Daily Archives: September 1, 2014

Guide to using the Tor Browser Bundle for secure communication
You can download the Tor Browser Bundle at: https://www.torproject.org/

By: Crypto Scriptorium

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Guide to using the Tor Browser Bundle for secure communication - Video

If you want to beef up and anonymize your Internet browsing experience as well, Tor Browser Bundle (free) is the way to go. The Tor network provides a way to browse anonymously.

The Tor Browser Bundle is a portable, self-extracting package which contains a special version of Firefox, along with an application for connecting to Tor. You extract the bundle, and double-click "Start Tor Browser." A connection window comes up and steps through an initialization sequence. You don't have to do anything; just wait a moment while the progress bar fills up. As soon as a secure connection with Tor is established, Firefox loads and you can start browsing.

When you connect to Tor, all of your Internet traffic is encrypted and routed through a complex network of anonymous nodes until it reaches its final destination. It's not 100% secure, but then again, no security solution is. Tor has been around since 2002, and has been field-tested in rough situations in Egypt and other oppressive regimes that restrict Internet access. It works.

Since Tor routes your data through so many layers and random endpoints, it's not exactly blazing fast. Then again, most of us don't require Tor as a necessary part of our daily browsing routines. For occasional use, it's an elegant solution that simplifies a complex security system down to a double-click.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software. This file is donationware; it is free to use, but the developer welcomes donations toward future development.

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Review: Tor Browser Bundle lets you browse in anonymity ...

Preserving your privacy on the net is no easy task nowadays with so many security risks and potential prowlers out there.

Tor Browser is a toolset that's designed for anyone who wants to improve their safety and security on the Internet. It can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. For business users, it means that confidential exchanges of information can be kept from prying eyes and for more general users, it means that ISPs, keyloggers and other types of malware can't track your activities easily.

It works by bouncing traffic around a distributed network of servers which it calls "onion routers" (hence the logo). The Tor Browser interface allows you to easily toggle it on and off based on when you need to go online anonymously - there's no need to restart your computer when you've done so. If you want, you can also choose from various proxy tunnels based on a world map which displays exactly where each one is located.

To check it's working, you can use the online "Tor detector" to see if you're surfing anonymously or not. Connection can take some time depending on how many users are logged onto the network at any one time but usually its very quick. The Tor onion logo turns from yellow to green in your taskbar when a successful connection has been made.

Tor is simple, well organized and effective tool for anyone worried about security or invasions of privacy online.

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Softonic - Tor Browser - Download

Editors' Note: You must be 17 years old to download this application. The download button opens the iTunes App Store, where you may continue the download process. You must have iTunes installed with an active iTunes account in order to download and install the software. This download may not be available in some countries.

by: Ben Markton on January 07, 2014

Tor Browser is designed to provide an added layer of security when browsing the Internet on your mobile device. Using proxy technology to keep your IP address and location secure, the app taps into the Tor browsing interface that many journalists, hackers, and academics use to protect their privacy online. From our tests, the proxies appear to work well, but the actual browser has issues of its own.

While the browsing experience with Tor did protect privacy and ensure an anonymous browsing experience, the actual Web surfing experience was hurt because of it. The setup time is long, requiring about 30 seconds or so to connect and ready itself for use. After this, the browser will often take a bit longer than other browsers to load Web pages, sometimes as much as twice the time needed by Safari. Combined with the often overseas IP addresses opening non-U.S. versions of sites, it can be a bit frustrating to get to your favorite sites and access content.

The core component of Tor Browser works as advertised and offers a secure, private browsing experience, but the browser built around that technology is not quite good enough to replace the other browsers on your device, at least not for quick reads of articles, e-mail checking, and other basic activities. It's an OK free app that could use some work on the usability side.

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Tor Browser for iOS - Free download and software reviews ...

Tor Browser is based off of the Firefox project, and is very similar in most aspect to the regular Firefox browser. The big difference though, is that all traffic is routed through Tor. This means you can be sure that your time spent browsing online is anonymous and safe.

The Tor Project is an open source project that was created to help people browse the Internet safely. This has been used in a wide variety of aplications, ranging from helping bypass firewalls in countries like China to ensuring safe communications between diplomats. But with the increasing pressure on everyone to keep basic online browsing private from markters, governments, and other snoops, it is starting to be more commonly used in everyday life for many people.

Tor works by channeling your traffic through a multi-step encryption across a globally-distributed servers. This means that not only your identity is completely hidden from the website/onlien service you are trying to connect to, it is close to impossible for anyone to intercept and read the communication en route.

With Tor browser, you can now get all of the powerful security in Tor, but with the ease of a common web browser. If you are interested in learning more about the Tor network and how it works, we highly recommend reading through their explanation.

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Browse Anonymously, Browse Safely - The App Center

As the acting cybersecurity chief of a federal agency, Timothy DeFoggi should have been well versed in the digital footprints users leave behind online when they visit web sites and download images.

