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Security Prices or Join Software Setup   Everything you need for Secure and Private use of the Web and Usenet Security and Encryption FAQ - Revision 21.4 by Doctor Who "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks." Article 12 Universal Declaration of Human Rights This Faq/Tutorial is offered in good faith and is intended to be an encapsulation of my knowledge and experiences gained over the many years that I have been a computer/Net user. There are many roads to security and privacy on the Net, this is one that I have personally pursued and can recommend from experiences gained. I am not making any claim that it is the best or the only route to privacy and security, just that it works for me. There are countless reasons why someone may need the reassurance of anonymity. The most obvious is as a protection against an over-bearing Government. Many people reside in countries where human rights are dubious and they need anonymity to raise public awareness and publish these abuses to the world at large. This Faq is to help such people. Privacy and anonymity are very important principles associated with both freedom of speech and democracy. "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority... It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation - and their ideas from suppression - at the hand of an intolerant society." Justice Stevens, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 1996 Changes since previous revision: Now includes a method of anonymously obtaining a prepaid Debit Card. Unfortunately, since my last Faq, e-Gold has been compromized by the FBI. All accounts are now subject to their scrutiny, so it is very inadvisable to use e-Gold for the foreseeable future. This revision is a holding, meaning temporary, revision and I will update with alternative ways to fund an anonymous prepaid Debit Card as soon as I am able. References to the use of e-Gold within this Faq should therefore be treated with great care or ignored. Part 1 offers an overview approach to achieve security and anonymity. Part 2. In the second part will be the practical implementations of some of the programs mentioned in Part 1. In some cases this will include detailed setup instructions to help achieve the goal of true computer and Internet privacy and anonymity. I assume a basic understanding of computers, such as the ability to copy and paste and a general knowledge of how to install programs and follow setup instructions. Part 1 (Questions 1 to 30) 1. How does encryption work? Essentially the plaintext is combined with a mathematical algorithm (a set of rules for processing data) such that the original text cannot be deduced from the output file, hence the data is now in encrypted form. To enable the process to be secure, a key is combined with this algorithm. The key is protected by a passphrase. Obviously the process must be reversible, but only with the aid of the correct key. Without the key, the process should be extremely difficult. The mathematics of the encryption should be openly available for peer review. At first sight this may appear to compromise the encryption, but this is far from the case. Peer review ensures that there are no "back doors" or crypto weaknesses within the program. Although the algorithm is understood, it is the combination of its use with the passphrase that ensures secrecy. Thus the passphrase is crucial to the security of the data. 2. I want my Hard Drive and my Email to be secure, how can I achieve this? You need PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) for your Email and DCPP (DriveCrypt Plus Pack) version 3 and/or TrueCrypt version 3 for your hard drive encrypted files. Both DCPP and TrueCrypt are known as OTF (On-The-Fly) type programs. OTF means the encrypted data is only decrypted into RAM (Random Access Memory) and remains at all times encrypted on the drive. Thus a crash close will not leave packets of plaintext on your drive. A very important feature. PGP is available for all versions of Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac and others. The source code is available for compiling your own version should you wish. DCPP is Win2000/NT/XP compliant but not compliant with Win98 or earlier. Regrettably, no source code is available. It has two unique advantages over other encryption programs. (a) It is a whole boot drive encryption program. (b) It offers a form of very good plausible deniability. TrueCrypt is a relatively new, free and open source program of great promise. It does not display any file header info to help a snooper identify the file's purpose. The header is encrypted and shows as random garbage. But it will identify which type of format was used to create the Truecrypt volume. Despite Windows and other programs claiming the partition is not formatted, Truecrypt will itself rather unhelpfully tell the world that it is obviously a Truecrypt created volume. I am at a loss to understand the logic of this, but there it is. It allows the encryption of a whole partition or drive. The source code is freely available so it means anyone with the ability can compile the same program. The importance of this cannot be too strongly stressed. It means the risk of a hidden back-door is virtually eliminated. If the sighting of the source code is important to you, I suggest using PGP and TrueCrypt. In all cases you must check the PGP signatures of these files, after downloading from a trusted site. I would never advocate using any hacked version of a critical security program, or one sourced from a warez or other dubious site. Certainly not if you are truly serious about your privacy. Note 1: PGP, although excellent at ensuring Email privacy, does nothing for anonymity. The difference is crucial. I will assume that anonymity is also very high on your list of needs and so will concentrate on that issue further down the Faq. 3. What is the difference between these encryption programs? One of the difficulties before asymmetrical key encryption was discovered was how to get the key to the person wanting to send you an encrypted message. In the past trusted couriers were used to get these secret keys to a distant location, maybe an overseas embassy. Nowadays this is unneccessary because of the discovery of what is called public key cryptography. Two different keys are used. One key is secret and the other is made public. The most widespread program of this type for private use is PGP, invented by Phil Zimmerman. In fact it has become the de facto standard on the Net. This program is ideal for Email. Anybody sending you mail simply encrypts their message to you with your PGP public key. The public key is obviously not secret - in fact it may be spread far and wide so that anybody can find it if they wish to send you encrypted Email. The easiest way to ensure this is by sending it to a public key server. On the other hand, some prefer not to share their key, except within a small closed group. Your choice. The only way to decrypt this incoming message is with your secret key. It is impossible to decrypt using the same key that was used to encrypt the message, the public key. Thus it is called asymmetrical encryption. PGP is simplicity itself to install and use. It even offers to send your newly generated public key to a key server. For your normal hard drive encryption, you will need a symmetrical type of encryption program. This means the same key is used for both encryption and decryption. DCPP and TrueCrypt are of this type and especially good because they are OTF (On-The-Fly) type programs. DCPP and TrueCrypt use the passphrase to encrypt a randomly created key. DCPP stores an encrypted copy of this key in the keystore which is a separate entity to the encrypted disk. TrueCrypt stores an encrypted copy of the key within the headers of the encrypted device. It is the plaintext of the key that is used to encrypt (and decrypt) the contents of the disk or container on an as needed basis into RAM memory. With PGP a public key is chosen to encrypt the message. PGP will then generate a one time session key which it uses to encrypt the message. This session key is then itself encrypted with the public key of the intended recipient of the message. This encrypted copy of the session key is then wrapped in the headers and sent along with the encrypted copy of the message to the recipient. Only the recipient has the private key which can decrypt this session key. If there are multiple recipients, then this session key is encrypted to the public key of each recipient in turn. All these different encrypted versions of the session key are then wrapped in the headers of the message. Each recipient can decrypt his version of the session key, which will then be able to decrypt the message. PGP also has a keystore. The keystores for both PGP and DCPP are protected by the passphrase. The sender of a PGP message may choose to sign a message. The message may or may not be encrypted. PGP will then encrypt the hash of the message contents using the senders private key. His public key can then be used by the recipient to check that his hash of the message is identical to the original, thus proving it was made using the sender's private key. Only one private key, the sender's, can encrypt the hash such that it will check out correctly with the sender's public key. If even a white space between two words is closed up in a message, the signature will show as bad. This offers a very secure method of checking both the accuracy and the authenticiity of a message. Truecrypt and many other symmetrical encryption programs store the key within the headers of the partition or container. One question often asked by newbies is whether the passphrase is also stored somewhere within the encrypted file. No. The passphrase is passed through a hash. It is the hash output that is stored within the headers of the encrypted container. The program will compare this hash with the hash it produces from your passphrase that you type in to mount (open) the container. If they are identical, the program will use your passphrase to decrypt the key that the program generated to encrypt the disk or container. It is this key that will then be used to decrypt the disk or container on the fly. Hashing is a one way