CyberWars: Want To Give The NSA Excedrin Headache #23??? Here Is How!

originally posted by: rival

The SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND dictates our right to privacy, our right
to be free from the harassment of searches without REASON--articulable
probable cause that can be presented to a judge who can then make the
decision as to whether a citizen should have this right denied based on
EVIDENCE.

I think you mean "violated" rather than "denied". Rights cannot be denied, because they are neither issued by nor approved by governments - therefore a government cannot deny them, they can only violate them.

It's up to the individual defending said right as to how to enforce it, or the lengths to go to in that enforcement. It's HIS right to handle.

originally posted by: crazyewok
I use TAILS OS alot.

Great thing about that as all data unless you allow otherwise is stored on the RAM not hard drive. So once you turn the Laptop off POOF all data is gone.

Well, except for the IP number you connected to the outside world from, and all the data that was stored on THEIR servers rather than purely locally in your own RAM...

See, that works OK if your gathering data you don't want anyone to find on your own hard drive, but not so much for stuff you send outward to them, or the fine folks who sit around correlating all the hits from any given IP to build a picture.

Anytime the NSA "tells" of a loophole or a mistake, its probably to drive people to use the very thing that they are saying is a threat to them. Kind of like sheep dogs herding the sheep to the gate, where their fate sometimes is worse than just dealing with the dogs. It says on the C-Space site "All users create 2048-bit RSA keys for themselves." It would be no problem for them to obtain a warrant to have those keys released and decrypted. Any of these security mediums could be obtained by a warrant.

Do you remember that scene from 'Transcendence' when Johnny Depp's character, who was by that time an A.I., was able to measure his wife's body's hormones and she asked him to "show everything you have on me"? And he proceeded to show a detailed graph on all of her body's processes, brain waves, memories etc?

Yeah... maybe? LOL It's just an idea.

a reply to: corsair00

Google what Microsofts Xbox Kinect is capable of. It'll scare the Hell out of you.

a reply to: Hefficide

Oh, I need one of those! I couldn't figure out why the thing (X-Box) wouldn't work. I have an old one lying around I wanted to try out.

Wi-fi brains! I am sure the same type of broadcasting is going on with cell phones and other transmitting devices.

Having the hell scared out of you is part of the process, I think...

I just don't believe that "Der Spiegel" would publish information which could have a negative effect on anything the US wants... cause it's one of those publishers who are totally US controlled... There's even a paragraph in everone's work contracts that no one is ought to write anything against US interests.... furthermore "Der Spiegel" is one of the publishers of the Atlantic Bridge (ger: Atlantik Brücke)...

so even if we did what they suggested, maybe it's still not that difficult for NSA to get our information... maybe they just want us to feel safer and therefore we are getting incautious...
Or they just wanted to calm down the german people, after they were massivly complaining about the NSA spying on us...

originally posted by: Tiyana
so even if we did what they suggested, maybe it's still not that difficult for NSA to get our information... maybe they just want us to feel safer and therefore we are getting incautious...
Or they just wanted to calm down the german people, after they were massivly complaining about the NSA spying on us...

I think you are correct to a certain degree about wanting to make people feel safer. Another thing this does is it feeds the cyber-security industry.

If everyone jumps on a VPN because they are worried that the NSA is spying on them then you've essentially bolstered a new and budding industry. Chances are good several of them are set up and maintained by alphabet agencies or have ties to them. There are a few that are prob. independently run and they will be the first to be bought out.

A side note, the attitude that people have if you use a VPN you must be hiding something. The truth is there are a lot of people that have the need to use a VPN. I should be using one when I travel but haven't jumped on getting one yet. I take work with me a lot and I have IP (intellectual property) files that I transmit as a part of my job. In many cases I receive them with passwords. However, if I'm in a hotel or beach/mountain house and have to do work the last thing I want is to transmit IP files over unfamiliar networks. A VPN would help secure the files I send from packet sniffers in a hotel or other unknown network.

Likewise, if you are in business or finance and are traveling you definitely don't want people grabbing your Emails if they are about client accounts, potential deals, trades, etc.

a reply to: Hefficide

while the level of difficulty involved in decrypting emails sent through Moscow-based Internet service provider ‘mail.ru’ is considered ‘moderate.’ Still, all three of those classifications don’t appear to pose any significant problems for the NSA.”

