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Facebook on Android gives you privacy through Tor
Facebook has offered Tor support for a while if you've been concerned about keeping your social networking activity private, but what about on your phone? Don't worry, you're covered. The site has started rolling out Tor support on Android, giving you a (relatively) easy way to encrypt your Facebook viewing on the road. You'll need to download the Orbot proxy app to make this stick, but you'll always know whether or not your communications are under lock and key.
The Dark Web has its first major news publication
The Dark Web has a nasty reputation (and deservedly so) but perhaps investigative news publication ProPublica being the first major media organization on the anonymized version of the internet can change that a bit. The reasoning? "We don't want anyone to know that you came to us or what you read," ProPublica's web developer Mike Tigas told Wired. The idea is that the publication wants to ensure that people reading its Pulitzer-winning work are safe in places like China where censorship reigns supreme. Or that anonymous sources or leakers can read the articles they provided information for without fear of being caught.
FBI hacked the Dark Web to bust 1,500 pedophiles
The Federal Bureau of Investigation infiltrated and shut down what it called "the largest remaining known child pornography hidden service in the world" this summer, using a hacking method to track IP addresses on the Dark Web, Vice Motherboard reported. The Dark Web bulletin board site, named "Playpen," launched in August 2014 and within one year had garnered 215,000 accounts with 11,000 unique visitors each week.
Tor plans to launch a bug bounty program
Tor will open itself to attack in 2016 with the start of a bug bounty program aimed at identifying weaknesses in its security systems, Motherboard reports. Tor is a free service that allows users to browse the internet anonymously, and it's working with sponsor Open Technology Fund and bug bounty coordinator HackerOne to pull off this latest security sweep. The bug-hunting will be invite-only at first, Tor Browser Lead Developer Mike Perry told Motherboard.
Tor's new executive director is a digital privacy legend
Tor's anonymizing internet technology is already vital to whistleblowers, human rights advocates and others who value their digital privacy. It only makes sense that the project team should hire a privacy champion to help lead its efforts, doesn't it? Sure enough, Tor is doing just that: it's appointing Electronic Frontier Foundation veteran Shari Steele as its executive director. She led the EFF's efforts to fund Tor a decade ago, and spurred online security initiatives like HTTPS Everywhere. There's no doubt that she knows what Tor can do to protect your data, then.
French police want to ban public WiFi during emergencies
The FBI isn't the only law enforcement agency that wants to restrict privacy for the sake of national security. Following the Paris attacks of November 13th, French police and gendarmes have submitted a wish list of security measures for a new bill, according to a document discovered by LeMonde. Among other things, police want to ban public WiFi during states of emergency, "because of the difficulty of identifying people connected to it," according to LeMonde. French law enforcement also wants the Tor network banned completely and would force companies like Microsoft to hand the encryption keys for apps like Skype to police.
Here's how ISIS tries to keep its online activity a secret (update: debunked)
It's no longer surprising that ISIS uses Telegram's secure messaging to conduct its terror campaigns, but what other tools does it use to keep its online actions under wraps? Thanks to researchers at the West Point military academy, we now have a good idea. They've obtained an ISIS operational security guide that shows the outfit's recommended internet services and software, as well as the policies they're supposed to follow. The extremists are advised to use Tor's anonymity network for browsing, Tails as their operating system and messaging services like Telegram, FireChat or iMessage. They're asked to rely on secure phones like the BlackPhone if they can. They're supposed to avoid both anything that gives away their location (for obvious reasons) as well as Dropbox, whose company-managed encryption theoretically lets governments demand access to cloud storage.
Carnegie Mellon says it didn't help the FBI hack Tor for money
The Tor network volunteers recently accused Carnegie Mellon University of helping feds uncover the identities of some shady website operators and users, including drug distributors and child pornographers, in exchange for $1 million. In a statement released today, however, the university doesn't only deny getting money from the FBI, but also heavily implies that it was served with a subpoena that requested the details of its Tor research. "The university abides by the rule of law," it said, "complies with lawfully issued subpoenas and receives no funding for its compliance."
Carnegie Mellon may have ratted out Tor users to the FBI
In a story that may become an acid test for internet privacy, the operators of the Tor network have accused Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) of taking up to $1 million to help the FBI bust illegal sites. If the allegations are true, the defendants in question certainly had it coming -- they include the drug market Silk Road 2.0 and a child pornographer. However, Tor director Roger Dingledine questions the university's ethics in the attack. "We think it's unlikely they could have gotten a valid warrant ... [since it] appears to have indiscriminately targeted many users at once," he said.
Tor Messenger makes chatting off the record easier
Tor has finally released a beta version of the cross-platform chat program it's been working on for quite a while. The client works with several chat services/protocols such as Jabber, IRC, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, Twitter and Yahoo, but its main draw is definitely the privacy features Tor is famous for. It uses Off-the-Record (OTR) protocol to encrypt your IMs, which pass through Tor's network of volunteer computers for security and anonymity. According to Wired, it even has chat logging disabled as a default setting. "With Tor Messenger, your chat is encrypted and anonymous... so it is hidden from snoops, whether they are the government of a foreign country or a company trying to sell you boots," Kate Krauss, the company's public policy director, told the publication.