action only; it is impossible to derive the key from the hash output. The hashing process is simply a way of checking that the correct passphrase has been input. If the program was somehow altered to force it to use an incorrect passphrase, the output would be garbage. There is no shortcut or fix, without the correct passphrase the output will be junk. 4. I have Windows, am I safe? Windows is a closed source operating system which is a law to itself. Each new update that is released by Microsoft seems to need further updates to fix the security holes discovered in the previous releases. It has been an ongoing process over many years with no end in sight. These weaknesses can manifest themselves as security holes when on the Net. A further problem with this operating system is its seeming determination to write to your hard disk all sorts of information that may be hidden from your view in all sorts of places that could be found by a forensic examination of your computer. Thus we have a two fold problem. Firstly, the problem of Windows having the potential of security holes that might be exploited by snoops and hackers using the Net and a different security problem of writing all sorts of information to sometimes hidden folders that might not be obvious from a cursory check by you, but easily found by a forensic examination. If you wish to protect yourself from these potential weaknesses you need to have an effective firewall, an effective anti-virus and an anti-spyware program. That will hopefully help to minimize the threats from outside. That is only the start. You also need to replace your Windows Internet Explorer browser and your Outlook or Outlook Express Email client for something a lot more secure. I like FireFox and Quicksilver. Even these need support from the use of specialist programs. Even with Firefox or any other Web browser it is imperative that you disable Java and Javascript. More about the reasons why later in the Faq. Secondly, you are well advised to encrypt your whole drive to protect yourself from what Windows will write to your hard drive. There are so-called wipe and cleaner programs to remove cookies and many other files that Windows will save to your hard drive for future reference. But at the end of the day, the only truly effective counter measure against these potential weaknesses is to encrypt your whole boot drive. In some countries, even this might not be enough. Such countries can force you to hand over your passphrases to these encrypted drives by threatening imprisonment. As more and more judicial systems seem to be leaning ever closer to this sort of injustice (injustice because the culprit is being forced to self-incriminate himself which is in direct violation of Article 5 of the Bill of Rights; the right to refuse to be a witness against oneself), so it is more and more important for the individual to protect himself. Because of these encroachments on our liberty I propose in this Faq a method of plausible deniability. This means you can justify every one of the files and folders that are on your computer. 5. Which program do you recommend for this whole drive encryption? Unfortunately, there is at present no modern whole boot drive encryption program for the Windows operating system with open source which also allows a hidden operating system accessible on boot. Of the many different boot drive encryption programs, I like DCPP. It is easy to install. But its single greatest benefit is it offers a form of truly excellent plausible deniability for its presence on your system. It encrypts the whole partition. So if you want to keep part of your drive in plaintext you will need to divide your hard drive into independent partitions or better, have two separate hard drives. A further major advantage over previously recommended encryption programs is that the passphrase is input at Bios level, before Windows is loaded. The importance of this is difficult to over-emphasize. This means it is impossible for any software key-logging program that may be on your computer to detect your passphrase. Such programs are sometimes picked up on the Net or arrive via Email and could circumvent all your efforts at security. It is even conceivable that a snoop or hacker could steal your passphrase as you type it in, if this is done whilst the operating system is running. I am sure someone will mention that there are hardware keyboard logging devices, which could grab your passphrase when you start up, before the operating system is loaded. However, common sense local site security should minimize this risk. A Bios level input of the passphrase in conjunction with whole boot drive encryption is just about the Holy Grail of security - without a hardware keyboard logging device, very difficult to intercept and snoop. 6. Are there other OTF programs? There are several. But so far as I know only DCPP operates from boot and includes the opportunity of creating a second (hidden) boot operating system. Others, such as TrueCrypt only encrypt data files, not the Windows operating system. TrueCrypt offers strong plausible deniability because it allows you to encrypt a partition that appears to be unused and without a drive letter. The method of ensuring this is simply explained in the Help File that accompanies TrueCrypt. The latest version also allows you to create a hidden encrypted volume within the first. This further improves its appeal and prospects of plausible deniability and in conjunction with DCPP should be excellent for your backup data. 7. How difficult is it to break into one of these programs? Very difficult, in fact for all practical purposes, it is considered impossible. In most cases, the weakest link will be your passphrase, or being compromised by a hardware key-logger through not having good security on your desktop. Your passphrase should be long. Every extra character you enter makes a dictionary search for the right phrase twice as long. Each time a bit is added it doubles the number crunching time to crack into the program. Each keyboard character roughly equates to 8 bits, and is represented on the drive as two hexadecimal characters. This suggests a 20 character passphrase is roughly equal strength to the encryption. In practice, probably not. A keyboard has around 96 different combinations of key strokes, thus multiplying this number by itself 20 times is a hugely large combination, ensuring a high probability of defeat at guessing a passphrase. But few people can remember a truly random 20 character passphrase. So most people use a less than random one. This means it should be longer to help compensate for this lack of entropy. You should also use at least part of both lines of the passphrase input screen with DCPP. If you like, two passphrases. 8. Why? Because any passphrase cracker cannot find the correct key until it has exhausted a key search as wide as the last character you enter. A strong hint that you should make sure the last character of your passphrase is well along the bottom line! For higher security you should spread it around on both lines. Although TrueCrypt has a single line entry it will accept a long passphrase of at least 57 characters from my simple tests. Be sure that if any serious snooper wants to view your secret data, they will find a way without wasting their time attempting a brute force attack upon your DCPP or TrueCrypt container. In some countries rubber hose cryptography may be the rule. In some "civilized" countries there are more sinister methods, such as tempest or the use of a trojan. Fortunately, tempest and trojan attacks are far less likely to succeed against DCPP than all the other encryption programs. Hence my strong and enthusiastic support for this program. 9. What about simple file by file encryption? I recommend either PGP Tools which comes free with PGP or Kremlin. Of course this is not necessary for files within your encrypted drive. But is essential to clear files off your computer that are outside your encrypted drive. PGP Tools is a long winded process just to encrypt a single file, as it asks you to first choose a key before entering the passphrase. Kremlin is quicker because it allows you to right click on the file to be encrypted, a password box opens and that is it. It also similarly allows you to wipe any file by right clicking. This can also be done by PGP. Another recommended program to erase individual files is Eraser. 10. Can I encrypt files on a floppy? Yes, use either TrueCrypt, DCPP, PGP Tools or Kremlin. 11. Does using Encryption slow things up? Negligibly on any modern computer. The length of your passphrase is immaterial to the speed of decryption. But different encryption algorithms vary significantly. One of the fastest is Twofish and probably the slowest is 3DES (triple DES). This applies only to symmetrical encryption programs. PGP uses RSA or Diffie-Hellman generated keys, which in turn are used to encrypt/decrypt a randomly generated session key. The RSA key is very slow, but as it is only used to encrypt/decrypt the 128 bit CAST5 or IDEA session key its slowness is not noticed. TrueCrypt offers a range of ciphers, of these I recommend AES as it is a 128 bit block cipher with a 256 bit key. It offers a good compromise between speed and security. 12. Do I need a PGP passphrase if I store my keyrings within my encrypted drive? Definitely. Just because you have encrypted your drive does not relieve you of the necessity of protecting yourself whilst online. 