Australian police sting brings down paedophile forum on dark web

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/07/australian-police-sting-brings-down-paedophile-forum-on-dark-web

by kristofferR • 9 years ago

142 100 9 years ago

People should really read VGs special, which covers things like:

* How VG found the IP of the Tor Hidden Server, and discovered that it was being run by Australian police.

* Why Australian police got to run the site, despite having no direct connection to it, due to how their laws allow the police to act in ways that are criminal elsewhere (basically digital black sites).

* How the forum had a policy that all posts from the admin had to include rape images, as an attempt at preventing police from honeypoting the site.

* The ethics of the police running a CP forum, including police posting CP themselves.

https://www.vg.no/spesial/2017/undercover-darkweb/

marak830• 9 years ago

Bloody hell that was a difficult read.

anonymous5133• 9 years ago

He found one weakness: By asking the server the right question, it would reveal his own IP address .
The question was asked and the server replied. It was located in Sydney, owned by the server Digital Pacific.

What the hell does that even mean? It almost sounds like they were doing packet sniffing and looking at the IP addresses of where the packets came from. Any non-tor exit node IPs could be the server's IP. Similar strategy was used against Silk Road.

kristofferR2• 9 years ago

They have a more technical description of the process further down in the article, in the grey box:

"IP addresses and physical server locations are inherently difficult to find on the Tor network. So how did VG’s computer expert get the forum to disclose this information?

1. Profile picture upload

The forum allowed users to upload a profile picture. This picture could also be fetched from a user-supplied URL.

2. The leak

This is where the information leak occurs. Configured for optimal security, the forum’s software and/or server would fetch the remote profile picture via Tor. Childs Play did not – all traffic to external sites originated from the server’s real IP.

3. The IP address is exposed

By telling the forum to fetch a picture from a server Stangvik controlled, he could see in his server logs that the originating IP was with a hosting provider in Sydney – Digital Pacific. Stangvik went on to confirm that outgoing DNS requests originated from the same provider, and that the forum’s software also loaded images included in forum post previews from the same IP.

4. A proxy, VPN or Tor Exit?

The next question was whether the IP belonged to a Tor Exit Node, a VPN or a proxy server. An IP can hide just about anything. How could he confirm that this was the forum’s location, rather than just a node in a chain of redirects? Stangvik applied three improvised techniques:

5. Timing between the servers

He rented a virtual server with Digital Pacific – the same place as where the suspected IP was located. He then updated the profile picture URL to point to this server. Upon receiving an incoming profile picture request, Stangvik’s server would respond with a redirect to another URL on the same virtual server. Repeating this redirection process several time, Stangvik was able to isolate and measure the roundtrip-time between the two servers. The measurements yielded very low times, consistent with a forum server in close vicinity of his rented server.

6. Measuring intermediate nodes

Stangvik also paid attention to so-called «Time To Live» values on the incoming data packets. These provide some insight into how many intermediate parties are involved from the sender to the recipient. In this case, the values indicated that there were at most one intermediate – a typical result if the servers were located in the same room.

7. Measuring packet size

The final test started to get advanced: Measuring MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) and packet fragmentation. Each packet in a computer network has a maximum transmission size, based on which intermediates it passes through. Each encapsulating technology, such as VPNs, can result in the total packet size increasing beyond the maximum size, and local networks usually have larger maximum sizes than the “tubes” found on the internet. If the maximum size is surpassed, the packet will be broken into multiple fragments.

By crafting long profile picture URLs, and setting specific packet flags, in the redirects returned by his custom web server software, he could see that the MTU was consistent with that of high-speed local area network traffic, and also ruled out VPN configurations."

Eridrus• 9 years ago

Two things spring to mind: a debug message that spat out the IP it was listening on, or just scanning the internet and sending every server a Host header that's the Tor hostname. Sounds more like the former though.

zxcmx• 9 years ago

It is this bug: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Server_Side_Request_Forgery

Except that with tor, hitting ANY external IP from the "real" IP of your hosting box is bad news (since your service is no longer hidden).

