[tor-talk] !!! Important please read. !!!

TheMindwareGroup themindwaregroup at gmail.com
Wed Jan 8 00:44:38 UTC 2014


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Hi im Shadowman, I havent posted on here before, I found this document
and thought it rather important for everyone to read it.

https://wiki.thc.org/ssl

I don't know the exact details of how SSL/certificates work and I
don't know about anyone else's opinion on this subject, this is mine
and it doesnt look good. If this document is true, it means that due
to a (massive) weakness in the way central certificate authoritys
work, putting huge trust in central authoritys, it doesnt take much of
a stretch of the imagination of why this system is bad. From what I
can gather it appears using fake and forged root certificates and
probably intentional collusion with governments, they have total
access to enter any ssl stream they like. In short ssl is there
playground, so even if ssl is used we still cannot trust it cos they
can get into any ssl stream they like. Im not sure if this is true,
cos i dont know how the key/shared secret is created, but the document
hints that it might be based on the servers ssl certificate.

Total control over ssl will allow 2 things...
1) They will easily be able to identify odd looking ssl streams (ie
Tor), making it very easy to find Tor users.
2) We will have to assume that ALL ssl streams are compromised.

There are points in the document where known untrusted sub authoritys
where known about but the root authoritys didnt revoke them (obvious
collusion), and where root certificates where forged (or could have
been forged and knowing the power and corruption of governments in my
opinion almost certainly are) which could potentially get into traffic
like (facebook, google ect), without the web sites knownledge and
without anyone being able to revoke them. And now we have the gravest
problem which should be obvious to all, what happens when the root CAs
are corrupt? well that is exactly the problem we now have.

Added with everything else thats going on this is extremely disturbing.


My other point,
It appears Tor (congrats on that btw its an awesome piece of software)
with this example...

[Browser]  ->Tor->Entry->Relay->Exit->  [Server].

 Server A        Server B         Server C
      !              "              £
       !             "             £
        !           "             £
         !         "             £
            !    "              £
             Exit            Exit
                 !"           £
                   !"        £
                     !"    ££
                      Relay
            !!!!!!!!!! "   ££££££
           !          "          ££££
       ClientA    ClientB         ClientC


Where the Tor circuit only acts as a direct tunnel from browser to
server. The browser is most vulnerable from attacks from the server,
they dont need to know where you are, because they just attack your
browser through the pipe.

Ive read they can using QUANTUM servers to redirect tor traffic to a
honey pot server, the honey pot server gives your browser a cookie to
mark you, once marked they can now identify you and redirect you to
other servers they have (got all sorts of weird names like
FerretCannon ect) to target exploits at your setup. This too is scary.

I believe this is Tor's greatest weakness.

Wouldnt it be better to communicate with a "Public browser" running on
the exit node and have the public browser do the requests for you?
Like this...

[Browser] ->Tor->Entry->Relay-> [Exit browser] ------------>  [Server].

 Server A        Server B         Server C
      !              "              £
        !            "             £
           !         "           £
              !       "        £
                 !    "      £
                    ! "    £
                  Exit browser
                    $$$%  ^^
                $$$$   %    ^^
            $$$$      %       ^^
           $          %         ^^
       ClientA    ClientB         ClientC

With this setup you communicate with the browser, the browser access's
the internet 2 seperate communication channels. The exit browser
acting as a air gap or filter, filtering rubbish out of the requests,
filtering rubbish out going and rubbish incoming. Cookies are only
stored on the exit browser, and all accumilated rubbish on the exit
browser can be dumped. Effectively like a virtual remote control
browser. Wouldnt this method be a lot safer and more like the effect
we was going for? Im well aware this setup would break a lot of web
sites and there cookie identification systems but then thats what we
are going for right? We dont want to be identified. Or implementing a
filter at some point along the Tor circuit would be just as good.
This is a lot like what Scroogle used to do with gooIPs, all attacks
and exploits can only be performed against the public browser, leaving
the user isolated, safe and totally unaffected.

The internet is an information retrieval system, client requests,
server responds, nothing else is needed everyone is happy, I have long
maintained that as soon as they started using client/server side
scripts, apps, applets, flash, java, cookies and the rest it was at
that point that it all just went to hell. I reckon no scripts by
default is best, just for certain sites, the risk of script attacks is
far greater than fingerprinting (and I wouldnt use cookies either for
that matter).

~DarkWolf.
darkwolf759 at gmail.com PGP: 0xf9708eef
- -- 
~TheMindwareGroup
TheMindwareGroup at gmail.com PGP: 0xf4b6586f
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