13. I use Mac, OS2, Linux, (fill in your choice), what about me? Use either BestCrypt (by Jetico - do a Google search) or PGPDisk. There are many others, but I know nothing about them. 14. How can I ensure I do not leave traces of unwanted plaintext files on my system? If you are using DCPP this should not be a problem. But you must disable the Windows hibernation (power saving) feature. When Windows goes into hibernation it will dump everything that is in RAM memory onto the boot drive, by-passing the DCPP drivers. By-passing these drivers means it writes everything to disk in plaintext including the keyfile data which unlocks your most secret partition. This will defeat the whole purpose of having encryption. Although your whole drive will be encrypted I would still install a program to clean out bloat and cookies. My recommendation for this is Windows Washer. To wipe unused space on your drive I recommend Zapempty. Although a Dos based program, it runs easily even within Win XP. This is a part of a zipped file of wipe utilities called Wipeutil.zip. Extract Zapempty onto the drive you wish to clean up and double click it. But do not use it or any other disk wipe tool on your encrypted drive or it may be a pointer to where the hidden container lies. 15. What programs do I put in my newly Encrypted Drive? All your usual programs that you need to use your computer normally, plus the more specialised ones to help you achieve anonymity. See further down the Faq. 16. How do I "cover my tracks"? Never surf naked. Always, always use a proxy. There are now easy ways to use a proxy. In the early days it was necessary to find and hand select the proxies you wished to use. This was a laborious process and needed expert knowledge of which programs to use to find and exploit them. Some still prefer to do it this way. I call it rolling your own. It has the distinct advantage of user choice and control over each proxy to be used in a chain. However, this may offer anonymity, but not necessarily privacy. Meaning no encryption. I like privacy and anonymity, so I use other methods. The method I propose also has the merit of ease of use and total transparency once the programs are set up. 17. Earlier on you mentioned plausible deniability, what is it? Plausible deniability is the ability to offer irrefutable justification for every single file, folder, container, partition and drive that might contain encrypted data. DCPP version 3 (now version 3.5) offers a world first because it allows dual booting into either of two entirely separate boot operating systems, each invisible to the other with both using the same drive partition. One of these may be called your honeypot operating system, meaning it contains encrypted data that you are prepared to show under duress. The second (hidden) operating system will contain your most secret data that you never release. Its presence can only be deduced by correctly guessing the second most secret passphrase for that operating system. No other way exists to prove there is a second operating system. Examination by forensics of your encrypted boot drive can only show the usual random data that is associated with an encrypted drive. Nothing else. This must mean excellent plausible deniability. 18. What if encryption is illegal in my country? I used to suggest using TrueCrypt. But as the program discloses which type of format was used, thus negating any claims of it being random, it might be difficult to justify. Actually DCPP offers some (slight) hope, if the MBR (Master Boot Record) of your drive is restored to normal. Hope only because it does not disclose what it is. But if you have a multi megabyte or worse gigabyte partition, it is not going to sound very convincing if you claim it is random garbage. It will need to be small, a few megabytes at most and at the end of a drive. It will have to be run off a floppy and you will still need to hide the floppy effectively in the case of a search. I am sorry I cannot help you here. It must be down to your own initiative. 19. Are there any other precautions I should take? Make copies of all your PGP keys, a text file of all your secret account numbers and passwords and the other details for your E-gold accounts, full details of your Virtual Debit Card account, copies of INI files for critical programs, your anonymous Email account details plus anything else that is so critical your life would be inconvenienced if it were lost. All these details should now be stored in a folder called "Safe" on your encrypted drive. A copy of this folder should be stored on an encrypted CD, preferably within the hidden part of a TrueCrypt container and stored off-site. If you are going to rely on any variation of the ploys suggested here, then you should keep this Faq within your hidden encrypted drive. You will need to take further precautions whilst you are online against threats from hackers and snoops. 20. What are these threats? They are known as Tempest and Trojan attacks. 21. What is a Tempest attack? Tempest is an acronym for Transient ElectroMagnetic Pulse Emanation Surveillance. This is the science of monitoring at a distance electronic signals carried on wires or displayed on a monitor. Although of only slight significance to the average user, it is of enormous importance to serious cryptography snoopers. To minimize a tempest attack you should screen all the cables between your computer and your accessories, particularly your monitor. A flat screen (non CRT) monitor offers a considerable reduction in radiated emissions and is recommended. 22. What is a Trojan? A trojan (from the Greek Trojan Horse), is a background program that monitors your key-strokes and then either copies them to a secret folder for later recovery or sends them to a server when you next go online. Sometimes referred to as spyware. This may be done without your knowledge. Such a trojan may be secretly physically placed on your computer or picked up on your travels on the Net. Perhaps sent by someone hacking into your computer whilst you are online, or whilst visiting a Website. 23. How do I do avoid these threats? First of all you must have a truly effective firewall. It is not sufficient for a firewall to simply monitor downloaded data, but to also monitor all attempts by programs within your computer that may try and send data out. I suggest installing Zonealarm. This firewall very cleverly makes an encrypted hash of each program to ensure that a re-named or modified version of a previously acceptable program cannot squeeze through and "phone home". Zonealarm version 6 also incorporates both anti-virus and anti-spyware checking, making it an excellent choice. That is but the start. You also need a Web browser that does not leak information, plus a method of passing data across your ISP's servers strongly encrypted to prevent prying eyes from watching all that you do on the Net. 24. I use the Net for Web browsing, Usenet and Email, am I safe? Whilst you are online anyone could be monitoring your connection. They do not need access to your computer to do this. They need only have access to your ISP. To minimize these risks you must encrypt the data passing across your ISP's servers. My suggestion is to use a combination of several programs. Each is easily set up (see Part 2). Between them you will be secure and anonymous. The best news, all these programs are free and open source! 25. Which programs do you recommend? You need four main programs besides the news client such as Agent (my favorite) and the Web browser such as FireFox (again my favorite) and the Email client such as Quicksilver, (yes, another favorite). Quicksilver will ensure that only text is displayed; all HTML is banished. This is important because it prevents you being caught by Email marketeers and perhaps snoops and hackers that use linked graphic files as a means of tracking "live" Email addresses. You can still receive HTML and attachments with Quicksilver, it just protects you by putting them into a separate folder, where you can view them at your leisure when offline. Other programs are: Stunnel, Freecap, Privoxy and Tor. They are all very easy to use and really can be setup by a newbie if you follow the setup instructions I offer in Part 2. They are totally transparent to the user. Once setup there is no maintenance or searching for proxies, etc. It is all done in the background with no further unput required from you. 26. Tell me more about these programs? Stunnel encrypts the data between you and your news server and is very simple to use. Freecap is also easy to setup and acts as the bridge between Stunnel and Tor. Tor is a connection-based low-latency (meaning fast) anonymous communication system that protects TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) streams for Usenet, web browsing, instant messaging (IM), internet relay chat (IRC), Secure Shell (SSH), etc. In basic language Tor is a socks server that accepts and encrypts data from any program that is "socksified", meaning set up to communicate with it. Tor is a new program and is still in Beta development mode. But it is still a fully functioning Socks proxying system that offers the promise of great anonymity and privacy. It is free and open source. It is supported by the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a web based charity dedicated to freedom of speech online. Tor will build automatically and transparently to the client (you) an anonymous and encrypted route across the Net. It uses multiple layers of encryption, each node only knowing the previous and next node, so with several nodes your data becomes anonymized. The principle is like an onion with many layers of encryption and anonymity. Thus it is called onion routing. Remember, the data is encrypted both by Tor which uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) and by Stunnel which uses SSL (Secure Socket Layer) as it leaves your desktop through your ISP and on into the Tor network. Where it exists the Tor network it continues onwards as SSL encrypted data on its way to the news server or wherever. For Web browsing we need Privoxy. This again acts as a bridge between your browser and Tor. A web proxy is a service, based on a software such as Privoxy, that clients (i.e. browsers) can use instead of connecting directly to the web servers on the Internet. The clients then ask the proxy to fetch the objects they need (web pages, images, movies etc) on their behalf, and when the proxy has done so, it hands the results back to the client. There are many reasons to use web proxies, such as firewalling (security), caching (efficiency) and others, and there are just as many different proxies to accommodate those needs. Privoxy is a proxy that is solely focused on privacy protection and junk elimination. Sitting between your browser and the Internet, it is in a perfect position to filter outbound personal information that your browser is leaking, as well as inbound junk. It uses a variety of techniques to do this, all of which are under your control via the various configuration files and options. Privoxy will bridge the connection between your browser and Tor the Socks proxy host. It will minimize pop up ads, etc. But its main advantage is it will help prevent information leakage from your desktop to any third party trying to sniff your data. Used in conjunction with Tor it ensures all your Web browsing is totally anonymous. There is no need to close Privoxy if you wish to use your news client or whatever. These programs are totally transparent to you once they are running. Full setup instructions for these programs are offered in Part 2. 