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Japanese Police Urge ISPs to Block Tor
Because They Struggled to Catch a Hacker
Hoping to thwart crime and abuse on the Tor network, Japanese police have resorted to begging ISPs in the country to voluntarily block access to the network. Tor allows the transfer of information without sharing the usual traditional personal identifiers, something that has allegedly thwarted a Japanese police hunt for several hackers. Police had arrested four people falsely, only later realizing a hacker had used Tor to compromise the fours' computers. Ultimately, Japanese police used good-old-fashioned detective work to track down the hacker:
quote:
The hacker continued to taunt police in emails that sent investigators all over the country looking for him. In a bizarre twist the hacker directed investigators to Enoshima, an island off Tokyo, and gave them information that led them to a cat wearing a collar on which was a memory card. The card held details of the code and malicious program he used to gain remote control of victim's computers. Inadvertently, directing police to the cat helped them catch the suspected hacker, Yusuke Katayama, 30, who was seen on CCTV footage with the cat.
Obviously detective work was the answer to catching him, and shutting down an entire (and quite useful) network because of some illegal activity is an over-reaction. Japanese ISPs say they'll fight the requests to block access to the network.
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R4M0N
Brazilian Soccer Ownz Joo
join:2000-10-04
Glen Allen, VA

1 recommendation

R4M0N

Member

What's next?

Asking ISPs to block encrypted ANYTHING? I mean, why not? Anything that thwarts investigations should be immediately done away with.

I, for one, welcome our all-intrusive overlords.

workablob
join:2004-06-09
Houston, TX

workablob

Member

Re: What's next?

said by R4M0N:

Asking ISPs to block encrypted ANYTHING? I mean, why not? Anything that thwarts investigations should be immediately done away with.

I, for one, welcome our all-intrusive overlords.

That sounds like a reference to a Simpsons episode.

Dave

PaulHikeS2
join:2003-03-06
Fitchburg, MA

PaulHikeS2 to R4M0N

Member

to R4M0N
said by R4M0N:

Asking ISPs to block encrypted ANYTHING? I mean, why not? Anything that thwarts investigations should be immediately done away with.

I, for one, welcome our all-intrusive overlords.

I, for one, will only welcome them if they will assume control of all planets of the Solar Federation.

GoRush
@spcsdns.net

GoRush

Anon

Re: What's next?

2112 reference, . In all seriousness though, asking ISPs to block Tor is just a silly idea.

skeechan
Ai Otsukaholic
Premium Member
join:2012-01-26
AA169|170

2 edits

skeechan

Premium Member

Not a user of Tor and an honest question

Why is Tor so useful vs. other methods of sending communications or xfering data?

R4M0N
Brazilian Soccer Ownz Joo
join:2000-10-04
Glen Allen, VA

R4M0N

Member

Re: Not a user of Tor and an honest question

Tor provides encrypted, anonymous, random paths of communication to the places you want to reach... That is great if you don't want to be tracked easily or want to remain anonymous.

There are lots of legitimate reasons for doing so, but as with anything else, a lot of illegitimate uses exist too.

Tor was created for the Navy to secure communications.

BTW, I don't use Tor either.

skeechan
Ai Otsukaholic
Premium Member
join:2012-01-26
AA169|170

skeechan

Premium Member

Re: Not a user of Tor and an honest question

Then banning Tor makes about as much sense as banning ski masks.

R4M0N
Brazilian Soccer Ownz Joo
join:2000-10-04
Glen Allen, VA

R4M0N

Member

Re: Not a user of Tor and an honest question

or those fake glasses with mustaches...

Yes, they are targeting a legitimate tool because it makes their job harder. Well, rights make the job of the police a bit harder too... It's a slippery slope as you've already noticed.

ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList to skeechan

Premium Member

to skeechan
it provides a way for people to report news from places where the powers that be would rather not have the news get out. I actually just wrote a paper about this in my cybersecurity class. For example, in China, Iran, and Syria, the only way to post dissenting political views online without fear of being arrested/killed is to use services like TOR.

here is a good write up by Reports without Borders.

»www.wefightcensorship.or ··· tml.html

which is part of a much bigger collection of online tools:

»www.wefightcensorship.or ··· tml.html
brianiscool
join:2000-08-16
Tampa, FL

brianiscool

Member

Good luck!

You can't just block TOR. TOR is designed to bypass governments. Also if they block TOR relays they can just use bridge connections to bypass the firewalls.

gatorkram
Need for Speed
Premium Member
join:2002-07-22
Winterville, NC

gatorkram

Premium Member

Not in my country...

they aren't trying to block Tor, and so far I havn't needed Tor, but any country that wants to block it should be very suspect themselves.

If Tor worked as quickly as my native connection did, I might be more apt to use it. Surely if I needed it though, I'd deal with the speed hits.
Wilsdom
join:2009-08-06

Wilsdom

Member

Pussycat

Where is the danger that they are trying to protect against?

jap
Premium Member
join:2003-08-10
038xx

jap

Premium Member

Re: Pussycat

said by Wilsdom:

Where is the danger that they are trying to protect against?

