Anonymous Services - Can We Get A List Going And Feedback?

There is a potential problem in your threat model: Anyone capable of tracking you through those techniques does not have a burden of evidence to prove, and is not restricted by the rule of law.


The above method is not impossible, only difficult. There are multiple companies that wardrive wifi hotspots to build geographic maps of their locations, like google does. These are available databases for usage. If you are frequenting hotspot(s) in the same metroplex, city, neighborhood, location (etc), you are creating patterns. Further, any amount of signals analysis performed will possibly be able to uniquely identify the hardware you are using. Further, TEMPEST attacks or mere directed observation will correlate and verify your usage. So when you say something is "impossible", there is an invisible asterisk there that says "for most people, but not all". But those things don't matter. Tracing you back to the hotspot is all that is needed.

It comes down to a question of motivation. So lets say we did track it back to the hotspot. If we were motivated to find you, we would simply go pick up the video feeds from the local traffic cameras and security cameras. Now we have your face and car, and from there your identity.

 

Stay away from this so called Telecommunication company.

They say they offer you encrypted service then you get an email reply back from them telling you it's not, a bit of deceptive advertisment on their part.

Also get this, the CEO answers the support emails, pretty sad that a company that appears as big as it does, can't even offer proper customer service support.

Well there's isn't much privacy or security and I think those are greater concerns to be worried about then just wanting some anonymity.

Also no one truly knows who is sitting on all those nodes, truly a great place for government surveillance to sit and no one would know, or they can deny it and you'd still never know it, but either way in the end, it's just not worth trusting with this loose open model of nodes.

For those really concerned over privacy and security Tor is not an option to ever consider.

=======================================================

So far even after this many months of posting it has been very difficult to weed out the pros from the not so pros and so far this is one of the most professional looking VPN services I have seen next to Xerobank with information on their security expert Dan Tentler of AtenLabs;

http://www.atenlabs.com/zipline/

The only problem, the site says it's in an early beta.

 

HideMyAss and Perfect Privacy STAY AWAY FROM!

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1885876&postcount=18

HideMyAss's reply back was clueless to say the least and Perfect Privacy shows no respect towards a prospective customer!

 

I didn't find HideMyAss's reply clueless. They tried to answer all of those question, which is a good thing. Very little companies will even bother, and try to protect their secrets.

 

Sorry for any confusion, a lot of what they said to you was good.

The reply back to me was the clueless reply I was talking about, read the post link above to see that....

 

Your-freedom.net. Its a connectivity service not a VPN. But you can use open VPN with it where all your apps can run on your pc over their servers encrypted of course 128bit Aes highest java support I think. They have free packages, then 3 different paid packages. They give you a test drive to test each package out for 1 hour. Some packages you can do SIP port fwd, server port fwd etc etc. Their german based which means the telecommunication laws of Germany states they are not allowed to keep logs or record what your doing. They just have a log that you been on the server and the logs only show 3 numbers of your ip the rest is not visible or recorded which means they don't have your ip and even if some authority demands it they wl only get to see 3 numbers. Their servers change keys every 10 min with randomly generated keys randomly salted etc etc. They got 35 servers in europe south america and north america. Great thing is they let P2P traffick like torrent clients only on certain servers. They got a java client that's 2mb in size and they release a update every day to 2days. And setting it up is all automated. You don't have to do much. you can choose if you want encryption in the client, you can use a socks 4/5 server and there's a avoid dns option. Plus the real ssl over https option if you wish to choose so. They specialize in circumventing firewalls and censorship that means they lots of different protocols like CGI, udp, http, https, ftp and open VPN of course.

Now lets get to Tor.
Tor is being funded by the US Government. Reason its backed is to help with anti censorship. Tor was a couple of months back caught by surprise when Iran manage to block it. They surpassed China overnight with their firewall and blocking techniques which they manage to get some equipment made by nokia that decrypts Tor on the fly. So things like that you need financial backing to update it and to try and hide it again.

Now Tor is safe but it depends with what do you use it for. If you use it with opera then sorry. Your real ip can discovered. Opera don't support socks. If you don't use socks your dns still leaks and your real ip doing the request is on the dns server which can easily be discovered. So use a browser that support socks. use Polipo or privoxy with it for extra protection and it can block adds if you play around with it.

Then there's Elite proxies. I do this a lot when surfing. I use the firefox add on or charon to automatically download IPS of proxies for me from here
www.ip-adress.com

They update their proxies every couple of minutes where I use the elite proxies where my ip changes every couple of minutes. I don't use Google. Google cookie your discovered. Tor and google not working nice together anyone notice that. Google get weed of if they can see your ip.
I use IXQUICK.COM with the Jondo Browser with all the security add ons already installed.