27. Is the data encrypted after it leaves the remote server and Tor? Yes, providing you are using Stunnel. The only precaution you must take to ensure both privacy and anonymity, is to use Stunnel in combination with FreeCap, which ensurres it routes all data over the Tor network. It is possible to use Stunnel alone, but not recommended. 28. How do I subscribe anonymously to a news provider? In this Faq I offer more choice. You can send cash, a postal order or use a prepaid Debit Card. There are now at least 4 news servers offering SSL (Stunnel) encrypted connections through port 563. These are: Easynews, Newscene, Octanews, and Meganetnews. Thus I strongly advocate you choose one of these four. It costs no more to enjoy this extra level of security, so why accept anything less? There are also remailers that accept an SSL encrypted connection, which significantly improves your Email security. Privacy.Li will act as a sign-up proxy, meaning they will sign you up anonymously to your choice of news provider, or indeed any other service you wish. They accept many types of payment, including cash and E-Gold. They have their own news service, but do not offer an SSL connection, but as it is only accessed via their SSH connection and Tor, it should be very safe. To maximize your security, you must sign up anonymously and only ever access their servers via Tor. This hides your IP address from Privacy.Li. E-Gold is not intended to be anonymous, unless you take steps to ensure it is. By signing up using your choice of discrete details and (most importantly) on first access immediately disabling the security protocols which sense your IP address. With anonymous access from different IP addresses using Tor, it is very important to do this or you will find your account access blocked. I recommend opening a second E-Gold account and transfering funds from the first into the second on an as needed basis. Any spending of your E-Gold should then only be done from the second account. This doubles the difficulty for anyone trying to do a backtrace. Obviously the accounts should not share any information. Meaning different bogus names, addresses, passphrases, etc. 29. How do I create a secure/anonymous Email account with Quicksilver? Previously I have recommended creating a Nym using one of the remailers. Because of the huge amounts of spam I was receiving, I have had to revise my recommendation about this. I now recommend opening a simple POP3 account with one of the many sites offering a free Email service. Provided you only ever access them via Quicksilver and Tor, you should be safe. One example of this is Hotpop. There are many others. Take a look here: http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_pop.htm All these are only soft anonymous, but they can all be hardened by using Quicksilver and ensuring it routes only through Tor. You could use Hotpop as your Email incoming POP3 account and send or post through Tor and the Mixmaster remailer network. Both Hotmail and Hushmail (and the latest version of Yahoo) insist on you having both Java and Javascript enabled before they allow you to open an account. This is unacceptable to me. I would never recommend using any Email service with such a requirement. Explanations follow in Part 2. 30. Can you briefly summarise all the above? You need PGP and Quicksilver for your Email and DCPP and/or Truecrypt for encryption of your hard drive. These recommended programs should help you achieve a very high level of plausible deniability and privacy. You will need other programs to ensure you are anonymous whilst online. You need to be anonymous online for both browsing and whilst subscribing to any Web services. For this you need at least one, but preferably two E-Gold accounts and a pre-paid Debit Card. You must only access your email POP3 accounts using Quicksilver and Tor. Part 2 31. How do I achieve maximum plausible deniability? You must have two separate bootable drives. Drive C is your regular drive, it should not be encrypted. Your second bootable Drive D is the one we shall concentrate on. I recommend leaving Drive C as your regular plaintext drive for ordinary usage. But there is good reason to have these programs also installed onto your Drive C. To achieve dual boot with your Drive C as the default, you will need to re-install Windows onto firstly your Drive D and then again onto your Drive C. This is because Windows always makes the last install the default. Alternatively, you can modify your boot.ini file, provided you know what you are doing. I recommend re-formatting both drives. Obviously you should backup essential programs and data before you do this. It should be possible to boot into either Drive C or D after you have created a dual boot system and at this point without any passphrases. You should then do everything from within the second Drive, D; meaning you first install Boot Authentication and immediately create an ER (Emergency Repair) disk. Choose the screen option with the Dos tools, just in case of future problems. Then check by booting into both drives (now needing the passphrase of course). You should then boot into D and encrypt D. At this stage you will still need to start DCPP from within Drive D to do this. Then immediately after encryption is completed, update your ER disk before re-booting. Now re-boot into Drive D and again start DCPP from within Windows. You must now create a new keystore and key using your ultra secret passphrase. It is very important that this new keystore and key is stored only on a floppy. Now you can clone your encrypted drive. You should then check you can still boot into the first (original) encrypted drive on D. If this is successful, close down and re-boot into your D drive using the ER disk (to test it) using your most secret second passphrase. This should now boot into the hidden OS. You should once again open DCPP from within Windows and using your secret key and passphrase you can now encrypt this hidden OS using your most secret key. Before re-booting ensure you update both ER disks. You can also create an image file to create a bootable CD using a suitable CD burning software. This is identical in usage as an ER floppy. You must now remove Boot Authentication off your desktop. One easy way is to use the Tools facility on your ER disk. Just follow the onscreen instructions. They do sound very ominous about being sure you know what you are doing, etc. Just say Ok or YES and revert to the original MBR (Master Boot Record). Do not worry, you will still be able to access your encrypted secret drive by using either of the ER disks. But henceforth this will be your only means of access. Obviously you must not attempt to update your ER disk after doing this! 32. So far, so good. What now? When booting you can simply boot immediately into your plaintext Drive C or by using the ER disk, input either passphrase and boot into either the honeypot encrypted drive or your hidden operating system drive. Clever, very clever. Superb plausible deniability. Or is it? What happens when an attacker finds that the dates of all the files in the first encrypted partition have never been opened perhaps for months? My justification for this scenario is that Drive D is an encrypted backup of my Drive C. It is encrypted to minimize the risk of it being corrupted should my computer catch a virus. When dismounted (closed), my encrypted drive will be shown by Windows to be unformatted. As such, Windows will not normally write to it. Thus it offers a layer of security that should I lose all of my Drive C, I can recover by booting into my encrypted Drive D. I am not going to argue the fine print here. This is my justification for having encrypted my Drive D. If there are viruses which can cause Windows to format Drive D, so what? I will argue I am ignorant of such things. If doubts are raised they are impossible to prove without correctly guessing your second passphrase. Even if your attacker convinces you he knows DCPP offers the possibility of a hidden partition there is a plausible defence. Note: It is not a good idea to simply copy your Drive C installation to your Drive D, because all the registry entries will refer programs back to your plaintext drive C, thus undermining all your efforts at security. Far better to do two independent installs. There are ways around this, using software that forces Windows to give your drives specific drive letters. But do this only if you know what you are about. 33. Is it as straight forward as this? Not quite. After creating the first encrypted partition on your second hard drive you have to avoid a couple of slight bugs. First of all it is essential to ensure the data are compacted to the front of your D drive. The easiest way I have found of doing this is prior to doing any encryption is to use Windows' backup tool to copy all the data on Drive D to another drive, perhaps a folder on your Drive C. Then do a quick re-format of Drive D (or delete everything but a quick format is so much faster). Now using Windows, restore all back to Drive D. Easy. You should find all your data is now compacted to the front of the drive which will allow you to easily create the hidden OS later on. However, another little bug raised its head when I tried again to get it to clone. I found that the password input screen DCPP displayed before it would clone only allowed a shorter passphrase to be input. There is no error as such, just that DCPP tells you it has found the keystore but cannot open it because either it is corrupt or it is the wrong passphrase. As long as this bug remains, it offers you the chance of further plausible deniability. The second bug sets a limit on the length of your seceond most secret passphrase of about 21 characters. The easiest work around is to use a shorter passphrase to clone and to change it to a longer one before encrypting the clone. Note 1: I would strongly urge you not to store this second keystore on your honeypot encrypted drive. I suggest creating and storing it on a floppy. Later, after cloning, encrypting and updating your ER floppies, you should completely destroy this floppy. This ensures this critical keystore was never written to your honeypot drive. Note 2: There is no requirement to keep a copy of this keyfile. If at any future date you wish to decrypt this clone or the original you can use the ER disk recovery tools to do so. The finding of a second keystore on your honeypot drive will totally destroy any attempt at plausible deniability. Or will it? Not necessarily. You could create a false keystore, one with a very long (and different) passphrase and most importantly, one with a different key to suggest you have been attempting to create a hidden drive but without success. You can prove this is feasible by demonstrating this keyfile cannot create a hidden operating system (naturally, only after you have already proven this to yourself with this particular keyfile). Ostensibly you have no idea why DCPP refuses to cooperate, but the passphrase opens the keystore, proving it is correct. This is vital. That is superb plausible deniability. 