This is a rookie mistake for an operator running a hidden service. What you are supposed to do is a) ensure you are not running crappy software and more importantly b) ensure that your server/container/service (preferably) has no network egress or (if you need that) that egress is transparently proxied at the network level through something suitably anonymous. Whatever scheme you choose should be robust against an attacker who compromises your hidden service any any way, up to having root on the host or vm. This usually means that if you are trying to run a hidden service on a single physical machine, you want multiple VMs or containers, and you really want there to be no guest-to-host escapes. There are multiple ways of skinning that cat but VMs are nicer than containers or jails because you can have actually different network stacks.

The officer's methodology for determining whether the requesting IP was really that of the hidden service was quite sound from a forensics point of view and in fact did not require any "special" network access over and above that which a normal citizen would have.

curiousgal• 9 years ago

You'd think that with a story that big they'd provide an English version. Too bad.

revelation2• 9 years ago

They do. It's just impossible to find since they prefer showing 1080p of some empty US road instead of checking browser headers. But here it is:

https://www.vg.no/spesial/2017/undercover-darkweb/?lang=en

(The icon was in the top right, some 20p image!)

Vinnl2• 9 years ago

I like how discrete VG appears to be, and still asking the right questions (at least in the English version [1]).

Two disturbing things other than the obvious ones such as people abusing children. First,

While the young Canadian unsuccessfully tried to find help to control the desires he felt, the American kept them shut inside. He was afraid any doctor, psychologist or counsellor he consulted would have to report him if he admitted being sexually attracted to children.

I often feel as if, like with drug users, treating paedophilia not as inherent thoughtcrime but as something someone needs help with, could help prevent a lot of abuse. I don't know what I'd do if there was such a taboo on adult men being attracted to adult women.

The second is the state of anarchy we're in at a global level, with law enforcement, criminals, governments and large multinational companies simply being able to go there where the law is most conducive to whatever they want to do, effectively as if there is no law at all.

Both things for which I don't really know how they could be fixed, but which have me concerned nonetheless.

[1] https://www.vg.no/spesial/2017/undercover-darkweb/?lang=en

whipoodle2• 9 years ago

Sounds illegal.

rabidrat• 9 years ago

If you read the article, you would know that it is in fact not illegal for police in Australia.

QAPereo4• 9 years ago

By the same token, other countries could try to extradite them under their laws, broken through the international, online distribution of CP.

whipoodle2• 9 years ago

No, I know it's not illegal when law enforcement does it. Very little is!

cyberferret• 9 years ago

Just to clarify - the police department didn't create the site from scratch. They busted the original owner of it, then took over the site 'as is' and ran it for a while longer to gather evidence of other users, then shut the whole thing down.

No different from cops everywhere knowing where a drug shipment is landing, then setting up a sting operation around that to see who comes along to collect, and then pouncing. (Rather than intercepting the drugs mid shipment or before it leaves).

belorn4• 9 years ago

That's not a fair comparison since in that scenario the police don't interact with any end user and are not distribution anything themselves.

This is more akin to a police going under cover and selling drugs on the street, hoping to get near the supplier.

yeukhon• 9 years ago

In the future, I hope we can use existing AI to create fake child porn images so these brave officers wouldn’t have to feed these motherfucking-sickshitbag-fuckers real child porns (although the police stated the pictures they used already exist else where).

Bravo to all the people crackingndown in human trafficking and protecting children from harms

Waterluvian• 9 years ago

This is like some sort of awful Black Mirror episode. What if we could generate infinite "new" content without harming another human to do so?

yorwba• 9 years ago

I say do it. I'm already ok with Loli Hentai existing, although I find it revolting to look at. If artificial child porn indistinguishable from the real thing becomes available, it will devalue its production. Given the risks, it seems likely that much fewer children will be raped.

tomjen3• 9 years ago

Then we use that to prevent children from being raped at no cost to civil liberties, or risk for the innocent.

And if anyone has a moral problem with that, because it feels wrong, well fuck them.

discordance• 9 years ago

This idea raises an interesting question - what if all child porn in the future was artificially generated. Would it be illegal to consume or share that material?

atdt• 9 years ago

https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-fede...:

"Visual depictions include photographs, videos, digital or computer generated images indistinguishable from an actual minor, and images created, adapted, or modified, but appear to depict an identifiable, actual minor. "

abecedarius• 9 years ago

I think I read in the 90s that made-up child porn (such as drawings from imagination) had recently become illegal in the U.S. It doesn't seem like that could've survived a first-amendment challenge, but IANAL and I don't know what's the status now.

randomdata• 9 years ago

Probably. Child porn is illegal today because consumption incentivizes production of even more material. If you could somehow guarantee that production would only come from artificial sources then there would be no reason for it to be illegal, but making that guarantee in the real world is unrealistic. Once you create demand for artificial content then someone is going to try and slip the real thing in, bringing us back to square one. Artificial depictions of child porn are already illegal in many jurisdictions for that reason.

