Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: thaganjaman on March 03, 2013, 08:48 am
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Is there a way to make sure a downloaded file is unable to call back with the non-Tor IP?
And why is pdf's and doc's more insecure than other formats ?
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Is there a way to make sure a downloaded file is unable to call back with the non-Tor IP?
And why is pdf's and doc's more insecure than other formats ?
TPB has a nice program.
Typically the "insecurity" of files comes into play when they are accessed, not just by having them downloaded. Downloading a file unopened and having it pwn your computer is the stuff of Hollywood and science fiction (as far as I know, though there may be research into this too).
Thus, to understand the problem, the real question is not about the file types, but rather about the typical programs commonly used to access those files.
Thus, a .txt file should be relatively harmless, since it's accessed in raw form by simple text readers and not recognized as code in any way. (Though of course a 0day vuln found in e.g. Windows Notepad could change that....)
PDFs and Office docs are typically opened by Adobe Reader and MS Office programs, respectively - and these all recognize numerous types of dynamic content, e.g. Office Macros. Furthermore, there is a whole lot of data handling, parsing, translating, activating, and rendering going on, and there can be (and are, and were) many different vulns at each step of the way, in each of those programs (and of course others). Hope that helps.
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Whenever I have any concerns about this, I just turn off the computer's network connection before I open the file.
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Always open suspect files in a virtual machine without network access. If you just want to protect your anon, disconnect from TOR before opening the file (incase it phones home). I would make sure that any BTC trading or SR access is done on a machine without pirated software.
There are certain instances where a exploit in a privileged program can allow automatic download and installation of software. These exploits mostly happen via java, flash / silverlight, and acrobat / word.
If you are just downloading a normal file (and not opening it) from a trusted site then you are fine.
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Theres only one way to do this without disconnecting from the net forever, use tails.