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The tricky thing about stuff like this is that the majority of people at protests (and in the general population) are incredibly tech illiterate. They are easil

The tricky thing about stuff like this is that the majority of people at protests (and in the general population) are incredibly tech illiterate. They are easily exploitable, but also prone to misunderstanding what they're seeing when things go weird with their devices. We know that hacking and spying on protestors happens, because there are FOIA (and similar state level public information act) requests that have revealed it. We also know there is collusion between private tech firms and the government at all levels that utilize questionable tactics (Stratfor leaks; Barrett Brown just got out of jail for covering this collusion as a journalist and Jeremy Hammond is still in jail for leaking it). So, something is certainly happening at Standing Rock. It is a protest against perhaps the most powerful interests in the world (oil and gas and international finance) so surely every tool available is being used against them. So, this is probably half paranoia and half correct. It's hard to know which parts are correctly diagnosing the symptoms, however. Also, some of the practices are likely unconstitutional, by most reasonable interpretations, but we long passed the point where the US government gave a damn about that when it comes to tech privacy.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "So, this is probably half paranoia and half correct. It's hard to know which parts are correctly diagnosing the symptoms, however." If you believe the story, then tech-savvy people have caught attacks whilst they were happening (the article mentions they spoke to someone that demonstrated a Wireshark re-enactment of ARP attacks performed on networking equipment at the camp).
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Even those parts of the story leave much to guessing and theorizing. I believe wholeheartedly that the government at many levels is spying on these folks, probably using illegal techniques. I just don't know that the explanations given in this article are right.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    Whilst it's healthy to have some cynicism about news stories (and the reasons they're spread), I wonder what level of proof you'd be looking for before you were convinced. Aside from finding equipment involved in the alleged signal jamming, what sort of information is likely to convince you? If someone took the time to triangulate the source of these attacks and could link those locations to government officials, would that suffice?
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      Oh, I think you're assuming I'm more skeptical than I am. I believe they have one or more Stingrays on site. It would be silly to assume they don't, given the history of use of Stringrays at protests. I also suspect the number of active cell phones on the networks in that area is probably a hundred times higher than usual; there's probably enough cell traffic happening there to saturate the current capacity many times over. This can lead to cell phones dying faster than usual (searching for signal), cell phones coming online and off, failing to send large files, etc. It can look like "jamming", even when there is no nefarious activity actually happening. So, I'm not trying to argue nefarious shit isn't going down. I have absolute confidence it is; I know too much about our nation's history with protestors to think otherwise. I don't know that airplanes are carrying the Stingrays (or other cell phone hacking devices) or WiFi honeypots. I don't know that all of the unsecured networks are honeypots put up by law enforcement. etc. I'm saying the specifics of their assessment may be wrong, not that the hacking and spying isn't happening. It's picking nits, in some regards. But, the motivations of law enforcement are sometimes misinterpreted by protestors, and the capabilities of law enforcement are sometimes over-estimated, even by people that understand the technical side of things. Law enforcement does shady stuff all the time, particularly in dealing with protestors, but, local police also don't have particularly strong technical teams. If the FBI is involved, then things get murkier. They have the resources and the expertise to do probably more than the worst thing we can imagine them doing (and possibly the will, as well). But, to be clear: I support the protestors, and think that the abuses they've endured in all of this have been criminal. Indigenous peoples in the US have been treated like garbage from the very beginning, and it continues today; this very reservation has been shrunk and unilaterally "renegotiated" (sometimes with guns) multiple times due to profit motives. The reservation has been shrunk on behalf of gold miners, and for major river re-routing, flooding, and damming projects. Even if these folks were making huge and unreasonable demands (which they aren't) I would still support them. I'd like to see a more thorough investigation of what's actually happening, by someone with a bit more expertise than Cracked. Wireshark dumps are great, but that's just the beginning of an exploit post-mortem.
patcheudor 10y ago
"The tricky thing about stuff like this is that the majority of people at protests (and in the general population) are incredibly tech illiterate." Combine this with the fact that even those who are tech literate are in fact illiterate in many ways. As a result, sadly exploitation becomes in many ways trivial and virtually undetectable even when targeted at the literate. This year as an example it was discovered that if you use proxies on iOS or macOS because you are trying to protect your privacy, that opened you up to having your HTTPS communication fully intercepted: http://fusion.net/story/337861/false-connect/ http://fusion.net/story/337861/false-connect/ This flaw dated all the way back to the earliest versions of iOS. What else is out there? Here we are in 2016 and we've not even mastered 22 year old proxy technology when it comes to secure implementations and worse, as a technical community, told people that using anonymizing proxies was a way to protect themselves. There are likely hundreds, if not thousands of ways to intercept and tamper with traffic including HTTPS what we are not aware of yet.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "So, this is probably half paranoia and half correct. It's hard to know which parts are correctly diagnosing the symptoms, however." If you believe the story, then tech-savvy people have caught attacks whilst they were happening (the article mentions they spoke to someone that demonstrated a Wireshark re-enactment of ARP attacks performed on networking equipment at the camp).

