How to check your network's outgoing encryption

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by SteveTX, Jul 6, 2008.

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  1. SteveTX

    SteveTX Registered Member

    Joined:
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    TX
    Testing the claims of network encryption can be a hairy job. You MUST sniff all your outgoing connections from outside your operating system. Why? Because the software in your operating system can lie, or could have a rootkit, or may not be able to see all your network traffic at one time.

    Without an external router running a sniffer or a network card running in promiscuous mode, it would be impossible. At least it used to be.

    How can we do it? Run your operating system in a virtualized mode inside of another operating system that checks all the network connections. Your regular operating system thinks things are normal, while infact it is running in a "Matrix" like world... inside xB Machine. Why xB Machine? Because it automatically includes QEMU for virtualization and nobody else does.

    WARNING: Windows users engage in this activity at their own risk of having Windows freak out and lock you out of the operating system because Microsoft doesn't like hardware changes as an anti-piracy measure.

    If you are a Windows user, do the following first:
    1. Right click "My Computer" and choose "Properties".
    2. Click on the "Hardware" tab.
    3. Click on "Hardware Profiles".
    4. Choose the selected default and click "Copy".
    5. Type in "XeroBank Machine" and click on "OK".
    6. Choose "Select the first profile listed if I don't select a profile in".
    7. Click "OK" and click "OK" again.


    1. Download xB Machine
    2. Unpack it
    3. Burn the ISO file to CD as a disk image.
    4. Put the CD in your computer, reboot, and boot from CD.
    5. After XB Machine is booted, open a terminal.
    6. Type in "sudo su -" and the password is "password".
    7. Type in "cat /proc/partitions"

      Note: Your hard drive will most likely be /dev/hda or /dev/hdc. You can use "mount" to see which dev device is mounted. That is your CD-ROM, and not your hard drive. Be sure to figure that out and modify command below.

    8. Type in "qemu -L /usr/share/qemu/ -m 128 -hda /dev/hda -boot C -no-kqemu"
    9. Select the "XeroBank Machine" profile you created earlier.

    You now are running your normal operating system in a virtualized container! You can load up your favorite network sniffing software into the xB Machine operating system and have a ball.

    You can use this technique with any network or service provider, including Tor and XeroBank, naturally.
     
  2. caspian

    caspian Registered Member

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    What if you wanted to check a hardware device like Iphantom to see if it it was encrypting traffic? Evidently it is not encrypted until it leaves that little box. Is there a way to hook something up to verify a device like that?
     
  3. SteveTX

    SteveTX Registered Member

    Joined:
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    Location:
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    For a hardware device you have to be monitoring the downstream of the output. So you need another computer on the other side of it.
     
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