Probably best not to. Most of them were just wiki and bloomberg business links for the people mentioned. At the time I was unaware of the exploit on archive.is specifically, and wanted mostly to illustrate that a host of this size going down would mean you don't have anything left for free speech on the internet. It the feds take down this host, it would be like turning the free internet off.
Then the 3 litter agency ties were PMed to me by another user, and I went wild in the comments. This info is still out there and still live, so research away.
thanks for the info! So should I stay away from archive alltogether? or just dont use it for viewing sensitive shit? The latter was my primary purpose for using in the first place :(
also, for elaboration
host of this size going down
do you mean archive actually going offline? or the fact that it got compromised with an IP harvester?
Ill try and lay out my thinking here, but this is a lot of theory on my part, just FYI.
should I stay away from archive alltogether?
Its a hard call. I only have a surface understanding of this exploit, and Ive only heard about it from the one source posted today. To the credit of that claim: I have all a browser addon that blocks "hijack attempts" to send you do another domain, and Ive had cases where the page would stop working alltogether while trying to archive a site. This vulnerability is probably unrelated to the NSA/FBI/CIA connections many of these sites have. Im also not sure if this exploit applies to everyone who visits, or just those who archive pages. I suspect the latter.
My new worry about archive.is is that advertisers are harvesting IPs of those people who are costing them money. Advertisers have the most to lose from these archiving services. Who knows what they might do with that info?
do you mean archive actually going offline? or the fact that it got compromised with an IP harvester?
Either or, really. This host (wiki link) has been a longtime proponent of free speech, and theyre the only US host that has economic prices for DDoS protection. These two factors mean that lots of very vocal people (good and bad) all use thise service to host their sites safely, and in theory anonomously. VPN hosting and DDoS protection are their key selling points.
Even if all the suspicious connections in their past are coincidence, Its still safe to assume that the NSA has direct access to everything that passes through any given corprate server, as laws now require compliance with any national security invesigation. Of course, the NSA operations are already by definition matters of national security under project stellar wind (wiki link).
So this raises the question I dont have a solid answer for: Why does it bennifit the 3 letter agencies to have all vocal free speech hosted by one legal entity? They already have the ability to pull man-in-the-middle attacks (like what archive.is has happening), but on a universal scale?
My working theory is this: If things get out of control for the 3-letter agencies, the fbi will shut down the host, leading to a complete blackout of all these sites (1.8 million iirc) until they could rehost. It would likely take days, if not weeks. A lot can happen in 3 days, and a true week of the internet going dark could start or stop wars depending on the context. Its the biggest security flaw the internet has, from my view anyway.
it does, and im rereading it a few times. (been a long day)
i am really having a hard time right now deciding whether to click any archive links anymore. I used the FUCK out of that site, feel like im missing a lot now.
I can definately relate, the internet has become a minefield for everyone. If you have a VPN, you should be immune to the archive.is exploit. TOR would be another option. Neither VPNs nor TOR are truly secure, but they sure as hell trump ip gathering scripts.
On the browser side, id recommend pale moon (an actively developed open-source fork of firefox) and a few good addons like no-script(always asks to activate javascript,) ublock origin (ad blocker with no corprate whitelist), HTTPS everywhere (might be called 'encrypted web' for palemoon), secret agent which randomizes your user agent ( browser verson, operating system, ect) and a cookie manager (like 'self-destructing cookies'). I also use 'flagfox' to keep an eye on what country a given page is hosted from.
Once behind a VPN, youll want to make new accounts for any and all websites you use, and keep them strictly for use while behind VPN.
If you do all of the above, and dont click silly links, youll be un-gettable by corprate level players, and (still) completely in the open to NSA level survailence. That's just the nature of it now days.
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Voopin__Voopin ago
so can i visit the archive link now? i missed this thrad when originally posted, and in light of archive being compromised...
Sciency ago
Probably best not to. Most of them were just wiki and bloomberg business links for the people mentioned. At the time I was unaware of the exploit on archive.is specifically, and wanted mostly to illustrate that a host of this size going down would mean you don't have anything left for free speech on the internet. It the feds take down this host, it would be like turning the free internet off.
Then the 3 litter agency ties were PMed to me by another user, and I went wild in the comments. This info is still out there and still live, so research away.
Voopin__Voopin ago
thanks for the info! So should I stay away from archive alltogether? or just dont use it for viewing sensitive shit? The latter was my primary purpose for using in the first place :(
also, for elaboration
do you mean archive actually going offline? or the fact that it got compromised with an IP harvester?
Sciency ago
Ill try and lay out my thinking here, but this is a lot of theory on my part, just FYI.
Its a hard call. I only have a surface understanding of this exploit, and Ive only heard about it from the one source posted today. To the credit of that claim: I have all a browser addon that blocks "hijack attempts" to send you do another domain, and Ive had cases where the page would stop working alltogether while trying to archive a site. This vulnerability is probably unrelated to the NSA/FBI/CIA connections many of these sites have. Im also not sure if this exploit applies to everyone who visits, or just those who archive pages. I suspect the latter.
My new worry about archive.is is that advertisers are harvesting IPs of those people who are costing them money. Advertisers have the most to lose from these archiving services. Who knows what they might do with that info?
Either or, really. This host (wiki link) has been a longtime proponent of free speech, and theyre the only US host that has economic prices for DDoS protection. These two factors mean that lots of very vocal people (good and bad) all use thise service to host their sites safely, and in theory anonomously. VPN hosting and DDoS protection are their key selling points.
Even if all the suspicious connections in their past are coincidence, Its still safe to assume that the NSA has direct access to everything that passes through any given corprate server, as laws now require compliance with any national security invesigation. Of course, the NSA operations are already by definition matters of national security under project stellar wind (wiki link).
So this raises the question I dont have a solid answer for: Why does it bennifit the 3 letter agencies to have all vocal free speech hosted by one legal entity? They already have the ability to pull man-in-the-middle attacks (like what archive.is has happening), but on a universal scale?
My working theory is this: If things get out of control for the 3-letter agencies, the fbi will shut down the host, leading to a complete blackout of all these sites (1.8 million iirc) until they could rehost. It would likely take days, if not weeks. A lot can happen in 3 days, and a true week of the internet going dark could start or stop wars depending on the context. Its the biggest security flaw the internet has, from my view anyway.
Hope that explains a bit for you.
Voopin__Voopin ago
it does, and im rereading it a few times. (been a long day)
i am really having a hard time right now deciding whether to click any archive links anymore. I used the FUCK out of that site, feel like im missing a lot now.
Sciency ago
I can definately relate, the internet has become a minefield for everyone. If you have a VPN, you should be immune to the archive.is exploit. TOR would be another option. Neither VPNs nor TOR are truly secure, but they sure as hell trump ip gathering scripts.
On the browser side, id recommend pale moon (an actively developed open-source fork of firefox) and a few good addons like no-script(always asks to activate javascript,) ublock origin (ad blocker with no corprate whitelist), HTTPS everywhere (might be called 'encrypted web' for palemoon), secret agent which randomizes your user agent ( browser verson, operating system, ect) and a cookie manager (like 'self-destructing cookies'). I also use 'flagfox' to keep an eye on what country a given page is hosted from.
Once behind a VPN, youll want to make new accounts for any and all websites you use, and keep them strictly for use while behind VPN.
If you do all of the above, and dont click silly links, youll be un-gettable by corprate level players, and (still) completely in the open to NSA level survailence. That's just the nature of it now days.
Good luck out there, and dont be stupid :)