It's the governmental/biz Total Information Awareness mentality: Tor gets in the way of monitoring who visited what sites when.

Tor does not mask what occurred during a site visit: data stream on/off the host site in-the-clear, enters the Tor sub-net, becomes encrypted, bounces around inside the subnet P2P-style (with each hop only knowing it's neighboring node's IP), after designated hop-count is achieved data passes to requesting user (who is a Tor node so previous handler does not know it's passing to an endpoint) and is decrypted for use.

So, to answer your question, today's reason for wanting to ban Tor is hackers obfuscated their tracks using Tor and and it made finding them more difficult. Of course the list of reasons why both businesses and governments would like to record every activity of every citizens is very very long.
axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC

axus

Member

Cat and mouse game

A "professinal" criminal wouldn't have played games with the police, and wouldn't have been caught. Good thing that criminals are dumb/arrogant!

I wonder how they linked his CCTV image to his identity.

elios
join:2005-11-15
Springfield, MO

1 edit

elios

Member

Re: Cat and mouse game

Japanese PD is pretty corrupt and worthless
there are people that think they guy they caught wasnt the hacker

the Japanese do not have coercion laws and most people will confess even if not guilty and it happens more offten then you think
if you look in to this story more
you will see the first arrested a man whos PC was hijacked and actually got a confession from him....
axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC

axus

Member

Re: Cat and mouse game

That's what I've heard, and I hear the prisons are even more draconian than ours.

On the other hand, as a foreigner visiting Japan, I've never felt harassed or followed by the police. I've seen them put up with drunks getting in their face, and being pretty tolerant.

DataRiker
Premium Member
join:2002-05-19
00000

DataRiker

Premium Member

Re: Cat and mouse game

said by axus:

That's what I've heard, and I hear the prisons are even more draconian than ours.

I think you have been given some false info. The structure may be more orderly, but definitely more peaceful.

I had a good friend spend some time in a South Korean prison for drugs (hash) and he had his own room, 3 meals a day, and study time ( he is now fluent in Korean) and absolutely no violence to speak of.

A friend of a friend told me similar stories of Japan and I'm very inclined to believe it given the nature of the cultures involved.
Mr Matt
join:2008-01-29
Eustis, FL

1 recommendation

Mr Matt

Member

Police one big delicatessen that only sells Bologna.

First there is the governments wish, then the government spinners spin up a story to give police an excuse to get their wish. Today it is the Japanese Police that wishes for ISP's to block Tor. The simple fact that they were able to apprehend the perpetrator by simply getting off their butts and engaging in good old police work, proves that blocking Tor was not necessary.

Many years ago there was a story promoted by our government, about a little old lady that ran off the road and was trapped in her car. The government propagandists pitched the fact that when she dialed 911 the emergency responders could not locate her. Our government used that incident to mandate that location tracking be included in all cell phones. The uninformed public bought the bologna. There were a number of academics that voiced their concern about the invasion of privacy. The government propagandists spun up the story that the tracking system would only be activated when the subscriber dialed 911. The government became agitated when the fact leaked out that the location tracking system could also be turned on by the wireless provider without the authorization of the customer.

Many years later a story appeared in the local newspaper about a little old that was driving down I-595 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Another driver cut her off and her car jumped the guard rail and wound up in a ravine about twenty feet below the road. When she dialed 911 from her location identifying cell phone, she found she had no signal. She remained trapped in her car for several days drinking rain water. The only reason that she was rescued was that a road maintenance crew was sent to repair the damaged guard rail and found her.

The original story, used to justify mandating cellphone location tracking, was government propaganda to cover up the real reason for location tracking. That was to monitor citizens social and business activities. When one considers how the government tracked the movements of citizens before cell phones, they discover that they could not, without getting off their buts and following them. I worked for a company where I was given a handful of quarters each day and was instructed to call in to the dispatcher from a pay phone, after completing each job, for the address of the next job. There are those that might argue that the police could tap the dispatchers telephone line to determine where my job assignments were, but they forget the police could not track where I had lunch or where I stopped when I decided to take a break.

nanimo
@verizon.net

nanimo

Anon

Japanese police get lucky with cat

I lived in Japan for many years, and had some experience with their police. Begging the ISP's to block and then just happening to luck out with the CCTV connection to the cat in order to catch their man is about as much as you can expect from them. I don't want to belittle their police force in its entirety, but if you've lived there for any time you know that what passes for great sleuthing over there would be almost comically inept police work over here-- thus this headline.
It's not really their fault; there is very little street crime, the mafia element in Japan is publicly known, have public headquarters, and is generally tolerated by society and the police to avoid disturbances, and the way the court system works for every other routine offender is that they basically just violate the accused's rights and convict them without what we would recognize as due process or any sort detailed investigation or burden of proof, and send them away for a few years.
To be sure, I am sure there are a few brilliant hardworking detectives working the rare homicide cases over there--- but for the most part it would be totally fair to say a tv script for CSI Tokyo would very much be like this news article "please please please shut off the internet, otherwise this guy will continue to send us mean emails--Oh, wait, luckily we got his license plate on the door camera when stopped to tie the kitty to the bike rack outside the 7-11."