Vinnl2• 9 years ago

Even more interesting: would it be moral. It seems to me like it would be great if police wouldn't have to feed them, but they wouldn't even have to rape children to feed themselves.

betterunix23• 9 years ago

It would in the United States; the law here criminalizes possession of cartoon depictions of child sex abuse:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A

There have been prosecutions in the past:

https://www.wired.com/2010/02/obscene-us-manga-collector-jai...

Yes, it is controversial, as the original reasoning for banning child abuse imagery was to protect the children who are harmed by its production. This is the result of a shift in thinking: while the original idea was that we should protect children, today it is a matter of morality and pedophiles are considered morally deficient. As a result, even if a pedophile has never harmed a child, the common notion is that they are a danger to the community and that we can never be too careful.

shirro• 9 years ago

I hope they got signed releases from the grown up victims whose non-consensual images were being posted. If not, then they are increasing the harm. If an a adult who valued privacy had a sex video stolen and then distributed by the police they would be livid. For it to happen to someone who was abused as a child is unconscionable. From that perspective artificial might be preferable.

etplayer3• 9 years ago

Out of interest, in what way is harm increased? Does the same harm occur in cases in which the image is only being viewed?

cyphar7• 9 years ago

That would actually still be illegal in Australia (at least, in all the states I've checked). For NSW in particular the The Crimes Act (1900) s91fb[1] states that materials that "appears or are implied to be" child abuse material are legally defined to be child abuse material. The criterion is further expanded by saying that the judgement of whether something qualifies is by "the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults" (among other restrictions). Though, as this article proves, Australian police are particularly well-known for being allowed to break laws for the purposes of an investigation.

Given that loli isn't legal in Australia, I doubt that photorealistic artificial child pornography would fare better.

[1] http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/conso...

fiblye• 9 years ago

Agreed with the crackdown, but not with the "brave" methods. Someone is getting paid to not only look but distribute this all day, everyday. We need to take measures to demolish government institutions that post and distribute this content under the guise of "law enforcement." I read far more articles about police-run sites and forums being shutdown than I read about wild sites being taken down.

This is no better than the "brave" arms smuggling operations of the ATF.

woodandsteel3• 9 years ago

But what if looking at AI-generated child porn inspires a pedophile to do something similar with a real child?

entwife• 9 years ago

Worth mentioning, these support groups. Because not all men are rapists and neither are all pedophiles.

Virtuous Pedophiles (for those who never raped) virped.org

Community support for offenders after prison (Australia): http://www.smh.com.au/national/pedophile-support-programs-ch...

ikeboy6• 9 years ago

Opsec breaches here: (from https://www.vg.no/spesial/2017/undercover-darkweb/, linked in this thread)

1. not firewalling the server so all traffic goes through Tor

2. registering a bitcoin wallet with a private email address

3. asking a coding question using their own identity (Ross Ulbricht, anyone?)

larrykwg• 9 years ago

Maybe it would be a good idea if some western states have access to a kind of backdoor into Tor/I2P/Freenet/etc. How many pedo/drug/etc. illegal sites are still there and will be there in the future where the owners know proper opsec. I get the point that journalists/political dissidents want some anonymous communication channel, but do we have to tolerate shit like this? Maybe tor without the hidden services would be morally less contemptible?

I suppose its likely that the NSA controls/monitors a sufficient amount of tor nodes to make this already be the case anyhow.

colejohnson66• 9 years ago

There’s this thing called the slippery slope. The reason backdoors are bad is because: once one government shows they can get a backdoor, every other government will want one. The FBI wanted a backdoor for iPhones while completely disregarding the fact that if Apple added one, what’s to stop China from demanding one, too?

nikanj• 9 years ago

Apple being an US company?

rallycarre• 9 years ago

There is a back door to every Iphone. Just ask around Boston.

betterunix23• 9 years ago

"Maybe it would be a good idea if some western states have access to a kind of backdoor into Tor/I2P/Freenet/etc."

