Author Archives: raffaem

How does the government install a trojan horse on somebody’s mobile phone?

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I am reading a news article (in italian) in which the police snooped on the Dean of a university by a trojan horse that the police had installed on his mobile phone.
In particular, the trojan horse transmitted face-to-face conversations (I… Continue reading How does the government install a trojan horse on somebody’s mobile phone?→

Pwned by a website I never subscribed to – How do they have my e-mail address?

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I searched my email addresses in https://haveibeenpwned.com/.
One of my e-mail addresses results as having been pwned, and is present in a data breach, in particular the Apollo data breach:

Apollo: In July 2018, the sales engagement start… Continue reading Pwned by a website I never subscribed to – How do they have my e-mail address?→

Is it safe to set up your firewall to allow localhost to accept incoming connections?

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I have set up a VPN client and I’m using iptables to block all connections not tunneled through the VPN. An example of the iptables rules I am using can be found here.
Unfortunately with this configuration RStudio does not start up.
In fac… Continue reading Is it safe to set up your firewall to allow localhost to accept incoming connections?→

Am I exposed to WebRTC leaks if my IP resulting from WebRTC is the IP of my VPN server with the last digit augmented by one?

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I am connecting to the website of ExpressVPN that checks for WebRTC IP leaks.
My IP as resulting from that website is the same IP of the VPN server I am connected to but with the last digit augmented by 1.
That is, if IP address of my VPN … Continue reading Am I exposed to WebRTC leaks if my IP resulting from WebRTC is the IP of my VPN server with the last digit augmented by one?→

Setting up VPN tunnel: what are the possible ways by which my true IP address could leak?

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I bought a subscription to a VPN service and I set up the VPN tunnel using openvpn.
In order to avoid DNS leaks, I am using the DNS servers provided by my VPN provider by manually enforcing /etc/resolv.conf.
By navigating on the internet, … Continue reading Setting up VPN tunnel: what are the possible ways by which my true IP address could leak?→

Using iptables to set up a killswitch for openvpn: DNS requests are blocked but they shouldn’t

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I bought a subscription to a VPN service and I am using the openvpn 2.5.1 client to connect to it. I am using Ubuntu 20.10.
I now want to emulate the "kill switch" feature of most proprietary VPN client.
That is, I want to block … Continue reading Using iptables to set up a killswitch for openvpn: DNS requests are blocked but they shouldn’t→