Deep Web, Deep Privacy

By Conrad Jaeger:

Tell someone that you know how to go off-radar on the Internet and, as a rule, they won’t believe you. They imagine shadowy intelligence agencies have state-of-the-art technology and can see everything you do. Bkut they would be wrong.

No doubt they do have amazing technology, but it is perfectly possible to hide yourself on the Internet, to send and receive emails that nobody can intercept or read, to upload and download securely, to visit banned websites, blog anonymously, and do anything you want without being followed, profiled or analysed. Those that know how use the Deep Web.

In essence, the Deep Web is the same Internet we’re using now but it’s the hidden parts of it, the parts not indexed by Google and the other search engines. Most of it is made up of databases and archives, many of which can be accessed by anyone with the right knowledge.

And then there are the Hidden Networks of the Deep Web. Nobody knows how many there are because that’s the nature of the thing. The most popular and easiest to access is Tor. You can start now by downloading the Tor/Firefox covert browser but, be warned, there are a lot of seriously bad people down there and it’s very easy to give yourself lasting nightmares by following some of the links at the main entry point, the Hidden Wiki.

But not everybody who uses these Hidden Networks is up to no good. Lots of people would rather that the Internet allowed them to be anonymous and to go and look up things and chat and all the rest of it without having someone or something looking over their shoulder.

Journalists use these networks to talk securely with whistle-blowers and dissidents. Aid agencies use them to stay in touch with base from inside repressive regimes. Activists of all sorts can organise amongst themselves and get their message out to the rest of the world.

And to do so they use much the same tools as we use on the Surface Web. To send emails that cannot be traced, consider an email re-mailer like awxcnx.de or cotse.net which strip off any identifying codes and add new ones along the journey. When the email arrives at its destination, there is no way that it can traced back to you.

The Deep Web has several email options, such as TorMail, which allows you to send and receive secure email with a you@tormail.org address both to addresses within and outside of Tor.
Additionally, the content of emails can easily be encrypted with both free and paid-for programs like PGP keys which are uncrackable even by the new mega-computers being used by the National Security Agency.

You can send someone a harmless-looking photo of yourself on holiday but nobody need know that the image contains a secret document. You can hide almost any kind of digital file by embedding it inside another digital file. This art is called steganography and there are a number of programs that perform this magic, some free like QuickCrypto.

Top Secret documents can be embedded inside a photo, short videos can be transmitted secretly inside a music file, and messages can be passed on by a digital ‘drop box’ held on a photo within a website. Counter-technology is next to hopeless.

And when the authorities force the ISPs to switch off access to Twitter and Facebook during civil unrest, the Deep Web allows those that know how to maintain connection. There are even Twitter and Facebook clones on Tor.

You can upload and download any amount of data via dozens of free hosting sites on the Deep Web, such as PasteOnion. Here you can make your post public or set a password, and determine how long it stays up there. Use can also use this service to construct a simple webpage in HTML or even as an image file and then upload it and pass on the address.

You can also go all James Bond and install the covert browser in a smart-phone or onto a USB thumb drive which you can then plug into a computer in a cybercafé or public library and leave no trace.

But don’t assume that everything done on the Deep Web will make you invisible. The Hidden Networks have their flaws and these need to be fully understood before embarking on anything that might cause a problem.

The art is to combine the different techniques available, to mix and match, until not even the most determined adversary can find you.

Conrad Jaeger


Conrad Jaeger is the author of ‘Deep Web Secrecy and Security’
(available for Kindle at Amazon.co.uk and at Smashwords for
all other formats).

A Guide to Torrent Acronyms: How to Choose the Right Download for Your Damaged or Missing Media Read more: http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/blog/guide-torrent-acronyms-choose-right-download-for-your-damaged-missing-media-0134623/#ixzz1t8L7Vl1j

So, you scratched up your $500 Adobe CD and now it's unreadable. You could go buy a new one, but you already purchased it! Searching The Pirate Bay and downloading some Adobe software can usually be easy enough, but what should you watch out for?
And what about your movies? What are the best backups to use for DVD collections? Why is all this DRM being cracked? Yes ladies and gentleman, I am going to teach you how to find and download your backups. So grab your eyepatch and peg leg and let's get down to it.
A word of caution. This might be frowned at in your country, and in fact, might even be illegal for some people. Folks living in the Police States of America should take special note to watch out. I am only providing this information for the sake of knowledge. It is assumed you're downloading copies of media you already own.

It's Like Stealing a Car... Or Making a Copy of It... Kinda

Imagine someone boosted your brand new car overnight, but when you came out in the morning to head off to work, it was still there! Yes, piracy is less like stealing and more like just making a free copy of something.
Copyright infringement happens when you acquire or redistribute a protected work without the expressed consent of whoever might own it. When you download and burn that copy of Windows Vista Pirated Edition and give it to your dorm matey who then installs it on his or her computer, you are breaking the law and performing software piracy. While it is not required to talk in a pirate accent whilst downloading your backups, it is encouraged.
However, you are allowed to backup your own legally purchased software for your own private use, so long as it is not distributed in any way. Because we do not endorse copyright infringement, the information being presented is for your personal use in obtaining backups of lost or damaged software.