SwellJoe 10y ago
Even those parts of the story leave much to guessing and theorizing. I believe wholeheartedly that the government at many levels is spying on these folks, probably using illegal techniques. I just don't know that the explanations given in this article are right.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  Whilst it's healthy to have some cynicism about news stories (and the reasons they're spread), I wonder what level of proof you'd be looking for before you were convinced. Aside from finding equipment involved in the alleged signal jamming, what sort of information is likely to convince you? If someone took the time to triangulate the source of these attacks and could link those locations to government officials, would that suffice?
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    Oh, I think you're assuming I'm more skeptical than I am. I believe they have one or more Stingrays on site. It would be silly to assume they don't, given the history of use of Stringrays at protests. I also suspect the number of active cell phones on the networks in that area is probably a hundred times higher than usual; there's probably enough cell traffic happening there to saturate the current capacity many times over. This can lead to cell phones dying faster than usual (searching for signal), cell phones coming online and off, failing to send large files, etc. It can look like "jamming", even when there is no nefarious activity actually happening. So, I'm not trying to argue nefarious shit isn't going down. I have absolute confidence it is; I know too much about our nation's history with protestors to think otherwise. I don't know that airplanes are carrying the Stingrays (or other cell phone hacking devices) or WiFi honeypots. I don't know that all of the unsecured networks are honeypots put up by law enforcement. etc. I'm saying the specifics of their assessment may be wrong, not that the hacking and spying isn't happening. It's picking nits, in some regards. But, the motivations of law enforcement are sometimes misinterpreted by protestors, and the capabilities of law enforcement are sometimes over-estimated, even by people that understand the technical side of things. Law enforcement does shady stuff all the time, particularly in dealing with protestors, but, local police also don't have particularly strong technical teams. If the FBI is involved, then things get murkier. They have the resources and the expertise to do probably more than the worst thing we can imagine them doing (and possibly the will, as well). But, to be clear: I support the protestors, and think that the abuses they've endured in all of this have been criminal. Indigenous peoples in the US have been treated like garbage from the very beginning, and it continues today; this very reservation has been shrunk and unilaterally "renegotiated" (sometimes with guns) multiple times due to profit motives. The reservation has been shrunk on behalf of gold miners, and for major river re-routing, flooding, and damming projects. Even if these folks were making huge and unreasonable demands (which they aren't) I would still support them. I'd like to see a more thorough investigation of what's actually happening, by someone with a bit more expertise than Cracked. Wireshark dumps are great, but that's just the beginning of an exploit post-mortem.

patcheudor 10y ago

"The tricky thing about stuff like this is that the majority of people at protests (and in the general population) are incredibly tech illiterate." Combine this with the fact that even those who are tech literate are in fact illiterate in many ways. As a result, sadly exploitation becomes in many ways trivial and virtually undetectable even when targeted at the literate. This year as an example it was discovered that if you use proxies on iOS or macOS because you are trying to protect your privacy, that opened you up to having your HTTPS communication fully intercepted: http://fusion.net/story/337861/false-connect/ http://fusion.net/story/337861/false-connect/ This flaw dated all the way back to the earliest versions of iOS. What else is out there? Here we are in 2016 and we've not even mastered 22 year old proxy technology when it comes to secure implementations and worse, as a technical community, told people that using anonymizing proxies was a way to protect themselves. There are likely hundreds, if not thousands of ways to intercept and tamper with traffic including HTTPS what we are not aware of yet.