So remember your dns. Make sure your real ip don't get sent with it. Use http headers live to see what sites are asking from your browser.

 

Just to point out the obvious here:
TOR traffic CAN NOT be decrypted on the fly. Blocking is completely different than decrypting the traffic. Iran has blocked TOR by doing one of three things:
1) Blocking known TOR Nodes (easy enough to find them) and ports TOR uses
2) Blocking ALL encrypted/unknown traffic period which would be the easiest way.
3) Making each ISP and effective MITM attack against everyone within Iran (hardest but most thorough).

If Nokia really had these capabilities (let alone any one else) why can I find NO results online ANYWHERE? googling for this shows this post only. I call FUD.

TOR is safe for anonymity but NOT secure. I don't recommend anyone using it for personal (email) or private (banking) logins etc. unless you tunnel a secure and trusted VPN through TOR to prevent a rogue exit node from sniffing your passwords. The VPN sees TOR ip (so still anonymous) and TOR can NOT intercept any data as it's encrypted via VPN (AES-256 BIT hopefully).

I normally chain a proxy on top of TOR for added safety. JonDo can't be trusted as they have publicly revealed they have a backdoor to use whenever a warrant is thrown their way.

I use scroogle. SSL + uses google for you. I also use alot of plugins to stop cookies, web tracking bugs, scrips, ads, headers etc. that way nothing is sent out unless I want it to be.

I also change my tor ID between searches on scroogle and going to different sites to skew any results from tracking bugs that may slip through.

 

Iran blocked Tor by DPI for SSL and filtering our Diffie-Hellman parameter. Not nokias capabilities. Its the equipment they manufacture

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Irans-Internet-Censorship-Creates-Deep-Packet-Firestorm-103130

 

Exactly. They blocked TOR. They didn't magically decrypt TOR data ON the fly like you said. They are two very different things.

 

then how did they manage to do dpi?

 

DPI (deep packet inspection) is essentially a MITM attack on a bigger scale (government) and is considered "legitament". Instead of trying to crack encryption they intercept and complete the request for you. TOR thinks they are you and you think they are TOR, making them invisible (MITM). Now they can analyze anything they want to with out cracking encryption.

 

no lol they didn't encrypt the whole thing on the fly just the headers and the delfi key they filtered out. But that was back then when tor didn't had the bridges going. They Isps use dpi to inject java code and all sorts of junk into network traffic which is ******* I'm not going to say the words but they should be burned at the stake.

Anyways back on topic. Tor is great if you want to anonymity you can hook up a Ssh tunnel at a exit node.
Here's how to do it
http://www.ncmilitia.org/matrix/ar01s03.html#DoubleBlackMagicIP

CGI proxy - http://rosinstrument.com/cgi-proxy.htm

Normal proxies - http://rosinstrument.com/proxy/

 

Alright, so i'm looking for a vpn and i read that this is the place to do it.

I bought NVpn yesterday, but I don't trust it. It's anything but professional, the service sucks and the owner is German but seems unable to type a decent word of English (second language?).
Next to that it's not even a company.
I'm still trying to get a refund, but he is to careless to respond to my message.
...

Okay this rant aside, here's a list of which specifications I'm looking for in a VPN.

- VPN service: Open VPN
- Server location: Netherlands/Germany/France/UK (prefer Netherlands)
I'm Belgian, so I presume Netherlands would give me the best connection?
- Privacy: No logs kept by the service
- Speed: Very fast (not slowing down my current connection)
- Good customer service (well, as long as they actually help and don't flip you off)
- UDP transfer through the tunnel to enable using it in video games.
- Unlimited download
- No website filtering (I want torrent use)
- Good policy on sharing info with the government (as in, not at all and only if they're staring in the eye of a .45 handgun).
- Dedicated IP
- MONTHLY FEE: +- 10 bucks (if necessary, by paying 3 months in advance)


I first thought Shadow VPN, but that service has vanished off the face of the earth as far as I can tell.
Next I thought Astrill. But asking phone numbers just to be able to subscribe is bad business.

So, what do you guys propose?
My main concerns are speed, no logs, and definitely being trustworthy.

:edit: I added Dedicated IP to the list

 

IVPN
An OpenVPN service using AES 256 bit encryption.
They charge $15 a month but do provide a multi hop network such as from nl -> uk or uk -> usa and different configurations. I've been using them for months will no issues other than the fact that I haven't seen any ip changes when I connect or disconnect. It would be secure for me to have a static ip while using this service.