Null Byte's Super Quick Breakdown for New Friends

You need a few things, mostly a program to handle the torrents and a tracker site to give you the file data and let you enter swarms to start downloading. Windows users can use Utorrent and *nix users can use whatever they are comfy with. If you are using Linux, I expect you know what a torrent is already and have a favorite.
Most of the time, files that are grouped and compressed will be in a .rar format. You might need to download WinRAR to handle these. Think of them as another kind of .zip file.
Now, let's take a look into the various types of media out there so you know what to look for.

Movies

Movie releases come in several flavors and forms depending on the time frame of normal release. Quality can very from grainy and unwatchable to high definition. You will see these types in the name of the file you are downloading, giving you the background on it.

• Cam - A copy made in a cinema using a camcorder or mobile phone. The sound source is the camera microphone. Cam rips quickly appear after the first preview or premiere of the film. The quality ranges from terrible to pretty good, depending on the group of persons performing the recording and the resolution of the camera used. The main disadvantage is the sound quality, it's usually poor as the microphone does not only record the sound from the movie, but also any background noise. These are very common.

• Telesync - This was shot in an empty cinema or from the projection booth with a professional camera mounted on a tripod, directly connected to the sound source. The professional camera source is then synchronized with audio source fed directly from the cinema's sound system, or captured from an FM radio transmission intended for hearing-impaired customers. These are not as common as others, but you will find them from time to time. Usually decent quality.

• Workprint - A copy made from an unfinished version of a film produced by the studio. Typically WPs have missing effects and overlays and often differ from its theatrical release. Some have a time index marker running in a corner or on the top edge and some also include watermarks. These are very rare and you usually will not encounter them on the open market. Having scene connections might get you access.

• Telecine - A copy captured from a film print using a machine that transfers the movie from its analog reel to digital format. Telecine has basically the same quality as DVD, since the technique is same as digitizing the actual film to DVD. However, the result is inferior because the source material is usually a lower quality reel. Telecine machines usually cause a slight left-right jitter in the picture and have inferior color levels compared to DVD. I have personally come across these twice.

• Screener - These are early DVD or BD releases of the theatrical version of a film, typically sent to movie reviewers, Academy members, and executives for review purposes. Disney has started encrypting the screener releases so they can only be played on special hardware, but this has not taken on industry wide as of this writing. A screener normally has a message overlaid on its picture, with wording similar to: The film you are watching is a promotional copy, if you purchased this film at a retail store please contact 1-800-NO-COPIES to report it.

• R5 - The R5 is a retail DVD from region 5. Region 5 consists of the Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, Russia and Mongolia. R5 releases differ from normal releases in that they are a direct telecine transfer of the film without any of the image processing. If the DVD does not contain an English-language audio track, the R5 video is synced to a previously released English audio track. This audio quality varies based on who is doing the new syncing.

• DVD-Rip - A final retail version of a film, typically released before it is available outside its originating region. Often after one group of pirates releases a high-quality DVD-Rip, the race to release that film will stop. Because of their high quality, DVD-Rips generally replace any earlier copies that may already have been circulating. No one usually bothers with the lesser versions afterwards.

• TVRip - TVRip is media captured from an analog capture card (coaxial/composite/s-video connection). Digital satellite rip (DSR) is a rip that is captured from a non-standard definition digital source like a satellite. In both of these cases, the best description would be they are pirating it off their TVs and sat boxes.

• BRRip - This is similar to DVD-Rip, only the source is a Blu-ray Disc. A BD/BR Rip in DVD-Rip size often looks better than a same-size DVD rip because encoders have better source material. It is Blu-ray, after all. What is commonly misunderstood among pirates is that a BDRip and a BRRip are really the same thing. A BDRip comes directly from the Blu-ray source, and BRRip is encoded from a prerelease, usually from a 1080p BDRip from another group. BD Rips are available in DVD-Rip sized releases, usually between 700MB and 1.5GB.

DVD Region Codes

• R0 - No region coding
• R1 - United States of America, Canada
• R2 - Europe, including France, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Arabia, Japan, and South Africa
• R3 - Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Borneo, and Indonesia
• R4 - Australia and New Zealand, Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America
• R5 - India, Africa, Russia, and former USSR countries
• R6 - Peoples Republic of China
• R7 - Unused
• R8 - Airlines and cruise ships
• R9 - Expansion (often used as region-free)

R1 and R2 usually offer the best quality, though R4 releases can be solid, as well.

Music

Music is a little less complex due to the rather open distro channels and ease of ripping and converting audio formats. MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, aka MP3, is still the common and default format for transferring music around. Things don't look to change there for the time being.
Tools range from ripping videos off YouTube, to more complex P2P works like GTK-Gnutella.
And of course, you can always just download entire albums as a torrent, so long as you own the original version legally.

