Inside The Dark Web - Documentary

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Kiopa_Matt

Banned
May 13, 2011
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Not sure, but may be of interest to a few here. Briefly explains everything, from what we're up against, to before the Tor days, to Tor coming online, and more.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXajND7BQzk[/ame]
 


You can tell by the number of comments on this video that most humans have no clue what is going on.

People think technology is been created out of thin air. Each of your digital device has a sinister purpose.
 
dank-memes.jpg
 
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRrFWwA-47U[/ame]

tl;dr
NSA cant decrypt OTR and hate tor network
NSA cant decrypt truecrypt
tor is still safe. users need to run more relays and donate to tor.
Government agencies are actively doing attacks against the tor network (owning less than 1% of total relays) but their relays are quickly routed out.
SilkRoad 2.0 bust is all hype and misinformation by government agencies. Owner just had bad OpSec. Governments do not have a secret way to decloak tor servers.
 
(O_o) said:
State of the Onion [31c3] by Jacob Applebaum & Arma - YouTube

tl;dr
NSA cant decrypt OTR and hate tor network
NSA cant decrypt truecrypt
tor is still safe. users need to run more relays and donate to tor.
Government agencies are actively doing attacks against the tor network (owning less than 1% of total relays) but their relays are quickly routed out.
SilkRoad 2.0 bust is all hype and misinformation by government agencies. Owner just had bad OpSec. Governments do not have a secret way to decloak tor servers.
Click to expand...

Umm...pretty sure Tor was created by, and is still funded by the US Government, correct? Seems odd that they would create and continue to fund something if they weren't able to somehow utilize it to their advantage.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
Umm...pretty sure Tor was created by, and is still funded by the US Government, correct? Seems odd that they would create and continue to fund something if they weren't able to somehow utilize it to their advantage.
Click to expand...

Ohhh, they definitely utilize it to their advantage. I would imagine the US govt uses Tor to do neat things, such as hack into Chinese and Russian computer systems, while being able to sit there and say, "wasn't us! you have no proof!"

At the same time, the project back fired on them somewhat, and there's now a new segment of society Big Brother can't watch. And I could be wrong, but I would imagine that segment is growing at a rapid pace. Wouldn't be the first time a US govt initiative back fired, and created a problem for them.
 
Yes its created by the US government but multiple leaked slides and documents state the NSA has trouble with the tor network since the government cannot control a majority of relays. This is why it's important for more regular users to run them.

Most current funding for tor comes from the private sector.

https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en
https://www.torproject.org/about/financials.html.en

It's also open source so any attempt to backdoor it or push an illegal update would be spotted immediately and nulled by the community. Jacob Appelbaum has stated that government agencies have come to them offering large amounts of money to weaken tor but they refuse.
 
(O_o) said:
Yes its created by the US government but multiple leaked slides and documents state the NSA has trouble with the tor network since the government cannot control a majority of relays.
Click to expand...

Interesting, but who leaked the slides and for what purpose? Thankfully the NSA would never intentionally leak misinformation, at least we can rule that out...

Kiopa_Matt said:
At the same time, the project back fired on them somewhat, and there's now a new segment of society Big Brother can't watch.
Click to expand...

You sure about that?

acidie said:
You're right, the other time is called the Internet.
Click to expand...

ORLY? Can you think of anything other than the Internet that has made spying on almost all of humanity easier for the US Government? Hard to say that backfired on them.

(O_o) said:
It's also open source so any attempt to backdoor it or push an illegal update would be spotted immediately and nulled by the community. Jacob Appelbaum has stated that government agencies have come to them offering large amounts of money to weaken tor but they refuse.
Click to expand...

Backdoors have existed in open source software for years without being discovered. And not just in obscure software either, shit that's used by millions of people. and that's just software - how comfortable are you with the thought that there aren't any hardware based solutions that negate all this shit?

Let's think back to how little we knew about the scope of spying that was being done on the average citizen just 2 years ago - now we're supposed to just accept that everything is out now and we know everything that the government is doing? Nope, not by a long shot. And anyone that thinks so is being pretty fucking naive.

I guess it just matters what exactly you're hoping to keep hidden, for most people the shit they're doing isn't important enough to bring them under the watch of the Five Eyes, but let's not pretend their leaks tell the whole story either.
 
Unarmed Gunman said:
You sure about that?
Click to expand...

Pretty sure, yep. Take the raid on Silk Road 2 that was mentioned above. That same day, a bunch of darknet sites got taken offline. There were dozens of raids across I think 18 different countries.

End of the day? They had 17 arrests. And that's just arrests, so will probably result in what? Maybe 11 convictions? Police forces across the world, Europol, FBI, and the whole bit jumped up into the news spotlight and touted how hugely successful the operation was, and what a blow to the darknet it was.

I don't really know, but I have to admit, considering the size of the operation, 17 measly arrests seems like sweet fuck all. Probably cost a good $30 million in taxpayer funds, so close to $1.5 million per-arrest. I have to admit, that's pretty dismal. So yeah, I think they have a tough time tracking people via Tor. If it was easy for them, there would have been a lot more than 17 arrests.
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
The raid on Silk Road 2 that was mentioned above.
Click to expand...

According to the developers that work on Tor the guy running SR2 fucked up and the FBI was able to find personally identifying information about him (not via Tor but via the general internet) and then they just flipped him.

They didn't crack Tor, they cracked a person.

Although that's not the story the FBI is telling.

Sort of related;

The DOJ investigated and at one stage considered bringing criminal charges against the NSA.

THE NSA AND ME

REPORT ON INQUIRY INTO CIA RELATED ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE ACTIVITIES
 
Kiopa_Matt said:
Pretty sure, yep. Take the raid on Silk Road 2 that was mentioned above. That same day, a bunch of darknet sites got taken offline. There were dozens of raids across I think 18 different countries.

End of the day? They had 17 arrests. And that's just arrests, so will probably result in what? Maybe 11 convictions? Police forces across the world, Europol, FBI, and the whole bit jumped up into the news spotlight and touted how hugely successful the operation was, and what a blow to the darknet it was.

I don't really know, but I have to admit, considering the size of the operation, 17 measly arrests seems like sweet fuck all. Probably cost a good $30 million in taxpayer funds, so close to $1.5 million per-arrest. I have to admit, that's pretty dismal. So yeah, I think they have a tough time tracking people via Tor. If it was easy for them, there would have been a lot more than 17 arrests.
Click to expand...

I don't think the NSA concerns themselves with drug arrests in the way the FBI does, so I'm guessing they may not share all of their access and secrets with them. Remember that the NSA is not a law enforcement agency.

I suspect somebody can certainly buy drugs if they're careful, but do I think "there's now a new segment of society Big Brother can't watch"? No, I don't think that's true in most cases. Unless we're going to assume there aren't hardware backdoors in all of our electronics devices.

Also, regarding the 17 initial arrests, I suspect the number went up exponentially after people started snitching and they got done going through all of their devices. But again, I think we need to draw a distinction between law enforcement agencies and spying. Big difference in their capabilities.
 
acidie said:
They didn't crack Tor, they cracked a person.
Click to expand...

Who knows. How did they get the other like dozen or more sites they took offline that day? Was it all due to the one Silk Road 2 guy? He was an informant, and had a list of the other sites, or something?

But you're right, the SR2 guy was an idiot. Don't use FIRST_NAME.LAST_NAME@gmail.com that's connected to your cell phone to order a server you're going to use to setup Silk Road 2. That would be a bad idea. heh.
 
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