Ok, not a big deal. I won't worry about typing emoticons and such, since your reader has prolly handled them since the alpha version. I'm just always impressed by how well blind people can navigate, since we are highly visual creatures building highly visual cultures. But I know very little about the actual methods.

There will always be exploiters, even blind wardrivers - and I'm not sure if I'm happy about that kind of equal accessibility.  :-P  But the existence of exploiters doesn't mean society needs to remove every exploitable item.

And if you had implemented only the security proposed in Victor's "educational" nanny system, how would that have stopped your neighbor from hacking your router? How much "educational" material, to prevent how many types of exploit, is enough?

I'd love to see a non-intrusive education program made easily available.

Or a security-checking app that fine-tooths the user's system and covers the basics in a wider scope than malware-stompers and such currently do. Presumably they're out there, but I haven't ever actually noticed one - or looked for one. All I've ever seen (other than a few specifics I've researched) is piecemeal stuff here and there: WinDOS "PC issues" alerts, the usual stompers, the usual setup prompts, the usual "important" updates (which often are more trouble than worth and get rolled back). I've noticed nothing coherent and integrated.

Either way, I'm always going to call out people who self-righteously think they're superior enough take up my time lecturing me about my actions for my own alleged "good". Always. If the Steve Litt types get offended, I'm ok with that.

Bova is a name I haven't encountered in a while. Every now and then I could stand to read some good escapist (semi-?) libertarian fiction.


On 3/24/2017 2:29 PM, Eric Oyen wrote:
totally blind here.
I use a screen reader, and a braille device. I still run into problems with sites that just aren't usable with either (and sometimes I am even forced to go to windows just to use a browser I can't use on this mac). as for feeling sorry, don't. I don't make a big deal of it and neither should you.

btw, getting back on subject here, I recently had a run-in with my ISP (cox) when they sent me a nasty note claiming I was sharing infringing content. I tracked it down to the router (which had apparently been hacked). Stupid little Linksys device didn't have very good security on it. So, I burned in a dd-wrt image, changed a lot of settings and now I don't have that neighbor using my connection for his bit torrent activities. btw, I found the exploit that said neighbor used over on wikileaks vault7 page. Right now, I am testing the device with a linux laptop using reaver and john the ripper (and pwgen to create the rainbow file). So far, it has taken a better part of 2 days and it still hasn't guessed the passphrase. One of the first things I did after replacing the system image on the router was to turn off the PIN for the device. WIth that on, Reaver was able to take just 5 minutes to break the connection and gain entrance.

so, if I can do this here at home, its a sure bet that some of these places with a wide open router are getting a lot of illicit traffic (and its also a sure bet that someone is pulling a man-in-the-middle attack to get info they shouldn't have). so, believe me, if it can happen to me (an experienced IT person), it can happen to anyone who doesn't take the time to secure their devices.

btw, to give you an idea of how strong my passphrase is, its a minimum of 200 characters (including spaces), run through a jive converter and then converted to 1337 using one of the known converter websites. so, good luck guessing it. :) I also use mac address filtering here and even have my SSID broadcast hidden.

btw, back on the subject of accessibility for a moment… the guys who developed Reaver got contacted by me several years back. I asked them if it could be possible to include a couple of packages on their live CD (specifically ORCA and an audio driver). They did and the tool is completely accessible for the blind war driver. :) so, it doesn't hurt to ask. :)

-eric
from the central office of the Technomage Guild, network breakages R us Dept.

On Mar 23, 2017, at 9:45 PM, Vara La Fey wrote:

Oooh, now your sig places you with the Brave New World dept. Heh. Perfect timing.

I'd love to de-Google, but as with Fakebook, that's where the party is. Even worse is that Google's products are pretty good.

Speaking of FB, they keep hitting me with a security verification when I go to my page to login. Fortunately my Firefox gives me its usual login screen and easily bypasses that.

I'm sorry to hear that you're blind, but I'm also curious how you navigate so well. I've never heard of a captcha solver, but now and then I'll click the gimme-a-new-one button or the say-it-aloud button. And my vision isn't good, but not blind. Can you see the captchas at all, or do you navigate by text-to-speech and a braille keyboard?


On 3/23/2017 8:34 PM, Eric Oyen wrote:
yes, they are. I even have a captcha solver tool here, but it's only effective 50% of the time. Google is, by far, the worst offender of the lot when it comes to this type of http interception and presentation scheme.

-eric
from the central office of the Technomage Guild, Brave new world Dept.

On Mar 23, 2017, at 6:07 PM, Vara La Fey wrote:

Mmm hmm. But at least nobody will know that you're streaming the footage of his arrival.

Are these captcha-blockings you mention the same as when Google and others intercept you when they detect that you're not trying to login from the same IP as your previous logons? Back when I last used Tor to actually login to an account, sites I used weren't doing that kind of interception. I've merely browsed with Tor since.

