[shellfu]

This was originally written as an eBook, so excuse the formatting.

Advanced Online Anonymity Tutorial

Abstract

This book has been designed to teach you of anonymity and how to gain a significant amount of protection through several means. Anonymity can play a key part in future events. For example, your identity may be leaked on a forum after being “doxed”.

Contents
1) Basic Internet Anonymity
2) Anonymity when Purchasing
3) Home Address Anonymity Methods
4) Stylometry Anonymity
5) Protection from Software

 

Basic Internet Anonymity

Basic Internet Anonymity is something every hacker or security expert should know. There are very many methods of securing your Internet Anonymity. First let’s focus on the two most common methods. Proxies and VPNs. These both re-route your internet traffic and hide your IP (Thus also hidng your Geo-Location) to make you appear differently to others on the internet. However there are key differences between them.

What’s the Difference?
The difference is quite simple. A proxy is mainly used to re-route traffic on an internet Browser, meaning it only secures you through your internet browser. A VPN however secures ALL connections, not just your browser connection. It secures everything a proxy secures. They are usually encrypted heavily and are easily turned on and off.

Different Types of Proxies
There are several types of Proxies which hide you (or not hide you, in some cases) in different ways.

Transparent Proxy
Transparent Proxies are simplistic proxies that do not affect how secure you are. They are mainly used to cache web pages.

Anonymous Proxy
Anonymous Proxies are used to cache websites (similar to Transparent Proxies) with the difference of actually hiding your IP address and replacing it with a new address.

Elite Proxy
Elite Proxies appear to websites as if your system is non-proxied. It’s next to impossible to detect whether a system is using an elite proxy. It does not replace your IP, instead it removes it completely and appears blank.

Which should I use?
A VPN would keep you more secure, as proxies can often not completely hide you.

What should I look out for?
Some VPN’s and Proxies keep logs of who is using it and what they are visiting. Visit their Terms of Service page and check whether they keep logs before you use it.

What should I use?
If you would like some Proxies, the Incog Group will be giving away elite proxies that will be updated every two days or so.
Here are some VPN recommendations:
[censored] VPN.

This is by far one of the best VPN’s I have used. They have a facebook trial which allows you to use all the premium servers for free.

Hidemyass VPN

Hidemyass has had a fair amount of negative background, as they were involved in the capture of several members of a specific hacking group, however this is one of the cheapest VPNs around for only $6.55 a month and with around 53 countries covered. Please note that logs are kept for two years, so this VPN is not as trustworthy as other alternatives.

Anonymity when Purchasing

Anonymity when purchasing items (virtual or physical) can be quite nerve-racking due to the general fear of your credit/debit card details and/or person information such as name and address being released or used against you. In this section we’ll be focusing on payment details alone. Anonymity when purchasing can be important to make sure you don’t get scammed. Let’s go through several payment methods.

PayPal

PayPal is one of the most commonly used methods of payment. It allows you to pay without revealing any of your payment details to the person you’re paying.

Bitcoins

Bitcoins are a fairly new currency that are most known for being secure. You can either download the wallet program, or use an online wallet to store your bitcoins. They are the primary method of payment on online blackmarket websites such as Silk Road. However recently there has been a lot of speculation over how secure bitcoins truly are. Please research before using this method of payment.

Liberty Reserve

Personally I have never used Liberty Reserve because I never understood how it worked. However using Liberty Reserve can often be cheaper than other methods of payment such as PayPal.
 

Home Address Anonymity Methods

Previously I talked about protecting your payment details. This is not the only information you may want to protect. Information such as your Address may be another thing you want to protect. There are several options here that allow you to hide your address.

Dead Drops
Dead drops are basically a method that you can use to obtain packages where you don’t want it to be delivered at your official address. The most common method is listed below:
•Find a local abandoned house (Or a house where the individuals residing there are on holiday).
•Use that address when ordering.
Option 1:
•On the day your package is supposedly supposed to be delivered, leave a note on the house door saying “If I’m not in, please leave the package round back”. Towards the end of the day, check round the back for the package.
Option 2:
•If you have a spare key to the house, wait until the postman leaves a collection note through the letterbox.
•Use the spare key to open the door and get the collection note.
•Go to the local post office and use the collection note to get the package.

