Anonymous File Sharing on the Darknet

Lance Henderson

Contents

Heinlein

Introduction

1. Low-Hanging Fruit & High-Hanging Fruit: The Many and the Few

2. Benefits of Anonymity

3. Tor Adversary Goals & Attacks

4. SHA1 values

5. Securing Your Hard Drive of Sensitive Documents

6. Don’t Talk to Cops

7. The Weakest Link: Human Fallibility & Ego

8. Social Media and the Anti-Anonymity Engines

9. Freenet Best Practices

Also by Lance Henderson:

Copyright 2019 by Lance Henderson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact lancehenderson7@gmail.com

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

Heinlein

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it should be good for him”

~ Robert Heinlein

Introduction

At the outset, this book makes some rather simple assumptions concerning your technical knowledge. For the purposes of expediency, we’ll assume that you know what an IP address is, as well as the difference between a peer-to-peer system like Emule and a torrent client like BitTorrent (not to be confused with Pirate Bay, as they are separate entities). While you certainly don’t have to be a programmer, it helps to have a basic understanding of how the binary bits travel across the internet, and how various agencies monitor those bits as a means of prosecuting/persecuting those that lazily refuse to conceal their online footprint. On that topic, there is nothing extraordinarily complicated about the tools that they use to exploit the weaknesses of anonymous applications.

Most detectives as well as record industry lawyers aren’t programmers either. What they use to catch downloaders and/or anti-government/environmental activists is no more complex than a carpenter using a hammer to drive a nail into a board. The training they require for using their own tools is laughably simple on the whole of it. Take your favorite photo editing application as an example. You may have used it hundreds of times, yet you are not a programmer. Would you say that using the program is obstructively difficult? Of course not. Most of the complex things take place under the hood, so to speak, as you are using it. The same is equally true of the programs law enforcement and government use to pursue tax evaders, counterfeiters, drug smugglers and the like. They hire programmers to develop a system that they can freely disperse to all agencies. Ease of use is their number one priority, as they want a program that their agents can be trained in as little time as possible. And since they have funding from the taxpayers, that means that they have a near endless supply of money with which to fine-tune and enhance said application. It is hard for private industry to compete with this, as they do not collect taxes. Profits are finite, and often unpredictable. Then there are the open-source programs that don’t charge for their applications at all. They are completely reliant on donations for the further development of their tools. Examples are Truecrypt, Freenet, Tor, various incarnations of torrent clients like BitLord, BitTorrent, and the like.

It should also be stated at the outset that agencies like the NSA as well as others are constantly trying to poke holes through anonymous, onion-routing programs like Tor and Freenet, trying to discover weaknesses and exploit them, much like the hacker group Anonymous does with its seemingly endless supply of bored script kiddies. It has been argued that this actually has beneficial properties in that it provides a virtual endless supply of beta testers with which to add further enhancements and fortifications to the code. However if there is one drawback to this argument, it is that adversaries is not likely to give the developers of anonymous systems any list of exploitive bugs it found in the process. Vulnerabilities are relayed to developers by users who wish to strengthen the anonymity of the system they use, and not by those who wish to destroy it. At least, that is usually not the intention. That said, it appears that full disclosure of investigations are often relayed in court documents. This is an advantage for those who are pro-anonymity.

It doesn’t always occur in such a fashion in anonymity-hostile places like Iran and China.

One

Low-Hanging Fruit & High-Hanging Fruit: The Many and the Few

Let’s perform a simple experiment and assume you live in a suburb or similarly crowded neighborhood. The weather is spectacular. People are water skiing, swimming, and even fly fishing. Now, remove all of your clothes, and then walk outside. How do you feel? Probably a bit uncomfortable. Now walk down the block with all of your valuables on full display to anyone within viewing distance. Putting aside the fact that you might be embarrassed to the core (and we’ll assume no alcohol is involved), how long do you think it would be before the police arrived to pick you up, or at the very least, ask you what the hell you’re doing walking nude in plain view of the public? That said, the police do not ask you such questions on p2p networks when they see something illegal going on. They setup a sting operation and try and dragnet as many people engaged in said activity as possible by casting that net far and wide long before making any public announcement to the media.

