Bridges or no bridges? : OpSec | Torhoo darknet markets Torhoo!

2 points

1 year ago

Your ISP wants you on auto-pay.

Your ISP doesn't go by morals and judgement. They are a for-profit business.

It's really up to you to decide what is needed for your best interests.

Brides aren't about anonymity but are designed to help users bypass internet censorship and national restrictions against the use of Tor and its censorship.

/u/DaVenom Made of Ⱡ₳₴ɆⱤ₴

2 points

1 year ago

Guys above gave you the proper answers.

I just amplify, if you do something illegal, don't mix up darknet and private.

This means that you don't connect from home using your ISP. Learn where you have free WiFi (small dinners, coffee shops, etc.), avoid public WiFi (airport, libraries, McDonald's, Starbuks, etc.). Prepare a backpack with a yagi and laptop with tails or Whonix as first choise. If you need burner phone then choose with a model where you can take out batteries.

You must strictly divide work from private, when working keep a long distance to your home and private devices. Never mix this up.
If you are to lazy and don't want to separate work from private, you will expose your self.

/u/Purplemonkey239 📢

1 points

1 year ago

I'm assuming that public wifi in McDonald's, etc. is not advised because of cameras?

That makes a lot of sense.

I haven't done anything illegal. I was asking more of a hypothetical of occasionally someone purchasing small amounts. I thought that tails + tor would provide ample obfuscation for small quantity buyers. But I am sure anyone can be exposed and that TOR can be defeated with enough scrutiny.

Thank you for the answer. This side of the WEB fascinates me.

/u/DaVenom Made of Ⱡ₳₴ɆⱤ₴

1 points

1 year ago

McDonald's and other large companies has the economy to invest in proper IT-infrastructure including WiFi-surveillance.
It's better to avoid them and connect via somebody that don't have those resources.

/u/networksoldier

1 points

1 year ago

And Do you know how to add bridges to tor after set up connection? i cant scan qr code i have no camera, thanks

/u/DaVenom Made of Ⱡ₳₴ɆⱤ₴

1 points

1 year ago

Try using the defaults, otherwise you risk being with to few Tor users.

/u/btcbestcool

1 points

1 year ago*

Said it before a thousand times. Don't use public WiFi. Don't use other people's property.

Tor is primarily intended for allowing you to browse ordinary websites anonymously, and only about 3% of Tor traffic is to onion sites.

If you read the original Tor specification, onion sites are practically an after-thought, almost the entire proposal is about using onion routing to reach the open web.

Nothing on the Tor project's front page or their about page even mentions onion sites or the darknet or markets.

3% -- Think of a population and think of 3% of that entire population. You are going to get a very small number.

/u/DaVenom Made of Ⱡ₳₴ɆⱤ₴

2 points

1 year ago

This is correct, don't use public WiFi (airports, libraries, McDonald's, Starbucks) thus they have more or less sophisticated surveillance where WiFi, cameras and POS units are interlinked.

Using a non-default bridge is only used by a very few, while default bridges by many.

So, no fundamental contradiction.

/u/envelopeoverrule

1 points

1 year ago*

Bridges try to scramble the use of Tor, but DPI (Deep packet inspection) can thwart that. At the end they know that you're using it. A VPN only adds attack surface, the TBB and tails devs advise against combining it. I personally trust them more than some shady shills. Feds are known to attack them.

Unless you're somewhere in the outback and the only person out there connecting to the network, i wouldn't worry too much about it. There are million of Tor users, according to the Tor-Project metrics. Just make sure to follow the rule 'don't shit where you eat'.

/u/asfaleia ⚔️ασφάλεια⚔️

1 points

1 year ago

If you need to hide the fact that you Tor from the ISP (which you should), connect remotely to the far away crowded public wifi hotspot. Solved. If your Tor connection gets compromised (it happens), they get just the crowded public wifi with thousands and thousands of other ppl.

/u/Purplemonkey239 📢

1 points

1 year ago

That would probably be the best way. There's nothing illegal about using TOR, but it can look bad by association. I'm sure there are some legitimate reasons to use TOR even in countries where there is no censorship.

/u/asfaleia ⚔️ασφάλεια⚔️

1 points

1 year ago

The point is that using Tor always rises flags and you can make it to the list of persons of interest. There is no gain for you there, unless you get tickling in the balls for being potentially watched (nothing against that though).

The adversary simply doesn't know if you are not selling child porn, engage in terrorism or high level drug, weapon or human heads dealing. And they need to find out.

The rule is, don't rise any unnecessary suspicion. There are two completely different games - UNDER the radar and ON radar.

Do your best to stay in the first game. The later one is the one you most probably are not ready for, without proper training, right psychological profile and endurance.

/u/Purplemonkey239 📢

1 points

1 year ago

Point taken. My activity is mostly contained to Dread and I keep activity away from my home network. I understand that I could be lumped into everyone else using Tor. It's unfortunate that privacy has to come at the cost of convenience.

/u/asfaleia ⚔️ασφάλεια⚔️

1 points

1 year ago

There is always a negative correlation in between the security and convenience - the higher the security requirement, the lower the convenience.

The OpSec and Counterintelligence science is about finding the point in between those two that provides a reasonable resistance and doesn't paralyze the operation at the same time

/u/Purplemonkey239 📢

1 points

1 year ago

What about people who use a VPN for everyday activities? I'm not talking about using VPN to hide TOR, but just VPN. Traffic is encrypted from ISP. Would that also raise flags? I don't use a VPN, but it's an interesting consideration

/u/asfaleia ⚔️ασφάλεια⚔️

1 points

1 year ago

Well, the question is what those people, using the VPN, wanna hide and from whom. Who is the adversary.

A simple VPN can hide some of the intelligence from the ISP, albeit not all of it. With the proper DPI analysis the ISP can determine what websites are for example the user is visiting or what OS you use, due to the unique packet patterns.

The VPN usage by itself is just moving trust from the ISP to the VPN provider. Now the VPN provider can see everything you do on the internet.

The Tor on the other hand is moving the trust to a semi-decentralized list of nodes, run by simple volunteers, intelligence agencies, LEs, state actors, military, researchers.... spread around the world. In this case you don't trust one entity but about 6.000 nodes. While jumping 3x around the world before reaching the destination.

But also there in case of Tor, one is not perfectly anonymous even on the network level. There are attacks that from time to time deanonymize everyone as well as some APTs active on the network and cooperating state actors can deanonymize Tor users.

This is where the Tor users break their necks often - not understanding the Tor design, its limits and therefore right usage needed to keep their anonymity intact. We offer the security consulting on OpSec and Counterintelligence for more than 12 years now in this setup and there was hardly anyone who really understood how to use Tor properly within its real world limits. Same with Monero and other tools.

None of it is magic, it has its limits and one needs to operate with those limits in mind. Otherwise it is a game over soon and we see those SHTF events in the news every day.

/u/Purplemonkey239 📢

1 points

1 year ago

Interesting, thank you!