The Experts below are selected from a list of 408 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Yawar Abbas Bangash - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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forensic analysis of Tor Browser a case study for privacy and anonymity on the web
Forensic Science International, 2019Co-Authors: Abid Khan Jadoon, Waseem Iqbal, Muhammad Faisal Amjad, Hammad Afzal, Yawar Abbas BangashAbstract:Web Browsers are among the most commonly used applications to access the web from any platform nowadays. With recent digital incidents involving breach of data, users are becoming more cognizant of the threat posed by malicious acTors having access to personal data as well as vulnerable applications which may compromise their data. For this very reason, users are being offered privacy preserving solutions for trust maturity. The onion router (Tor) Browser is one such application which not only ensures the privacy preservation goals but also provides promising anonymity. Due to this feature, majority of the users use Tor Browser for normal use as well as malign activities. In order to validate the claims of Tor Browser and help digital forensic investigaTors and researchers, we created different scenarios to forensically analyze the Tor Browser privacy and anonymity. As a result of the findings, it can be concluded that the Tor Browser leaves plethora of sensitive digital artifacts on host machine, which can be further used to compromise user data.
Youngseok Lee - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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improving Tor hidden service crawler performance
IEEE Conference Dependable and Secure Computing, 2018Co-Authors: Jonghyeon Park, Hyunsu Mun, Youngseok LeeAbstract:Tor is a popular anonymous network that provides the dark web called the hidden service not accessible with traditional web Browsers. The number of hidden services using Tor's anonymous network has been steadily increasing every year with the demand of user privacy concerns as well as illegal services that abuse Tor's anonymity. As a result, how to collect and analyze the contents of Tor hidden service is not yet in full swing. In addition, due to the slow access speed of the Tor Browser, it is difficult to observe the dynamics of the hidden services. In this work, we present an efficient Tor hidden service crawling method that can moniTor the status of hidden services for the analysis of authentic hidden service contents. We have designed our Tor crawler with the virtualization software, Docker, and parallel Tor Browsers to improve the crawling performance. In order to maximize the utilization, we analyzed the collected Tor hidden services by a clustering technique and reduced the crawling targets. Crawling time was 76% improved with 5 Docker containers with 5 Browsers. From clustering same hidden services, we can also reduce 39% of crawling the Tor hidden services. From January 1, 2018 to May 31, 2018, we collected 25,261 onion addresses and found 2,527 unique hidden services. We crawled this hidden services twice a day, collect 456,739 HTML pages. We classified 722 hidden services contents and analyzed the Tor hidden service dynamics through collected HTML pages and crawler's log data. As a result, we found that the percentage of illegal services is higher in hidden services, which is actually in service.
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poster probing Tor hidden service with dockers
Computer and Communications Security, 2017Co-Authors: Jonghyeon Park, Youngseok LeeAbstract:Tor is a commonly used anonymous network that provides the hidden services. As the number of hidden services using Tor's anonymous network has been steadily increasing every year, so does the number of services that abuse Tor's anonymity. The existing research on the Tor is mainly focused on Tor's security loopholes and anonymity. As a result, how to collect and analyze the contents of Tor's hidden services is not yet in full swing. In addition, due to the slow access speed of the Tor Browser, it is difficult to observe the dynamics of the hidden services. In this work, we present a tool that can moniTor the status of hidden services for the analysis of authentic hidden service contents, and have automated our tool with the virtualization software, Docker, to improve the crawling performance. From August 12, 2017 to August 20, 2017, we collected a total of 9,176 sites and analyzed contents for 100 pages.
Alison Macrina - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The Tor Browser and Intellectual Freedom in the Digital Age
Reference and User Services Quarterly, 2015Co-Authors: Alison MacrinaAbstract:I have wanted to publish a column on privacy as it relates to library technology for a while. While privacy has always been an issue at the forefront of librarians' minds, revelations surrounding the NSA's far-reaching data-collection programs and a seemingly unending string of high-profile breaches at major companies make paying attention to privacy all the more pressing. Having discovered Alison Macrina's work via an appropriately-titled article "Radical Librarianship: How Ninja Librarians are Ensuring Patrons' Electronic Privacy," she was an obvious choice for author. Her work with the Library Freedom Project is vitally important to the future of libraries and recently earned a Knight Foundation grant.--EdiTor If you've been following the revelations of the last year and half detailing the overbroad and often illegal collection of data by the NSA surveillance machine and its various government and corporate partners, you've no doubt heard of Tor. It's a powerful tool for anonymity, one of many tools that whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, activists, journalists, and everyday people use to help conceal their identities online. The Tor web Browser was featured in some of NSA slides that Snowden leaked (see figure 1); according to the spies, it's a tool for terrorists and other criminals, which ignores the many legitimate reasons noncriminals might want to conceal their sensitive personal data from spies and hackers. Other Tor-haters insist, without evidence, that the Browser is actually an NSA false flag, designed to trick users into thinking that it's protecting their online activity, but in fact designed to compromise privacy, or that it's been broken by cryptographers working for the government--or that it never even worked at all. Many false, sometimes deliberately misleading, things are written about Tor, and the people smearing it seem to want Tor banned or shut down outright (for a thorough explication and evisceration of some of the major condemnations of Tor, read this perfectly-worded