Even our ISPs are reading SSL requests by using man in the middle attacks and i know this because the DNS hijacks by our ISPs includes records for domains that are using HTTPS and yet the pages still work.

SSL certificates include the domain name and the IP-Address but you can fake them if a fake CA certificate is installed on the machine but i an not sure if this is the way our ISPs are able to host HTTPS pages that they don't own.

Microsoft with its NSA back doors is where the real powe of the NSA comes from and using Tor or a VPN might not be perfect but it is better than doing nothing.

I advise everyone to buy their own hardware firewall/router and to learn how to block outbound packets to corporations like Google/Apple/Facebook/Youtube/Twitter and all the other big US names because they are all working as a team for the CIA/NSA

A good trick is to block UDP port 53 (used for DNS lookups) for all machines in the house except one machine in the firewall and to then run you own DNS server on that machine that includes a tracking protection list built in to the DNS server or better still connect your DNS server to OpenDNS on port 443 (might fool ISPs too) and block all outbound ports 53 traffic in the hardware firewall/router

Great thread, and those are some great tools. However, for the average person (probably 99% of internet users) these tools are irrelevant. If the NSA has any reason to hack you, they will, and they will be successful in doing so, regardless of whatever encryption you use. So, don't give the NSA any reason to hack you, or basically just don't be a criminal.

Heff, will ATS be implementing HTTPS this year for login and browsing. right now nothing seems encrypted.

a reply to: sixandone

That is simply not true.

Every thread like this there are posters who claim the NSA is all capable. They are not. They may want the general public to perceive their capabilities in being all powerful but the reality is they are not there.

Also using Tor or BitTorrent does not make one an NSA 'target' like many others suggest.

What they do not want the general public to know is the commercial sectors involvement in the domestic spy campaign.

a reply to: jrod

This is partially true and partially incorrect. The odds of being targeted are very slim as the sheer amount of data flowing through the Internet is incredible and standing out is very hard to accomplish. It's easy to set off automatic triggers, but the odds of any human doing more than a cursory glance and "ignore" are slim.

BUT if you do flag and flag heavy? the NSA can decrypt just about anything - regardless of how much effort you put into hiding it. This is a resource and time consuming process - but supercomputers are quite capable of making it happen.

AVG virues prog says Cspace is bad!
thats just down loading it!

a reply to: buddha

It's a false positive.

Not uncommon with anything that encrypts or tries to detect malware. They often see one another as being malware.

originally posted by: sixandone
So, don't give the NSA any reason to hack you, or basically just don't be a criminal.

www.theguardian.com...
www.washingtonpost.com... df8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html
www.vox.com...
rt.com...

You really making the argument that all the US citizens caught up in the NSA's warrantless spying of civilian networks were criminals? Really? The NSA reminds me a lot of James Franco's line in the Interview, and I paraphrase: "They hate us, 'cause they anus." The only criminal behavior going on here is coming out of Langley and Fort Meade.

a reply to: Hefficide

Most likely, anyone that reads this thread has pretty much nothing to worry about from the NSA - it's pretty unlikely any of us are up to something they'd care about, and they have plenty of actual bad guys to look for and track than to do whatever it is to us we're supposed to be so afraid of.

The far more real existential threat to people like us are hackers who'd steal our PII, steal our identities, ruin our credit, raid our bank accounts, mortgage our houses, etc, etc. If you're going to spend any time at all worrying about protecting yourself in your electronic activities, I'd spend it worrying about what information commercial entities have and continue to collect on you, often without your knowledge or consent, what they do with it, and how well they protect it - more to the point, I'd rather spend my time finding ways to protect my computers, networks, and PII from someone who'd like to open a charge card in my name to buy themselves something nice from Neiman Marcus.

This is all kind of like those who'd spend their time preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, while neglecting to protect themselves from burglars and muggers.

And when it comes to things like the Tor network, I'm reminded of the phrase "When you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

If you download a binary VPN client from somewhere to access a super-secret VPN concentrator, what assurance do you have that there's not a data recorder sitting on the other side of the concentrator recording everything you do? You don't think the NSA - or other country's equivalents - can hack a VPN concentrator? Or that binary you downloaded doesn't have a keylogger or malware built right in?

