Tenebril GhostSurf

If you left Javascript enabled, allow ActiveX downloads and executes, or downloaded GRC's local client then obviously it will know and can report the IP address for your host.

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:1125956983.087078.209500 @f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Any software like that is snake-oil. You cannot hide your machine out here on the Internet. It's bunch of BS. And BTW, I got some swamp land (that's prime real-estate) in Mississippi you can buy too.

Duane :)

That's a proxy service - so while your IP isn't shown on the packet that arrives at that pr0n site you want to visit - your network admin can still see the traffic. Oh, and do you trust the proxy site you are using?

ALL traffic on the net has to have legitimate source and destination addresses. Think for a moment about viewing a web page at foo.example.com (a well known non-site on the web). Your browser asks to send a packet there (how else do you think the page shows up on your computer) - so the O/S first has to send a different set of packets to some name server to translate 'foo.example.com' into an IP address. (Packets travel the world using IP addresses - four byte addresses, that take up less space in the packet that the fifteen bytes needed for foo.example.com or the fortytwo bytes for 'adsl-69-235-220-167.dsl.irvnca.pacball.not'.) The DNS replies that 'foo.example.com' is at 192.0.2.144 (no that address isn't real either). Your computer then sends a 'hello' packet to that IP address - and think about this - with your legitimate IP address as the sender. Why? How do you think foo.example.com is going to send packets to you, if you are giving them a fake address that says you are in Timbuktu in Mali (a country in Western Africa)? If you use a fake address, the packets are going to be sent there (not to you), and who ever has that fake address is going to be wondering WTF this crap is.

Awww, would Steve lie to you? Yup. Turn off java/javascript/activeX.

It's not hiding everything - if it was, your networking wouldn't work.

Get a fake ID card, and go to your public library. Get access using their computers. No one will _ever_ know it's really you.

Old guy

Better forget this.

"Shields up" is just nonsense. No product can "hide" you in the Internet, even if "Shields up" is telling you such trash.

Yours, VB.

It does not matter.

If you're going onto a webpage, the server there has your IP address, wether you will do ridiculous things like "stealthing" your PC or not.

POC:

---------------------------------- snip ---------------------------------- #!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI::Request;

$req = GetRequest($pkg); $cgi_obj = $req->cgi; $cgi_var = $req->cgi->var("REMOTE_ADDR");

print "your client IP is ".$cgi_var."\\n";

---------------------------------- snap ----------------------------------

Yours, VB.

For anonymizing, you could use AN.ON/JAP or Tor for example.

Yours, VB.

I thought the concept with a service such as Tenebril's was that your packets got routed through their servers so the end site you were visiting didn't get your address but rather got Tenebril's server's address. Tenebril would have a record of your ip address's page request to watchmygrandparentshavesex.com, but watchmygrandparentshavesex.com wouldn't know where you were coming from and the trail would end at Tenebril's proxy server. Obviously even in this model, only as secure and anonymous as Tenebril's server, but not complete snake oil and effectively anonymous until the Feds come knocking on Tenebril's door with a court order or a hacker or rogue employee hacks their servers.

I asked about Tenebril because their software was recommended in a computer magazine I was looking at.

Tom

As a proxy service - yeah, that's the basic concept.

Doesn't have to be the Feds - but you've got the idea. For a while, there were some wide open proxy servers on the net. These tended to get closed due to pressure by the upstream providers. In some cases, there were questions if the server wasn't even being run as a sting, or was being run by bad guys to steal identity information, credit card numbers, and so on.

If you are so inclined, there are millions of systems on the Internet that are so poorly set up that you can take over the system, and run your nasty deeds and pr0n surfing out of J. Random User's home system, and if the Feds come looking, he's to clueless to know if anything happened and they will blame him. Just make sure he really is clueless, and the computer isn't being run by the local Fuzz under a grant from the national committee to "save the chilldruns from peddlephiles and junk food merchants" or some such.

What a lot of people forget is to secure their own systems, and turn off all of the automatic features that "improve your Internet experience" such as Java/JavaScript/ActiveX/Cookies/Remember_my_password/Log_me_in_ to_all_sites/etc. and so on. I suspect this is due to the radiations from the screen of the PC, or the satellite mind-control rays, but people who get near computers do some of the most stupid things imaginable. In some cases, this is because the individual doesn't want to spend any time learning WTF, and just click on an icon to see what's behind door 3.

Old guy

The target host only knows the IP address of the host that connects to it. If you use a proxy, which is the point of Ghostsurf, then the IP address you get is for the proxy, NOT for yourself that went through that proxy (or the proxies before it). The idea of using proxies is that the target gets the IP address of the proxy host, not of you. It's really not that complicated a process to grasp. It is the Javascript, ActiveX, or client programs that you download - through all those proxies - that then runs locally which can report *your* IP address. It is very similar to using a NAT router. The target host doesn't get your intranetwork's IP address from the packet it gets but instead gets the WAN-side IP address allocated to the router. ICS is a proxy and works similarly.

And far as you "BTW" code goes, that CGI script runs on the *server* which is the target or last host. All it will report is the IP address of whatever host is connected to it, and that would be for the proxy host, not your host.

Yes, of course. There are some better possibilities than "stealthing" to anonymize your connection. I already recommended Tor and AN.ON.

The point is, "stealthing" is nonsense, not using proxies or even onion routing.

Yours, VB.

I wasn't addressing the pros and cons of stealthing or whether or not it is nonsense. I was addressing your claim that:

"If you're going onto a webpage, the server there has your IP address, wether you will do ridiculous things like "stealthing" your PC or not."

which is not correct. You even contradict your own statement by later recommending to use Tor to anonymize a connection.

As to whether anonymizing your connection is nonsense or not, that depends on why you use it (and if you classify abusive use as nonsense). Most users that hide do so for anti-social reasons (which also includes wanting to disavow responsibility for your words), and the same for posters that use anonymizing mail2news gateways. There are some legitimate uses but most times it is just fluff that will reduce reliability and impact performance only to provide imagined protection that can be circumvented by other means (as mentioned in my other post, although I neglected that the content of non-encrypted traffic can also be interrogated to find useful info tidbits). Also, users of these stealthing services are assuming that Tenebril, Tor, and other anonymizing services aren't logging your source at their first proxy/router and, if more than one is used, doing the same at their last proxy/router to know where you came from and where you go so they can covertly monitor your traffic, your destinations, and even your content; i.e., you attempt to stealth your connection by trusting an unknown with your traffic.

OK, I think, this is just a misundersanding. I referenced the topic "stealthing". Please read my sentence as "If you're going onto a webpage, ridiculous 'stealthing' will not prevent if the server there has your IP address or not". This is how it was meant.

A problem with context, I think ;-)

Yes, of course.

This is the misunderstanding again - with "stealthing", I did not thought about anonymizing with proxies or onion routing or something like that, but this ridiculous thing GRC is crying for, and he is calling "stealthing", and the providers of the "Personal Firewalls" are advertizing.

Yours, VB.