4 ms·

When Assange accesses the internet, I am guessing that state actors would be trying to see what his traffic contains. How would a person in such a situation acc

by anondon 10y ago

When Assange accesses the internet, I am guessing that state actors would be trying to see what his traffic contains. How would a person in such a situation access the internet and be sure that his traffic cannot be decrypted and/or there is no man in the middle modification of his traffic. For the sake of discussion, assume he has a brand new laptop with Debain/tails or another FOSS OS. The general consensus seems to be to avoid MacOS and Windows in cases where your life is on the line.

Kenji 10y ago
He needs good friends who host VPNs for him. TOR would also be a good thing. Maybe a combination of both. Of course, those friends would have to visit him in person and give him some public keys or something to verify their identity.
- pilif 10y ago
  > He needs good friends who host VPNs for him then the state actors would just bug that good friend.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    which would require infecting the VPN machines themselves? Just wiretapping isn't sufficient because of public key encryption Assuming the nodes themselves are not compromised (big ask) and identity can be confirmed(like via key exchange), state actors can listen as much as they want to the wires, they won't be getting much. Except if some private key were out there...
    - nkadri 10y ago
      What if they are able to wiretap the traffic exiting the VPN server. With the help of the server ISP for example ?
    - tP5n 10y ago
      > Just wiretapping isn't sufficient Please explain, I was under the impression that the above could not reasonably be claimed anymore with any kind of certainty [1][2][3]. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something important here or the 'Happy Dance!!' slide [4] made me paranoid. [1] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/how-the-nsa-could-put-undetectable-trapdoors-in-millions-of-crypto-keys/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/how-the-nsa-could-pu... [2] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/cisco-firewall-exploit-shows-how-nsa-decrypted-vpn-traffic/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/cisco-firewall-explo... [3] http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/how-the-nsa-can-break-trillions-of-encrypted-web-and-vpn-connections/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/how-the-nsa-can-brea... [4] http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf
      - rtpg 10y ago
        in the slides, check Slide 28. There's a bunch of useful software for wiretapping, but they need access to things like the Pre-Shared Key, or to be using an easily-exploitable connection mechanism like PPTP. Of course router/firmware exploits cannot be prevented in the general case, so NSA-likes could figure out a way get in. But the null hypothesis is still that the NSA cannot crack strong encryption without some sort of pre-built backdoor IMO. Based off of the leaks, NSA gets into things via two ways: - poisoning the encryption methods - social engineering/legal coercion to get keys
johansch 10y ago
If he has a laptop it almost certainly hacked if it's in any way connected to the Internet. How could it not be?
- dllthomas 10y ago
  > [...] if it's in any way connected to the Internet And probably even if not.
  - drusepth 10y ago
    He's gotta sleep every once in a while.

by anondon 10y ago

Kenji 10y ago

He needs good friends who host VPNs for him. TOR would also be a good thing. Maybe a combination of both. Of course, those friends would have to visit him in person and give him some public keys or something to verify their identity.

pilif 10y ago
> He needs good friends who host VPNs for him then the state actors would just bug that good friend.
- rtpg 10y ago
  which would require infecting the VPN machines themselves? Just wiretapping isn't sufficient because of public key encryption Assuming the nodes themselves are not compromised (big ask) and identity can be confirmed(like via key exchange), state actors can listen as much as they want to the wires, they won't be getting much. Except if some private key were out there...
  - nkadri 10y ago
    What if they are able to wiretap the traffic exiting the VPN server. With the help of the server ISP for example ?
  - tP5n 10y ago
    > Just wiretapping isn't sufficient Please explain, I was under the impression that the above could not reasonably be claimed anymore with any kind of certainty [1][2][3]. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something important here or the 'Happy Dance!!' slide [4] made me paranoid. [1] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/how-the-nsa-could-put-undetectable-trapdoors-in-millions-of-crypto-keys/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/10/how-the-nsa-could-pu... [2] http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/cisco-firewall-exploit-shows-how-nsa-decrypted-vpn-traffic/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/cisco-firewall-explo... [3] http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/how-the-nsa-can-break-trillions-of-encrypted-web-and-vpn-connections/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/10/how-the-nsa-can-brea... [4] http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35515.pdf
    - rtpg 10y ago
      in the slides, check Slide 28. There's a bunch of useful software for wiretapping, but they need access to things like the Pre-Shared Key, or to be using an easily-exploitable connection mechanism like PPTP. Of course router/firmware exploits cannot be prevented in the general case, so NSA-likes could figure out a way get in. But the null hypothesis is still that the NSA cannot crack strong encryption without some sort of pre-built backdoor IMO. Based off of the leaks, NSA gets into things via two ways: - poisoning the encryption methods - social engineering/legal coercion to get keys

johansch 10y ago

If he has a laptop it almost certainly hacked if it's in any way connected to the Internet. How could it not be?

dllthomas 10y ago
> [...] if it's in any way connected to the Internet And probably even if not.
- drusepth 10y ago
  He's gotta sleep every once in a while.