Mirrors

Mirrors

The elders say that there are no answers, just stories. There are so many urban legends, from "The Candy Lady" to "The Devil Tree"; "Bloody Mary" and "The WMDs". All these stories are a constant reminder of certain painful and traumatic events that we that scarred our people. There are so many stories about mirrors; we have the ones that explain their capabilities as portals to other dimensions; there are stories that if a person dies in a room where there is an uncovered mirror, the soul of the deceased person will be trapped forever; and the most famous story of all...the candle, the mirror and the darkness… at 3am.

Other stories talk about reflection and duality; the pond that reflected Narcissus' image and the different alternative realities. In a way, mirrors do show us, for a fraction of a second, what dwells inside…and this is how this article begins.

Reality is stranger than…

We all have used an Internet browser, from the disastrous Internet Explorer to Firefox and Chrome; also Safari, Opera, Torch, Maxthon, Sea Monkey, Avant, Deepnet Explorer, Tor and the one that we love the most, Epic. All these browsers are like ponds, and every time we visit a website, we are allowing something very personal to come to life on screen. We all look for and consume whatever our desires ask for; but we must be capable to understand that when we look inside our souls, we are looking into the abyss… and from time to time, the abyss looks back at us. 

People think and imagine whatever they want; from the nice and lovely; to the stupid and obnoxious... probably even the ones that are illegal in Thailand... and there is no greater consequence because those things, most of the time, remain inside our heads. But what happens when those thoughts move to a computer?

The way in which a conventional internet browser works is relatively simple: there are certain protocols such as identification, the address to be visited, exchange some more information and that's it!.
 

Everything was so simple and somewhat transparent, but people and governments always find a way to fuck things up, Man-In-The-Middle Attack. Also, back in the day, many companies that already had an online presence decided that in order to give a better service to their clients and to improve their products, they had to know what was going through the minds of all those people visiting their websites; thus this "small list" of companies who track their users, was born.

Tor and Onion.

Tor is an Internet browser that allows its users to remain anonymous; and the easiest way to explain how it works is the following: The user opens Tor and Tor will communicate with a relay system that creates a path to a desired server, so the user can connect to the internet.

Onion

Let's say that the user connects to a server through a network of onion routers (approximately 6.000 relays), the information that the user sends to the server must be encrypted by layers, so each layer can be decrypted by each router in the network. For example, if the user connects using 4 onion routers, there will be a need for 4 encrypted layers to protect the information.

Paranoia

The principle behind "onion routing" was developed by Paul Syverson, Michael Reed and David Goldschlag… the idea was to protect the communications of the different intelligence services, online. The first version of Tor (The Onion Routing Project) was developed and launched by Syverson, Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, in 2002. By the year 2004, the Naval Research Laboratory “released” Tor's code. Tor's most important patrons are the International Broadcasting Bureau, Internews, Human Rights Watch, University of Cambridge, Google and Stichting NLnet.

During the infamous cyber-raid called “Operation Onymous” (different international agencies attacked different websites in the Black Market and other type of services that operated in the Tor network), certain “weaknesses” were found, thus allowing to track the physical location of the servers and the number of sites hosted there. All these happened when Firefox was 17.

In 2014, Alexander Volynkin gave the presentation called “You Don’t Have to be the NSA to Break Tor: Deanonymizing Users on a Budget" (Exposing users without spending much money… around $3000.00), at Black Hat. This presentation was cancelled at the request of Carnegie Mellon, arguing that the material that Alexander Volynkin was going to use, was not approved to be shown in public.

“It is said that a mirror must be covered at night, so the soul cannot wonder and escape through it... or to prevent something from the otherside from coming in.“

Now what?

TAILS “The Amnesic Incognito Live System”
Freenet
Subgraph
Freepto
Ipredia
JonDonym
LPS
Whonix
PeerBlock

Keep posing

There are fake mirrors at fitting rooms in malls, bathrooms in luxury hotels and motels (two-sided mirrors) through these mirrors people can be recorded, and eventually end up in the internet. (Take a look at your favorite amateur porn website: “Hotel…”)

Perform the fingernail test. While not completely accurate, you can use your fingernail to determine if the mirror is a first or second surface mirror. Simply place your fingernail against the surface of the mirror. When you touch your fingernail to a second surface mirror, you can't to touch your own reflection; instead, you will see a gap caused by a second layer of glass over the mirrored surface. When you touch your finger to a first surface mirror, you can touch your own reflection, since there's no additional layer of glass in between. First surface mirrors are very rare, so if you find one there's likely to be a very specific reason and it's very possible that it's a two-way mirror. Second surface mirrors are your ubiquitous everyday mirrors.

Reading Material

Internet Never Forgets: Persistent Tracking Mechanisms in the Wild

How unique is your web browser?

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