Virtual Anonimity – What? Why? When? How?
- Anonymity online involves hiding one's true identity and maintaining a false identity to reduce the chances of having one's online activities correlated back to the person. - There are many reasons why someone may want to be anonymous online, such as to perform virtual attacks, mislead publications, protect consumer privacy, avoid public scrutiny, or promote freedom of expression. - Achieving anonymity can be done through various techniques across "waves" such as using proxies, prepaid cards, public WiFi networks, TOR, SSL encryption, Linux with MAC address changing, I2P networks, secure chat programs, disabling plugins and scripts, using fresh identities with wiped and encrypted virtual machines, and advanced tunneling methods. However, true
Virtual Anonimity – What? Why? When? How?
- 1. Virtual Anonymity What? Why? When? How? Andrei Avădănei Web Developer, Security enthusiast, Blogger www.worldit.info @AndreiAvadanei +AndreiAvadanei
- 2. Anonymity ... - is an art - and become a virtual lifestyle - is trying to hide an maintain a false identity - reducing the chance to correlate the identity with the man behind - use communication channels difficult to be sniffed - it's NOT bulletproof!!!
- 3. Reasons? - perform virtual attacks (random or not) - mislead online publications - protect the privacy of consumers - avoid limelight (obscurantism or pseudoanonymity) - promote freedom of expression - and many others!
- 4. How to?
- 5. First wave... - public & private proxies - prepaid cards - public WIFI networks - TOR, tunneling - SSL - encrypted chat
- 6. Second wave... - linux + mac changer - i2p2.de + tor-socks - tor-socks + wget - noscript for theory of scripts tracing - no java, adobe etc.
- 7. Third wave... - fresh identity - wipe drive + 3 times encryption + VM encrypted + fake OS - change MAC + firewall - pidgin encryption or other + SSL + PGP - disable browser plugins, Java, Reader - NanoStationM - tunneling + RDP (ccleaner + remove event viewer) - wipe drive (few times) - forgot identity
- 8. But! - Anonymity is a technique of hardening the discovery of virtual identity - We are humans - At some point we break down - Think twice if it's really worth!
- 10. Questions?