I expect those that go to these lengths to protect themselves from the NSA are actually making them *more* likely to be tracked, monitored, and hacked than someone who just keeps themselves low-profile.

Just my two cents.

a reply to: squittles

I post threads about these subjects for two reasons. First the Unconstitutionality of violating the 4th Amendment openly - not just our government but private corporations both alone and in concert with the government.

The second reason is that, while today things may be "safe" - tomorrow may be a totally different story. The Internet weighs in the middle right now. On the one hand it's probably the most efficient form of control, suveillance, and propaganda ever created. But on the other hand it's also a two way street - something new. That aspect is uncharted territory...

First came printing. People could read the pamphlets, but they couldn't really write their own in retort.

Then came TV and we could watch, but not talk back.

With this medium everything they send out is digested and returned. On top of that those smart enough to catch the slip-ups can gain a global audience rather quickly.

If nothing else, should I decide I want to send racy messages or pictures to a friend, I'd rather those be encrypted. Well, actually I'd like the incoming ones to be encrypted... If the NSA ended up looking at selfies of me, I'd laugh and assume that whoever got that job is gonna need therapy.

a reply to: Hefficide

Hey?

So what about you Heff? Didja take a look at the MIT Kerberos thing?

I've been really excited about it since I learned about it in school and seldom find anyone that is as interested in talking about it as I am.

The goal of MITs KIT consortium is to put people's personal data fully whithin their own control.

Here look: See Alice? All that stuff in the yellow boxes on the left of this image belong to Alice. All the folks on the right want to acess Alice's Personal Data Store.



You are right, if a service on the WWW is set up for it, it's all digested and regurgitated. Well, that's the way that "Web 2.0" is supposed to work. In adition to the "Semantic Web" aspects of this "Web 2.0", there is also this concept (the reality, really) of the "Internet of Things". That's devices that belong to you that might have your PII and SPI attached to them that are left on all the time. These days that could be things like your refrigerator.

But it's definitely things like municipal utilities and stuff like train systems.

Anyhow, I'm interested in hearing what you think of it.

a reply to: Bybyots

I am very interested in it, and it's one of the reasons that I store nothing in the cloud. The idea, in and of itself, seems to be an answer, but it relies upon the infrastructure already in place - and already compromised - to achieve even personal cloud computing ( where your own PC or raid array is your personal cloud ).

The analogy: You can spend the $$$ and buy an armored car. But in order to use that armored car you still have to take it out on the public roads where, at the least, it's monitored by traffic cams... and at the worst it's pulled over and you are forced to open it and allow it to be searched.

If you read tech articles they almost all have announced the death of the PC - citing Chromebooks as the wave of the future. Small ARM architecture portables with no inherent storage - totally cloud oriented. This, they tell us, is the most amazing thing ever because the days of lost data are gone and no more hassles of trying to move data from one place to the next. Work on that Powerpoint presentation at home for a month? Just walk into work and it's already there - cuz cloud!

And it sounds exciting! Until you research just who is offering up all of this free or cheap cloud storage! And you come to the same names we are all trying to avoid... Google, Microsoft, etc.

Right now I have over 2Tb of portable storage - between external USB drives and thumb drives. They are as close to "safe" as I can get - and that's only when they're in a box and not tethered to my online machine.

But, again, privacy isn't even my main concern with cloud computing. It's the Corporate game hidden behind it. They start off hosting data for free, or on the cheap - with unlimited access. Let time pass and they'll announce that the costs are too high and they need to charge a bit more for that storage. Oh, and that bandwidth? That's expensive stuff, gotta up that too. Own your own cloud? Well then you're really abusing the system and you MUST pay a premium!

When it's all said and done the war for the Internet isn't really about privacy - it's about access and affordability. It's about a few major players trying to price the small sites out of business and forcing the consumer into paying for Internet in the same manner we now pay for cellular service. Sure, they're be "unlimited" packages that crawl along and have caps. But most people will want the fast lane - and they'll pay to get it - many times more than what they're paying today. And when they do get it the content will be far less diverse.

I hope I didn't try to squeeze too much into a single answer. LOL