Tags
Bradley Manning, civil disobedience, Edward Snowden, Jesse Walker, Julian Assange, Thomas Drake, Tor Project
Jesse Walker has an interesting article in Reason today:
I’ll go straight to a point that Walker does not discuss. Most people cannot afford to lose their livelihood for leaking, let alone go to prison for thirty-five years (Bradley Manning), go into permanent exile (Edward Snowden and Julian Assange), or undergo four years of prosecution (Thomas Drake). In order for secret information to move into the sunlight as easily as Walker suggests it can in the digital age, leakers must have a way to protect themselves. They need more Internet security than they presently have. Moreover, they must have confidence their security measures work.
Does the Tor Project meet those requirements? Is it secure enough to give leakers confidence to release their information online? What about anyone who wants to engage in civil disobedience online, but does not want to go to prison or into exile? We already know the scope and power of the feds’ snooping tools. Right now, it seems that civil disobedience can succeed only if large numbers of people engage in it together. If you face even a small chance of solitary confinement for thirty-five years, you will say the possible cost exceeds the possible benefit.
Meantime, we should track the evolution of online security tools for individuals. We should track the evolution of all tools that empower citizens to engage in civil disobedience, to disrupt the operations of a state that has clearly committed itself to treating disobedient citizens as traitors.
The Jeffersonian 
[Redacted] routers are no longer devices only seen in [Redacted]. Entire countries run their Internet infrastructure exclusively on these products and established tier 1 ISPs make increasing use of them. However, very little is known of [Redacted]’s Software Platform and its security. This presentation will introduce the architecture, special properties of configurations and services as well as how to reverse engineer the OS. Obviously, this is done only to ensure compatibility with router products of other vendors ;) Routers might be still hurt in the process. FX is the leader of the Phenoelit group and loves to hack pretty much everything with a CPU and some communication, preferably networked. He looks back at around fifteen years of (legal) hacking with only a couple Cisco IOS and SAP remote exploits, tools for hacking HP printers and protocol attacks lining the road. In his day life, FX runs Recurity Labs GmbH, a security consulting and research company in Berlin, Germany. Twitter: @41414141 Greg joined the Recurity Labs team early 2008. Prior to Recurity Labs, Greg worked as a freelancer for a number of large customers. Greg is experienced in source code audits, black box analysis and reverse engineering. Furthermore, Greg also performs software/system design work at Recurity Labs. Greg works on various internal research projects, where he applies his taste for cryptography.