Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: alpine on July 22, 2012, 10:57 pm
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i am currently using tails and it does not change my mac on startup like liberte does. what can LE really get with a mac? do hardware makers really keep records? thanks, alpine
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your mac adress is composed out of several hardware ID's from your computer parts. that means a single hw vendor can't have a mac adress record..
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i am currently using tails and it does not change my mac on startup like liberte does. what can LE really get with a mac? do hardware makers really keep records? thanks, alpine
In theory, yes. MAC addresses can uniquely identify you.
However, not only does TOR hide your MAC address, but almost any networking hardware between your computer and your modem (routers, etc.) will hide your MAC from your ISP, and your MAC is never exposed on the Internet.
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i am currently using tails and it does not change my mac on startup like liberte does. what can LE really get with a mac? do hardware makers really keep records? thanks, alpine
In theory, yes. MAC addresses can uniquely identify you.
However, not only does TOR hide your MAC address, but almost any networking hardware between your computer and your modem (routers, etc.) will hide your MAC from your ISP, and your MAC is never exposed on the Internet.
Pretty much it, the only way your mac address can testify against you is if LE confiscates your computer along with any records exposing your mac address. This can easily be avoided using a mac spoofer or even a certain o/s like liberte, tails, BT, etc.
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No. You can be tracked down by your IP address, but Tor hides that as well as your MAC. Your MAC address is an address that uniquely identifies your hardware, and is not linked to you personally or your address.
What authorities could do though is if they found out your IP, and had your MAC address from various things you may have done, and they track you down, they could prove that you did things by linking your computer's MAC (after confiscating it), to their records. But they cannot track you through it.
For instance, say authorities find your fingerprints (your MAC) at a crime scene. They eventually get your address (your IP) (but are not sure the fingerprints are yours). They track you down, and match your fingerprints off your hand to those at the crime scene. Now there is evidence against you. Does that make sense?
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Great thanks for the info! So To the best of my knowledge tails does not change the Mac address at start up but you can use Mac changer in the console.
I have heard though that if you use this it can still be leaked because it was not changed at start up is that true? I would use liberte but it will not work on my laptop just crashes once it gets an Internet connection. And I want to use a public network so changing Mac would probably be a good idea.
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I have heard though that if you use this it can still be leaked because it was not changed at start up is that true? I would use liberte but it will not work on my laptop just crashes once it gets an Internet connection. And I want to use a public network so changing Mac would probably be a good idea.
Technically yes but no government has the combined technical ability and financial budget to use this against you.
There was one guy, that I was reading the court case files about recently, who got busted sending death threats to Obama by his MAC address even though he was using Tor. He was sending emails and there was some kind of data leak which gave away his MAC address, probably because the Tor browser doesn't completely disable javascript and his webmail was using it. Anyway that alone wasn't enough to get him busted, he was already being monitored because he was a known kiddie fiddler and the normal cops had a suspicion he was up to stuff so had put a tap on his wireless router, and they happened to match the MAC addresses from his router to the death threats in the emails by almost sheer luck in one of those cold case evidence scanning random database type reviews.
Moral of the story is, don't be a pedophile, it makes sending death threats more risky.
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Tor does not hide your MAC address. Only your access point will have a copy of your MAC address. You can be tracked down by your MAC address, if LE are capable of analyzing the wireless spectrum near you while you are using your wireless network card. Otherwise, they will need to gain physical possession of your computer. Using the same MAC will allow LE to link multiple wireless sessions to you if they can get MAC logs from multiple access points that you have used.
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I have heard though that if you use this it can still be leaked because it was not changed at start up is that true? I would use liberte but it will not work on my laptop just crashes once it gets an Internet connection. And I want to use a public network so changing Mac would probably be a good idea.
see this:
Tor does not hide your MAC address. Only your access point will have a copy of your MAC address. You can be tracked down by your MAC address, if LE are capable of analyzing the wireless spectrum near you while you are using your wireless network card. Otherwise, they will need to gain physical possession of your computer. Using the same MAC will allow LE to link multiple wireless sessions to you if they can get MAC logs from multiple access points that you have used.
well said.
However, if your mac address was leaked some how - LE snarfs it on your wifi - if they STILL dont know who you are after that (despite being in range to access your wifi) LE _might_ have the resources to request information from the vendor of your hardware.
They might find out what kind of wifi card you have, when it was manufactured and what OEM computer vendor they had sold the hardware too.
They MIGHT be able to find out what batch of computers your wifi card went into.
They MIGHT be able to find out what shipments were made to which retail stores/amazon/etc
They MIGHT be able to link the sale of the wifi card to the store you bought it from.
But since they're in your wifi anyways, im sure they already have a good idea where you are. I'd say dont worry about your mac address getting leaked as much as your IP getting leaked. Or logs. Always delete logs that you have - MSN and other protocols log by default. If you chat about shit on facebook you're a fucking retard.