Private Mailbox / Mail Forwarding
Private Mailboxes are useful if you want to conceal your own address. Unfortunately almost all of them cost money to use. Below are a few websites that allow Private Mailboxes

http://www.the-post-house.com/ - Private UK mailboxes
http://prime-secretarial.co.uk/ - UK mailboxes
http://www.usabox.com/ - USA Mail Forwarding
http://www.privatebox.co.nz/ - New Zealand Mail Forwarding

Tips:
One of the main things you should remember is that using your normal address on any purchasing website can be risky. A lot of websites are vulnerable to a hack of some sort. This means that if you use your normal address on websites, it may be released publically if the website is hacked.
 

Stylometry Anonymity

Stylometry is quite new in virtual terms, however has been around for a long time. An example of classic Stylometry is faking your parent’s signature on a letter. However this does not mean Stylometry is alone about the handwriting. It is about the linguistic style and analyzing a person’s unique writing style.
Recently, Stylometry is being used heavily against hackers in an attempt to identify who they really are. Researchers from Drexel University used Stylometry to identify 80 per cent of users on underground online forums. This is the reason why I have incorporated this into the eBook.

Method of Protection:
The most common way of protecting against Stylometry is to use JSAN, the open source dual tool project. JSAN consists of two parts (JStylo and Anonymouth).
JStylo is the Authorship Recognition Analysis Tool. This is used to find out who the author is.
Anonymouth is the Authorship Recognition Evasion Tool. This is used to avoid being recognized.

Even though there is a definitive threat for hackers with this, the method is very new and is not, as of this moment, likely to be a potential threat towards your security and anonymity. However as these tools exist, you can expect a large rise in usage.
 

Protection from Software

Another threat to individuals and companies is software. I’m not talking about average software such as Word, or Excel. I’m talking about malicious code such as viruses that steal your data and sensitive information you will probably want kept secret (Such as passwords to your accounts that may have your private data within).

Antivirus Software
Antivirus software is more useful than you may think. Most people think it’s only useful to protect your computer from being completely destroyed. Although this is true, most people don’t see the effect of viruses, or if they do, don’t think it is the fault of a virus. For example, if someone finds their account password has been changed, most people with suspect that they have just forgotten it. Below are some famous anti-virus programs that are often recommended on HF.

Avast Anvast

My personal favorite Antivirus. It almost always alerts me when something’s going wrong.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky is really well know (Especially for being bloatware on computers) and has many good features.

BitDefender

It was only recently that I was acquainted with BitDefender when I was recommended the program by a friend on HF. Unfortunately I had to uninstall my previous antivirus programs to allow this program to install, which was not very helpful. However the program was quite useful for defense.

MalwareBytes

There are no words to explain how much I love this program. Whenever I caught one of those annoying fake antivirus viruses, this program would ALWAYS be the one that cleared in up when I booted in safe mode. This program has helped me very much over the past few years to keep me safe from malware attacks.

Norton

Norton is an antivirus I’ve heard quite a lot about. It seems to be advertised everywhere. Personally I have never used it, however I’ve been told it is quite good.

McAfee

McAfee came pre-installed with my PC. It was annoying to try to remove and screwed up my firewall when it removed an important registry key that was infected by a virus (BFE). However, it did alert me whenever there were viruses. I should note that if you want an antivirus that you can disable, then this is probably not the right one.

Thank you for reading my tutorial, I hope it was of some use to you and that you learnt something new.
-Max (Incog Leader)

[girlscanner]

Hidemyass VPN keep logs for 2 years, dont use!

[teonanacalt]

Nice tutorial, lot of useful guide and information.
Thank you Max! appreciate your work.

[shellfu]

Hidemyass VPN keep logs for 2 years, dont use!

Thanks for the specific details. I wasn't sure how long the logs were kept for. I'll add it to the thread.

Nice tutorial, lot of useful guide and information.
Thank you Max! appreciate your work.

Thanks :)

[Un0wn_X]

Wow Really useful and a awesome tutorial on anonymity... Thank you HEX ... Keep it up !

[hakuna]

Thanks for this tut.. it is really detailed and helped solving some probs i had.

[shellfu]

Thanks for this tut.. it is really detailed and helped solving some probs i had.

No problem. Always here to help :) if you have any questions then don't hesitate to ask!

[ghost_rider]

Great tut. If I go thru multiple VPN's and a proxy to hide my ident, is this over kill or can doing this make sure I remain anonymous?

use comercial paid vpn, then [censored], and then anonymous proxy.

[Candyflip2013]

Good post :) made me download kaspersky, instead of the mcafee.