Software

Here we get to the real fun stuff for the nerds out there.
Software cracking is a very complex programming project and the scene is divided into groups that perform this function. Usually, when a new version of some hot software is released, the race starts between these informal groups to crack the DRM protecting it and release the new version. Typically, this is achieved by cracking the executable file that would start the program, bypassing functions and routines that might be calling protection related code.
However, this is just a simple explanation of a complex topic. The side effect of this is that new versions usually need new cracks and it is a back and forth battle between the development teams and the black hats.
It should also be noted that not every file you see out there is safe, and proper safety should be practiced. This is a huge vector for malware and spyware, so only work with trusted sources.

In Closing

And there we have it, your guide to the high seas of software and media backups. Hopefully, this will keep you from wasting your time on that crappy CAM release, or maybe you can get your hands on that video editing software you desperately need for school but lost last semester.
Any questions about what we covered? Concerns? Shoot me a message or start a thread up in our forum.
Looking for more breaking security news and other gems? Follow us on Twitter!
Images by BlackhatGuide, SoftD, Elreplicante, uberchicchic
Via A Guide to Torrent Acronyms: How to Choose the Right Download for Your Damaged or Missing Media on null-byte.wonderhowto.com.
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the Free Universal Construction Kit

by fffffat

Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and much more. Announcing the Free Universal Construction Kit: a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys.

Consider the frustrating experience of purchasing a new computer (a Mac, say) and discovering that it will not play your aunt’s Windows Media video of your little cousins. Likewise, imagine your aunt’s corresponding annoyance when she finds that her PC will not play the Apple Quicktime video you sent her of your cats. This humiliating little episode isn’t an accident; it’s just a skirmish in a never-ending battle between giant commercial entities, played out, thousands of times every day, in exactly such micro-punishments to customers like you. If you’re well-informed, you may happen to know about VLC — a free, open-source video player, developed by independent hackers as a grassroots remedy for exactly this problem. Until the advent of ubiquitous 3D printing, software remedies like VLC weren’t readily available for hardware products, like toys. That’s changing.

Today’s manufacturers have little or no intrinsic motivation to make their products compatible with anyone else’s. Indeed—despite obvious benefits to users everywhere—the implementation of cross-brand interoperability can be nearly impossible, given the tangled restrictions of patents, design rights, and trademarks involved in doing so. So we stepped up. The Free Universal Construction Kit is the VLC of children’s playsets.

Fig. 1. The Free Universal Construction Kit.

• Overview
• Motivation
• Download
• Implementation
• Legal and Commercial Implications
• License and Disclaimers
• Credits, Contact and Acknowledgements
• Keywords

Overview

F.A.T. Lab and Sy-Lab are pleased to present the Free Universal Construction Kit: a matrix of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten* popular children’s construction toys. By allowing any piece to join to any other, the Kit encourages totally new forms of intercourse between otherwise closed systems—enabling radically hybrid constructive play, the creation of previously impossible designs, and ultimately, more creative opportunities for kids. As with other grassroots interoperability remedies, the Free Universal Construction Kit implements proprietary protocols in order to provide a public service unmet—or unmeetable—by corporate interests.

The Free Universal Construction Kit offers adapters between Lego, Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears!, K’Nex, Krinkles (Bristle Blocks), Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, Zome, and Zoob. Our adapters can be downloaded from Thingiverse.com and other sharing sites as a set of 3D models in .STL format, suitable for reproduction by personal manufacturing devices like the Makerbot (an inexpensive, open-source 3D printer).

...MORE HERE...

Cooking With Cannabis – Cool Mint (Cannabis) Patties

Mint smothered in decadent dark chocolate —
refreshing and euphoric

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup of light corn syrup
2 teaspoons of peppermint extract
1/2 cup of softened Baked Butter
2 drops of food coloring (optional)
9 cups of sifted powdered sugar (about 2 pounds)

Use a mixing bowl to mix the corn syrup, peppermint extract, and slightly melted Baked Butter or margarine. Then add the sugar, a little bit at a time, and incorporate into the mix. Add the amount of food coloring to achieve your desired color and blend well.

Roll this mixture into small balls. Place them a couple of inches apart from each other on a cookie sheet that has been lined with wax paper. Use a fork to make each one flat.

Let the mint patties set in the refrigerator for several hours. Remove the patties from the refrigerator and let stand at room temperature for several days to dry out.

After a few days when the patties are dried out transfer them to a container with an airtight lid and store them in the refrigerator

You’ll make about 24 patties. Eat 3 to 4 patties per (regular size) person to get baked.

Excerpted from Baked: Over 50 Tasty Marijuana Treats, by Yzabetta Sativa, Published November 24, 2011, by Green Candy Press, £12.99, Available from all good bookstores, alibongo.co.uk and Amazon.

For wholesale order information contact our UK distributor, Turnaround Publisher Services, at hester@turnaround-uk.com or call: +44 (0)208 829 3000

Published in issue 12 of ISMOKE Magazine

MAKING TIN FROM ROCK DEMO.

Uploaded by lesserspottedbograt on 12 Aug 2011

A demonstration on how to make tin from rocks, held on Morvah Pasty Day 2011, Morvah, West Penwith, Cornwall

how to make a still at home

Uploaded by 306cas on 1 Oct 2011

quick little video on how i made my still, cost about 100$ cheaper if you do a bit of looking for the parts