point here, but I completely see benefits for them..
Any others care to share their theories or facts on this? :getstones
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor – ‘Merika
IMHO,
It is pure fear mongering to make people leave places like TOR networks. NSA barely scratched the surface of how to get in and the biggest exploit is the propaganda they gave to the people so they believe they are fucked.
It feels good to be running from the devil
Another breath and I'm up another level
It feels good to be up above the clouds
It feels good for the first time in a long time now
I must agree with you, Acid, as this is all about fear as a means of control. The bottom line is that TOR represents something that the government cannot control. Given recent enlightenments, it is obvious to anyone paying attention that our federal folks are having none of that. They will not stop until they have a method of reaching any possible means of communication. It simply makes their heads explode that there could be folks doing things online that they cannot monitor.
I do believe that they have the means to get where they need to go though. I’ve been leery of TOR from the get go because of the government tie in to its development. It’s also easy for them to set up several systems on the network due to the open source nature of the technology. From there, they have vast resources, unfortunately provided by ‘us’ the taxpayer, that they can focus on their target. Caveat emptor.