5 Online Privacy Tools You Can Start Using Now To Bypass NSA

[Berean]

5 Online Privacy Tools You Can Start Using Now To Bypass NSA Surveillance


Eliot Estep, collective-evolution



Now more than than ever, we need to be smart about how we communicate online. The NSA’s PRISM program is continuously collecting all of our personal data from the world’s top online services including Facebook, Skype, Google, and Apple. If we take no precautionary measures, we should assume that all of our communications are being stored and analyzed in real-time. This is a total violation of our privacy and it’s time we take back our online power and freedom by using some simple tools and expanding our technical awareness.



5 Online Privacy Tools You Can Start Using Now To Bypass NSA Surveillance



The ultimate goal of the NSA is nothing less than “total population control.” They want to know exactly how you live, what you think, what you’re interested in, what motivates you, who you associate with, what you really know, and what you are against. This occurs regardless if you have done anything wrong or not. Their motto and practice is simple: collect everything. This dragnet surveillance attempts to intercept all digital communications including emails, chat messages, phone conversations, video calls, text messages, browsing history, and more.



PRISM-Collection Details



As a result, we really need to be vigilant about our browsing habits and our approach to using the internet. It would be wise to reduce and eventually eliminate our usage of all compromised services, especially when sharing sensitive personal information. In the meantime, here are some helpful and easy-to-use tools that can greatly enhance your online privacy and digital integrity.



Search Anonymously



Use StartPage or DuckDuckGo for all your searches. They are both the world’s most private search engines, allowing you to search anonymously and securely. They do not collect or share any personal information about you, including your IP address. I recommend adding one or both of these search engines to your browser. StartPage even offers you one-click access to search results through a web proxy, giving you further anonymity.



Browse Anonymously



The easiest way to prevent anyone from learning your location and spying on your internet activity is by using the Tor Browser Bundle. The Tor network is run by privacy-conscious volunteers all around the world and is an extremely effective tool against network surveillance. Even the NSA doesn’t like it. Using Tor allows you to access sites that have been blocked by certain ISPs and countries and also to hidden parts of the internet. It is important not to use Tor for sites that personally identify you like Facebook or Gmail, as this defeats the purpose of anonymity. The Tor Browser will block browser plugins like Flash, Quicktime, etc as these can be tricked into revealing your IP address. So be aware that you may have to change your browsing habits to maximize the use of this powerful software.



Use a VPN



Another easy way to browse anonymously is by using a VPN (virtual private network). This essentially encrypts your connection and gives you an anonymous IP each time you browse. There are many VPN providers available but they are not all created equal. What’s important is that the company does NOT keep traffic logs, as these can be turned over to the NSA and other courts upon request. Therefore, I recommend using PrivateInternetAccess, where you can sign up completely anonymously using Bitcoins and other payment methods. Alternatively, here is a solid list of other seriously private VPN providers.



Chat Anonymously



One of the best apps for private, encrypted chats is Cryptocat. It can easily be added to your web browser and even your iPhone. The app offers individual or group chat, file sharing and even Facebook chat — all encrypted. Keep in mind that both users need to be using Cryptocat for encrypted chat to work properly over Facebook Messenger. Also note that using Cryptocat does not anonymize your connection, so you’ll have to mask your IP address using Tor or a VPN to be truly anonymous. Check this list for more secure instant messaging options. If you’re looking for Skype alternatives, I recommend checking out Jitsi or Linphone. See more voice & video chat options here.



Store & Share Files Anonymously



One of the most popular file storage services in the world is Dropbox and, unfortunately, they are a “targeted wannabe PRISM provider”, according to Edward Snowden. This means their services have been potentially compromised and cannot be trusted. Fortunately, there is a better alternative. SpiderOak is a tool that enables you to have completely private file storage, backup, and syncing across all your devices. They have a “Zero Knowledge” policy — which means even their servers do not have access to the plaintext contents of the data being stored. They do not store your password and everything is encrypted. SpiderOak has been recommended by Snowden himself as a secure alternative. All new users are offered 2GB for free, a generous starting point.



Email Anonymously



Everyone uses email and these can be the most revealing and compromising communications. Using providers like Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail and Yahoo virtually guarantees that your emails are being recorded and stored against your will. Therefore, it is important to consider switching to a privacy-conscious email provider. Additionally, it is recommended to learn how to use encrypted email by using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). Essentially, PGP uses public-private key cryptography, which allows you to send emails and files that only a trusted third party can open and view. You will need to generate a public and private key pair and have some technical knowledge to use it effectively. Here is an easy startup guide and there are some good tutorials on YouTube that can show you how to get started. There is a nice Chrome extension called Mailvelope that can integrate PGP with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo if you must continue using these. I also highly recommend using Enigmail if you use Thunderbird as an easy integrated PGP solution.