We don’t want to spend too much time on the basics, but nevertheless it is needed to differentiate low hanging fruit from high hanging fruit. When you use any kind of peer-to-peer file sharing application such as Bittorrent, Emule, Limewire, Bearshare and the like, you expose your IP address to anyone on the tracker. This is a numerical value that leads straight to your doorstep. If for instance, you decide to download the latest cd by Justin Bieber (perish the thought), you can be tracked if you are not using a vpn to mask your IP address. The kicker is that you can be tracked by anyone participating in the swarm and not just law enforcement. This includes the record industry, movie industry, government agencies as well as those who connect to the system via proxified IP address.

Torrenting presents its own unique problems in that, if you are based anywhere in the US or Canada, you can be sued for millions just for downloading a few songs. How do they find you? In order to download via torrents, you have to upload simultaneously. The person on the other hand can run a netstat command (and most times this is not even required) and see your IP address. From there, the lawyer can get a judge to issue a subpoena for ISP subscriber information which has your name and address. From there, it is relatively simple to initiate all manner of lawsuits or early-dawn raids in your direction.

Peer-to-peer systems by their very design encourage sharing. Most often, users are penalized with slower download speeds if they halt of lower the speed of their uploads. This is true not only with torrents, but also p2p clients like Emule.

So how does one get around being a low hanging fruit in this manner? The answer is simple: use anonymizing tools to mask your IP address, or don’t use p2p or torrents that could expose your IP address. This is not rocket science. Most p2p systems will actually let you see other IP addresses that you connect to. BitTorrent has this capability and if you have ever used it, you can even see the countries that connect to your line.

So, to summarize:

Low-Hanging Fruit = Those who persistently use peer-to-peer applications to exchange files without the use of public/private proxies, Tor, or other means of masking their identity.

High-Hanging Fruit = Those who use the Tor browser package, Freenet, I2P or similar tools to access either the web or the Freenet and I2P networks. Alternatively they can use proxies based in countries that are either hostile or have no extradition treated with the US, such as Iran, China and the like to hide their true IP location.

Identity thieves, spammers and police officers prefer to target low hanging fruit on the open web. It involves far less work, offers less risk of exposure as more tools can be used to sniff the connection, and often is the path of least resistance. It is a fact of life that most internet users will prefer the easy path to acquire or use their data/social media/finances rather than implement something that possesses a technical learning curve like Tor or Freenet.

Imagine a Chinese student who employs the use of bots on the World of Warcraft servers to mine skills/items he can later sell at some auction house. He can’t make a sizeable profit doing it manually by himself, so he uses programs that do it for him. Do his bots go after the more lucrative targets which drop rare, epic weapons and armor? No, of course not. At least not initially. It is much easier to target much smaller enemies and reap the rewards of farming those kills 24/7. This is how law enforcement works. They go after the small fish, as do identity thieves, spammers and the like. Naivety and gullibility go hand in hand when you are talking about millions of users who are not too tech-savvy with their internet connections.

The point of all of this is to encourage you to not be complacent in your internet habits. Don’t get into the mindset of thinking that since there are millions of people out there all doing the same thing you are, that you get into a “safety in numbers” mentality.

P2P busts by law enforcement are extremely lucrative for them. When all is said and done, the government reaps profits by targeting low hanging fruit. GPS requirements for various offenders, court costs, attorney fees, asset forfeiture (i.e. taking your house if you have a grow-op present), give them millions every year, and not just for things related to P2P sharing. Record companies also reap millions in assets every year for lawsuits that usually will settle out of court for the nominal fee of about $5000 per incident of sharing mp3s. If you’re one of those who absolutely insist on sharing audio online, it is highly recommended to subscribe to a premium Usenet service, as downloads are not monitored (uploads are however, but that is optional). Ten bucks a month is hardly a sacrifice when compared to a lawsuit worth tens of thousands.

Two

Benefits of Anonymity

The term “anonymity” in and of itself can be a bit of a misnomer not only in the blogosphere but in many online forums. If the identity of a poster can be “flipped” by a forum administrator, that is, exposed, then anonymity was never a factor at all. Most likely it was privacy that a forum offered, not anonymity. And as we know, privacy and anonymity are not interchangeable terms. When you join an online forum, most of the time you are assured a fair level of privacy by the admins and moderators. That is, until you profess allegiance to Al Queda, threaten suicide or admit to committing a federal crime such as murder, etc. At that point, all bets are off, and the moderators will almost certainly give your identity to the relevant authorities voluntarily. This also applies to those in democracy-hostile countries like China, Iran and the like, where criticizing the government could land one in hot water with authorities.