 

Multihop, a good encryption AND excellent speed?
How did they manage to do that?

Besides that it looks great.
Though it is based in the USA, so even though they see they don't keep logs, I wouldn't bet my money on it.
http://who.is/whois/ivpn.net/

I do like their privacy policy: 'If a law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over our business presents us with a valid order from a confirmed judicial authority, we will comply with that order as written. However, we cannot be compelled to present information we do not store such as the network traffic logs.'


Now at the beginning of this thread, I read something about Tunnelr.
Their service is a lot cheaper, albeit single hop and not that encrypted.
They don't save logs, yet they will fully cooperate with the government.
That's a bit fishy, no?
'We don't keep login information on any of our nodes, nor do we keep logs of any activity or sites accessed. However we will fully cooperate with a government agency in regards to any use of our service that is deemed illegal in the country in which the server resides. Our services are not intended to be used to commit crimes.
We do not share any information with any third-parties. We don't like it when companies share our data, so we certainly won't do it with our own customers.'

And not a dedicated IP either.
'All clients on each Tunnelr node share the same IP. Due to the price that we are able to offer our tunnel service for, it would be incredibly difficult for us to make any profit if we also gave out a static IP for each client.'

Does a shared ip really mean slower connections?

 

I am not sure but I get around 90% of my full bandwidth and have had no outages as I use it all the time. The company is based in Europe, Malta I believe. The different openvpn configurations are excellent. My only complaint is the price as I went from paying $5 a month with Mullvad to this but I won't complain too much.

 

Could you elaborate please?

Do you actually use multihop? How far are you located from the server and which server?

Atm speedtest.net gives me 30Mbit download. Would it be possible for me to reach at least 27Mbit then?

 

Those are not VPNs. Those are connectivity services. A VPN is to extend your private network over the internet via a secure tunnel to your home, other offices etc. A VPN does not include the internet. Connectivity services are there trying to protect your ip by not letting the places you surf your real ip. With that encryption don't need to be super strong because your browsing the internet and viewing things visible to everyone. Your anonymity becomes important rather than security of the data transported. Basically its a proxy acting as a router where you are hiding behind the servers ip and it encrypts the data for you that's coming back.
If you want to transport you business sensitive info over the internet to your home pc the last thing a person will do is to connect via a third party server. You'll connect a straight encrytped tunnel thru to your home or other pcs to extend that private network. That's a VPN.
Connectivity services you should look at how good are they hiding your real identity and how strong are they with providing anonymity rather than how strong the encryption is.

 

Be that as it may, it is widely recognized as a VPN.
An openVPN, but still a VPN.
Try searching for 'connectivity service'... Not many companies sell their service under that name because future customers don't know what it actually means.

Anyway I just tested 2 connectivity services:
VPNSecure --> Very friendly live chat and 20Mbit dl speed on speedtest (100 Mbit Netherlands server)

iVPN --> When i got it to work last night, hardly 8Mbit (1Gbit Netherlands server).

Is this even possible? A slower server giving me a faster connection than a faster one?
Though I must tell you, the first one is shared, the second one dedicated IP.

 

Reason why everyone goes on about how strong the encryption is and about how save their data are rather unknowingly that they can tunnel a straight path to whatever they want to sent it.

For the server question there's different factors. What network are they on? Are they on different networks or same one. What's the server load? Do they have a SSL accelerator? What kind of traffic let they allow on it.
I think server load might be the answer. Everyone mauls for the fastest server meaning it ends up being slower coz its overloaded

 

Well I took a single hop to the netherlands, namely Amsterdam.
They claim their servers' bandwith hasn't even reached 20%, as its a 1Gbit server. So I'm guessing that's not the issue.

The problem I have right now is far worse though. I am unable to connect to the internet after having connected to iVPN by Openvpn client.
I am in dire need of help, so if you have any ideas, please pm/post it here.

 

without a ssl accelerator A server can process 75 ssl connections per second. With one 800. So you see its not about bandwidth but muscle. The server can be 100Gbit its cpu still have to be able to handle all those connections and encrypt the data.

Have you tried another server? Remember some of them or a lot of them disable ack and such so you won't get a reply when you ping it.
Open your OpenVPN config file and look if there's any error

 

I see. I read something about the of graphic acceleration for speeding up the vpn servers. Or am I completely wrong on this one?