Useful Browser Plugins



All of these are available for Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers.



Adblock Plus – unblock annoying ads, including on Facebook and YouTube. The internet’s most popular browser extension.

DoNotTrackMe – a simple extension that blocks companies and websites from tracking you

HTTPS Everywhere – tries to force all sites to use an encrypted HTTPS connection

NoScript – Blocks active content and scripts so that you decide what to trust.

Self-Destructing Cookies – Immediately deletes cookies as soon as you close a tab or your browser. Extremely useful and customizable.



Keep in mind that these are all just tools that can assist us in maintaining our privacy and integrity online. They are not foolproof magic bullets and we must use them responsibly and effectively in order for them to work. Please continue to educate yourself on why privacy matters and spread the word to family and friends who can also benefit from this. If you have any more useful privacy tips, please share them in the comments below. We need to keep the internet open, free, and secure for all!



For a comprehensive list of verified privacy tools for all platforms, please visit PRISM-BREAK.org

[Berean]

Privacy-Conscious Email Services


Link here.

I'm using Safe Mail out of Israel; so far, I'm very pleased with it...and NO ADS!  

[PurplePuppy]

How the NSA Attacks Tor/Firefox Users With QUANTUM and FOXACID

The online anonymity network Tor is a high-priority target for the National Security Agency. The work of attacking Tor is done by the NSA's application vulnerabilities branch, which is part of the systems intelligence directorate, or SID. The majority of NSA employees work in SID, which is tasked with collecting data from communications systems around the world.



According to a top-secret NSA presentation provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, one successful technique the NSA has developed involves exploiting the Tor browser bundle, a collection of programs designed to make it easy for people to install and use the software. The trick identifies Tor users on the Internet and then executes an attack against their Firefox web browser.



The NSA refers to these capabilities as CNE, or computer network exploitation.



The first step of this process is finding Tor users. To accomplish this, the NSA relies on its vast capability to monitor large parts of the Internet. This is done via the agency's partnership with US telecoms firms under programs codenamed Stormbrew, Fairview, Oakstar and Blarney.



The NSA creates "fingerprints" that detect HTTP requests from the Tor network to particular servers. These fingerprints are loaded into NSA database systems like XKeyscore, a bespoke collection and analysis tool that NSA boasts allows its analysts to see "almost everything" a target does on the Internet.



Using powerful data analysis tools with codenames such as Turbulence, Turmoil and Tumult, the NSA automatically sifts through the enormous amount of Internet traffic that it sees, looking for Tor connections.



Last month, Brazilian TV news show Fantastico showed screenshots of an NSA tool that had the ability to identify Tor users by monitoring Internet traffic.



The very feature that makes Tor a powerful anonymity service, and the fact that all Tor users look alike on the Internet, makes it easy to differentiate Tor users from other web users. On the other hand, the anonymity provided by Tor makes it impossible for the NSA to know who the user is, or whether or not the user is in the US.



After identifying an individual Tor user on the Internet, the NSA uses its network of secret Internet servers to redirect those users to another set of secret Internet servers, with the codename FoxAcid, to infect the user's computer. FoxAcid is an NSA system designed to act as a matchmaker between potential targets and attacks developed by the NSA, giving the agency opportunity to launch prepared attacks against their systems.



Once the computer is successfully attacked, it secretly calls back to a FoxAcid server, which then performs additional attacks on the target computer to ensure that it remains compromised long-term, and continues to provide eavesdropping information back to the NSA.



Exploiting the Tor browser bundle



Tor is a well-designed and robust anonymity tool, and successfully attacking it is difficult. The NSA attacks we found individually target Tor users by exploiting vulnerabilities in their Firefox browsers, and not the Tor application directly.



This, too, is difficult. Tor users often turn off vulnerable services like scripts and Flash when using Tor, making it difficult to target those services. Even so, the NSA uses a series of native Firefox vulnerabilities to attack users of the Tor browser bundle.



According to the training presentation provided by Snowden, EgotisticalGiraffe exploits a type confusion vulnerability in E4X, which is an XML extension for JavaScript. This vulnerability exists in Firefox 11.0 -- 16.0.2, as well as Firefox 10.0 ESR -- the Firefox version used until recently in the Tor browser bundle. According to another document, the vulnerability exploited by EgotisticalGiraffe was inadvertently fixed when Mozilla removed the E4X library with the vulnerability, and when Tor added that Firefox version into the Tor browser bundle, but NSA were confident that they would be able to find a replacement Firefox exploit that worked against version 17.0 ESR.