How will we ensure that only the Western States that are supposed to use the backdoor will be able to, and that e.g. the governments of Russia, China, or Iran will not have access? Remember that Tor was created by the US government for the purpose of evading surveillance and national firewalls, and that many countries would like to have access to that backdoor for less acceptable purposes.

"I get the point that journalists/political dissidents want some anonymous communication channel, but do we have to tolerate shit like this?"

Tor is not really the issue here. Pedophiles do not really depend on Tor as much as you might think. Pedophiles are known to use the postal system to send and receive encrypted DVDs. They are known to operate legitimate websites as "fronts" for pedophile forums (not hidden services). They have used Usenet, IRC, FTP, and BBSes. They use sneakernet.

Child molesters often go undetected for years, despite not using the Internet at all. Child molesters rely less on systems meant to evade mass surveillance than on the fact that we do not live in an Orwellian world of total and pervasive surveillance. I think we would all agree that the priority is to arrest people who abuse children; yet that is a crime that occurs offline, is not in any way aided by Tor, and still remains hard for the police to detect and stop.

It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that were it not for Tor, the police would have an easy time catching pedophiles or that child sex abuse imagery would stop being produced.

fit2rule4• 9 years ago

legal protections allow police to post abuse material

It should be noted that Australia has a lot of history with this sort of legal protection. The reason for this is that Australia does not include its armed/police forces in its democratic institutions - i.e. the armed and police forces do not answer to the public, but rather to the sovereign (the Governor General, who answers to the Queen).

For example, its legal for Australia to commit war crimes as part of the Coalition - in fact, Australian armed forces are in the Coalition to "do the dirty work that other countries cannot do". Australian Forces can bomb innocents with relative impunity - relative to the scrutiny that the American forces must operate under, that is. Whenever America needs something dirty done, it comes knocking on the ADF door...

ajdlinux2• 9 years ago

Give me sources, or I'll say you're just plain wrong.

Conduct that amounts to war crimes will amount to an offence either under the Defence Force Discipline Act or under civilian law - ADFIS and AFP do investigate this stuff, though admittedly they haven't had much luck recently with actually charging or convicting anyone, but the same can be said of any other country currently in Iraq. I'd find it hard to believe that Australia is any worse than the US, honestly.

(FWIW I'll allow that parliamentary scrutiny of the ADF is probably not as stringent as in the US Congress.)

In this case, the police are using their Controlled Operations authority that was originally granted to allow police to conduct drug importations as part of sting operations. Other jurisdictions do have some analogous laws, though potentially not with such broad scope.

fit2rule4• 9 years ago

Pop quiz: why doesn't the ADF ever have to report its civilian casualties to the nation? Oh wait, you answered it:

parliamentary scrutiny of the ADF is probably not as stringent as in the US Congress.

Australian Constitution, Section 68:

"The command in chief of the naval and military forces of the Commonwealth is vested in the Governor‑General as the Queen’s representative."

(NB; the Australian Constitution is an embarrassment to the Australian people - it is categorically the worst constitution of all modern western democracies...)

Here, Scott Ludlum explains the situation pretty well:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/17/the-au...

".. Australia has remained anchored to a pre-democratic tradition founded in hereditary monarchies and feudal states."

Curious readers might like to know more about Australias' war crimes in the middle east, and the extent to which its politicians will go to keep the truth from the Australian people:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/adf...

https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/australias-...

Australia committed war crimes in Mosul, and in Raqqa - this is known by anyone who cares to investigate the matter. It is not reporting these crimes, because its forces are not required to by the Australian people, and its politicians are cowardly hiding the truth, because they know that the Australian people will be held liable for these crimes...

tryingagainbro• 9 years ago

To maintain their cover, undercover detectives were posting and sharing abuse material on Childs Play. For over a year.

Who would authorize this...once again, it's a whole freakign year? I understand seizing a site and "seeing" who log in for a while but police actively posting child pron? Why not have undercover ATF agents kill people to prove their no undercover?

Australian police sting brings down paedophile forum on dark web

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