34. Any other precautions? It is absolutely essential that no further data are added to your honeypot drive at the risk of destroying altogether your hidden drive. This is no idle threat. To (slightly) help in this regard, when about to clone the operating system, you are offered a choice of spacing between the two partitions, input at least 500 megabytes or more for this gap space. I would recommend that you initially test out both passphrases. But use your honeypot passphrase just once to test it works. Never again use it. Windows is a very pro-active operating system and it will do things you may not be expecting. Things such as automatic backing up of the registry, defragging, etc. Everyone must have noticed how their drive can sometimes be very active when they are not doing anything. This is Windows doing its thing. So mount once to test, then forget all about it. But do not forget the honeypot passphrase, it may be your credibility lifeline. 35. Any more hints about this system? Another option that you should consider is disabling your C: drive from within your Hidden OS drive. To do this open Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Click on Disk Drives to expand and select the drive you wish to disable. This will have the effect of hiding your Drive C when you are in your hidden encrypted drive, thus minimizing the risk of Windows writing anything to your plaintext Drive C. It also helps to minimize the risk of you saving or installing something to your Drive C accidentally. Note 1: the devices are shown using their boot identification, not as drives C, D, etc. You must check by looking in your boot configuration to correctly identify these entities. Note 2: This action will only be implemented when booting into the drive from which it is setup. By doing it from within your hidden OS you ensure you can still boot into Drive C normally. Note 3: You could do this from within your Drive C to hide your encrypted drive. But it will not fool a forensics expert for one moment, thus it foolishly red flags what should not be of any concern. 36. What programs do I need and where do I get them? There are seven programs recommended for security and anonymity: DCPP, PGP, TrueCrypt, Stunnel, FreeCap, Privoxy and Tor. And three others recommended for Email, Usenet and Web browsing: Quicksilver, Agent and FireFox. In all cases where there is a choice of download, ensure you download the version that is compliant with your operating system, e.g. Windows XP or whatever. Get them here: PGP: http://www.panta-rhei.dyndns.org/downloads/PGP/pgp658ckt08.zip TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/ Stunnel is used for NNTP secure connections to your news provider. Stunnel: http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html Stunnel requires the executable file plus 2 others. stunnel-4.05.exe stunnel-4.05.exe.asc (digital signature file optional but recommended) OpenSSL Libraries (required files). These are put in the same folder as Stunnel: libssl32.dll libeay32.dll libssl32.dll.asc (optional) libeay32.dll.asc (optional) FreeCap: http://www.freecap.ru/eng/?p=index Privoxy: http://www.privoxy.org/ Tor: http://tor.freehaven.net/ Not essential, but strongly recommended: Agent: http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php FireFox: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ Quicksilver: http://www.quicksilvermail.net/ Note: There are later versions of PGP. Ignore them. They are closed source. 37. Where do I put these files? PGP should be installed onto your hidden operating system. It may offer to install onto your Drive C. Avoid that unless you want to deliberately offer a sanitised version on your Drive C. Actually there is good reason to install all of the above onto your Drive C. This may sound alarming, but consider, their presence might be deduced if any snoop has been monitoring your ISP data. It will always pass across as encrypted data. If an examination of your hard drive were to reveal the absence of such programs, how do you show how you were doing it? The presence of these programs is not illegal at all. On the contrary, there are very good and sensible reasons why you want to avoid both spam and having your privacy invaded. In fact, I go further and install Tor as a server. This is easy with the latest version. Just click on server after install - that's it. More about this later on. For the other files, create a new folder called Proxy. Open Proxy and create the following sub-folders: FreeCap, Stunnel, Privoxy, Tor Install by copying all of the downloaded files into their respective folders. Ensure the library files for Stunnel are in the same sub-folder. The latest version of Tor now includes a Windows install. Each program can then have shortcuts made and placed on your desktop, or wherever you choose if different. 38. How do I configure Privoxy? Privoxy is used for HTTP secure connections to the Web. It works in conjunction with Tor. It is not used for Usenet or Email. The config.txt file looks daunting, but you just remove # from the beginning of any line to make that line active. The only change you must make is to ensure Privoxy routes through the Tor network. To ensure this, scroll down to section 5.2 in config.txt Copy and paste the following line exactly as shown, into section 5.2: forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 . The spacing and the period at the end are important. You should leave the other lines alone unless you know what you are about. The above is mandatory, but optionally and strongly recommended once you have succeeded in getting privoxy working properly, is to stop it logging your actions. Do this by commenting out (using # at the start of the line) "logfile privoxy.log" and "jarfile jar.log". By default it will run on startup and minimize to the task bar. 39. How do I configure Stunnel? Stunnel is required for an NNTPS, meaning secure, connection to Usenet. Copy and paste all of the following in Notepad and save it in the Stunnel folder, name the file stunnel.conf: #Stunnel client configuration file # client = yes options = ALL RNDbytes = 2048 RNDfile = bananarand.bin RNDoverwrite = yes # #[Meganetnews_NNTPS] #accept = 119 #connect = news.meganetnews.com:563 #delay = no # [nntps] accept = 119 connect = secure.news.easynews.com:563 delay = no # #[nntps] #accept = 119 #connect = news.x-privat.org:563 #delay = no # #[Octanews_NNTPS] #accept = 119 #connect = snews.octanews.com:563 #delay = no # #[putty_nntps] #accept = 119 #connect = 127.0.0.1:563 #delay = no # # End of config file Remove the # from the beginning of any bunch of lines you wish to make active. The above is setup to optionally allow (When the # is removed) routing through several news providers using a secure SSL connection. Note the lines: [putty_nntps] accept = 119 connect = 127.0.0.1:563 delay = no This is an option to route your Usenet connection through a SSH (Secure Shell) host server using Putty. This option is strongly recommended for Usenet posting when used together with Tor for maximum anonymity and security. The file (stunnel.conf) does not exist until you create it. Stunnel cannot work without its presence. You will just get some server error. This might happen if you or Windows names it incorrectly. You may need to get Explorer to show extensions to known file types, otherwise Windows may save the file as stunnel.conf.txt. If you are not sure, go to Tools > Folder Options > View > uncheck "Hide extensions to known file types". Click on Ok. Note: In the previous Faq I had shown a long list of various remailers. I have omitted them all from the above config file as the latest Quicksilver allows direct connections into Tor and thence on to the remailer network. This means it is easier and quicker to send and receive mail using Quicksilver and Tor. If you want options I suggest creating several folders called Stunnel 1, Stunnel 2, etc and copy Stunnel.exe plus the two library files and stunnel.conf into each. Now make active different combinations of the above in each folder. Ensure that only one option is active in each stunnel.conf file or you may get conflicts and problems. Create shortcuts to each stunnel.exe and copy to your desktop (renaming as necessary). 