Online Anonymity (How Safe)

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September 15th, 2005, 08:04 AM
gauravjulka

Online Anonymity (How Safe)

I have just come across... a topic which needs discussion

Online Anonymity

Below I give you a pointer to TOR (Software using Onion Routing technique to hide a person's original identity)
http://tor.eff.org/overview.html

After going through the TOR site and some of the suggested papers in the same site..... I feel that the topic of Online Anonymity needs to be debated... because despite all the pros of Anonymity over the internet.. . we have to be aware that there is a dark side as well.... The hackers and other malicious code writers get something to hide behind and pose a danger to Online Community as a whole.

Quote:

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.

Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.

Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are supporting Tor's development as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers?

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

For a Network Security Researcher this is an interesting issue which needs to be dealt in depth and with utmost dexterity.
September 15th, 2005, 03:07 PM
Kite

From a logical standpoint there should be no issue as long as you hide behind Online Anonymity as well. You cant get at them and they cant get at you. However, there are undoubtedly many things hackers can do to get past it that we cant due to legality issues or whatever. This is just another step in the nets evolution, as long as you keep up to date and patched up and use some common sense security measures(firewall, router) you should be relatively safe.
September 15th, 2005, 03:27 PM
Trevoke

/s/hacker/cracker

:rolleyes:

Online anonymity is nearly impossible. I believe the closest we will ever get to it is Freenet...
But this looks very interesting and I will have to read it all. Thanks for the link!
September 15th, 2005, 04:37 PM
thehorse13

There is no such thing as online anonymity - period. Look at the specifics of how TOR works, in particular, the key exchange & routing, and you will soon understand why this is not foolproof. Well, assuming that you're not a networking/security n00b.
September 15th, 2005, 04:47 PM
hjack

But you could get very reasonable amount of anonymity taking certain precautions couldn't you? Say like using a new wifi card in a lappy on a liveboot cd and a free hotspot? Would that create damn near perfect anonmity? Long as you avoided going to the same spot all the time and using a different nic to log on @ home or anywhere else.

Ryan

edit: I was reading the Tor site and seen it used Onion Routing which I looked up and found this site explaining the techniques and logic behind it.

http://www.onion-router.net/
September 15th, 2005, 04:50 PM
jinxy

Tor, States quite clearly and inside the running application,

"This is experimental software. Do not rely on it for stong anonimity"

Still it confuses my google home page. I never no what language it is going to show:)
September 15th, 2005, 05:04 PM
dinowuff

Quote:

Originally posted here by thehorse13
There is no such thing as online anonymity - period. Look at the specifics of how TOR works, in particular, the key exchange & routing, and you will soon understand why this is not foolproof. Well, assuming that you're not a networking/security n00b.

Well - As Bill Clinton said, what's your definition of Anonymity? or something like that.

In the days of dial-up I used a local ISP owned by "These two guys" I know for a fact that they couldn't trace me because they NO I AM NOT LYING did not log anything.

Frustrating as hell when they would call me to help on an issue and even the event logs were cleared.
September 15th, 2005, 06:33 PM
pakbehl

lol
"Should we keep these logs?"
"What logs?"
"The event logs on the authentication server, they're getting pretty big"
"Nah, just delete them, we're gunna have to eventually and we need the space for my DragonballGT collection"
"They just have the same stuff in them over and over anyways"
September 15th, 2005, 06:40 PM
dinowuff

Quote:

Originally posted here by pakbehl
lol
"Should we keep these logs?"
"What logs?"
"The event logs on the authentication server, they're getting pretty big"
"Nah, just delete them, we're gunna have to eventually and we need the space for my DragonballGT collection"
"They just have the same stuff in them over and over anyways"

Pretty much right on the money.

*whispers* pete, jason - that you?
September 15th, 2005, 08:11 PM
zENGER

Quote:

Originally posted here by dinowuff
Well - As Bill Clinton said, what's your definition of Anonymity? or something like that.

In the days of dial-up I used a local ISP owned by "These two guys" I know for a fact that they couldn't trace me because they NO I AM NOT LYING did not log anything.

Frustrating as hell when they would call me to help on an issue and even the event logs were cleared.

The dialup ISP I used to have was owned by a guy who really didn't like the gov't so he set up a cron job to purge the logs every minute. He had the FBI ask him for the logs a few times and after a while they got the hint that even a subpeona wasn't going to help.
September 15th, 2005, 09:00 PM
thehorse13

That's because they cannot tell you how to operate your business. There were no laws dictating how to log.

Quote:

Well - As Bill Clinton said, what's your definition of Anonymity?

Here is how I define it:

an·o·nym·i·ty ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-nm-t)
n. pl. an·o·nym·i·ties
The quality or state of being unknown or unacknowledged.
One that is unknown or unacknowledged.

anonymity

n : the state of being anonymous

Quote:

But you could get very reasonable amount of anonymity taking certain precautions couldn't you? Say like using a new wifi card in a lappy on a liveboot cd and a free hotspot? Would that create damn near perfect anonmity? Long as you avoided going to the same spot all the time and using a different nic to log on @ home or anywhere else.

Yep, you can take steps to do so such as these but they do not guarantee that you won't be snagged. There are proven techniques to catch sneaky bitches who do just what you have described. Sorry, can't tell ya. ;)
September 15th, 2005, 09:07 PM
jinxy

Quote:

Yep, you can take steps to do so such as these but they do not guarantee that you won't be snagged. There are proven techniques to catch sneaky bitches who do just what you have described. Sorry, can't tell ya.

CCTV ;)

You'd be lucky to find a hotspot in this country that isn't watched by big bro :D
September 16th, 2005, 08:03 AM
gauravjulka

Quote:

TOR works, in particular, the key exchange & routing, and you will soon understand why this is not foolproof

Quote:

"This is experimental software. Do not rely on it for stong anonimity"

Well... Given the fact that all the nodes encrypt the msgs and send it across to other node.. Each node only knows about the node which sent it the packets and to whom it is sending.... Also in TOR documentation ... as the number of nodes/servers and users grows, the degree of anonimity grows as well.. Though not 100% foolproof.. This type of routing technique seems to be having potential to provide high degree of anonimity.

Quote:

Online anonymity is nearly impossible. I believe the closest we will ever get to it is Freenet...

Technology will keep on maturing with time but the success of a particular technology is directly implied by its social repercussions.

Quote:

But why is anonymity necessary?
You cannot have freedom of speech without the option to remain anonymous. Most censorship is retrospective, it is generally much easier to curtail free speech by punishing those who exercise it afterward, rather than preventing them from doing it in the first place. The only way to prevent this is to remain anonymous. It is a common misconception that you cannot trust anonymous information. This is not necessarily true, using digital signatures people can create a secure anonymous pseudonym which, in time, people can learn to trust. Freenet incorporates a mechanism called "subspaces" to facilitate this.

http://freenet.sourceforge.net/index...age=philosophy

Quote:

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Despite all the opinions expressed. ... the highpoint is there are many positive aspects of remaining anonimous like escaping censorship and freedom to put ur viewpoint across without the fear of getting caught ....

The question is whether this point suggests that the initiatives like Freenet and TOR be pursued and researched with greater vigour and their positive points outweigh the negatives... Lets think a bit broader while talking technology...