Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group

Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by 21 on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:32PM (#12293645)

More likely they are trying very hard to avoid any linguistic profiling. Maybe they google-translated the text back and forward multiple times.

Anyway, they painted a huge target on their back if this is real NSA stuff. I can't see how they would cash-out any significant bitcoin amount ($100k+) without being traced.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by tromp on Monday August 15, 2016 @06:58PM (#12294161)

Currently, they can use Coinjoin to obscure the money trail.

For complete anonymization, they need a little patience.

In the near future, they can buy ZCash.

In the distant future, they can probably move the money into a MimbleWimble based sidechain.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by grkvlt on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @05:43AM (#12296378)

> a MimbleWimble based sidechain

OK, now you're just making up words...

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by kardos on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:37PM (#12293671)

They didn't google translate back and forth a few times, because both google and the NSA would have a copy of the originals, and that would out their original text / writing style.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by kuschku on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:39PM (#12293688)

Not necessarily, there's a way to run Google Translate offline (the app can download translation files, and you can then run it even after you rip out every antenna physically and put the phone in a faraday cage)

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by kardos on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:44PM (#12293717)

The list of people who downloaded an offline google translate app followed by their phone going dark is probably not lengthy.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by kuschku on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:48PM (#12293748)

That's why you buy a 10$ android phone at black friday sale, download via public WiFi in a mall in a different city than your own, preferably a different country when you're just travelling through, and so on.

Btw, if you're in Germany, you might still have a chance to get an anonymous prepaid SIM in the next weeks before the carriers adapt to the legal change - you can use that, too.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by semi-extrinsic on Monday August 15, 2016 @07:29PM (#12294357)

I believe anonymous prepaid SIMs will keep existing in the UK for a long time. I used to have a Tesco Pay-as-you-go SIM card, bought and topped-up anonymously with cash, £12.50 a month for a semi-usable package with 1 GB data. Looks like they still have them:

http://shop.tescomobile.com/pay-monthly/sim-only/Tesco+Mobil...

With roaming in the EU becoming free mid-2017, and Brexit not coming into effect til 2019, the whole EU will still be well covered by anonymous prepaid.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by Godel_unicode on Monday August 15, 2016 @08:05PM (#12294536)

You think not? Download dictionary before international flight, travel, lose phone.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by kardos on Tuesday August 16, 2016 @01:05AM (#12295646)

So further filter by those who didn't travel shortly afterwards. Small enough list yet?

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by colejohnson66 on Monday August 15, 2016 @05:56PM (#12293790)

Or just simply use Tor, right?

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by kuschku on Monday August 15, 2016 @06:40PM (#12294045)

Well, if you're trying to fight the NSA, Tor might not be good enough anymore.

Just like they sent a takedown to every site hosting content from the shadowbreakers, they might just send a SWAT team to every Tor node your data ran through, and try to track you.

And that's in addition to whatever TAO has in their reportoire.

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Re:Lifting the Shadows of the NSA’s Equation Group by semi-extrinsic on Monday August 15, 2016 @07:15PM (#12294257)

Tor development sprang out of a US Navy project. The US government has probably been able to intercept Tor for a long time if it's important enough; they just have to have more than 40% of all nodes (IIRC) and they win. There's only ~10k relays + bridges in the entire network. 4000 computers is utter pocket change compared to the NSAs hardware budget.

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