40. How do I configure FreeCap? Go > File > Settings > Proxy Settings > Default Proxy. Type 127.0.0.1 into the server window and 9050 into Port. Click OK. Under Protocol ensure SOCKS v5 is checked. With the program back at the opening screen, drag and drop the Stunnel shortcuts into the FreeCap window. You will immediately see the Stunnel icons position themselves along the top of the screen. As each is loaded, re-name it to easily distinguish it from the others. Do this by right-clicking on an icon and selecting Modify. Change the name on the top line to something self-descriptive, such as Easynews or Putty or whatever. You have now socksified Stunnel. That is all it takes. Whenever you run Stunnel you must start it by clicking on one of the icons from within FreeCap, which obviously means first starting Freecap. Stunnel secures the programs and by socksifying it with Freecap, ensures all data is routed over the Tor network. Just minimize Freecap after starting Stunnel. To close Stunnel, right click on its icon on the taskbar and select Exit. Note: Some may experience problems with FreeCap. If you do, an excellent, free for non-commercial use alternative, (but not open source) is SocksCap. It is here: http://www.socks.permeo.com/Download/SocksCapDownload/index.asp 41. How do I configure Tor? Nothing to do. Just click on its shortcut and watch the screen. Wait a minute for it to create its onion route across the Net. Once this is enabled it will display, "Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks like its working." minimize (not close) the program and that is it for Tor. The latest version comes bundled with Vidalia, a Windows installer. This now shows all sorts of goody information, such as a World view of the Tor servers and network in actual usage. It is very easy to make your system a server on the Tor network. Do not be alarmed. This is perfectly innocent. All data passing through will be encrypted. It helps to explain your operation. You are a firm believer in freedom of speech and the rights of freedom. This is your way to express your rights. Note: I recommend checking back regularly for the latest version of Tor as it seems to be changing very frequently. Older versions may cause problems of incompatibility or other minor glitches. I also recommend you take the bother of reading at least the basics of how Tor works. 42. How do I configure my Browser? To ensure your browser chooses to route through Tor you must now go to its Proxy settings Window. With FireFox this is > Tools > Options > Connection Settings. Input 127.0.0.1 into each line except Socks Host. Leave that line completely clear. Input 8118 into the Port window for each line, but again leave the Socks Host line clear. This is because Privoxy listens for connections on port 8118 by default. Remember we have already configured Privoxy with the line: "forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 ." This is telling Privoxy to pass on its connections to Tor which is listening on Port 9050 by default. Click on > Tools > Options > Web Features and uncheck "Enable Java" and "Enable Javascript". This is very important to ensure no remote site can take control of your desktop and invade your privacy. I would also disable "allow Web Sites to install software" You will find some Web sites will not now work correctly. This is the penalty of ensuring you do not give away your private details to any snooper who may be trying to sniff them. 43. How do I configure my news client? You must now configure your news client by inputting 127.0.0.1 into the window which asks for your news server name. If you have never used a proxy prior to this, go to the screen displaying "News Server". In Agent 1.91 this will be Options > User and System Profile > User. Enter 127.0.0.1 for the server name. Click OK. The port is set in the Agent.ini file to 119, do not change that. Stunnel has already been configured to listen on port 119 anyway and to forward through port 563. Yes, you could change this port, but only do so if you know what you are about. Note: Stunnel can only be used with a news provider that offers a secure (NNTPS) connection (by default on port 563). For other news providers Stunnel is useless. For these less secure sites I suggest socksifying Agent, by dragging and dropping the Agent shortcut into FreeCap. Not nearly as secure, as your data will not be encrypted after it leaves the Tor network on its way to the News provider. It costs no more to subscribe to a secure news provider than it does to one that does not offer an encrypted connection. So why choose anything less? Each of these four programs, Stunnel, FreeCap, Privoxy and Tor accepts connections from either your Web browser, into Privoxy and on to Tor, or from your News client into Stunnel, socksified by FreeCap and again on to Tor. Many programs can be socksified, not just those mentioned. The procedure is exactly the same, just drag and drop the shortcut of the program to be socksified into Freecap. 44. How do I test these are all working? Let's check the Web first. Start Privoxy (which by default normally starts with Windows). Open your browser and input: http://p.p/ You should see the Privoxy main page with the following: "This is Privoxy 3.0.3 on localhost (127.0.0.1), port 8118, enabled." If you see that, be assured you have accessd via Privoxy. If you see "p.p. could not be found, please check the name and try again." You are definitely not accessing via Privoxy. Go back through the above and check everything very carefully. Note: This is an internal test, not via the Web. It just proves that Privoxy was invoked to display that page from its own folder, which you will see displayed if you click on "View and change the current configuration" You will then see a clear display of all the configuration settings. Do not change anything unless you have a backup file and know what you are doing. Let's assume your Web browser is functioning as it should and you see the p.p. page displaying the confirmatory message. You should now test your news reader client. 45. How do I test my news connection is anonymous? Open FreeCap and click on the Stunnel icon in the FreeCap Window. Without opening Tor at this stage, start your news client. As a small precaution ensure you are in an appropriate newsgroup and attempt to download its headers. You should see connecting to 127.0.0.1 displayed on the lower taskbar in Agent or wherever in the version you are using, followed by error reported by Winsock driver. Good. This proves Stunnel was attempting to connect to Tor which is offline of course, thus no connection was possible. Now start Tor. Try again. Hopefully this time you will have more success and it should connect to the news server and start downloading headers. Note: It can sometimes take a considerable time to connect when using the Tor network. This is normal, but means patience is a virtue here. Go to a multimedia group and start to download a large file. While the download is in progress, close Tor. You should see an immediate error about connection to server closed unexpectedly. Good. Re-start Tor. Re-establish the connection with the server and start over. This time close FreeCap. Notice the download will continue. Do not panic! It is still accessing via Tor. Prove this for yourself by closing Tor and notice the download again stops immediately and there is the same Winsock error. However, do not normally close any of these programs until you are ready to go offline. Always close the news reader first to ensure no data is being accessed which might just possibly jump across and appear in the clear. The usual way to open each of these programs is go online with your ISP. Open Freecap, start Stunnel from within FreeCap. Open Tor, then last of all open your news reader. Test the system from time to time to satisfy yourself all is as it should be. Closing down is the reverse of this procedure. If you have got this far, you have succeeded in creating a secure and truly anonymous network connection for both your browser and your Usenet posting/downloading. Note: It is imperative that Stunnel be started only from within FreeCap and thus be socksified. Otherwise it will simply connect directly with your news provider, bypassing the Tor proxy network. Certainly it is an encrypted connection but totally useless from an anonymity point of view. Your ISP will know exactly where you are connected. Your news server could also log your ISP address! 46. What if no exit server exists on Tor with port 563 (or 119) enabled? Unfortunately this might very well happen occasionally. Because of abuse or over-use (what is the difference?), admins are reluctant to open ports to Usenet. Of course, if you are a server, you have this option. But be aware, it might attract very heavy traffic through your computer as others find it open. Alternatively, check the box to ensure you are handling only traffic between Tor servers, in other words become a middleman server. If you do experience a problem one alternative is to subscribe to a Secure Shell (SSH) host, such as Cotse, Find.Not or Privacy.Li. There are others. I have only had experience with Privacy.Li. Rarely had a problem. Their servers seem very reliable. But using any of these services will add overhead and therefore slow things up considerably. Of course if all you want is to access the privacy groups you can configure your stunnel.conf file to include: [BANANA_NNTPS_563] accept = 119 connect = tyrndfbdb2x6g3vg.onion:563 delay = no This is Banana's hidden service. Because it is a hidden service, it does not rely on any Tor exit server having ports 119 or 563 enabled. Note that only a very few news groups, those concerned with privacy are available through Banana. Panta offers a similar service, also with just a few news groups. Both are useful for posting to news:alt.anonymous.messages If you would prefer to subscribe to a Secure Shell host, then you need to use Putty as the SSH client. Putty is here: http://www.tucows.com/preview/195286.html You will still need Stunnel to allow the NNTPS (encrypted) connection into your news provider and FreeCap to act as a bridge between Stunnel and Tor. Tor is the socks proxy that hides your true IP from the Secure Shell host server. As Putty will channel everything through port 22, you will have a lot more choice of exit servers with Tor. See the above example stunnel.conf file. The sequence is: Agent > Stunnel > Freecap > Tor > SSH server > news server (or wherever). This is the route to go for the strongest anonymity. It is especially recommended for hard anonymous posting to Usenet. For lurking, the requirements are not as critical and it is sufficient to just go Agent > Stunnel > Freecap > Tor > news server. Contrast that with the usual newby connection of Agent > news server, or worse, Outlook Express > server. 