- Vara


On 3/23/2017 5:13 PM, Eric Oyen wrote:
That is the other problem I have seen with TOR. Any slower and the second coming of christ will arrive sooner. :)

-eric
from the central office of the Technomage Guild, Editors choice dept.

On Mar 23, 2017, at 4:02 PM, Vara La Fey wrote:

I'm all for education. I'm a trans-girl, and believe me, I would like to educate people a little about us. But I wouldn't take it upon myself to intrude on their time for a 3 Minute Love unless they're trying to hurt someone.

I don't want people semi-forcing content on me. And the desired "campaign" is exactly that. It's sad that everyone here who comments keeps asserting the "safety" benefits, without a care in the world about the sheer intrusiveness and the obvious socio-political abuses of systems like that becoming commonplace. Which hopefully they won't.

I don't need a VPN and have never set one up, but I don't doubt the security of a VPN/Tor combination. And if you are really afraid of snoops and spooks, encrypt all your text traffic with large PGP keys. But I rarely use Tor because it's horribly slow, and PGP because it's an extra few steps. But they are always there for those special occasions.  :-)

- Vara


On 3/23/2017 3:16 PM, Eric Oyen wrote:
well, if you don't want to deal with bad certs, redirected https,etc, you can either not use that router/service or get a VPN and secure all your traffic. And yes, I will not use paywall systems of any kind, they have no business knowing what my credentials are.

Lastly, if I want real security, a combo of VPN and TOR cannot be beat. I use private internet access for the VPN and also have a TOR node setup here. the TOR node will not be connected until after the VPN comes up. why let my ISP know I am running a TOR node here at home? The only issue I have with this is that my search engine queries don't work right (mostly, I get blocked and asked to solve a captcha, which is not doable for the blind most times)
Anyway, do what you must, but education should be the first item on the list when it comes to net security.

-eric
from the central office of the Technomage Guild, Security applications dept.

On Mar 23, 2017, at 2:50 PM, Vara La Fey wrote:

First you were talking about open hotspots. Then you were talking about https. Now you are talking about ssl.

But all the while you're still just talking about monitoring and restricting the activity of 3rd parties on 4th party systems. And it seems really important to you for some reason.

Please, waste time and effort and money patenting your spyware chaperone system that monitors web activity with the intent of creating consequences for activity which you - or your intended customer - opines is "invalid". I doubt very many people will buy into it because there is no upside for them. Even when they alter it to fit their own agenda, they just anger their customers who can click OK for EULAs and enter logins, but cannot bypass your 3 Minute Hate.

If it can detect an "invalid" certificate, then by changing a couple code lines (if even), it can detect anything else about an attempted site visit. Of course this ability is ancient now, but less evil implementations of it merely censor by blocking, which is bad enough. Yours is "educational" - and it's interesting that you put the quotes around that word yourself - for the purpose of taking up other people's time with propaganda.

If it became common, it would become a mandatory advertising medium anytime anyone clicked on a competitor's site, or a site with bad reviews for your customer. If it became law, it would become a mandatory propaganda delivery system anytime anyone clicked on a site containing any kind of dissenting viewpoint.

Are you hoping to create one of those conditions? If so, which?

Because this sure looks like more than just wanting to manipulate lesser people into a system designed to reinforce your wishful feelings of superiority. There has to be a more compelling reason that you're this overly concerned about what 3rd parties do on 4th party systems.

Which, btw, brings up the fact that your system is not equivalent to EULAs or logins or pay systems, because the connection provider has the right to set conditions for using their connection. Your spyware idea is to harass people who are using other people's connections.

I'm not an expert on web connection technology per se, but it seems that Tor would nicely wire around all SSL issues after the initial connection to the now-restricted hotspot. You certainly make a great case for using it, even if just on general principle. So what would you do about that?

I don't think your grandmother wants you monitoring her activity. I don't think anyone wants you monitoring their activity. But you seem to want to do it anyway. And no one but me is saying boo to you.  :-(

As to the trivia: I personally have never had trouble from visiting a site with an "invalid certificate" of any kind, because that stuff simply isn't 100% maintained. Obviously I am careful where I go and what I click and download anyway. I do not so easily ignore "known malware site" warnings, and if in doubt about a site I reflexively check the web address. MyBank.Phishing.com and Phishing.com/MyBank do not get clicks from me. But that's all beside the point.


On 3/20/2017 9:57 PM, Brien Dieterle wrote:
On Mar 20, 2017 3:36 PM, "Vara La Fey" <varalafey@gmail.com> wrote:

OMG!!

First of all, you'd be mis-educating them if telling them that certificate "validity" has any real meaning. (But now you're talking about http.)

I mean validity as in trusted roots that have been shipped with your OS or browser.  Surely you don't mean these are meaningless. AFAIK they are very reliable as long as you never accept bogus certs.  If you accept bogus certs "all the time", I really hope you know what you're doing.  Pretty much any important site should have working SSL.

