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Your Digital Identity

January 24, 2013 technology
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Sounds like a stupid thing to say doesn’t it – I mean who has a digital identity? But alas we all have nowadays, at least if you participate in 21st century life at all.

 So when you think about it, the reality is a little more worrying. It’s really about everything you do online being monitored. Now that’s does scare me – mainly because it happens. How much of your life happens via a phone or the internet?

Anyway the worry I have is this – most Western Democracies have access to everything you do online for the last couple of years.  Of course there’s some vague idea that it’s all about catching terrorists but frankly that’s a load of rubbish.   I’ll take my chances on any plane if the terrorist has been thick enough to post his plans online on Facebook or Twitter – chances are they’ll blow themselves up on the way to the airport or at the car park ticket machine.  After all it’s not difficult to fix yourself up with a false IP address!

Not going to happen – so what our agencies and governments are really interested in is all the other information …..like this……………………

From my ISP logs dated 21/12/11 when I returned home from the Cross Lanes Hotel ( Geo location enabled on my Iphone).

My location established from my phone.
After drinking one bottle of South African Shiraz and paying my bill – (via internet enabled till) I watched the Kylie Minogue Agent Provocateur Video several times in a row.  When I go for that high powered Government job – it could be a difficult interview question,

or perhaps I could just show them the video ……..

All red blooded and nothing to be ashamed of? Sure but remember they have every web site you visited …in the last two years..

National Governments that Censor the Internet

January 15, 2013 privacy / security / technology
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According to Wikipedia, the term “internet censorship” is defined as “the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to, information on the Internet.” Internet censorship is implemented by national governments or private organizations – delegated by governmental influences – for several reasons, with emphasis on: religion, moral issues and unlawful business schemes.

Enemies of the Internet List

Reporters without Borders (or “RWB”) is a French, non-profit organization that advocates freedom of information and press. This organization has compiled a list of countries that are deemed “Internet enemies” due to their methods of cyber censorship. The flagged nations are: Armenia, Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

In 2009, Belarus was added to the “Enemies of the Internet” list, was subsequently removed, and was added again in 2012. In 2011, Egypt was added to the “Enemies of the Internet” list. In 2012, Tunisia was added to the list after being removed in 2011. Egypt was also removed in 2011 and was added again in 2012. The small kingdom of Bahrain was also added to the list in 2012.

Countries under Surveillance

The RWB further compiled an “Under Surveillance” list. Nations under this category are considered to give cause for concern about the possibility of increased Internet censorship. The current list spans the following countries: Australia, Egypt, Eritrea, France, India, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The “Countries under Surveillance” list, introduced in 2008, listed 10 nations which used surveillance on users’ Internet activities or otherwise impeded people’s rights, without blocking massive amounts of information. Between 2008 and 2012 the number of countries listed grew to 16 but subsequently fell to 14. Jordan in 2009, Tajikistan in 2009, and Yemen in 2010 were dropped from the list.

Australia in 2009, France in 2011, Russia in 2010, South Korea in 2009, Turkey in 2010 were added.

Bahrain, Eritrea, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka dropped from the list in 2010, but were added again in
2011. Libya dropped from the list in 2009, added again in 2011, and then dropped in 2012. Venezuela was added in 2011 and then dropped in 2012.

Internet Freedom Setbacks

Azerbaijan, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Russia, and Sri Lanka are seven nations that are at particular risk of suffering Internet freedom setbacks in 2013.  These nations are relatively free of government interference and censorship on the Internet for their citizens; however, they also maintain separate governments either known to be: a) repressive of freedom of the press in traditional forms of media, or b) they have recently introduced laws that significantly affect online freedoms of expression in negative ways for their citizens.

There are two ways to address internet censorship. The first is to change an IP address to an address under a non-censored nation.  The second is to access a search engine website that acts as a host by displaying all results through their site. Governmental censorship reduces freedom of expression, while simultaneously revoking basic, human rights. For more information on this cyber suppressive trend, refer to the Internet Censorship infographic found below.

internet censors

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country
Source: http://march12.rsf.org/i/Report_EnemiesoftheInternet_2012.pdf

Iran Launches YouTube Alternative

December 10, 2012 content filtering / technology
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I bet the young people of Iran can hardly contain their excitement.  The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting have just announced the launch of an Iran-only version of the popular video uploading site YouTube.  It’s called Mehr and it’s the second video channel accessible only in Iran.  Access to YouTube was blocked in 2009 after lots of people posted allegations of vote fraud and election fixing by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.    Of course there was only circumstantial evidence that the President’s landslide victory was anything but fair, his incredible unpopularity in certain areas didn’t seem to materialize in the ballot box.