blog post from The Intercept's Micah Lee). (1) What is it about Tor that causes such controversy? Tor is a powerful tool that gives users anonymity in an age of total online surveillance. It's misunderstood and therefore sensationalized by a nontechnical media and public. But it's also something that librarians need not only to understand, but to champion and fight for. Why? In this era of dragnet surveillance, our freedom to read and write freely is threatened. A recent PEN study entitled "Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor" detailed this well, showing that one in six writers polled had self-censored because of fears of surveillance, and another one in six had seriously considered doing so. (2) This is an Figure 1. "Terrorist with Tor client installed" from one of the NSA slides revealed by Edward Snowden to Glenn Greenwald in June 2013. alarming statistic, one that shows how much surveillance threatens free expression. There are few things librarians care more about than intellectual freedom, and Tor can help our local communities protect that freedom. This is why libraries should be installing the Tor Browser on all public PCs, running Tor relays from our networks, and teaching the public what Tor is and how they can use it to protect themselves. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] To help our library community understand this tool, a little background on Tor and how it works is necessary. First, just what is Tor? The most simple definition comes directly from the folks at the Tor Project: "Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet." (3) The most common use of Tor is through its web Browser, which you'll see referred to as "the Tor Browser," "the Tor Browser Bundle," or sometimes simply "Tor." Tor is fundamentally a proxy that masks the location information and browsing hisTory of the user, allowing for anonymous use of the Internet. …
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accidental technologist the Tor Browser and intellectual freedom in the digital age
Reference and User Services Quarterly, 2015Co-Authors: Alison MacrinaAbstract:I have wanted to publish a column on privacy as it relates to library technology for a while. While privacy has always been an issue at the forefront of librarians' minds, revelations surrounding the NSA's far-reaching data-collection programs and a seemingly unending string of high-profile breaches at major companies make paying attention to privacy all the more pressing. Having discovered Alison Macrina's work via an appropriately-titled article "Radical Librarianship: How Ninja Librarians are Ensuring Patrons' Electronic Privacy" she was an obvious choice for author. Her work with the Library Freedom Project is vitally important to the future of libraries and recently earned a Knight Foundation grant.
Abid Khan Jadoon - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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forensic analysis of Tor Browser a case study for privacy and anonymity on the web
Forensic Science International, 2019Co-Authors: Abid Khan Jadoon, Waseem Iqbal, Muhammad Faisal Amjad, Hammad Afzal, Yawar Abbas BangashAbstract:Web Browsers are among the most commonly used applications to access the web from any platform nowadays. With recent digital incidents involving breach of data, users are becoming more cognizant of the threat posed by malicious acTors having access to personal data as well as vulnerable applications which may compromise their data. For this very reason, users are being offered privacy preserving solutions for trust maturity. The onion router (Tor) Browser is one such application which not only ensures the privacy preservation goals but also provides promising anonymity. Due to this feature, majority of the users use Tor Browser for normal use as well as malign activities. In order to validate the claims of Tor Browser and help digital forensic investigaTors and researchers, we created different scenarios to forensically analyze the Tor Browser privacy and anonymity. As a result of the findings, it can be concluded that the Tor Browser leaves plethora of sensitive digital artifacts on host machine, which can be further used to compromise user data.
Divya Dayalamurthy - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Forensic Memory Dump Analysis And Recovery Of The Artefacts Of Using Tor Bundle Browser – The Need
2013Co-Authors: Divya DayalamurthyAbstract:The Onion Routing (Tor) project is a network of virtual tunnels that facilitates secure, private communications on the internet. A recent article published in “The Registry” claims that Tor bundle Browser usage has increased in recent years; statistics show that in January 2012, there were approximately 950,000 users globally and now in August 2013 that figure is estimated to have reached 1,200,000 users. The report also illustrates that The United states of America and the United Kingdom are major contribuTors towards the massive increase in Tor usage. Similarly, other countries like India and Brazil have increased usage to 32,000 and 85,000 respectively. This research paper will be an introduction and identifies the need for research in this area, and provides a literature review on existing research. The objective of this paper is to discuss the existing methodologies for analysing forensic artefacts from RAM from the use of the Tor Browser bundle and to propose a synthesized forensic analysis framework that can be used for analysing Tor artefacts.
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forensic memory dump analysis and recovery of the artefacts of using Tor bundle Browser the need
2013Co-Authors: Divya DayalamurthyAbstract:The Onion Routing (Tor) project is a network of virtual tunnels that facilitates secure, private communications on the internet. A recent article published in “The Registry” claims that Tor bundle Browser usage has increased in recent years; statistics show that in January 2012, there were approximately 950,000 users globally and now in August 2013 that figure is estimated to have reached 1,200,000 users. The report also illustrates that The United states of America and the United Kingdom are major contribuTors towards the massive increase in Tor usage. Similarly, other countries like India and Brazil have increased usage to 32,000 and 85,000 respectively. This research paper will be an introduction and identifies the need for research in this area, and provides a literature review on existing research. The objective of this paper is to discuss the existing methodologies for analysing forensic artefacts from RAM from the use of the Tor Browser bundle and to propose a synthesized forensic analysis framework that can be used for analysing Tor artefacts.