The Quantum system



To trick targets into visiting a FoxAcid server, the NSA relies on its secret partnerships with US telecoms companies. As part of the Turmoil system, the NSA places secret servers, codenamed Quantum, at key places on the Internet backbone. This placement ensures that they can react faster than other websites can. By exploiting that speed difference, these servers can impersonate a visited website to the target before the legitimate website can respond, thereby tricking the target's browser to visit a Foxacid server.



In the academic literature, these are called "man-in-the-middle" attacks, and have been known to the commercial and academic security communities. More specifically, they are examples of "man-on-the-side" attacks.



They are hard for any organization other than the NSA to reliably execute, because they require the attacker to have a privileged position on the Internet backbone, and exploit a "race condition" between the NSA server and the legitimate website. This top-secret NSA diagram, made public last month, shows a Quantum server impersonating Google in this type of attack.



The NSA uses these fast Quantum servers to execute a packet injection attack, which surreptitiously redirects the target to the FoxAcid server. An article in the German magazine Spiegel, based on additional top secret Snowden documents, mentions an NSA developed attack technology with the name of QuantumInsert that performs redirection attacks. Another top-secret Tor presentation provided by Snowden mentions QuantumCookie to force cookies onto target browsers, and another Quantum program to "degrade/deny/disrupt Tor access".



This same technique is used by the Chinese government to block its citizens from reading censored Internet content, and has been hypothesized as a probable NSA attack technique.



The FoxAcid system



According to various top-secret documents provided by Snowden, FoxAcid is the NSA codename for what the NSA calls an "exploit orchestrator," an Internet-enabled system capable of attacking target computers in a variety of different ways. It is a Windows 2003 computer configured with custom software and a series of Perl scripts. These servers are run by the NSA's tailored access operations, or TAO, group. TAO is another subgroup of the systems intelligence directorate.



The servers are on the public Internet. They have normal-looking domain names, and can be visited by any browser from anywhere; ownership of those domains cannot be traced back to the NSA.



However, if a browser tries to visit a FoxAcid server with a special URL, called a FoxAcid tag, the server attempts to infect that browser, and then the computer, in an effort to take control of it. The NSA can trick browsers into using that URL using a variety of methods, including the race-condition attack mentioned above and frame injection attacks.



FoxAcid tags are designed to look innocuous, so that anyone who sees them would not be suspicious. baseball2.2ndhalfplays.com/nested/attribs/bins/1/define/forms9952_z1zzz.html is an example of one such tag, given in another top-secret training presentation provided by Snowden.



There is no currently registered domain name by that name; it is just an example for internal NSA training purposes.



The training material states that merely trying to visit the homepage of a real FoxAcid server will not result in any attack, and that a specialized URL is required. This URL would be created by TAO for a specific NSA operation, and unique to that operation and target. This allows the FoxAcid server to know exactly who the target is when his computer contacts it.



According to Snowden, FoxAcid is a general CNE system, used for many types of attacks other than the Tor attacks described here. It is designed to be modular, with flexibility that allows TAO to swap and replace exploits if they are discovered, and only run certain exploits against certain types of targets.



The most valuable exploits are saved for the most important targets. Low-value exploits are run against technically sophisticated targets where the chance of detection is high. TAO maintains a library of exploits, each based on a different vulnerability in a system. Different exploits are authorized against different targets, depending on the value of the target, the target's technical sophistication, the value of the exploit, and other considerations.



In the case of Tor users, FoxAcid might use EgotisticalGiraffe against their Firefox browsers.



According to a top-secret operational management procedures manual provided by Snowden, once a target is successfully exploited it is infected with one of several payloads. Two basic payloads mentioned in the manual are designed to collect configuration and location information from the target computer so an analyst can determine how to further infect the computer.



These decisions are made in part by the technical sophistication of the target and the security software installed on the target computer, called Personal Security Products or PSP, in the manual.



FoxAcid payloads are updated regularly by TAO. For example, the manual refers to version 8.2.1.1 of one of them.



FoxAcid servers also have sophisticated capabilities to avoid detection and to ensure successful infection of its targets. The operations manual states that a FoxAcid payload with the codename DireScallop can circumvent commercial products that prevent malicious software from making changes to a system that survive a reboot process.



The NSA also uses phishing attacks to induce users to click on FoxAcid tags.



TAO additionally uses FoxAcid to exploit callbacks -- which is the general term for a computer infected by some automatic means -- calling back to the NSA for more instructions and possibly to upload data from the target computer.



According to a top-secret operational management procedures manual, FoxAcid servers configured to receive callbacks are codenamed FrugalShot. After a callback, the FoxAcid server may run more exploits to ensure that the target computer remains compromised long term, as well as install "implants" designed to exfiltrate data.



By 2008, the NSA was getting so much FoxAcid callback data that they needed to build a special system to manage it all.

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