Mehr is Farsi for ‘affection’ although I wouldn’t test that principle out by posting anything remotely critical of Ahmadinejad or his regime on the site.  The problem that Iran has, and in fact any despotic regime – is that it’s extremely difficult to censor or filter specific parts of the internet.  They couldn’t for example just block access to the various videos they don’t like on YouTube or Facebook as it would be impossible to keep track of the content.  Blocking the whole of YouTube stops lots of people gaining access within Iran but not all, increasingly people are using circumvention tools to bypass these filters.

Using proxies or VPNs you can  bypass these specific filters and the ‘video not available in your country‘ messages and many thousands of Iranians do just that.   Unfortunately there is one way to control all access to the internet and that’s to block it completely.  It’s the sort of model that you see in North Korea, where the internet is merely a basic intranet consisting of Government created websites with all access to the outside world blocked.  It is suspected widely that Iran is heading in this direction with the creation of these internal versions of popular sites.

The Iranian government are frequently complaining about the way they are portrayed by bloggers, the media and journalists in general – so it is invitable that the current regime will pull the plug at some point if they stay in power.   Anyway there’s no point posting the link to the Mehr website but relishing the irony I will post a link to the Mission for Establishment of Human Rights in Iran also known as MEHR.

Higgs Bosons Wednesday

July 3, 2012 Just Interesting / technology
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I am here sipping my cheap grade Whiskey (run out of the good stuff), just about to go to bed and suddenly remembered – HIGGS BOSON !!!

Rumours are they’ve found it, or perhaps found some evidence it may exist….. but what ever they’ve found to prove or disprove the ‘God Particle’ will be pretty incredible.

1960s God Particle

This is a picture of Peter Higgs,  who predicted the existence of this particle in the 1960s.  His predictions and perhaps dreams may about to become true….

Watch the news tomorrow – there might be the most incredible news !!!!!

I’ll probably have a lie in though……..

Internet Monitoring – UK Snooping Plans

June 14, 2012 security / technology
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The UK Government have decided to take some lessons from the likes of China, Iran and Syria and started implementing increased internet surveillance. It often seems to happen when Governments are having a tough time they roll out the ‘tough on terrorism’ plans and start telling us how it will catch criminals and keep us safe.   After all it sounds good and is easy to implement – even though for the most part it’s completely pointless.

Under these plans, Police, the Government and intelligence agencies will be able to access data on all phone calls, emails, internet useage. They will be able to read through your web mail, Facebook messages, Linkedin posts, forums and gaming boards – just about anything you do electronically will be accessible to these people.

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner says -

Put simply, the police need access to this information to keep up with the criminals who bring so much harm to victims and our society.

Sigh……

What they will have is data and information on people who are doing nothing wrong. The criminals will be using SSH encryption, VPNs, secure proxies or they will simply just use other peoples Wifi connections. The only criminals you’ll catch by this incredibly intrusive internet snooping is thick ones who you should have caught anyway.


For instance I’m quite a careful driver however I live in an area where the Police force seems to have one single aim in life to catch people who exceed speed limits by three miles an hour. As such I have quite a few penalty points on my license which I’m not altogether happy with.

However I know several speed obsessed, thrill seekers who drive like they are on the Le Mons racetrack who have absolutely no points at all. Do you know why – it’s because they all have Warning systems and Radar detectors things in their cars. As such the only speeders that get caught are dozy ones like me who occasionally drift over the limit by a tiny amount.

This is the reality – and in this case too there are lots of easy ways to avoid this surveillance.

All this rubbish about a ‘Total War on Crime’ is just an excuse to further erode our privacy and civil liberties.  For example if I use Identity Cloaker then nobody will be able to see anything I do online, my data is encrypted and all the logs will just contain my fake IP address from the Identity Cloaker proxy server that I use. The logs on those are deleted almost instantly so that makes me just about invisible online.