There is a reason why all the browsers freak out when you get a bad cert, but users still click "add exception".  My captive education portal would give real consequence to this with the 3 minute power point slideshow and mandatory quiz.  I wonder if this is already patented. . .

Second, why do you think you have any right to put speed bumps in the way of people who are doing nothing to you?

Plenty of businesses do this already for captive portals and forcing users to log in, pay, or accept an EULA.  They are already tampering with your SSL connection in order to redirect you to the portal. I'm just suggesting to use this technology for "educational" purposes.

Third, if your grandmother needs internet "safety" education, just educate her, or refuse to keep fixing the problems she encounters in her ignorance - if she really is all that ignorant. I hope you wouldn't install a browser re-direct without her consent, because then you'd be just any other malware propagator with just any other self-righteous rationalization.

Well, I'm lazy.  I'd much rather have an ongoing passive education program for anyone that uses that router.  Maybe only 1 in 1000 requests trigger the "test", or once a month per mac address maybe.  If grandma fails the test I can get an email so I can call her up and gently chastise her.  "Grandmaaaa, did you accept a bogus SSL certificate again? Hmmm?"

As far as consent goes, I'm only talking about routers you own or have permission to modify.  That should go without saying.

Fourth, if you need educational "speed bumps" on your router, you are free to have them. One of the great things about freedom - from government or from meddling busybodies - is that you get to be free too.

My post is in the context of businesses or individuals that provide Internet to the public.  Presumably businesses and individuals have the freedom to do this kind of SSL interception, since they've already been doing it for years without any repercussions.  Personally I'm disturbed that businesses will try to get me to accept their SSL cert for their Wi-Fi portal, but I know the technology leaves little choice.  One trick is to ignore the cert and try again with a non SSL address.

It is pretty ironic that the first thing these captive portals ask users to do is blindly accept a bogus SSL cert.  It is really just a sad state of affairs that we are literally training people to accept bad SSL certificates.

For years my Firefox has had an option to "always use HTTPS", and I'm sure all other modern browsers do as well. Plus, Mozilla.org has a free plugin - I think it's from EFF.org - called "HTTPS Everywhere". It's all very easy to use, and will be almost entirely transparent to Grandma.

This won't do anything to protect you/grandma from bogus ssl certs.  Imagine connecting to a bad AP at Starbucks that is proxying all your SSL connections.  Your only defense is trusted roots and knowing not to accept bogus SSL certs.  If only we had a captive router-based SSL education program... ;)




On 3/20/2017 3:14 PM, Brien Dieterle wrote:
A system like I described would just be an "educational tool" to encourage people to use HTTPS (properly).  It wouldn't stop you from accepting bogus certificates-- just a speed bump.  Now that I've thought about it I'd really like to install something like this on my grandparent's router. . .   heck, my own router. . .

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Vara La Fey <varalafey@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh HELL no!! What kind of hall-monitor nanny mentality do you want people to adopt??

I accept "bogus" certificates all the time because the whole idea of certificates is crap in the first place - they are NOT maintained - and years ago I got tired of that procedure warning me about "invalid" certificates for sites that were perfectly valid.

I've never had a problem. Of course I'm also careful where I go, certificate or not.

- Vara

On 3/20/2017 2:12 PM, Brien Dieterle wrote:
Maybe every commercial router should do SSL interception by default.  If a user accepts a bogus certificate they are taken to a page that thoroughly scolds them and informs them about the huge mistake they made, forces them to read a few slides and take a quiz on network safety before allowing them on the Internet.  Maybe do the same for non-ssl HTTP traffic, etc.. .

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Matt Graham <mhgraham@crow202.org> wrote:
On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 12:29 PM, Victor Odhner <vodhner@cox.net> wrote:
I’m really annoyed that so many companies offer open WIFI when it would be
so easy to secure those hot spots.  Restaurants, hotels, and the waiting
rooms of auto dealerships are almost 100% open.
 [snip]
On 2017-03-20 13:20, Stephen Partington wrote:
This is usually done as a means to be easy for their customers.

 Pretty much this.  Convenience is more valuable than security in most people's minds.

they’d be happy to do the right thing if we could explain it to the right people.

 I'm not sure this would happen.  Setting up passwords and then distributing those passwords has a non-zero cost and offers zero visible benefits for most of the people who are using the wireless networks.[0]  And as another poster said, what about football/baseball stadiums?  Distributing passwords to tens of thousands of people is sort of difficult.  "Just watching the game" is not an option; people want to FaceTweet pictures of themselves at the game.

OTOH, the last time I looked at the access points visible from my living room, almost all of them had some sort of access control enabled. Maybe there's a social convention forming that "my access point" ~= "my back yard" and "open access point" ~= "a public park"?

[0] Having a more educated user population would make the benefits more visible, but it's very difficult to make people care about these things.

--
Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress
There is no Darkness in Eternity
But only Light too dim for us to see.

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