Users of hidden net advised to ditch Windows | Hacker News Reader

Users of hidden net advised to ditch Windows

bbc.co.uk

33 pointstimetraveler26 comments

That [title] is a weird thing to take as main message from that advisory. The Firefox exploit that was used would have worked on Linux just as well; it was simply only targeted at Windows this time.

I agree that switching away from Windows is generally a good idea, but only a hardware-based router, or a software based VM isolation solution like Whonix or Qubes OS would have defended the user in this case. Even Tails, the Tor live USB distribution could have gotten owned by this exploit, had the NSA/FBI/hackers chosen to target them.

I was surprised that Windows was the target OS -- I had figured that most Tor users were using Tails at this point. I'm sure that whoever targeted the user group they meant to capture, though, had a good idea of their general usage patterns.

Wouldn't disabling JavaScript have also prevented this exploit? I don't know if FireFox still runs JavaScript through an interpreter if the user has disabled it; I'd assume not, but it wouldn't come as a shock to me if it did.

Disabling javascript would have prevented the exploit. The Tor browser bundle contains NoScript, but has it set to allow javascript by default. I think this is because it makes it more accessible to non-technical users.

Before this issue they even advised _not_ to disable javascript, since that would make you stand out more amongst Tor users.

Noscript blocks by default in the browser bundle...

Not in recent versions (the idea being that users w/ JavaScript disabled "stand out" more from typical users).

My noscript is on by default on the linux version. I _never_ touched it.

"Why is NoScript configured to allow JavaScript by default in the Tor Browser Bundle? Isn't that unsafe?"

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#TBBJavaScriptEna...

I was surprized that the NSA/FBI/whatever-3-other-letters had to use an exploit to gather that data from Windows users.

If they didn't need one, they know better than to admit it.

You might have high security. The average TOR user probably doesn't.

And that's why it's all the more important that Tor ships only very-secure-by-default software, including disabling javascript by default, even when that will confuse some new users.

I believe this issue has caused the Tor people to realize this more than ever, and think/hope that some priorities and tools within the project will change as a result.

Consumers of child pornography are probably inclined to save the images. TAILS would be a lot more invconvenient since it doesn't save anything. With TBB you can save things you download to your desktop. Combine this with Windows being a dominant platform.

I guess you could do this with TAILS and a usb stick though.

How exactly does a hardware based router help? Is the idea that TOR is running on separate hardware, and despite the local system being compromised, the attacker can't "phone out" to find the real IP address?

I think that's the idea. All connections would be routed via Tor. Additionally, the local system wouldn't know the external IP address (would only know the eventual Tor exiting IP address.)

It's possible to virtualize Tor (without running a dedicated router) so that it, too, doesn't know the external IP address. You can do this, as an example, in FreeBSD jails, and instruct the firewall to NAT all connections from/to the jail in which Tor is running. Of course, having a dedicated hardware router running Tor is even safer.

Yes, exactly. Using a separate router it's possible to transparently force all traffic through the Tor network.

Does the Qubes Tor container egress filter non-Tor traffic? If it does not, it would still be susceptible to a linux-specific version of this same attack.

Does this mean that Linux, and other Unix variants (but not Mac OS of course, because Apple plays ball), will be classified as a "Hacker Tool" in the eyes of the law?

In the "eyes of the law" wget is a "Hacker Tool".

Why hasn't anyone made the case that "Hacker Tools" are simply arms, covered under the 2nd Amendment?

Perhaps because "foreign" countries (i.e. most of the rest of us in the world outside the US and a few other select countries) and much of their populations (me included) see arms as something to be tightly regulated, and so it would fly in the face of what you are trying to achieve for "hacker tools". Internet issues tend towards being global, with notable exceptions.

Right, but Murkins are special. There's this very real culture of "you can take my guns from my cold dead hands" that the rest of the world doesn't quite grok. While the 2nd Amendment argument wouldn't hold much water in, say, Denmark, You could probably get a bunch of NRA members to champion the cause of your friendly neighborhood script kiddie if you sold it to them correctly. And americans only support what's been sold to them.

Now, would the world be a better or worse place if someone got SCOTUS to agree that DC v Heller applied to 0-day exploits? Personally, I don't know if I could answer that.

Anything without a well-regulated "app store" will be classified as a hacker tool in the eyes of the law.

So Ubuntu/Arch/Fedora are safe, because of their respective package management GUI's?

I'll take a liberal, CATO-Institute-on-2nd-amendment stance on the concept of what is considered "Well-Regulated" in the eyes of the Law [1].

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

as long as direct use of dpkg or make is considered a felony.

The actual Tor Security advisory. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-announce/2013-Aug...

Windows should be ditched by any user who cares about privacy. This has nothing to do with Tor specifically.

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