As social media seeks to personalize the online social experience, the drive to expose more and more personal information about its subscribers is increasing. There seems to be the mistaken notion that if you attach your real identity to a forum post, then that post carries more “weight” in whatever argument the poster is participating. Nothing could be further from the truth. Divulging such personal info publicly:

1. Destroys any privacy OR anonymity you previously had

2. Enables ad companies like Google, Bing and Yahoo to better target your profile with laser-targeted ads not only based on your purchase history, but your religious beliefs, political persuasion and even though related family members on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Guarantees that the information can never be satisfactorily retracted. Once it is posted on the internet, be it on forums, usenet, or blogs, it is there for the longevity of the internet.

The real question to ask is this: would you rather be engage in civil discourse with a person who reverts to ad hominem attacks and half-truths, but gives their real Facebook name and family relations, or someone who argues anonymously, but from a vantage point of logic accompanied by trusted sources that support his position? It seems that, like most democracies, we are doomed to fail if we listen to the throngs of social media users who seem to think you are more apt to be in the right if you expose your real name.

Anonymity strengthens logical arguments

Several news forums have over the past couple of years demanded its commenters to its news stories provide their real name. One such site was salemnews.com, who in 2011 took the viewpoint that using one’s real name would discourage personal attacks, and encourage a more civil discourse for all readers. However a majority of their readers vehemently disagreed with that policy. I can think of one good reason it was a terrible idea: the temptation to favor influential socialites over lowly peons would definitely be too great for the editors to resist. Further, today they may demand your name. Tomorrow, you are required to not only provide your real name, but your occupation, list of coworkers, friends, and dislikes, which may include all manner of political leanings that conflict with the moderators. Once that Pandora’s Box is opened, there is no closing it. Do you think FoxNews moderators are more trigger-happy with commenters who are politically left-leaning in their beliefs? Of course they are. And the same is true with the left-leaning CNN concerning libertarian/conservative-leaning commenters. Not only can their usernames and accounts be banned, but also their IP address. This of course isn’t possible if one uses the Tor network to make anonymous comments. One does not have to worry about persecution for their beliefs while using Tor. Brutal honesty it seems is on the side of anonymity, not in destroying one’s personal privacy at the whims of power-hungry editors who disrespect their reader’s right to privacy. Using your real identity certainly “elevates the discussion”…right into the editor’s “best commenters” list. Truth is sedated by social favoritism when people in charge of our privacy overstep the boundaries that we the taxpayers paved. To make matters worse, we can already see some websites aggregating every social media link into their news comment sections. Do you really want everyone on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and LinkedIn knowing every single thought you have on every news piece that gets delivered? How about your local politicians? Clergymen? Your Doctor?

Anonymity protects authors: Pseudonyms (pen names) protect an author’s privacy like no other mechanism can. Coupled with Tor’s ability to eliminate the author’s true IP address, he is free to write on any subject he feels needs illumination. On the Amazon marketplace for instance, many writers employ several pen names to preserve their anonymity. Some even use Tor each and every time they access the Amazon Kindle store. It may be that they do not want their competitors knowing their true identity in order to protect the privacy of their family. Or it may be that writers of erotica do not wish their real names exposed to friends, co-workers and family members.

Anonymity protects sources:

There are a multitude of examples throughout history where various sources of news were protected by anonymity. Without that anonymity, they could be prosecuted and imprisoned, or worse, retaliated against by political opponents. When an anonymous tipster wants to expose financial fraud, either involving tax funds or other illicit dealings, he does so in the faith that his trust will not be betrayed. Several hundred police websites across North America have “anonymous” tip sections of their websites. To add an extra layer to their security, users can use Tor, and rest confident in the knowledge that the police captain will not retaliate against an anonymous tipster involving his nephew who just so happens to be funneling drugs out of the station. Without the ability to use Tor, or other out-of-the-country proxies, one would inadvertently leave a trail right to their front door, all on account of their IP address that connected to the police website.

Anonymity protects free speech: In China, some use Freenet as well as Tor to send secret communiqués to each other, informing the proper news outlets of human rights abuses. However in the UK, a virtual army of surveillance cams adorn many streets with facial recognition abilities. In the US, Google CEO and social media advocate Eric Schmidt has publicly stated the difference between privacy and anonymity. Privacy in his view, was permissible. Anonymity however, was the modus operandi of terrorists, baby killers and monsters lurking in the closet.