The latest NSA scandal makes me think we should devote a thread to real conspiracy (no zog/illuminati mumbo-jumbo), spy oriented subjects, etc.
Nothing against Americans in the forum (I like both you and your land) and I know most of you guys hate Obama and friends (and even more Bush) more than we do since you have to live with them, but this thing, if proved, is definitely a bit too much too handle even for most prio-nato liberals.
NSA spying row: bugging friends is unacceptable, warn Germans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/01/nsa-spying-allegations-germany-us-france
I am quite sure this will solve with nothing as it already happened in the past (coward Italians probably will thanks the States for being kept safe).
Nothing is as it seems. Except this one time.
Here's a fun FinSpy promo video - this tool disguises itself as other software on a target's computer, very widely used by law enforcement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8i7C659FU
I remember when CARNIVORE was released and it was a major subject in security/hack related sites.
Quote from: HongKongGoolagong on July 01, 2013, 05:34:45 PM
Here's a fun FinSpy promo video - this tool disguises itself as other software on a target's computer, very widely used by law enforcement - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc8i7C659FU
http://threatpost.com/mozilla-fights-back-after-finspy-found-masquerading-as-firefox/
I didn't know that, an in depth article on the subject.
What I find interesting is this is all happening with a Progressive, Liberal Democratic who is the First African American president who has the most transparent administration in history.
Anyone who trusts government needs their head examined.
When Americans are forced to sign up for health insurance in October, which is only available within the state they reside in, all of their information goes through 7 different federal agencies. I find that worse than NSA logging phone numbers.
There is no escaping Government...
Quote from: bitewerksMTB on July 01, 2013, 08:18:53 PMWhat I find interesting is this is all happening with a Progressive, Liberal Democratic who is the First African American president who has the most transparent administration in history.
Don't forget that this stuff was all brought into action during Bush's administration. Anyone who blames Obama for this is an ignorant fool. You can't really blame Bush either. It doesn't matter who the president is/was, this kind of stuff was going to happen anyway. We have embraced living in culture of surveillance and this is an inevitable result of that. What's surprising to me is that people are just now realizing this is possible... People detail every aspect of their lives on Facebook and carry out public conversations, everyone's cell phone records are stored on a server somewhere, and everybody has a smartphone with a camera sitting in their pocket. You don't think the authorities will want to use that to their advantage? All that data is useful to more than just advertisers. We're gleefully doing the government's monitoring work for them, they just have to check the data that's already there.
Again, very interesting that the general public is just now catching on to this, but better late than never I suppose.
It's not who started it, it's who finishes it especially when they're sold as something completely different. Which is why it's good advice to distrust EVERYONE involved in politics & government.
I have mentioned Barrett Brown before here and that the USA is shooting itself in the foot over this guy - USA already looks like China or Russia rather than a land of the free and home of the brave the way it's dealing with him. I was following his work and increasingly rabid and furiously anti-authoritarian tone online before his arrest. Here is a recent article about him, I agree with the Hunter S Thompson comparison: http://www.thenation.com/article/174851/strange-case-barrett-brown
Quote from: bitewerksMTB on July 01, 2013, 10:16:21 PMdistrust EVERYONE involved in politics & government.
Agreed.
There
are people who get into politics/government because they have a genuine desire to help make the country/world a better place but the percentage is very small and they usually don't last very long (unless they're some kind of hell-bent masochist with a messianic complex). They get elected with bright eyes and big ideas but once they get sucked into the govt machine and
really get to see how the sausage is made, they either turn to the dark side when $$$ is flashed in front of them or they quit the whole scene in disgust.
Props for thread. Interesting subject.
One of the interesting things about some of the people complaining about the spying are people who think the government knows best about everything else: education, healthcare, welfare, the weather, etc.. So, if they know best about all of those then they know what is best for your privacy, too. Right?
VERY interesting
How algorithms rule the world
The NSA revelations highlight the role sophisticated algorithms play in sifting through masses of data. But more surprising is their widespread use in our everyday lives. So should we be more wary of their power?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jul/01/how-algorithms-rule-world-nsa
Quote from: bitewerksMTB on July 01, 2013, 08:18:53 PM
Anyone who trusts government needs their head examined.
When Americans are forced to sign up for health insurance in October, which is only available within the state they reside in, all of their information goes through 7 different federal agencies. I find that worse than NSA logging phone numbers.
