Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Friday July 03 2015, @07:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-the-terrorists dept.

In the game of anonymity-versus-surveillance online, the discovery of the user's IP address usually means game over. But if Ben Caudill has his way, a network snoop who successfully hunts a user through layers of proxy connections to a final IP address would be met with a dead end—while the anonymous user remains safe at home more than a mile away.

At the upcoming DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas next month, Caudill plans to unveil ProxyHam, a "hardware proxy" designed to use a radio connection to add a physical layer of obfuscation to an internet user's location. His open-source device, which he built for $200, connects to Wi-Fi and relays a user's Internet connection over a 900 megaherz radio connection to their faraway computer, with a range of between one and 2.5 miles depending on interference from the landscape and buildings. That means even if investigators fully trace the user's internet connection, they'll find only the ProxyHam box the person planted in a remote library, cafe, or other public place—and not their actual location.

Caudill, a researcher for the security consultancy Rhino Labs, compares his tool to typical tactics to hide the source of an Internet connection, like using a neighbor's Wi-Fi, or working from a coffee shop instead of home. But "the problem with Wi-Fi as a protocol is that you can't get the range you need. If the FBI kicks down the door, it may not be my door, but it'll be so close they can hear me breathe," says Caudill. "[ProxyHam] gives you all the benefits of being able to be at a Starbucks or some other remote location, but without physically being there."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:05PM (#204685)

    HAM rules are ridiculous, then.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @01:26PM (#204694)

    HAM is meant to facilitate communication, not to exist as your private encrypted network.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @10:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @10:37PM (#204863)

      HAM rules were invented to make sure that geeks didn't communicate too freely without the government having at least some means of stopping them if they didn't like what was gong on. Want to prove me wrong? Start broadcasting a simple 8-N-1 broadcast of old nuclear bomb blueprints like the old "Gun-Type" designs and see what happens. Easy to decrypt/interpret. Everyone will have a copy by dinner. You WILL be informed on by Ham radio operators even if you are in compliance. Free speech says you are in the clear but watch some weasel-like bureaucrat use a HAM rule to shut you down.

      Ham radio rules only exist to give the government the ability to fuck with geeks talking to each other, worse yet, some geeks think if they get a license and inform on others that they will be safe. Useful idiots the lot of them.
      Technology would have solved the crowding issue even sooner if the airwaves were a free-for-all.

      Why the fuck do you even need a license to use your own damn airwaves? They're owned by the people aren't they ? Are you a person ? Why does some punk kid half your age in a cubicle 2000 miles away get to decide what you can or can't do in your own life?
       

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday July 06 2015, @03:36PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Monday July 06 2015, @03:36PM (#205667) Journal

        If HAM radio was the free-for-all you desire, it would be immediately flooded by corporate and commercial traffic and would no longer be any use to the rest of us.