Anyway, I am unable to ping any server after connecting to them, and non of the servers give an error in the log.

 

When you surf the Web, data packets need to travel from your computer through the huge morass of interconnected network of data-carrying lines called the Internet to the web server hosting your content and back through the Internet to your computer. Along this entire journey, there are many different hops for your data to reach its destination and back. It’s a bit like travelling from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Some parts of the roads are wider and your data car zips through. But if there are a lot of other data cars trying to squeeze through the same lane or if the lane is really small, then your data car will take longer to pass through that part of the journey. The number that you see on your broadband plan (i.e. 512Kbps, 100Mbps, etc.) is only referring to the “last mile” of your Internet journey. Think of it like getting from your home to the Woodlands checkpoint. But it does not tell you the condition of the roads on the rest of your journey beyond Woodlands. What is the bandwidth of the other connecting roads? Are there a lot of cars on a specific road you are travelling on? So what is really important to you is how long it will take you to reach Kuala Lumpur. For Internet users, what is important is to know your end-to-end rate of data transmission – i.e. the amount of data that actually gets transmitted from your PC, through the Internet to the web server and back in a single unit of time. This is known as throughput. When you download files, you will see a bar that shows the progress of your download and a number that shows your rate of download. This is your throughput.

If a server is in your home town but is on a dfferent network and a server is miles away but on the same network (isp) you will have a better connection with the one miles away because it doesn't have to travel through all the gateways.

Can you surf? You say you are connected its only the pings? If you cant get the pings thru check your dns server. Its likely your culprit

 

Sorry for the double post but I notice people concerned if they're data are protected or not. I'm going to try and explain how a provider can go about to protect that data. Remember the values are just for purpose of explaining it so don't take it as real world or that every provider uses such methods.

Out of all the transports https, ftp and udp will encrypt connections and make it look like gibberish. The Http protocol transport will keep the framework that looks like webpages but will only encrypt the transported stream info and the destination stream info

Now there's different ways algorithms can be used to connect with the server.

The server sends a random "challenge" string. The client contatenates the user name, the password and the challenge, then calculates an MD5 hash, and replies with the MD5 hash. With this method the server still requires knowledge of the users password during the sessions.

Another method is the password don't get used. A md5 hash of the username/ password gets sent So the server don't need to know the password only the md5 hash. With authentication response the client will sent a XXXbit rand secret which is encrypted with a XXX RSA key.
Only the server can decrypt that which also means with client updates they change the key. The shorter the space of the client updates the better as it means they change they keys regularly.

Now the client encrypts the client to server connection and normally also negotiate the encryption keys securely. That's the re keying normally where the keys get changed XXX amount of minutes or hours or whatever. AES is the algorithm normally used.
Now the key is an MD5 hash of the session ID and a shared "secret" -- not much. But there are only two things protected with it: the server provides a challenge (a random string) and the client replies to it with a response to authenticate. As soon as the response has been accepted, both sides re-negotiate a stronger key. This key is an MD5 hash of the shared "secret", a xxxbit random value generated by the client and transported securely in the authentication response, and a xxxbit seed that changes in each re-keying which happens every xxx minutes. Both ends use different seeds, so uplink and downlink are encrypted differently.

Now the strength of the algorithm will be a XXX amount. Depends. But since they are more to protect the client server connection the data flowing thru it encryption is not as important as the keys that negotiate that tunnel. How that keys are protected is the main focuses and how each providers goes about with it.

Example. Re-negotiated keys consisted of the shared "secret", the session ID, the username and the user's password, plus a salt. Every XXX minutes a different salt and a different seed value was used. Since the password was never transmitted in the clear authentication uses MD5 one-way hashes of the session ID, the username and the password, a strong password would ensure that the key cannot be guessed. The algorithms don't pay such a important role as the key exchange.
Now your connection and the strength of that key relies on your password strength. Weak password means weak key. Strong passwords means strong key and it can't be guessed. Now AES protect those using a weak password a bit but not by much.

Now with SSL/TLS the certificate exchange plays a part. Now the certificate exchange is still visible to observers. So what does that mean? Can they steal my data? No not visible in that sense but visible in a sense that your trying to circumvent filters or detection by authorities like for example countries that censors the internet.

Now if you use proper certificates it will make it harder to recognize what and to id what sort of traffic it is. If you make your own they can block it easy because they're basically no good.

So they key exchange plays a important part and how often its done. Remember above is just sort of example how connections are made and how's it protected. Providers have their own methods and clients but the protocols and methods around are more or less the same.