There is no escaping Government...
truth. it's an interesting, albeit pretty fucking frightening time to be an american.
the thing i find rather amusing is that years and years ago, even before bush got this whole thing rolling, the people who would spout off "the government is spying on us" rhetoric were almost exclusively labeled as crazy conspiracy theorists. now, even the most far-left liberals are right there with them (or, "us", i should say) ... and all us "crazy conspiracy theorists" are left saying "this isn't new, you shoulda fucking listened 20 years ago..."
i am, however, quite pleased at the amount of people who are upset about the NSA and CIA and all that shit. i read some polls a couple weeks ago, and over half the country is "displeased" in one way or another with their government spying on them. there was, however, a rather large percentage of people who said they either didn't mind or they thought it was necessary, which i found a bit unnerving. but yeah, people are pissed, and that's a good thing. honestly, i hope things keep getting worse. it's the only way we're ever gonna get anything to change. it may be wishful thinking, and i'm likely giving the american people too much credit, but i'd hope that things will get to a point where the majority of americans say "alright, enough is enough" and fucking DO something about it. standing outside buildings with bullhorns and signs only gets you so far...
Not sure who said it on what but someone said that the NSA, etc. has to cast such a wide net because they're not allowed to just log numbers of people who actually may do something. They can't focus on people who hang out in mosques because that's profiling based on race and religion so they have to throw you into the mix.
I think it may have been Greg Gutfeld (sp? name?) on Red Eye...?
There's no big changes coming any time soon. Just keep your head down & try to stay out of sight.
Quote from: tiny_tove on July 01, 2013, 05:40:03 PM
I remember when CARNIVORE was released and it was a major subject in security/hack related sites.
CARNIVORE turned out to be a program run on a PC that had to be physically connected to the computer it was monitoring, I think. Which sucks, because I spent a lot of time coming up with a code language that would use only words that would raise red flags to express totally banal things, thinking if it got popular enough, it would overload CARNIVORE.
What about ECHELON?
Echelon was mostly fake. Although now it sounds realistic consodering what happened ehheh. Conspiracy nutters were claiming the Italian base was 1 h from my place while it was just the local astro- physic laboratory where everybody could go if requested and was run by my ex physic professor (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrado_Lamberti).
Everybody was obsessed by that back in the days - me too ehehe -
It will be itneresting to watch the reactions from the EU unfold, now that it turns out they were spying on Germany for example. As someone said, just like Soviet did back in the days.
this isn't really "news", because it's been going on for a long time now, but still.. fucked up:
U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement
"It's a treasure trove of information," said James J. Wedick, a former F.B.I. agent who spent 34 years at the agency and who said he used mail covers in a number of investigations, including one that led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California on corruption charges. "Looking at just the outside of letters and other mail, I can see who you bank with, who you communicate with — all kinds of useful information that gives investigators leads that they can then follow up on with a subpoena." But, he said: "It can be easily abused because it's so easy to use and you don't have to go through a judge to get the information. You just fill out a form."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0
Quote from: tiny_tove on July 03, 2013, 07:46:29 AM
Echelon was mostly fake. Although now it sounds realistic consodering what happened ehheh. Conspiracy nutters were claiming the Italian base was 1 h from my place while it was just the local astro- physic laboratory where everybody could go if requested and was run by my ex physic professor (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrado_Lamberti).
Everybody was obsessed by that back in the days - me too ehehe -
Italy wasn't a member state though, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy
The Italian wiki page says Italy was.
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#ECHELON_in_Italia
as said most information on the subject were spread by conspiracy theorist who are now into alex jones/david icke
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/04/nsa-us-embassy-closures-terrorist-threat
I remember they said exactly the same thing a few years ago, turning big cities in ghost town for nothing.
Real threat or just an excuse to show NSA as something necessary after the last scandal?
Quote from: tiny_tove on August 05, 2013, 11:31:59 AM
Real threat or just an excuse to show NSA as something necessary after the last scandal?
I've been wondering that as well.
Here is a post I made in the Porn thread concerning the recent Deep Web/Tor busts:
QuoteWelp, the Deep has been severely compromised this week. Javascript exploit that uses Firefox (which is the browser used in the Tor bundle) to get information about the users. The owner of Freedom Hosting was arrested in Ireland and because he hosted many different boards and sites, is being labeled as the biggest CeePee dealer on Earth. A few Americans have been arrested as well, and we can expect many more.