47. How do I configure Putty? Open Putty. Load one of your SSH servers, but do not yet open the connection. Go down left hand column to Proxy. Click on Socks5 Enter 127.0.0.1 into Proxy Hostname and 9050 into Port. Click on Yes for "Do DNS name lookup at Proxy end." Go down to Tunnels. Remove your existing news server which will be using port 119. Input 563 for local port. Then input "secure.news.easynews.com:563" (or whatever name your news provider has assigned you) in the destination host box (without the quotes) and click on ADD. Your entry will then look something like this: L563 secure.news.easynews.com:563 Go back up to the opening screen in Putty and click on Save. Note: Despite suggesting Easynews in the above examples, I am not endorsing them as a news server. I prefer Meganetnews these days. 48. Can I post binaries anonymously to Usenet with this system? Absolutely. If you choose to use Agent, it will always use your news provider as the posting host. This is why I recommended you subscribe anonymously to this news provider - see further down regarding anonymous subscriptions. If you are into heavy posting then you should use Power Post or something similar that allows you to choose whole folders of files for posting. If you use Quicksilver for posting to Usenet it will always use one of the mail2news gateways. All data from your desktop is encrypted through to the first remailer and then on through the Mixmaster remailers and onto Usenet. The one and only down side is that the anonymous remailer network does not readily accept large files, such as binaries. Do not try and post as attachments, better to write it into the body of the message, if possible. Agent does this by default, even when you use its attachment feature. To post binaries, use Agent or Power Post or similar and post via your socksified Stunnel and Tor via your SSH server using Putty. A warning: If you post illegal material, you may find your anonymous account closed without warning and no possibility of any refund! Of course no such opportunity exists when you channel through the remailer network, which is precisely why so many choose to use it. 49. what about sending Email? I recommend Quicksilver. Quicksilver now supports a direct route through to Tor, providing you specify it. To ensure this go > Tools > POP Accounts > Proxy > input 127.0.0.1 in the Proxy Server window and 9050 in the Proxy Port window and choose 5 for Socks Level from the drop down options. Obviously, you must also input your POP3 userid and password in the POP Accounts section. There is no need to worry about socksifying it through Stunnel and FreeCap. Here are sample templates for this. Just copy and paste them into a Quicksilver template. This one is for Usenet, name it Panta-news: Fcc: outbox Tor: 127.0.0.1:9050,4a; nowhere.invalid; Host: panta-rhei.dyndns.org:2525 From: kwiktime < kwiktime@kwiktimemail.net> From: urnym.goes.here Chain: panta,*,*,*; copies=2 References: To: mail2news_nospam@anon.lcs.mit.edu, mail2news_nospam@freedom.gmsociety.org Newsgroups: X-No-Archive: yes X-Hashcash: Subject: ...and this one is for Email, name it Panta-Email: Fcc: outbox Tor: 127.0.0.1:9050,4a; nowhere.invalid; Host: panta-rhei.dyndns.org:2525 From: kwiktime < kwiktime@kwiktimemail.net> From: urnym.goes.here Chain: panta,*,*,*; copies=2 To: X-Hashcash: Subject: Notice that in both cases truly excellent anonymity is assured because in addition to the anonymity offered by Tor, your messages are further anonymized by passing across the Mixmaster remailer network. It should be truly impossible for your ISP to be able to even discern that you are posting or sending Emails. This is because you are not using your ISP's SMTP server to sendmail or to post. Hashcash is a requirement for panta-rhei, banana and dizum. Without the Hashcash token your message will be either randomnly sent to another remailer or lost. To use Hashcash you must get the Hashcash zipped file from here: http://www.panta-rhei.dyndns.org/downloads/ Unzip and install in a convenient folder. After installation go > Start > Programs > Universal Hashcash Minter and copy or drag and drop the shortcuts shown into your desktop, or wherever. Now all you need to do is click on the shortcut to mint tokens, copy one of these tokens to the clipboard so you can paste it into the header of your Quicksilver template. Then delete that token from the list of availables. Hashcash is being forced on remailer admins to help minimize junk mail. Without it, some might simply close. We all benefit from the remailer network and this is the price we have to pay for this service. To read more about Hashcash go here: http://www.hashcash.org/ A further refinement when using Quicksilver is to ensure that when you ask it to update the remailer listing, it always uses Tor. To ensure this, on the Tool Bar go > Remailer Documents > Proxy > in Proxy Host type 127.0.0.1 and Port 9050 and Socks Level 5. 50. Why is the remailer network so secure and anonymous? Although not perfect (nothing is), it does offer a level of anonymity well above and beyond what simple anonymous services (such as Hotpop) offer. It uses the Mixmaster remailers and has protocols to ensure your messages are very difficult to trace and decrypt. Remember, by using Quicksilver in the recommended way, you are not just using Mixmaster, but also using the Tor network which then sends all data on to the Mixmaster remailer service. Mixmaster is the type II remailer protocol and the most popular implementation of it. Remailers provide protection against traffic analysis and allow sending email anonymously or pseudonymously. Mixmaster consists of both client and server installations and is designed to run on several operating systems including but not limited to *BSD, Linux and Microsoft Windows. It does not use PGP, but RSAREF with its own keys and key formats. In the above cases, this anonymity is further reinforced by using the Tor network to anonymize you from the panta-rhei first remailer in the Mixmaster network. Double anonymity - excellent. On the horizon is a new remailer system called Mixminion. It is available now, but only as a beta service, so by all means experiment, but be careful. 51. How do I receive Email with Quicksilver? You can set up Quicksilver to look for Emails on any POP server such as Fastmail.fm or hotpop.com. All your mail is then recovered via the Tor network which helps you remain anonymous. Go > Tools > POP Accounts > Proxy > 127.0.0.1 for Proxy Server, 9050 for Port and Socks level 5. Ignore the two lower lines. This will route your Email path through Tor. You can choose to ensure that quicksilver only downloads PGP encrypted mail and to delete or leave on the server. Very flexible. 52. What about P2P and IRC? P2P using eMule or whatever is very risky from a privacy view point, unless you know what you are doing. I believe some have used it in conjunction with Find.not, but you will have to do your own research about this. I am sorry I cannot help as I have never tried it. The Tor Website claims you can use Tor for IRC and IM, but again, I have never used Tor in this fashion myself. 53. How do I get access to the premium (paid for) services? Apply on their sites. But always access via Tor and ensure you subscribe anonymously. The easiest way is by means of a prepaid Debit Card. 54. I want a Pre-paid Debit Car, how and where do I get one? Go here: http://www.money-around-the-world.com/ But only after you have configured your browser to route via Tor - most important this! They will accept many forms of payment. E-Gold is my preferred way using two different E-gold accounts back to back. Why? Because it is much more difficult to do a back trace. The Debit Card is acceptable to many more web sites, especially news providers, than E-gold. Note this card is solely for Net use. It is a virtual card. You get Emailed the card details, you do not receive a physical card through snail mail. Thus the name and address you supply need only match the name and address you have used when creating your second E-gold account. Naturally, this is the same address you must use when using your card to subscribe to a Web site. But this name and address is your choice! If in the United States, the Zip code must match your choice of address. But so far as I can tell, that is the only check that is made. Just take an address out of the phone book, but change the name and street to something innocuous. Of course the Email address you offer, must be accurate, secure and most importantly, anonymous. 55. Are there any disadvantages to this type of card? Cost. They charge you 50 US Dollars, plus 6 percent of the value you wish to load into the card. At the end of the year, you need to re-apply for another. It can only be used for Web purchases. Its truly big advantage is it can be purchased anonymously. No online identity checks or credit checks and no need to offer a genuine postal address. But be certain to use an accurate and anonymous Email address. 56. What about funding my E-gold account? This can be a disadvantage if you choose a market maker unwisely. Some will want to identify you as per the latest Government homeland security bills. However, if you choose an Asian market maker, you can pay directly into one of their branches with a fake identity. Remember this is your initial E-gold account. The name you use must be different to your second E-gold account. The second E-gold account receives its funding by you transferring money from one account to another. To E-gold it would seem as if you were sending money to someone else with no connection with you. Always use Windows Washer between accessing these accounts, to ensure there can be no connection between them by E-gold's use of cookies. 