So what’s to stop a terrorist using any one of these security systems ?

Nothing which is why the British Government will be left spying on ordinary people. That’s going to win the war on crime isn’t it?  Of course if you snoop on enough people for long enough I’m sure you’ll catch some people doing something illegal. But is it worth the cost, are we really expected to believe that this data won’t be routinely accessed to build profiles of individuals.

At the moment, the police can access this information anyway, however they need a warrant from a judge. Of course a judge isn’t going to issue these on the basis of ad hoc requests and idle snooping – which is exactly the way it should be.

We all know these powers will be abused, even if the police and intelligence services only exercise these rights in extreme cases (yeah right) – you can be certain that databases will be hacked, logs left on trains or USB sticks dropped in taxis.  All the time the criminals will be not remotely be worried as they will be the only ones not being monitored.

What is a Web Proxy Server?

June 1, 2012 technology
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A long time ago, at least in the context of the Internet – we used to call proxy servers –  gateways. In  fact the first WWW gateway was created at CERN by the World Wide Web team led by Tim Berners-Lee.  Yep that BernersLee – the man who invented the World Wide Web !

So how can we define these gateways, what do they actually do?  Well the most common description is that they are devices which forward packets between different networks.  Of course sometimes these networks are fairly different so the gateways need to translate protocols before they forward them on.  The difficulty here was that two distinct types of devices were being grouped together under the title – gateways – which needed defining.

The first type were Internet gateways which acted both as a firewall and a gateway to the internet.  These would sit in front of secure private networks and allow access both inbound and outbound – these were defined as proxy servers.  The other type were information gateways which usually acted on behalf of a server rather than the client.  These were defined as ‘gateways’ although some call them reverse proxies just to keep it slightly confusing.

So there are even quite a few different type of proxy servers, ranging from the one page web proxies you’ll find on loads of web sites, to big corporate proxy servers which you use to access the internet from work or college.

There are however some common properties that all proxies should share -

First of all they should be transparent.  That is to say they should not affect the end result, the client should receive exactly the same result from the web site whether you use a proxy or not.

Second, the decision to use a proxy should be instigated and controlled from the client.  Although in most corporate networks this is true – the use of a proxy is normally hard coded in to the configuration.  Most Windows clients will enforce the browser to surf through the corporate network.  Next time at work or school if you look in your browser under connections you’ll probably see a proxy server address set here which you cannot alter. (Under IE you’ll find it under Internet Options/connections/LAN settings).

Finally the last main property is that the destination server or web site should be completely unaffected by the use of a proxy server.

These three definitions are however slightly under threat particularly because of the increasing use of geolocation.  This technology targets and controls content based on the geographical location of the client. However if you surf through a proxy server, then it is the location of  the proxy that determines what you can access or see.  This is why proxies are becoming so popular – if you have access to the right proxies you can access any content you like.  For instance if you want to access BBC Iplayer and you live outside the UK you’ll have your access blocked.  However if  you connect through a UK proxy server, then you’ll be considered a UK surfer and be allowed to use it.

Proxy Avoidance – An Introduction

May 17, 2012 content filtering / technology
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So what does this mean to you? Proxy avoidance? Aren’t proxies used to help you keep your privacy – why would you want to avoid them.   Unfortunately there are some proxies you really should be looking to avoid.  Just using a proxy means absolutely nothing, it’s a bit like saying you are environmentally aware because your car happens to be colored green.  Proxies can enhance security but equally they can also be used to steal all your details and finance a Russian cyber crime gang’s Christmas party.

Bloody Spoilsports !!

 

So should you use or bypass a proxy server – well it really depends on a couple of factors – who’s running it and how it’s set up.

For instance I recommend a couple of proxies/vpns on this site – both of them don’t keep logs, they don’t monitor traffic and delete pretty much everything.   However this is not the case for the vast majority of proxies – some are actually designed to monitor you and control what you can or can’t do online.

The one thing you should remember is – that if you use a proxy server, then all your data is being channeled through that server.  Which is why most businesses make sure their employees surf the internet through a proxy.   They control and configure the proxy so that they have full control of what you do online on their time.

So let’s just be clear, if you are being blocked from accessing your favorite site at work, school or through your ISP, it’s probably because you are being forced to surf through their proxy server.

