WyldRyde IRC Network » privacy

Report: WiFi not secure enough

usrbingeek — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:34:56 +0000

Global Secure Systems said that WPA and WPA2 encryption systems are not secure enough to protect wireless data, reports SC Magazine.

Global Secure Systems has said that a Russian’s firm’s use of the latest NVidia graphics cards to accelerate WiFi ‘password recovery’ times by up to an astonishing 10,000 per cent proves that WiFi’s WPA and WPA2 encryption systems are no longer enough to protect wireless data.
David Hobson, managing director of GSS, claimed that companies can no longer view standards-based WiFi transmission as sufficiently secure against eavesdropping to be used with impunity. He also said that the use of VPNs is arguably now mandatory for companies wanting to comply with the Data Protection Act.
He said: “This breakthrough in brute force decryption of WiFi signals by Elcomsoft confirms our observations that firms can no longer rely on standards-based security to protect their data. As a result, we now advise clients using WiFi in their offices to move on up to a VPN encryption system as well.

What do you think? Is no WiFi encryption secure enough?
[WiFi is no longer a viable secure connection]

Can people see my host or IP? Can I see others?

usrbingeek — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:37:54 +0000

On WyldRyde all our users’ IP addresses and host masks are privatized upon connection to prevent others from determining your IP address or full hostmask.
Only WyldRyde Staff and YOU can see your own IP address and full host. So when YOU “/whois your-own-nick” you will see it. However, when others whois you they will only see a privatized IP address or hostmask.
Other users may still see your ISP (e.g: privatehost-E6919581.hsd1.vt.comcast.net) but they won’t be able to determine your IP address and make a direct connection to your computer from the information they get from your /whois.
Do not be tricked into allowing others to see your IP address or full host:

Never type “/mode your-nick -x” as it will allow others to see your IP address or full host mask.
Do not accept DCC chat or file transfers requests as either will allow a direct connection to your machine and will allow someone to determine your IP.

There has recently been a lot of questions and insistences by a few that Colloquy can determine the IP addresses of everyone. This is absolutely not the case. Colloquy performs a dns of the vhost address, and if it’s a real domain name, it provides the IP address that the domain name is associated with. It does not provide the actual IP address that the user is using because it cannot, nor can any client, get the IP address of any privatized hostmask or IP.

Tor Admin Arrested

usrbingeek — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:09:25 +0000

CNet reports that a Tor server admin in Germany was arrested back in July.

The police were investigating a bomb threat posted to an online forum for German police officers. The police traced one of the objectionable posts on the forum to the ip address for Janssen’s server. Up until his arrest, Alex Janssen’s Tor server carried over 40GB of other random strangers’ Internet traffic each day.
Showing up at his house at midnight on a Sunday night, police cuffed and arrested him in front of his wife and seized his equipment. In a display of both bitter irony and incompetence, the police did not take or shut-down the Tor server responsible for the traffic they were interested in, which was located in a different city, over 500km away.
Janssen’s attempts to explain what Tor is to the police officers fell initially on deaf ears. After being interrogated for hours, someone from the city of Düsseldorf’s equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security showed up and admitted to Janssen that they’d made a mistake. He was released shortly after.

This only goes to show the type of people that are using Tor. It’s mostly internet trolls and people up to no good. The idiots posting threats are escaping arrest and meanwhile political dissidents haven’t even heard of Tor nor can figure out how to use it.

[Tor Anonymity Server Admin Arrested]