Topic: Lavabit closes down (Read 2966 times)

Mr "Robert White" was behind the "attack" (message from secupost.net and Bitmessage):
-- -- --
This message is also available at http://secupost.net

Alright, the messages sent out a few days ago are starting to expire now. It's time for everyone to learn what the purpose of secupost.net is.

As many of you guessed, this is indeed a Bitmessage address to IP address mapper. Yes, the only thing that webserver would send was a 500 message.

It did alright too, gathering nearly 500 bitmessage users information after sending 15000 messages. Double what I expected.

I've included both a log of each address detected and the first thing to hit it including IP, reverse DNS and useragent as well as raw logs for every valid request. If you need to confirm this signature so you can verify messages from me when bitmessage is down, please see the bitmessage general chan for a copy from my bitmessage address.

So, future lessons:
- - - Yes, all bitmessage addresses are public and can be read from your messages.dat file using a small script.
- - - Don't click links. Even if it looks like a security-related site and uses some technical terms. I am not a nice person, I will publish any information I can gather about you and I don't care if you get lit on fire by terrorists because of it.
- - - Bitmessage does _not_ scale. It took me around 3.5 hours to send ~15k messages but it took the bitmessage network over 18 hours to fully propogate them.

Some of you were smart enough to use tor or VPN providers, but many of these are direct home or server IPs. The information below is more than enough for any government to come after you or any script kiddie to DDoS you. Be more careful next time.

Some of you tried to use scripts to claim addresses which weren't yours and skew the data, of course, you didn't even change your user-agent.

Even without accouting for that your attacks were ineffective because the IDs were generated in a non-linear fashion using a cropped HMAC-SHA256. To find your id:

def gen_mac(addr):
mac = hmac.new("fuck you", addr, hashlib.sha256).digest()
return unpack('>I', mac[0:4])[0]

This simple deterministic method means that you would have had to try... (2^32/15000)/2 = 143165 times on average just to get a single collision. Thanks for playing, but no luck this time.

This service has been operated completely anonymously thanks to Tor and Bitcoin. I hope you enjoy the result.

Robert White (BM-2D8yr4fzoMzwndqPwLMVyzUcdfK9LWZXjY)

Bitmessage has several potential security issues including a broken proof of work function and potential private key leaks.

 Full details:
 http://secupost.net/*RefNumber/bitmessage-security

There is still Riseup:
https://www.riseup.net/de/riseup-and-government-faq
Although they are US based they keep on fighting.

A word on hushmail:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hushmail

However, developments in November 2007 led to doubts among security-conscious users about Hushmail's security and concern over a backdoor. Hushmail has turned over cleartext copies of private e-mail messages associated with several addresses at the request of law enforcement agencies under a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with the United States.

or just use bitmessage with pgp.

I don't have any child porn to hide. I use torbrower for other things.

You can use Chinese/Russian email services. Like qqmail and mail.ru

The closest I'd be able to get to a site that meets your requirements is magnesium.net, which probably fits most of your requirements.  Unfortunately, I can't really recommend it because it hasn't really been reliable lately.  Most of the time it's up, but there are occasions when it's down for weeks at a time, so reliable it isn't.  

If you can afford it, the easiest way to get something like this is to host your own website, then you can have an email address that you control more than you would otherwise since it's hosted on your own domain.  I'm going to buy my own hosting eventually and would be happy to sell you an email address through it if you like, but I'm not planning on setting it up for a while so that doesn't really help you now.

Edited to add: Actually, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Hushmail here.  They're based in Canada and I think they meet all your requirements: PGP based email, good support, no advertisements.  I don't know how reliable they are, but I've heard good things about them, so that's what I'd go for if I were you.

Ah one of those "I have nothing to hide".
Ive heard of your kind, you guys are very dangerous.

Think it out.  What does this actually mean?  That Tor actually is effective in hiding the identity of the surfers?  Seems like otherwise, they would have wanted the site left open as a honeypot.

There's a story here, and it's not just a shrug and a laugh and....

So the government went after a hosting service that hosts child porn? Oh no!