[chmod]

Hello HC I have decided to write a full paper on anonymity, a lot of this paper is intended as theory as there will be some extreme measures and some are not practical or illegal (I will include them for educational purposes but neither I nor HC staff condone such activities, and if I am in violation of any rules mods feel free to snip the parts in question). So lets get started shall we?


Anonymity is the process of being untraceable (in this case over the internet), I cannot guarantee you will be 100% untraceable even if you use every part of this paper, no one can ensure that, what I intend to do is to show you some of the techniques used to make you MUCH harder to find.


first things first- Hardware

you will want to get yourself a second hand laptop pay with cash and hide your identity don't go crazy with wigs etc just wear clothes you wouldn't usually wear and possibly a baseball cap or similar to hide your face, or buy one from a private seller in the local paper or whatever the important thing is that none of the hardware can be traced back to you.

You may also benefit form a fake ID just in case (illegal)
A car or van, you can go even further and use cloned license plates just make sure the plates belong to a vehicle of the same make/model/color to avoid suspicion (illegal)
A WiFi card capable pf packet injection

Purchasing things online

For purchasing things online you will need a pre paid visa, you can find them in stores, again pay cash and hide your identity, don't buy hardware online as this will leave a paper trail.

Software

You will need:

• A good offshore VPN that doesn't keep logs (do some research, to find a good one), you will most likely have to pay for this so use your pre paid card
  
• true crypt and use it to create a hidden OS with all your hacking tools
  
• Backtrack/kali or other hacking distro (recommended)
  
• Windows or other OS (to use serve as your decoy OS)
  
• TOR/proxy for extra security
  
• MAC spoofer to change your hardware address
  
  The set up
  
  You will want to completely wipe your new laptop and install install your decoy OS onto it leaving enough free space to install your hacking OS then install truecrypt and configure a hidden OS if you are unsure how to do this check *here* and install your hacking distro onto it
  
  next you will go out "war-driving", after using the MAC spoofing software to change your MAC address (going around neighborhoods looking for open or WEP encrypted networks and cracking them), there are a tonne of tutorials on here on how to do this.(illegal) and download and install TOR and set up your VPN.
  
  Extra tips
  
  Never use the same network twice and try not to use a recognizable pattern for choosing your neighborhoods, don't stay in the same location for more than a few hours. Never use your hacking laptop to browse social media (checking your facebook/twitter account etc), even with the decoy OS. When choosing a username for forums etc choose something that will bring in a lot of hits on a search engine and don't use the same user name for everything (for example have at the very least one alias to use when trying to stay anonymous and one for everyday activities making sure you keep these completely separate (different non-related emails and other "personal" details)-(Thanks to @"Maxx" for pointing out this was missing), making it much harder to find your haunts.
  
  Do your research on any VPN's you plan to use make sure that they really don't keep logs
  
  keep your hacking to yourself, don't brag to friends or threaten any body, this is the fastest way to get caught
  
  If you are working within a group you will need to communicate follow *this* thread to learn how to do so securely

[A.W.H]

This was a nice informative thread, thanks Chmod. +1

[chmod]

Your welcome, thanks for the feedback!

[unnamed]

Grave-digging for high quality.
Great tutorial, seriously the best I've seen online on this subject.


A quick note for newbies (I am one as well), Don't use Backtrack/Kali or any distros made by Offensive Security for everyday use.
Why? Their hacking tools require root access, which means that if someone gains access to your computer, he can fk up your whole system, not only your Linux OS.


If you want to use Kali/Backtrack as main os , either create a normal user or go ahead and use one of the other amazing Linux distros.

[chmod]

Thanks for the feedback, I would also seriously recommend not using pen test distros for everyday use for the exact reason @"FZEROX" mentioned above not to mention you are running several servers from boot including SQL and Apache which could compromise security. I do have kali installed on my system but only ever boot into it when the need arises and never use it for day to day tasks or browsing the web (although I will use it for researching a particular subject related to an attack I'm performing but great care is taken to minimize risk)

[hydrodynamiks]

Very informative thanks this got me thinking. If you were going to go through with something that needed this kind of protection wouldn't you try have any type of ace's up your sleeve like DBAN if they do catch you?

[chmod]

For something that required this level of Anonymity I would thoroughly destroy the laptop itself taking extra care with the HDD

[id0ge]

[*]true crypt and use it to create a hidden OS with all your hacking tools

Thanks chmod, great paper.

I would like to comment about the choice of TC, since there are lot of suspicion about it being a CIA honeypot.

http://www.privacylover.com/encryption/a...-honeypot/

I used TC for about 2 years but now I switched to Diskcryptor, as it really is open source and more trusted even if it has less functions than TC.

Let me know your thought about this

---

I would add in the software list also a secure file eraser like Eraser for Windows or Wipe for Linux.

[chmod]

I must admit I haven't heard of this before so you have caught me slightly off guard....

The link you provided here makes a lot of assumptions and seems to blow quite a few small details out of proportion, so what if the devs wish to remain anonymous, they could be doing so to avoid being questioned by said authorities mentioned in the article.

As for the forum rules banning mentioning other methods of disk encryption I can see why that would be in their interest (we have a similar rule here about rival forums)

(These are just my first impressions from reading this article)

I will certainly look into this though and post my findings for anyone who would like to know, and will certainly add some information about file erasers thanks for the suggestion.

[Whirl]

Wow to be truely anonymous it takes some hard work