Calling Puter Geeks

[eastcoast_bsc]

OK maybe I am missing something. CIA Director George Patreus and his Mistress were purported to have used "sophisticated methods to hide their IP addresses. But the FBI was able to catch her IP address.

They used a method that terrorists and spooks use. They create a drop box. Which is simply an e-mail account o file they both have access to. If it an e-mail account, the mail is never sent, but can be read from the draft box or if it is a file, they would both have access to it and communicate without allegedly leaving an IP trail.

My question to fellow Geeks, would a TOR server be safer ? Or does the GOVT. have a backdoor to them ? The methods they chose seemed sort of juvenile, and I thought that the head of the CIA would be more sophisticated. It leaves me blown away. I am almost embarrassed to think that I would be more secure and hide my tracks.



https://www.torproject.org/

 

[MikeK]

I don't know the answer to your questions because I'm cool and I like girls, not video games....

....but I'm not shocked that Patreus didn't know a lot about cyber security on the local level. That was never really his job, he's spent the last 25 years being an administrator, not a technician, engineer or scientist.

 

[pgp_protector]

So much depends on what they're allowed to do on the computers.
If they're not locked down, Tor might of been a better solution.
Though I'd use a USB Bootable Live Linux with Tor that way nothing is left on the computer. But you can only do that if the Hardware allows booting from external devices, and a good IT Department would prevent that on office computers.

But add to that some good encryption software (Also ran from the USB Drive) and oh I don't know, NOT USING WORK COMPUTERS OR WORK NETWORK

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

So much depends on what they're allowed to do on the computers.
If they're not locked down, Tor might of been a better solution.
Though I'd use a USB Bootable Live Linux with Tor that way nothing is left on the computer. But you can only do that if the Hardware allows booting from external devices, and a good IT Department would prevent that on office computers.

But add to that some good encryption software (Also ran from the USB Drive) and oh I don't know, NOT USING WORK COMPUTERS OR WORK NETWORK

I was about to mention a USB, but not necessarily Linux. One can easily access the Bios, we never lock them down and I work in IT. Or you use the bootable USB at a neutral location.

Maybe I romanticize the Spooks, but it seems they should have known better. ????

 

[Fish and Bread]

Someone in his position probably assumed that his traffic was at least being casually monitored as a matter of routine. Maybe not at a level that would really get into the contents of e-mails or details, but maybe just in a casual way that would look for "red flags" in terms of the type of traffic that was coming through (For example, to detect if something on his computer was routinely sending something to a KGB server, or whatever the Russian intelligence agency is called these days, because it had been compromised by a specialized piece of Russian malware, or anything along those lines, but to not check on the details if his computer was doing something like contacting ESPN's servers, which would be assumed to be benign.).

The second he'd start using proxy servers or TOR servers or whatever, even if they shield him better from people seeing details of his communications, that might instantly send a red flag up that he's hiding something, and could trigger an investigation into whether or not he'd been compromised in some way. So, assuming that's the way they operate and assuming that he knew that (And you'd expect he would), he might have been intentionally using a less secure method of communication so as not to send up such a red flag. Without an active investigation on-going, maybe standard procedure is not to read personal e-mails and that sort of thing if the nature of the traffic looks non-suspicious-- i.e. "Oh, the General is using a personal Gmail account in the clear, no big deal there, probably just chatting with friends".

Another possibility is that the technical details of exactly what he was doing to avoid getting caught and how he was caught are being altered for public consumption. Intelligence agencies probably don't want the general public worldwide to know exactly what they can crack and what they can't, what triggers investigations, how they conduct such investigations, and so on and so forth. It'd make sense to "rewrite" the details so that you're not revealing something the entire world doesn't already know, and simply telling them something they already do know- which is that Gmail is not exactly designed with privacy in mind, and that the government pretty much has open access to it.

It's entirely possible that the General *was* doing a bunch of complex things to hide his communications with his mistress, and that those details are all classified for reasons of national security (i.e. it'd impede future investigations if people knew what methods were used to hide things and which of those methods were crackable by investigative agencies). So you put out a story about G-mail instead that conveys the general point of what happened to the public without compromising national security by getting too specific.

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

Well they now have to pay the fiddler. I think their security precautions were amateurish, and apparently so did the FBI.

I sometimes wonder if they are like the movies or are they just a clumsy bureaucracy. I get what your saying, but I don't think it is that sophisticated.

 

[Ad4m]

Personally I would never have used email in the first place. The best solution (instead of hiding your IP) which never really works anyway, I would create a secure TCP/IP tunnel to either send files (.txt) to another computer anonymously or I would link the tunnel to a secure back end of a basic terminal based (linux shell) Chat IM.

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

Personally I would never have used email in the first place. The best solution (instead of hiding your IP) which never really works anyway, I would create a secure TCP/IP tunnel to either send files (.txt) to another computer anonymously or I would link the tunnel to a secure back end of a basic terminal based (linux shell) Chat IM.

But can't they hijack the packets and decrypt ? Just saying. They say the drop box is as common method that various groups use. I also read that they use the TOR servers. That way they don't find the originating IP address.

But encryption makes sense, but if they know that a tunnel is set up, they then know something is being hidden. Just doing the Socratic on myself.

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

I just read that Google hosted the drop box and obviously they had to allow the Govt. to gain access.

 

[S.ilvio]

This whole 'affair' leaves me cold and disappointed in those who proport to Serve their country...

 

[Ad4m]

But can't they hijack the packets and decrypt ? Just saying. They say the drop box is as common method that various groups use. I also read that they use the TOR servers. That way they don't find the originating IP address.

But encryption makes sense, but if they know that a tunnel is set up, they then know something is being hidden. Just doing the Socratic on myself.

You can easily encrypt the files with AES256, nothing will break that kind of encryption easily. Yes they could very well intercept the packets if they knew, but the golden rule is.. don't let them know in the first place

Sure they can trace IP addresses, but it is the evidence they want and they won't have a very good story with a bunch of almost unbreakable AES files. Of course there is also TrueCrypt.. plausible deniability.

 

[holyorders]

The most secure way for them to communicate would have nothing to do with anything IT. There are several pre-paid cellphones (like the "Go" phone) that they could of used and continued to replace (to prevent sniffing of the phones). Sadly this is how most drug deals are done in the US.

Anyway all this stuff is interesting because I am studying for my Comptia Security+ Certification.

 

[eastcoast_bsc]

You can easily encrypt the files with AES256, nothing will break that kind of encryption easily. Yes they could very well intercept the packets if they knew, but the golden rule is.. don't let them know in the first place

Sure they can trace IP addresses, but it is the evidence they want and they won't have a very good story with a bunch of almost unbreakable AES files. Of course there is also TrueCrypt.. plausible deniability.

Makes sense. I do mostly server and desktop support, that level, but I am working on my security and virtual server certs. I like security.

So I called a former friend and colleague , who works in security. He said that the TOR Server with encryption, preferably 256 Bit would be as good solution, another that had, I think three keys, sort of a tunneling protocol with encryption.

I just thought, that the head of intelligence would be a bit more astute.