Collaborate Disseminate
I’m exploring a solution that would allow large technology companies to allow access to their database for analysis, in a way that would protect the privacy of its users. I would love feedback on the idea.
The problem
Many l… Continue reading Accessing sensitive database through public analysis to preserve privacy
Fascinating research de-anonymizing code — from either source code or compiled code: Rachel Greenstadt, an associate professor of computer science at Drexel University, and Aylin Caliskan, Greenstadt’s former PhD student and now an assistant professor at George Washington University, have found that code, like other forms of stylistic expression, are not anonymous. At the DefCon hacking conference Friday, the pair… Continue reading Identifying Programmers by their Coding Style
I have wondered this for quite some time but have not found any references. In the TV series “The wire” they use disposable prepaid mobile phones as a counter-surveillance technique. However if someone uses a prepaid mobile p… Continue reading Identify anonymous mobile phone user by network participants
My idea of a max security situation would be using Tor with a VPN that you 100% trust not to log your information, in tails booted off of a usb that you destroy afterwards, connected to a public wifi network, and making sure … Continue reading What would be the ideal maximum security situation?
Given a nation-state has full access to the logs of the ISPs operating on its territory and given it knows that a certain activity has been conducted by a user from its territory, can they do the following:
when starting th… Continue reading Are VPN users identifiable by matching their connection to the VPN server?
I received a suspicious email (suspicious body) coming from a legit person.
The headers always show the legit adress as if the person in question has been hacked.
But I wanted to go further and checked for the originating IP… Continue reading are some IP whois capable of going beyond proxies?
A group of researchers from Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University have demonstrated how years-old Bitcoin transactions can be used to retroactively deanonymize users of Tor hidden services. It seems that Bitcoin users’ past transactio… Continue reading Old Bitcoin transactions can come back to haunt you
The Tor Project has issued an emergency security bugfix release of Tor Browser, to prevent user IP address leakage due to a still unpatched Firefox bug. The bug is present only in the macOS and Linux versions of the browser, so those users are advised to upgrade to version 7.0.9 (or 7.5a7, for those who use the alpha channel). About the vulnerability The vulnerability was recently discovered by We Are Segment CEO Filippo Cavallarin, and … More → Continue reading Tor Browser flaw leaks users’ real IP address
My understanding is that a strict definition of anonymity means that defeating the security mechanism is logically impossible or mathematically infeasible, and therefore so is deducing the identity. (An example would be blind… Continue reading What category of anonymity do onion routing and blockchains afford?
A California man that stands accused of sextortion, producing child pornography, and threats of mass violence has been identified by the FBI through the use of a so-called Network Investigative Technique (NIT) embedded in a video file. The 26-year-old Buster Hernandez allegedly used the Tor anonymity network to contact his victims, and until the FBI got involved, law enforcement were unable to pinpoint his IP address or identity. According to the affidavit FBI agents filed … More → Continue reading FBI unmasks Tor-using suspected sextortionist