In this case you will also be requiring one of these if you need to avoid this particular proxy -

Luck – or rather some incompetence. If your client, browser or proxy security is set up badly, it can be fairly easy to avoid a proxy server.

Technical Knowledge – always helps but if you want to bypass the sneaky IT department, the more you know the better.

Security Software – programs like Identity Cloaker have special functions to piggy back existing proxy servers or bypass firewalls. Nothing guarantees that you by can avoid a proxy specifically designed to control your internet access but it’s usually possible.You can always test theories out – for instance the free – trial version of Identity Cloaker allows access to a selection of websites including Facebook.    This site is often blocked by content filters or proxies (usually because people are liable to spend hours on it!) – so test out to see if it works in your environments – the free demo version can be downloaded here

Remember a proxy server set up in your work or college – is acting as an intermediary for each client on the network.    As such it knows and records every single site you visit – so if you’ve got something to keep private – don’t do it at work !! Unfortunately there are lots of different ways that proxy servers can be set up, transparent, caching or anonymising for example.  When proxies where first used they were primarily used for speed. They would be set to cache requested pages – so when another client on the network requested the page it could be delivered locally.  This would mean that you would only need to download a page once and then served when required.

They are now used for a whole lot more – a proxy is a vital tool for controlling and configuring access to the internet for any client.  You can use a proxy to block, filter or simply monitor any request passing through it.  Have a look at your broswer settings at work, if set up properly you should be blocked from manually changing the settings.   This is a simple first step in making sure that any employees cannot avoid using the proxy server – secure your proxy settings in the browser.  If you’re using Windows then this is normally used by using Windows Group Policy Objects which can tie down all security settings on your client.   Generally not only will this stop people fiddling with their settings, but it will be backed up by firewall rules.   The most common rule set would be that outgoing web traffic is only allowed via the IP address of the official proxy server.  Which is why most people get stuck when trying to be a proxy ninja on their school or company network.

In addition to the installation of a proxy server, most organisations now are rightly paranoid about ‘nasty stuff’ on the net, and so they utilise some sort of additional content filters.  The most common one I’ve come across is from Websense but there are quite a few different ones.   These will monitor online all the traffic and URLs, and block or log according to specific rules and algorithms.  These filters are generally installed on the ‘wire’ and will have access to all traffic on the network.   There’s only one real way to beat a decent filter and that’s to stop it analysing what you’re doing – that means you must use encryption.

It can be via SSL, a VPN or like Identity Cloaker which uses Rjindael-AES 256 bit Encryption over a SSH connection.  It’s difficult to summarise what situation you might find in any specific environment.  In any vaguely secure environment you’ll probably find most stuff I’ve mentioned being implemented.

Of course us Ninja surfers can get round all these issues.  Normally it’s not that hard to do usually becuase of the way a security measure has been implemented. For example you’ll commonly find Internet Explorer locked down very tightly stopping you doing anything.   But then the rest of the client will be neglected and a user can often install a different browser like Firefox which has no such restrictions!!

If an organisation hasn’t stopped you installing a new browser on your PC then it’s unlikely they’ve created any security templates either.   It’s not uncommon to see surprisingly – a super locked down version of IE alongside a completely unmonitored copy of Firefox.  Of course before you start messing around with the Internet at work or college, you should consider your position.   Check out your Internet Use Policy and see what you’re allowed to do – is there something that says you can’t use another browser for example !

It’s a big subject and I’ll cover some more specific scenarios in future posts.  I’ll mostly use Identity Cloaker as it normally has the functionality to bypass most corporate blocks and filters but there are others.   Don’t bother messing around with stupid online web proxies though – they won’t work unless your network admins are particularly stupid.

The Next Pavarotti?

March 31, 2012 technology
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Ok I love Turkey, but doing business there is so hard work!! But my frustration waiting for yet another piece of paper in an office in Ankara simply melted away when I heard this – a fabulous performance…

If you’re not in the UK – you’ll need a proxy or security program (like Identity Cloaker) to give you access I’m afraid.

More security stuff coming next post I promise………………………time to hack your neighbors Wifi….

