NSA using Google To Hunt Tor Users \ stacker news ~BooksAndArticles

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This is partly why I think Tor solutions are not "good enough" in 2024. IPFS might be if the gateways were less spastic. I2P probably is, but people don't seem to use it very often and it's been more jammed up lately.

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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @profullstack 17 Aug

funny, i used to work at Whitehat Security and Jeremiah was the founder.

42 sats \ 5 replies \ @justin_shocknet 17 Aug

Article is 11 years old and grossly underestimates the capabilities of agencies that effectively have telemetry on every piece of routing equipment on the internet.

Privacy is not something you can download. When you use Tor/I2P, a privacy shitcoin, or really anything of that nature shilled by larp privacy influencers, is flag yourself for more scrutiny. They are honeypots, many put out by the agencies themselves.

Fortunately, whatever degenerate behavior you're hiding is likely of little interest to anyone with these capabilities and a VPN or SSH tunnel is adequate. If you're really an activist under a truly hostile government, then you have to be smart and not use crap that every kiddie on reddit thinks makes them an el1t3 h4x0r.

So, next time you see a privacy influencer recommending Tor or some privacy shitcoin, just mute them because they're larps.

7 sats \ 4 replies \ @jbschirtzinger OP 17 Aug

Fortunately, whatever degenerate behavior you're hiding is likely of little interest to anyone with these capabilities and a VPN or SSH tunnel is adequate.

The "degenerate behavior" I'd be indulging is "trying to read the news that suddenly disappears".

If you're really an activist under a truly hostile government, then you have to be smart and not use crap that every kiddie on reddit thinks makes them an el1t3 h4x0r.

I'm thinking more in terms of DNS circumvention, as my articles this week allude to. All governments are hostile when it comes to the DNS in some way or another.

Article is 11 years old and grossly underestimates the capabilities of agencies that effectively have telemetry on every piece of routing equipment on the internet.

Sure. Point is, that's what was happening THEN.

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @justin_shocknet 17 Aug

None of those onion systems do anything for DNS, if it's a clearnet resource you're hitting then all you're doing is adding middlemen, not circumventing it

Getting around geofences is different than privacy, commodity VPN's or ideally a VPS running a proxy is the way to deal with that

Archiving stuff on mirrors is one way to persist information that may get scrubbed, Torrent with redundant trackers is the only way that's every been somewhat achieved. IPFS is a retarded ETHhead thing that doesn't work as it relies on DHT, Torrent tried that ages ago and still uses trackers because it's crap.

7 sats \ 2 replies \ @jbschirtzinger OP 17 Aug

None of those onion systems do anything for DNS, if it's a clearnet resource you're hitting then all you're doing is adding middlemen, not circumventing it

Yeah they do. They don't use them.

Getting around geofences is different than privacy, commodity VPN's or ideally a VPS running a proxy is the way to deal with that

It can be. You have to trust the VPN which is increasingly a risky gamble.

IPFS is a retarded ETHhead thing that doesn't work as it relies on DHT, Torrent tried that ages ago and still uses trackers because it's crap.

Yeah, I was around when torrent tried that "ages ago". I'll tell you a little secret, each time something has been tried it is not necessarily because the technological solution failed but rather a certain kind of interference asserts itself. The same thing happened back in the PGP days. After this interference shows up, people that develop certain solutions often are visited by interested parties and not long after, often that technology disappears. Then, people come along and say "Well the tech was crap." No, not really. I've had a lot of time to see many university projects that had all the ideas right and develop prototypes never get funding, or else get yanked. I'll let you figure out why that might be.

Edited to add: Windows was and IS crap. That crap is everywhere.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 17 Aug

Yeah they do. They don't use them.

Tor is a proxy, if you're accessing a clearnet website, the exit relay is using DNS. This is internet 101.

You have to trust the VPN which is increasingly a risky gamble.

Thats why I said ideally a VPS, its not risky if you don't consider VPN's a privacy tool.

certain kind of interference asserts itself

That's a lack of resilience

Fact is IPFS doesn't work, neither does DHT... if you want to beat your head against the wall on that perennial failure glhf

7 sats \ 0 replies \ @jbschirtzinger OP 17 Aug

Tor is a proxy, if you're accessing a clearnet website, the exit relay is using DNS. This is internet 101.

You aren't understanding what I'm talking about. Onion links don't use DNS. They go around it.

Thats why I said ideally a VPS, its not risky if you don't consider VPN's a privacy tool.

They are easy honeypots.

Fact is IPFS doesn't work, neither does DHT... if you want to beat your head against the wall on that perennial failure glhf

Fact is, nothing is working. Not really. And it won't. Not as long as the problem I'm pointing out persists.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @16d86e9daa 17 Aug

The NSA has a history of surveillance and data collection on a broad scale, as revealed by Edward Snowden's leaks in 2013