/cyber/ - Cyberpunk & Science Fiction

"Dr. Strangelove"

or

"How I learned to stop worrying a love the infopocalypse"

In all seriousness though, I do all the required stuff ot be successful in society, like have a gmail account and stuff. But anything I don't want corps seeing(like my actually important emails, or my browsing habits) are carefully hidden by encryption and other good security practices. I remain strictly anonymoose on the web. The idea is that if things really go down the shitter I can switch to being full paranoid easily, but in the meantime I can experience the benefits of capitalism.

>Has anyone on /cyber/ already reached the point of no return?

I'm fairly normal in society. Not too obvious but not too discreet. I still use windows, but that's because I need software to work for, you know, life. I don't want to compile a word processor just to type a txt document.

I use a dumb phone because it does the job and doesn't anally rape my data for profit.

I use Tor to browse most places, even when browsing normal clearnet places, to help obfuscate my browsing.

I use cryptographic software to protect my data where necessary

I run a server that's only accessible if you find out my IP address (for my friends)

I work and have my name in some govcorp server as a citizen whos only crime is a fare evasion ticket and works hard to stay alive.

You can only do so much. Corps own everything. Your shirts, your fridges, your food, your computers, phones, your fucking underwear. I'm not saying there's no point in resisting the system which this anon >>34004 mentioned. But it's not necessary in every aspect of your life. You have to compromise sometimes.

>>34004

Its not just that, but what happens when you reach the point that you can only trust what you make in your own directly from materials you personally harvested?

>>34065

>>34040

Yeah, I pretty much try to do the same, although sometimes I feel the temptation of drooping the stuff that I use to pretend with.

Being "social" is such a chore.

>>34087

I can't trust a wooden mixing spoon made by some kitchen-ware corporation? What the hell are you even saying?

It's one thing to keep in mind potential backdoors hardwired into CPU's and other hardware and another thing to not trust a fucking clock.

Please, dissuade me or enlighten me but as of this moment I don't think extreme paranoia is a healthy mentality.

If all else fails and you lose hope in everything, meditate and/or do some psychedelics and pick up a paint brush or a guitar and imprint your consciousness onto the world. Or die.

>>34149

>and another thing to not trust a fucking clock.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-24707337

>>34150

Point taken and thank you for that.

But still, is it smart to be suspicious of every item in your house? From a mathematical standpoint, there's going to be a certain percentage of manufactured items that are fucked with one way or another simply because humans are involved; as we all know, humans are not perfect. Do you stop going to public school or college because there were instances of shootings and people died? Do you stop driving cars because some people demonstrated the software/firmware could be hacked? Do you stop ironing your clothes because you fear your network to become infected?

So, at what point do you just stop giving a fuck? What happens to you if you give too many fucks? Are there ways to live a comfortable life without playing 'the game'?

>>34151

I dunno mang, not that anon you talked to, but these days I feel like humanity is on a ride that we can't even control anymore, or like you call it, the game. I don't know what will happen in the near future, I sure know that it will be disastrous for some reason and dark ages and chaos can come. I always wanted to do something for humanity but now, eh.

>>34152

I feel you, I really do. Most of us who haven't lost all hope would like to do something for humanity to steer it in the right direction, whatever that may be. The problem is that currently our system is fucked up to a point where it appears disaster is inexorable and extinction on the horizon. The catch 22 is: It appears this way and WILL be this way if we do NOT do something to help. You see? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that defines, at least in part, our current zeitgeist.

So how then do we factor in that society again appears to be out of our control? How can we help if we can't penetrate society in some way with our efforts to better it? What are the ways in which we can better it in the first place? I have ideas but I don't have the answers to these questions and I would encourage everyone to think about them.

Although society and culture seems to be outwardly spiraling out of control, we must remember that we ARE society. What can we do?

>hardware

not sure; Thinkpad with libreboot helps (maybe?)

>software

Minimal set of utilities compartmentalized in virtual machines, never leak to host or other, nothing but bare minimum on host and virtualization software.

> internet

Privacy oriented offshore VPN connected to Tor

The rabbit hole of paranoia goes on forever, chummer.

My laptop has usbkey that has grub on it, missing OS error without it, encrypted hard drive, same usb acts as a kill switch as i keep it on a wristband and it shuts my comp and wipes my ram, securely. Anything else I can do?

>>34153

>>34153

>Although society and culture seems to be outwardly spiraling out of control, we must remember that we ARE society. What can we do?

We are only a fraction of said society, and ends it. Going against it? Too powerless. Or you can get sucked in, be a ceo or something, but you would remain just as powerless. Sadly, you can not get people to think for themselves, they are just too brainwashed for that, and the machine is too big and corrupted to the core, heaven and hell, back and forth. Just think about it:

>Become prime minister

>Encourage people to use linux, libreboot

Corps would find a way to make brouzouf and suck everything off you, if there is brouzouf in it, they make it happen. I feel like democracy as we know it is dated and useless. The first law of political science that since modern democracy exists, politicians are sponsored by commercial interests. China has an advantage against every other country on earth : they don't take no shit from civilians and they are also backed by almost every single corp on the world as they are used as Earth's industrial district so they can corrupt every single equipment to the core. This means they can pursue their crazy ideas (or their political machine's idea, since they have the same problem regarding the unstoppable ride [remember those ghost towns they build so their politicians can brag to the others while the poor lives on the street, slums and mud?]). Oh, and there is this thing : usa tries to suck in talent from all around the world, to make innovations and such, but where those things get manufactured in the end? Bingo.