Researchers create super-fast Tor-style anonymity network
The price of making sure that the feds aren't reading your emails is download speeds that can be measured in weeks rather than seconds. A group of academics are hoping to change that, however, by taking the basic idea of the Tor anonymity network and slapping on more than a few go-faster-stripe decals. Hornet has been crafted by a team from universities in Zurich and London and promises to keep your information safe from prying eyes while reaching speeds of up to 93 GB/s. Phowar.
Key Silk Road witness gets 2.5 years in jail
One of the reasons that Silk Road was so popular and dangerous was because it enabled people who would have otherwise never dealt drugs to become Scarface-like kingpins. That's the tale of Michael Duch, an IT consultant who has wound up being sentenced to two and a half years in prison for dealing heroin. Duch agreed to testify against the site's founder, Russ "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht in exchange for a lower sentence, and told the court how easy it was to make anything up to $70,000 a month from home.
The Dark Web may be smaller, pervier than previously thought
Last week, two hackers unleashed an automated scanning tool on the the internet's deepest layers, known as the Dark Web. This digital underworld is accessible only through the Tor Network and trafficked largely by hackers and criminals looking to avoid the gaze of law enforcement. Hackers Alejandro Caceres and Amanda Towler set their website vulnerability scanning tool, PunkSPIDER, loose on the Dark Web in an effort to improve the semi-anonymizing network's security but made a surprising discovery: the Dark Web may not be nearly as large as experts estimate.
Facebook will encrypt the emails it sends to you with PGP
Facebook, the social network where there's no such thing as too much information is handing another olive branch to the privacy crowd. The company has announced that it'll allow users to add PGP keys to their profiles, enabling them to encrypt the regular missives that the social network sends out. That way, no-one but you will be able to find out that Dave, the bully from junior high, has tried to add you as a friend twice this month. If you're wary about the legitimacy of Facebook's project, take comfort from the fact that one of the testers was noted security expert and former Tor lead, Runa Sandvik.
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison
Despite Ross Ulbricht's emotional plea for leniency in court today, Judge Katherine Forrest has sentenced him to life in prison. He was facing a minimum of 20 years up to the maximum life sentence after he was found guilty of money laundering, narcotics trafficking and computer hacking. Under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts," Ulbricht was the czar of Silk Road, an online drug marketplace that netted him an $18 million fortune. It was anonymized by the Tor network and used Bitcoins to hide transactions.
Your Tor-based email isn't as secure as you think
A recent security breach just provided a painful reminder that Tor's anonymity network isn't completely foolproof against truly determined intruders. The email service SIGAINT is warning users that someone recently launched a sustained attempt to break into its servers and snoop on messages. While that direct attack wasn't successful, the culprit also tried setting up malicious exit nodes (where data reaches the normal internet) in hopes of spying on messages the moment they left Tor. The chances of actually connecting to one of these rogue routers was slim (about 2.7 percent), but you clearly wouldn't have enjoyed winning this lottery.
Sketchy crowdfunded privacy router gets a new corporate master (update)
Remember Anonabox, the internet privacy router that was outed as a rebranded Chinese device and booted off of Kickstarter for fraud before it headed to Indiegogo? Well, it's getting another lease on life. Sochule, which is best known for its social hotel app HelloTel, tells us that it has snapped up the Anonabox team. The new parent company won't say much about what's happening next until a South by Southwest event on Friday. However, it's stressing that Anonabox founder August Germar is maintaining a similar role -- it apparently doesn't mind the controversies surrounding Germar and his networking gadget.
Hyperspace Beacon: Seven things I learned while writing about SWTOR
This travel through hyperspace cannot be compared to anything else. Not many people get an opportunity to work on something they love professionally, like my writing about Star Wars: The Old Republic. With Massively as we know it coming to an end, it's time to say goodbye to this passenger. Before I actually say my final farewell to Massively, I'd like to leave you, fans of Massively and the Hyperspace Beacon, with a list of things that I've learned from writing this column.
SWTOR dishes out punishment for a major exploit
Last last week, BioWare community manager Eric Musco wrote a detailed post regarding a recent exploit that's plagued the PvE endgame for Star Wars: The Old Republic, explaining the planned punishments and the team's reasoning behind them. "We didn't take these actions lightly," Musco posts, "and reviewed every account to determine where we could be lenient. From our end, this was a no win situation. We feel responsible for allowing the exploit to occur and remain in the game for an unreasonable length of time, but we also cannot and will not condone cheating." Penalties applied to the affected accounts ranged from a warning and one day ban to even full and permanent suspensions. Musco finished up the post by encouraging players to continue to report potential exploits as soon as they are found.
Hyperspace Beacon: Examining SWTOR's producer letter
At the community cantina that Star Wars: The Old Republic held this past weekend at PAX South, community manager Eric Musco said that the community team was going to do something different in 2015 during the cantinas. He said that he wanted to reveal some tidbit at each and every event. And this cantina yielded us an early look at Producer Bruce Maclean's roadmap letter to the community. In the letter, he talks about where the SWTOR story will take us, what's on the horizon for flashpoints, personal stories, planets, and the outfit designer. But what is all this new stuff, and should it get people excited about the coming year? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer for that. If you play for similar reasons as I do, then there is plenty to be excited about. However, there are certain players, like PvPers, who might be a little frustrated by what they are seeing and not seeing in the letter.
