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Ryan Lackey, Marc Rogers Reveal Inexpensive Tor Router Project At Def Con
An anonymous reader writes Ryan Lackey of CloudFlare and Marc Rogers of Lookout revealed a new OPSEC device at Def Con called PORTAL (Personal Onion Router to Assure Liberty). It "provides always-on Tor routing, as well as 'pluggable' transport for Tor that can hide the service's traffic signature from some deep packet inspection systems." In essence, PORTAL is a travel router that the user simply plugs into their existing device for more than basic Tor protection (counterpoint to PogoPlug Safeplug and Onion Pi). On the down side, you have to download PORTAL from Github and flash it "onto a TP-Link compatible packet router." The guys behind the device acknowledge that not many people may want to (or even know how to) do that, so they're asking everyone to standby because a solution is pending. The project's GitHub page has a README file that lists compatible models, with some caveats: "It is highly recommended to use a modified router. The modified MR11U and WR703N provide a better experience than the stock routers due to the additional RAM. The severe space constraints of the stock router make them very challenging to work with. Due to the lack of usable space, it is necessary to use an external disk to store the Tor packages. The stock router has only a single USB port, and the best option is to use a microSD in a 3G modem." (Note: Lackey is no stranger to helping people secure internet privacy.)
Your routers are well supported by OpenWRT, and that is the reason for a good chunk of your sales, but you're not without competition. Your routers could easily become the router of choice for geeks if you offered them with more RAM and flash memory, even if the stock firmware doesn't need it. 16MB flash and 128MB RAM shouldn't be that much more expensive, but more memory would make all the difference to a lot of people who find new uses for your products.
Don't trust the hardware itself.
Routers, specifically home routers, were a huge target of NSA attacks.
I'd highly assume the actual hardware itself is rigged,bugged, or worse.
How much you wanna bet "magical" packets delivered to it's ethernet port from the WAN could be interpreted specially to allow the machine to reply with packets of it's internal memory (passwords, ssh keys, tor keys, etc).
All you need a ethernet firmware that speaks to the CPU over DMA and reads out memory allowing the NSA to attack any OS running on top of that router.
Buy a non-router based piece of hardware and use that. You seriously cannot trust what you'll find inside a Linksys router people. The bug is below the software level so your fancy firmware does *nothing*.
i know *I* would never run an out-node.. i dont want the feds coming to my door due to what someone else was accessing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"It is highly recommended to use a router configuration we're not going to document or even provide you a link to".
The document implies that at least one modification is a flash and RAM upgrade - but they don't even provide links to details of this modification and/or whether any other techniques are needed (how do you populate the bootloader in the new flash? Or does the SoC itself have a built-in recovery mode?)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yes, let's put our trust in Chinese made hardware instead. No chance of backdoors or anything, right? Right??
“Before the Snowden leaks, about one percent of Internet traffic was SSL protected,” he said. “Now it’s about three percent.”
Is that a result of google, facebook and so on to use SSL in their fibers between datacenters, or can I trust I a statistic I haven't faked myself?
Privacy is a derived right and invokes unwritten rules of human nature such as judging other peoples actions. My freedom really should not be limited by your pea brained assessment of my actions or motives. Privacy is insidious and a bastion of cowards that are afraid their own morals won't stand up to scrutiny. No my freinds, I have the inarguable right to do whatever the hell I want to the point of death. The real debate should be whether the government should have the right to keep and bear arms rather than I. Governments really shouldn't be alllowed near guns, they have murdered a lot more innocent people than me, or my crackhead commie neighbor combined.
By extension they can do this to all your computing device(s). Better switch to microfilm dots on snail mail. Or look at RFC 2549. Encrypted of course.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Getting lots of people running Tor even if they don't need to, even if the implementation may not be the "best" possible, for various definitions of best, is that it dilutes the number of users using Tor for "bad" things.
I don't know what the percent of users of Tor are using it for the standard list of things the government needs to save us from, but you know that eventually the argument will get made, which owing to the nature of Tor will be almost impossible to disprove, that basically everyone using it is doing something illegal and thus running a node makes you an accomplice, and using Tor is probable cause for the government to come and search your stuff.
If that argument has not already been made in court you know it is only a matter of time before it is.
-jon
MORTAL (Modified Onion Router To Annul Liberty).
And it's a known fact in the blackhat world that tor is completely compromised by the NSA and CIA. The project receives direct funding through them.
I'm sure the "plugin" is designed to specifically help these said agencies too.
Then again Def con was long ago compromised by the CIA.. do real blackhats really still go to that shit?
Speaking as an attendee, I thought the neatest feature covered in the presentation itself that I haven't seen many articles covering this touch on was a rather ambitious development goal Marc Rogers spoke to for about the last 15 minutes of their talk at Defcon. In addition to all of the security features the firmware is capable of doing, as well as having the ability to enable/disable specific features based on your needs and limitations of whatever hardware you flash it onto, the team's long-term goal is for the router to have an engine that is capable of examining the wan side of it's connections and, based on the potential security risks it identifies on the connection, make smart recommendations about which specific features a user should be using to ensure maximum privacy. Having a large suite of tools available is awesome and all, but when you're talking about running it on a pocket-sized piece of hardware you're going to be limited by the amount of horsepower and on-board memory of the hardware pretty severely. Thus, having an engine that can make smart recommendations for non-technical people that have a strong need for this level of anonymity like journalists or political dissidents is an absolutely huge feature and IMO trumps everything else this project can do.
Jesus guys. .IT'S A FUCKING HONEYPOT.
Its a honeypot,
for filter
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