I feel like the day will come when the world will take a huge U-turn and the retards who can only think about buying the newest iphones and interacting with the most genitalias in the weekends will be given a reality check. Or maybe not. Maybe it will be more subtle. Maybe we are already under water, but we keep playing like Titanic's band.

Mindless globalism, outsourcing and greed killed nice things

\rant

>>34149

>Please, dissuade me or enlighten me but as of this moment I don't think extreme paranoia is a healthy mentality.

I think that is precisely the original point.

And by the way, a wooden mixing spoon could easily have a hidden microphone.

>>34151

Mathematically speaking, most privacy/security measures /cyber/ takes are unnecesary. While we laugh at people saying that they don't do such a thing because "they've got nothing to hide", it does makes sense from a logical point of view. Are the benefits obtained from such measures worth the cost?

>>34154

As long as those are before the CHina-made IBM Thinkpads. And I don't think I need to mention Lenovo's ver.

And sadly VPNs and Tor are an obstacle only (and sometimes not even) to individuals trying to track you without a corp/agency backing them up.

>>34158

>And sadly VPNs and Tor are an obstacle only (and sometimes not even) to individuals trying to track you without a corp/agency backing them up.

Unless those NSA powerpoints were faked, the NSA can't track you if you have a properly secured firefox routed through Tor and a VPN.

>>34160

I had this idea once in one of my paranoia-induced brainstorming that one should write a code that basically infects every machine in the area you are war-(moving) in and make them host tor nodes without the knowing of the owners to make a fuckhuge relay system

>>34161

Dude holy shit, that's great. It's basically fighting fire with fire.

>>34157

Thank you for perspective. I think your point of people already being sucked in is key since that's at the core of this whole issue.

Is there something we can do to try and slowly but surely change our relationship with China? I understand that's an entirely open-ended question.

Can corporations exist within a societal construct that doesn't stack the odds in the wealthy's favor? What would that societal construct look like? Perhaps we haven't found the right combination of social framework and culture yet.

The Titanic's band analogy was good.

>>34160

Faked? Nah.

Misinfo? Duh, its 20XX old man, get up with the times.

At this point, VPNs are for 3-letter agencies, in their worst case scenario, just a little bit more paperwork to be done.

>>34180

Seconded. VPNs are only good if your ISP blocks Tor, otherwise useless

>>34150

WHOA WHOA WHOA NO NO NO NO

>>34183

>useless

nope. VPNs are good for general web browsing while giving away less information about where you are.

Marketing agencies, who collect the bulk of mass surveillance data, do not have the resources to find out who's behind the VPN. VPNs are also a good tool for posting on sites where tor is banned.

Don't forget bittorrent.

>>34151

You did think that a few seconds ago clocks were harmless.

See how quickly your perspective can change? Crazy, isn't it?

>>41064

You're better off using TOR in a virtual machine, chummer.

>>41064

yeah, use tor fgt.

>>41125

Using Tor isn't exactly a good idea. In fact, it really is "just an obstacle." Those powerpoints are dated now and I can't remember where, but 2 or 3 years ago I once read that authorities rendered Tor somewhat insecure. Not only that, but if they find out a certain address is using Tor (which is possible), it gives them reason to believe you're up to no good, in their eyes.

Also, I'll have to agree some of the users in this thread are being extremely paranoid, which really isn't healthy. Whether it be smoking too much pot or actually committing crimes, maybe chill a tad bit and realize you're not that much of an important study subject, or actual suspect, as you may think…

Is there a "correct" (Read: /cyber/-approved) way to encrypt Windows drives? I imagine Windows BitLocker is backdoored to shit. Are there any negatives to encrypting drives?

>>44131

Use VeraCrypt. It's the successor to Truecrypt and has been audited.

You could also run windows on a linux hypervisor and do FDE the linux way with dm-crypt. In some ways this increases your attack surface, in other ways it reduces it.

Don't use AES-256, it's possibly less secure than AES-128 if used without an NSA manual. If AES-128 isn't good enough you should use an algorithm with a greater safety factor, like Twofish or Serpent. On a recent 64-bit processor, Serpent-256 is almost as fast as AES-NI.

An advantage to dm-crypt is that you can store the headers on portable storage so even if your disks are stolen they don't know what encryption modes you used and neither can they prove your disks aren't random data. I don't believe that VeraCrypt can run in this mode.

>>44181

>dm-crypt

Noted. Thank you based anon.

Was using veracrypt. Guess is time for a change