57. What is so bad about MS Internet Explorer? MSIE is a dangerous program designed by MS to allow remote servers to access your computer's registry. Although designed for use by MS to allow easy updating of the Windows Operating System, this feature could be used by any site to access your IP address, even your machine ID and your personal Credit Card details or worse, far worse, your saved passphrases. This can be done even if you have logged onto a site through a chain of proxies. In other words Microsoft Internet Explorer is an absolute no-no as far as anonymity is concerned. Be wary also of Windows Media Player. It creates a unique ID number in the form of a 128-bit GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) which will uniquely identify your computer to the world at large. It is stored in the Windows Registry here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WindowsMedia\WMSDK\General\UniqueID This ID number can be retrieved by any web site through the use of JavaScript. Hence the reason why it MUST be disabled. The ID number is called a supercookie because it can be retrieved by any web site. This supercookie can be retrieved by any site to track you and web sites can share this information with each other, allowing them to create a sophisticated profile about your Internet usage. Worse, cookie blockers cannot block its use! The easy way to fix the problem is in Windows Media Player > Tools > Options > Player. In the "Internet settings" section, uncheck the box next to "Allow Internet sites to uniquely identify your Player." Or you can ensure that Windows Media Player is not enabled at all. To do this go Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Set Program Acess and Defaults > Custom > clear the button for both Real Player (another bad one) and Windows Media Player and also clear the button where it says "Enable access to this player" for both of them. I choose both of the above methods as I believe in belts and braces when it comes to privacy. 58. Surely all this is totally over the top for the majority of users? It is certainly over the top for 99 per cent of users for 99 per cent of the time. If, however, you are the one in a hundredth and you do not much like the idea of being at risk for 1 per cent of the time, then no, it is not over the top at all. In any case, using these tactics helps create smoke which in turn helps protect those who really do need all the protection and security they can get. Remember this Faq is intended to help many different people. Some may be living in deprived conditions, in countries where human rights abuses are a daily fact of life. Remember, there are far more undemocratic countries, than democratic ones. 59. What about backing up my Data? Create another encrypted container using TrueCrypt on an external hard drive. Open this partition and copy some innocuous data from your normal plaintext drive. Now close this container and create a hidden container, following the instructions in the documentation that comes with TrueCrypt. Now copy all your secret data across into this secret container. Restoring is just as simple. Just open the secret container and copy into your DCPP partition. 60. Are there any other hints? A few items that may be of interest if you run Windows XP, although not of any value as snoop protection. To make your system run faster do this: Right-click on the Start menu button > Properties > Start Menu > Classic Start menu > Customize > Advanced Start > scroll down to "Show Small Icons in Start menu" and uncheck the box. Click OK, again OK. Now right-click on your Desktop > Properties > Appearance > effects. Uncheck everything. Click OK in the Display Properties dialog and OK again. You have just got rid of much of the Windows kludge. It will run faster and will seem more enthusiastic about everything. A further small improvement in securing your hard drive is to disable Write Behind Disk Cache, if allowed. My version of Windows XP Pro does not now allow it. If yours does, do this: go > Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Disk Drives - show devices > open the appropriate disk > Policies > Uncheck Enable write caching on the disk. Click OK, close the boxes. And that's it! Write behind disk caching is just another kludge thing from Windows. Theoretically it will speed things up, but at the cost of causing more program crashes and certainly to reduce your security, so disable it. Windows Vista insists on NTFS files. Thus it is presently impossible to create a hidden OS using Vista. I suspect Securstar are well aware of this and are taking steps to work around this drawback. ............................................................... That's it. I hope this Faq has been of some help to you. I am aware that this Faq has grown over the years and will seem very daunting to someone new to the Net. My suggestion is to take it one step at a time. Experiment with PGP. Generate a few keys, test them out by sending Email to yourself. Only when you understand what you are doing should you then go on to the next step. I would suggest this might be by investing in a new hard drive and experiment with encrypting it using DCPP. Once this has been successful, attempt to clone it and then finally to encrypt your hidden OS within it. Only then should you try installing the files required for anonymity and privacy. Again, take it one step at a time. Do not over-reach yourself. Despite my attempts at thoroughness, this Faq still falls woefully short of a truly comprehenisve explanation of all that is required for true Net privacy and anonymity. Hopefully individuals will take time to read and learn more as they go along. I have received several Emails from individuals who tell me they have encountered various problems trying to follow my Faq. Basically, it appears that some machines just do not like DCPP. Dell is one such brand. From what I have learnt, it seems impossible to create a hidden drive. In some cases, not even on Drive C. However, some success was achieved following my suggestion to use the ER disk to attempt to boot into the hidden disk instead of relying on the disk's MBR (Master Boot Record) after cloning. Do the same whenever you wish to boot into the hidden drive. In another incidence it seemed beneficial to switch off the machine altogether before attempting a re-boot. Yet another ploy was to reduce the size of the DCPP drive to just below 30 Gigs. A larger drive caused boot errors. No idea what is going on, but if you are having similar problems, try one or more of these suggestions. They may help. My key is on the key servers. This is my key fingerprint: F463 7DCB C8BD 1924 F34B 8171 C958 C5BB Remember, anybody can call themselves by my Nic, but there can only be one key fingerprint like the above - mine. It thus ensures you are reading a Faq prepared by me and no one else. Links to items specifically mentioned or recommended in the Faq: DCPP: http://www.securstar.com TrueCrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/ Putty: http://www.tucows.com/preview/195286.html or here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html Stunnel is used for NNTP secure connections to your news provider. Stunnel requires the executive file plus 2 others. Stunnel: http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html stunnel-4.05.exe stunnel-4.05.exe.asc (digital signature file optional but recommended) OpenSSL Libraries (required files - scroll down the page: libssl32.dll libeay32.dll libssl32.dll.asc (optional) libeay32.dll.asc (optional) Privoxy Home page: http://www.privoxy.org/ Tor: http://tor.freehaven.net/ Quicksilver: http://www.quicksilvermail.net/ Mixmaster: (required by Quicksilver) can be downloaded after installing Quicksilver, just go > Window > Update Wizard and follow the onscreen steps POP Email services: http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_pop.htm Hashcash Zip file: http://www.panta-rhei.dyndns.org/downloads/ Hashcash site: http://www.hashcash.org/ Kremlin: http://kremlinencrypt.com/download.php Wipeutil: http://short.stop.home.att.net/freesoft/filutil2.htm Windows Washer is here: http://www.webroot.com E-Gold: http://www.e-gold.com (CAUTION: Don't use anymore! Indicted in the US, no more privacy) SupraGold: http://www.supragold.com Virtual Debit Cards: http://www.money-around-the-world.com/ Privacy.Li: http://www.privacy.li Agent: http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php Zonealarm: http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp Other links that might be of interest: UUDeview: http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/ Jstrip: http://www.davidcrowell.com/ BLJoin: http://www.all4you.dk/FreewareWorld/links.php?id=8866 (Recommended to decode and join binary files) SSL Proxy info: http://www.jestrix.net/tuts/sslsocks.html#intro WinHex: http://www.winhex.com/winhex/order.html. (Will show you what is on your hard drive) ACDSee: http://www.acdsystems.com/english/products/acdsee/index Thumbs Plus: http://www.cerious.com VuePro: http://www.hamrick.com News Providers: http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/providers/ Freenet: http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ Nym remailers: nym.alias.net, home page: //www.lcs.mit.edu/research/anonymous.html Anon.efga.org, home page: http://anon.efga.org/ In case you need convincing: http://www.gn.apc.org/duncan/stoa_cover.htm Useful programs: Partition Magic: http://www.powerquest.com/ FSRaid: http://www.fluidstudios.com/fsraid.html HJSplit: http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/ Mastersplitter: http://www.tomasoft.com/mswin95.htm PowerPost: http://www.cosmicwolf.com/ Quickpar: http://www.pbclements.co.uk/QuickPar/ SmartPar: http://www.smr-usenet.com/tutor/smartpar.shtml WinAce: http://www.winace.com/ WinRAR: http://www.rararchiver.com/ YProxy: http://www.brawnylads.com/yproxy/ Media Player Classic: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/ Some anonymity sites: http://www.worldnet-news.com/software.htm http://www.skuz.net/potatoware/index.html http://www.skuz.net/potatoware/jbn/index.html http://packetderm.cotse.com/ http://www.cotse.com/refs.htm http://freeyellow.com/members3/fantan/pgp.html http://www.all-nettools.com/privacy/ http://Privacy.net/ http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/3969/gotcha.html http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/links.html http://www.skuz.net/potatoware/privacy.txt Other additional useful sites: Beginner's Guide to PGP: http://www.stack.nl/~galactus/remailers/bg2pgp.txt PGP for beginners: http://axion.physics.ubc.ca/pgp-begin.html#index Faq for PGP Dummies: http://www.skuz.net/pgp4dummies/ The PGP Faq: http://www.cryptography.org/getpgp.txt The SSH home page: http://www.ssh.com/products/ssh/ Anonymous Posting: http://www.skuz.net/Thanatop/contents.htm Anonymity Info: http://www.dnai.com/~wussery/pgp.html Nym Creation: http://www.stack.nl/~galactus/remailers/nym.html General info: http://www.stack.nl/~galactus/remailers/index-pgp.html Revision 21.4                  Copyright Since 1998 All rights reserved News4u2