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One possible counterpoint is that the FBI took over and ran a child pornography onion service in 2015 [1] in order to deliver malware to visitors and demask the

One possible counterpoint is that the FBI took over and ran a child pornography onion service in 2015 [1] in order to deliver malware to visitors and demask them. This suggests that at least the FBI does not have the capability to demask users on demand. [1]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkj8vv/the-fbis-unprecedented-hacking-campaign-targeted-over-a-thousand-computers https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkj8vv/the-fbis-u...

ng12 8y ago
Couldn't it have been parallel construction? They wanted convictions without revealing that Tor has been compromised.
- rictic 8y ago
  There were strong suspicions of parallel construction in the Silk Road case, where the US government was able to track down the Silk Road's servers despite its use of TOR. One article: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-holes-in-fbis-story/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-h...
  - EGreg 8y ago
    Read Tarbell’s deposition https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-LsKJJAOvP4fDfuhV/Ulbricht%20Criminal%20Complaint_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-LsKJJAOvP4fDfuhV/Ulbricht%20... Or TLDR read some news article from the time http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/10/11/crossing-swords-with-pirates-in-cyberspace.html http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/10/11/crossing-swords-with-pira...
nickpsecurity 8y ago
Well, they also lied they couldn't break into that iPhone to try to get a court ruling that made it unnecessary to use expensive contractors or secret exploits. They lied that cryptography is blocking them a lot in general when the data shows that's rare. The NSA also had attacks on most mobile OS's, backdoors in ISP's, and so on feeding stuff to FBI who supposedly had no such capabilities. Btw, the big ISP's being backdoored with high-bandwidth, Tor nodes on same networks drawing people to use them is about the worst-case scenario for Tor. Global visibility into traffic patterns on top of huge, attack budget for partial or full defeats of the technology. Plus lots of storage to keep as much encrypted traffic as they can as long as they can. That lets them hit today's systems or encrypted data with future attacks. I assume NSA sees it all. I assume the FBI gets a part of it which will grow over time, concealing how they got the information. I did anonymous activities using equipment bought in cash over WiFi and HTTPS-looking connections to blend in with the less-interesting crowd. If worried about publicity, use cantennas so folks can't see your face on camera. Preferably suburban areas with more empty space and trees than cameras. Maybe Tor, too, but just don't use it anywhere near devices or a residence that's obviously yours.

ng12 8y ago

Couldn't it have been parallel construction? They wanted convictions without revealing that Tor has been compromised.

rictic 8y ago
There were strong suspicions of parallel construction in the Silk Road case, where the US government was able to track down the Silk Road's servers despite its use of TOR. One article: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-holes-in-fbis-story/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/10/silk-road-lawyers-poke-h...
- EGreg 8y ago
  Read Tarbell’s deposition https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-LsKJJAOvP4fDfuhV/Ulbricht%20Criminal%20Complaint_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-LsKJJAOvP4fDfuhV/Ulbricht%20... Or TLDR read some news article from the time http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/10/11/crossing-swords-with-pirates-in-cyberspace.html http://mag.newsweek.com/2013/10/11/crossing-swords-with-pira...

nickpsecurity 8y ago

Well, they also lied they couldn't break into that iPhone to try to get a court ruling that made it unnecessary to use expensive contractors or secret exploits. They lied that cryptography is blocking them a lot in general when the data shows that's rare. The NSA also had attacks on most mobile OS's, backdoors in ISP's, and so on feeding stuff to FBI who supposedly had no such capabilities. Btw, the big ISP's being backdoored with high-bandwidth, Tor nodes on same networks drawing people to use them is about the worst-case scenario for Tor. Global visibility into traffic patterns on top of huge, attack budget for partial or full defeats of the technology. Plus lots of storage to keep as much encrypted traffic as they can as long as they can. That lets them hit today's systems or encrypted data with future attacks. I assume NSA sees it all. I assume the FBI gets a part of it which will grow over time, concealing how they got the information. I did anonymous activities using equipment bought in cash over WiFi and HTTPS-looking connections to blend in with the less-interesting crowd. If worried about publicity, use cantennas so folks can't see your face on camera. Preferably suburban areas with more empty space and trees than cameras. Maybe Tor, too, but just don't use it anywhere near devices or a residence that's obviously yours.