Too early to understand what is happening but the general consensus is that the FBI was working with blue teams/pentesters to create said exploit and waited until the Defcon convention started before putting it into play in the wild. After compromising the host itself they injected the exploit to all hosted, mainly illegal, sites to harvest clear IP's. There is a warning circulating that states "IF you visited a FH site during this small window of time, expect to be raided". Pretty big shit storm down there, especially on some specific boards. Here are a few links/info/headlines:
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/fbi-bids-to-extradite-largest-childporn-dealer-on-planet-29469402.html
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1rlo0uu
And the message being spread around the DeepWeb itself reads:
Quote"UNKNOWN JAVASCRIPT IN THE BOARD PAGES POINTING TO IFRAME TO A VERIZON SERVER ON THE OPEN WEB!!!!!!! THEY ARE INSERTED BY FH! I WOULD CONSIDER FH COMPROMISED!!!! THEY ARE ALSO IN TLZ AND OTHER SITES PAGES!! STAY AWAY FROM ALL FH HOSTED SITES, including TLZ, LC, TORMAIL, ALL OF THESE ARE HOSTED ON FH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALL BOARDS HAVE BEEN DELETED TO PROTECT YOU!! IF THE BOARDS COME BACK UP, IT IS NOT ME RUNNING THE SITE ANYMORE, ALL ADMIN/MOD ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN DELETED!!"
Also, Hacking group Anonymous claims that they are going to be releasing thousands of clear text entries taken from TorMail. They have been very active against ped's and ped sites, trying to out as many people as they can and shut down as many sites and boards as they can (#Operation Darknet). They have nothing to do with the latest info on Tor, but it is significant information nonetheless.
The .js on the compromised Tor sites (which I have little doubt included illegal material) phoned home user IPs to Reston, VA according to Vlad Tsrklevich.
Trapwire is based in Reston. http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Trapwire
This is probably about more than just finding paedos.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/05/tor-browser-anonymity-compromised-maybe#comments
It had to happen, right?
If Anonymous releases pedo texts, that should definitely be interesting reading!
Researching Op.Darknet, everything I read is from 2011 with user names from Lolita City posted on PasteBin.
Quote from: bitewerksMTB on August 06, 2013, 02:00:15 AM
Researching Op.Darknet, everything I read is from 2011 with user names from Lolita City posted on PasteBin.
Yea it may have a different name now, but how I understand it, it is just a continuous name they are using for the outing of said lists and will use the same Operations name on this up-and-coming list. But yes the last list they made was 2011.
BBC is picking up on the story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23573048
QuoteThe .js on the compromised Tor sites (which I have little doubt included illegal material) phoned home user IPs to Reston, VA according to Vlad Tsrklevich.
I'm not a Java Script programmer (Python, Perl, PHP and of course bash are what I know) but from looking over it it seems like a pretty cut-and-dry, ugly code. For the exploit to work you have to 1 be using windows, 2 be using that bundle, 3 have java enabled and 4 NoScript set to *allow* scripts, and of course visit the exploited sites within the small time frame.
From the reverse engineers and blackhats that have been working through the code we have come to understand this isn't the FBI, rather the NSA and SAIC. Who the fuck are they? This fits nicely with the topic of this thread now...
(https://www.cryptocloud.org/download/file.php?id=217&t=1&sid=4392df2de2e3f2a703fbc1d571f83c51)
http://pop.robtex.com/nsa.gov.html#records
That IP address is part of IP space directly allocated to the NSA's Autonomous Systems (AS). It's not FBI; it's NSA. And why was that IP address just there for everyone to see? One simply does not write hand-obfuscated code like that and then put one's IP:80 in plain view. The placement was certainly intentional. What the security world is thinking is this is some sort of "psyops" shit; FUD on meth". They want to scare you off Tor, scare you off all privacy services. They want people to feel vulnerable, insecure, uncertain, they want them to doubt everything they think they know about online security.
I don't know what I believe yet, but in any case the questions that needs to be asked is, what the fuck is an NSA IP address doing as a command & control contact for javascript malware being deployed in the torsploit attack?