June 30, 2006

The Newbie's Guide to Detecting the NSA It's not surprising that an expert hired by EFF should produce an analysis that supports the group's case against AT&T. But last week's public court filing of a redacted statement by J. Scott Marcus is still worth reading for the obvious expertise of its author, and the cunning insights he draws from the AT&T spy documents. . . . With that in mind, here's the 27B Stroke 6 guide to detecting if your traffic is being funneled into the (AT&T) secret room on San Francisco's Folsom street. via

If you're a Windows user, fire up an MS-DOS command prompt. Now type tracert followed by the domain name of the website, e-mail host, VoIP switch, or whatever destination you're interested in. Watch as the program spits out your route, line by line. . . The internet surveillance program covers domestic traffic, not just international traffic. . . This, of course, directly contradicts President Bush's description of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." (Some) interesting comments on the blog too, including: "There are a number of different commercial products to sniff data directly off of the fiber without a hop even appearing." Caveat Pluribus, ex post Groucho. see also

posted by petebest 18 years ago
  • Interesting. When I traceroute mofi I get a clean path to New Zealand, but when I trace aljazeera.net I pass through AT&T, as the article predicts. I'd write more, but I have to go scan the horizon for black helicopters.
  • When I traceroute mofi Mofi is in Dallas, apparently. (according to whois on the IP).
  • /msg DogBallz he's taken the bait - begin operation flea bath
  • um . . ignore that, everyone
  • Is Aljazeera really hosted by AT&T? > host english.aljazeera.net english.aljazeera.net is an alias for english.aljazeera.net.att-idns.net. english.aljazeera.net.att-idns.net has address 32.107.45.11
  • A page of handy DNS stuff - traceroute is 2 down on the right.
  • Bob Hoskins!
  • A paranoid friend told me once, 'The whole of the net is nothing but a huge honeypot'. Mmmh.
  • you spelled it wrong tho.
  • I cancelled our sevice with AT&T just last week, firstly because they harrassed me incessantly when I switched to SBC, and secondly, because AT&T bought SBC and I refuse to have AT&T as my service provider. I can't stand their customer service practices, but this article (and similar ones I've read elsewhere) irks me.
  • Hello N S eh. Spott the hiD|>en, ter0r]s+T [\/]eSSaGe. [\/]0N|
  • Mofi is in Dallas, apparently. (according to whois on the IP). Ummm, un-, don't know where you get your whois data, but mine shows: Registrant: MonkeyFilter.com 59 xxxxxx Street xxxxxxxx, Christchurch 8004 New Zealand which I'm going to wildly guess is the home address of tracicle and #2. My tracert to said domain takes me to a nz server as well, not surprisingly. If you're whois-ing an IP, it is probably the address of the mega-firm that owns that IP address range. (xxx's added for thin veil of privacy reasons)
  • MoFi's actual server is in Dallas, if memory serves.
  • Arg.
  • the_bone, that would explain why traceroute for mofi never leaves Canada and the US and says under 70ms while monash.edu.au (where a friend teaches) takes the obvious jumps to the far side of the globe and gives packet times on the order of 300ms or so.
  • RalphTheDog, you are looking at DNS information which has no necessary link to geographic location. I looked up the server IP in ARIN using whois. The traceroute goes to a server in Dallas, not New Zealand. It's just called something that ends in '.nz'.
  • ŧΞħ м∂†яŀж ĦΔŹ ω
  • Care to translate?
  • Excuse me, but did you check with the Office of Censorship before posting this?
  • I believe that's "the matrix has you," path. And fucking impressively done as well. Do I see a character commonly used in the Z specification language in there?
  • Wait, I think it's just a Greek symbol anyway. Carry on.
  • I always thought the server was in Michigan. Or was that the last one? Bah. Either way it's in the US although the company administering the server (that we give money to) is NZ-based. Our domains are registered in NZ too -- although without looking, I can't remember if I transferred monkeyfilter.com to the same domain hosts as earthling.net.nz and juju.net.nz. Monkeyfilter.com may still be with godaddy, which is who Kimberly registered it with way back in the dark ages. I'd look it up myself but the extra keystrokes would hurt me.
  • Call Connected thru the NSA ringtone by They Might be Giants.
  • Bah. Either way it's in the US although the company administering the server (that we give money to) is NZ-based. Bah!
  • Just teasing, of course. ;)
  • All your data is belong to the NSA, possibly. How disturbin'. Ah, there we go: the data centres are in Dallas. Also Austin, NYC, London, and Brisbane. I'm curious about their privacy policies now: the Dallas data centre (Colo4Dallas) claims that all information remains confidential except for "broad demographic" purposes or troubleshooting.
  • Alright monkeys: it's time to wage war on the NSA. From now on, here is what I expect you all to do in EVERY conversation that you have on your phones and on the Internetz: 1. Always begin your conversations with "Allāh-u-Akbar" or "Allah be praised." 2. Say sentences throughout your conversation that somehow mentions the words "kill," "bomb," and "president," but not "bomb the president" or "kill the president." For example: "The president is the bomb!" or "I would kill to meet the president." 3. Use the word "infidel" a lot. 4. Always end your conversations with "Allāh-u-Akbar" or "Allah be praised." By following these simple steps, we can fill up the NSA's database with so many false positives as to render their efforts useless. That'll learn those fascist sheep-buggerers. That is all. Allah be praised.
  • Me hopes Nunia enjoys full body cavity searchs. Don't stop until you feel the back of his teeth!
  • For what purpose, one wonders? And who profited?
  • "For what purpose, one wonders? And who profited?"- posted by beeswacky Ok conspiracy boy, take off the tinfoil hat now. We don't need your manic rants here. There are no UFOs abducting Judge Crater who shot JFK while mutilating a cow with a black helicopter that crashed into the twin towers on 9/11. /heh heh, it's funny 'cause beeswacky's questions are perfectly reasonable.
  • I want a "For what purpose, one wonders? And who profited?" T-shirt.
  • Wow. That's just... *frantically searches for the "reset" button*
  • It's that one, the one mislabeled "Nuke"... : )
  • I'd say yes, it probably did, even before I read that link.