But DeFoggiconvicted today in Nebraska on three child porn charges including conspiracy to solicit and distribute child pornmust have believed his use of the Tor anonymizing network shielded him from federal investigators.

Hes the sixth suspect to make this mistake in Operation Torpedo, an FBI operation that targeted three Tor-based child porn sites and that used controversial methods to unmask anonymized users.

But DeFoggis conviction is perhaps more surprising than others owing to the fact that he worked at one time as the acting cybersecurity director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. DeFoggi worked for the department from 2008 until January this year. A department official told Business Insider that DeFoggi worked in the office of the assistant secretary for administration as lead IT specialist but a government budget document for the department from this year (.pdf) identifies a Tim DeFoggi as head of OS IT security operations, reporting to the departments chief information security officer.

The porn sites hes accused of usingincluding one called PedoBookwere hosted on servers in Nebraska and run by Aaron McGrath, who has already been convicted for his role in the sites. The sites operated as Tor hidden servicessites that have special .onion URLs and that cannot normally be traced to the physical location where they are hosted.

Although anyone could use the sites, registered users like DeFoggiwho was known online under the user names fuckchrist and PTasseatercould set up profile pages with an avatar, often child porn images, and personal information and upload files. The site archived more than 100 videos and more than 17,000 child porn and child erotica images, many of them depicting infants and toddlers being sexually abused by adults.

The FBI seized the sites in late 2012, after McGrath failed to secure his administrative account with a password. Agents were able to log in and uncover the IP address of the Nebraska server where he was hosting two of them. McGrath worked at the server farm, and hosted the third site from his home. The FBI monitored him for a year and after arresting him in November 2012 continued to operate his child porn sites secretly from a federal facility in Omaha for several weeks before shutting them down. During this time, they monitored the private communications of DeFoggi and others and engaged in various investigative techniquesto defeat the anonymous browsing technology afford by the Tor network and identify the real IP addresses of users.

These techniques successfully revealed the true IP addresses of approximately 25 domestic users who accessed the sites (a small handful of domestic suspects were identified through other means, and numerous foreign-based suspect IPs were also identified), prosecutors wrote in a court document. In March 2013, twenty suspects were indicted in Nebraska; followed by two others who were indicted the following August.

One of these techniques involved drive-by downloads that infected the computers of anyone who visited McGraths web sites. The FBI has been using malicious downloads in this way since 2002, but focused on targeting users of Tor-based sites only in the last two years.

Tor is free software that lets users surf the web anonymously. Using the Tor browser, the traffic of users is encrypted and bounced through a network of computers hosted by volunteers around the world before it arrives at its destination, thus masking the IP address from which the visitor originates.

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Federal Cybersecurity Director Found Guilty on Child Porn Charges

The former acting cybersecurity director for the US Department of Health and Human Services, Tim DeFoggi, was convicted yesterday on three child porn charges.

As reported byWired,DeFoggi is the sixth suspect to be caught by the FBI's Operation Torpedo, which used controversial methods of defeating the Tor anonymizing software in order to find child porn suspects.

One site frequented byDeFoggi wasPedoBook, hosted by Aaron McGratha Nebraska man who was convicted earlier for his role in the operations. The websites were only accessible to users who installed Tor on their browsers. DeFoggi used names such as "fuckchrist" and "PTasseater"to register on thesites, where he could view more than 100 videos and more than 17,000 child porn images.

The FBI seized McGrath's site in late 2012 after monitoring him for a year. Then they kept it up and running for several more weeks, gathering private communications from DeFoggi and other users. The FBI used "various investigative techniques to defeat the anonymous browsing technology afforded by the Tor network."

The techniques used include "drive-by downloads," in which a website installs malware on every visitor's computer.

Such a deployment "can be a bulky full-featured backdoor program that gives the government access to your files, location, web history and webcam for a month at a time, or a slim, fleeting wisp of code that sends the FBI your computers name and address, and then evaporates," explained Wired in an earlier piece on Operation Torpedo.

Having set up such atrap, FBI agents got to know DeFoggi better. Wired's Kim Zetter explains:

During chats DeFoggi described using Tor to access PedoBook early in the morning hours and between 4 and 6 pm. Among the evidence seized against him was pen register/trap trace data obtained from Verizon showing someone at his Maryland residence using Tor during these hours as well as the IP addresses used by an AOL account under the username ptasseater, which pointed to DeFoggis home.

When agents arrived at his home early one morning to execute a search warrant, they had to pry him from his laptop, which was in the process of downloading a child porn video from a Tor web site called OPVA, or Onion Pedo Video Archive. In addition to child porn images stored on his computer, authorities also found evidence of his Tor browser history, showing some of his activity at PedoBook and OPVA.

DeFoggi worked for the Department of Health and Human Services from 2008 until January of this year. He's scheduled to be sentenced in November.

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Cybersecurity official uses Tor but still gets caught with child porn