Blocking Anonymity – China and TOR

February 9, 2012 content filtering / technology
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There’s loads of places where it’s pretty simple to bypass the blocks and restrictions that Governments put up. In reality a lot of countries have no access to the skills, equipment and in some cases the will to ensure that they really do control access to the internet. For instance in Turkey, there are a lot of sites which are officially blocked like Gay and Lesbian groups ( serious sites not porn) but thousands of people access every day with no problem.

Subscribing to a anonymity service is quite common in many countries, not particularly due to the privacy issues but more because they want to access TV and media sites in other countries. The Geographical blocks that stations like the BBC and Hulu put above are easily circumvented by using a security program like Identity Cloaker.   In fact if you speak to these companies you’ll find that 95% of the traffic is related to watching video and not to secure or private browsing.   In Identity Cloaker for example you can turn off the encryption to increase speed which is what many users do. Then people select the proxy server that they need – anything from an Australian proxy or a French, German or British one.

However the simple Geo blocks of the media companies are much worse for many people – for instance in China.  Whilst many countries are as mentioned pretty hopeless at controlling internet access – the techies behind the Great Firewall of China are very switched on indeed.

TOR Access Block

TOR is free software which links to an open network run by it’s users, it’s designed to provide anonymity online and let users bypass blocks and firewalls.   It does have it’s problems mainly based on the open format of it’s network – you relay traffic through other users computers.  As such there are security problems and it can be painfully slow to use.  But it is very difficult to block as you are not reliant on specific servers and there’s no specific IP addresses you can restrict access to.   But the Chinese have reportedly been block TOR users for several months.

The security team at Team Cymru have recently investigated how the Chinese Government was blocking access made to the TOR network.  It’s pretty interesting reading and demonstrates that the Chinese are actively combating the use of Tor through the Great Firewall of China.   Every time a user connected to a one of the Tor Bridges (which relays the connection through the Open network) then probes would be sent out from a Chinese IP address.  The probe was only sent if a connection was made to port 443 (HTTPS) in which an SSL negotiation was performed, any non secure connection did not cause the probe.

The probe was extremely sophisticated and designed specifically to connect with Tor, even able to communicate using the Tor Protocol.  As soon as one  of the probes was received the connection of the original Tor User was blocked by the Chinese Firewall and the connection dropped.

The team Cymru researcher was able to identify how the Tor connection was been identified.  The Tor handshake was located by inspecting inside the packet and locating the specific SSL ciphers used by Tor to establish the handshake.

Pretty heavy stuff,  to utlize this level of Deep Packet Inspection requires very sophisticated technology and obviously teams of people actively researching  how to block anonymity systems like Tor!

You can read the full details of this research conducted by Tim Wilde of Team Cymru here – Great Firewall of China Tor Probing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Debugging or Checking Out a Proxy

July 8, 2011 technology
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Before you trust your data using that nice, new shiny proxy that you found online. You’re going to want to check it out – so what can you do. Well believe it or not every single one of us has the perfect tool on our computer – it’s called telnet. Now you may think this is a little bit basic but you can actually get quite a lot of information on a proxy server just by using this simple program.

HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) is the mainstay of our proxy, it’s raison d’etre if you like. Fortunately for us HTTP is a completely ASCII protocol operating in clear text which makes it perfect for using Telnet with. None of that complicated decompiling of binary data for us, all our responses can be read in plain (well a little Geeky) English.

 

Understanding Proxies

So How Do We Use Telnet to Debug?

It’s actually quite straight forward and uses the standard Telnet Syntax -

Telnet {Proxy Address} (Proxy Port}

So if you wanted to check out your college proxy server then simply -

Telnet collegeproxy.com 8080

This will get the telnet program to attempt to connect to the proxy server (or in fact any web server as well).   If you don’t get blocked by a firewall or restricted by policy you’ll get something like this -

Connected to collegeproxy.com

Escape character is   ‘^]’

Followed by a cursor sign (usually an underscore _).  When you’re at this point anything you’ll type will be sent to the server.

So here you can forward any HTTP requests directly to the server without using a browser.  But it will also allow you to see proper error codes and the responses the server is making.

For instance if you get the response

- telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

This suggests that the server process is not running or it’s not listening on the port you specified (telnet will connect by default on 23 if  you don’t specify).  It’s really great way of troubleshooting issues with web servers, proxies or any web enabled device.