Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: rmaxjax on June 18, 2012, 06:48 am

Title: FREE Samples for Good Advice! New vendor wants Security Help
Post by: rmaxjax on June 18, 2012, 06:48 am
1. what are some good ways of securing your wifi connection from other in the area (ie internet cafe etc)
2. What is the best Firewall/ Anti Virus to use.
3. Is there any other security software he should install that will incease his security
4. Is there anything else you can configure on your computer or tor browser to increase security?
5. How should he go about selling his bitcoins and then again buying them (without loseing a bunch on exchange services like btc buddy etc)
6. Any other tips that I should let him know?

My friend is new to SR and Loves it he wanted me to help him set up a vendor account and hop on, however I'm good with computers but NO expert I don't want to give him bad advice


Any help is very much apperciated again I know the general things and know there is little risk as a buyer but i have no knowledge to offer him as a seller, and I'm sure the community is always down to help ensurea New Vendor is as good and as safe as possible!
Ohh and I'm going to be hooked up for the help, any good advice will get some VERY good FREE SAMPLES for the help :)
Title: Re: FREE Samples for Good Advice! New vendor wants Security Help
Post by: simon6747 on June 19, 2012, 02:05 pm
Since no one has responded so far ill give it a try:

1.  Internet cafes are great for hiding from authorities since your ip wont be traced to any geographical location associated with you.  However you are more susceptible to others on the same network (things like man-in-the-middle attacks).  If youre going to do this dont forget to spoof your mac (youtube it).
2.  Im not a professional on antivirus of firewalls but keyloggers are probibly the enemy here.  If you dont have music or other files on  your computer just reinstall the operating system/repartition the hard drive regularly and you should be okay.  Even better, use a boot usb/disk (pick your favorite linux!) but you will probibly have to install tor every time you use SR.
3.  research VPNs.  In fact : http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/
4.  Spoofing your mac will never hurt, but if you dont know much about computers it might take a few minutes to get your internet working again with the new mac but its worth it.  Remember the fundementals:  the internet is nothing but a medium that allows you to connect to another computer.  So, if you arent keeping any logs on your computer (browser history, cookies, ect) then all you have to worry about is the logs on the computer your connecting to.  These logs are going to catch things like your ip and mac, but if those are fake youre one step ahead.  Also, any program embedded to your browser (addons) or the webpage (facebook's like button) has the potential to log information and send it to a third party.  If you use facebook, review your privacy settings and always stay logged out when on SR.
5.  Im looking for bitcoin advice too.
6.  The best advice is to read.  I cant really claim to be an expert but i can pass along a few things ive found in my research that might help direct yours.
Title: Re: FREE Samples for Good Advice! New vendor wants Security Help
Post by: Raoul Duke on June 19, 2012, 02:35 pm
simons pretty on the ball with the answers, i'll add my 0.2BTC though:

1. simon is right as far as man-in-the-middle attacks go. another thing you can do, something a friend of mine does, is drive around the city looking for residential wifi networks that are unsecured - piggy back off of those. you'd be surprised how many people still leave their internet wide open for all to abuse.
2. do an internet search for antivirus reviews - Kaspersky and Norton usually come out on top. no antivirus is infallible though. and as far as keyloggers are concerned - the safest thing to do is don't let your computer out of your sight. obviously this is not really an option so stick a bios password on it to fend off software keyloggers and look to see exactly whats plugged into it every time you boot - you're looking for either something that looks like either a small USB stick or something that your keyboard is plugged into before reaching the PC. software firewalls are pretty crap. Black Ice is one of the betters ones, but if you buy the Internet Security versions of Kaspersky or Norton that should be good enough. the best firewalls are hardware, but if you are using public wifi or piggy backing off of others networks you obviously don't have a say in this.
3. the most secure way would be booting from a USB using Liberte or Tails. VPN's are good but a bit overkill, and Tor is slow enough anyway so i think using Tor over a VPN could be very frustrating.
4. as Simon says (haha :) ) spoofing your mac address would help increase anonymity. the Tor browser bundle should be ok to cope with the rest.
5. maybe set up your own BTC exchange service? i doubt this would be possible until you become an established vendor but the only way i can think of is cutting out the middle man, so become the middle man.
6. yeah, same as Simon - read, read and read some more. make use of the search function in the forums before posting a new question - if people have seen it countless times before they are reluctant to type their answers all over again.

tips for being a vendor here - don't sell short weight, don't mark the item in transit until it's either actually in transit or will be ON THE SAME DAY. treat your customers with respect and answer their PM's (as long as they aren't stupid ones). create a listing and send out a few samples anyway, just charge for postage - this gives you a bit of feedback to start with and gets the ball rolling on the forums. don't put a picture you found on the internet up and claim it as your product, and make sure you wipe all metadata off pictures you take. don't ask for FE (i don't think you can until you've had x amount of transactions anyway)

what will you be selling?
Title: Re: FREE Samples for Good Advice! New vendor wants Security Help
Post by: rmaxjax on June 20, 2012, 03:28 pm
Could a DVD be used as a keylogger?
I also suppose it would be smart to perhaps buy a whole new cheap laptop ( or perhaps even better a used one and use that only for SR)

Also I'm intrested in the USB thing if someone could really help explain it to me.
As far as the VPNS what is the best and preferably free one's to use?


My friend will be selling many Opiates Oxy, Roxi, Perks, suboxone etc
CHEAP medical Marijuana Introductory prices of 12/ G
and 80 per Quarter for AA strains
100 for AAA strains!

and PERHAPS some H if the intrest is there!
Title: Re: FREE Samples for Good Advice! New vendor wants Security Help
Post by: oscarzululondon on June 20, 2012, 07:15 pm
1. what are some good ways of securing your wifi connection from other in the area (ie internet cafe etc)
The best way is to use an encrypted VPN tunnel and bridges so all the data from computer to computer is encrypted and is impossible to decrypt if someone else in the internet cafe or the internet service provider is listening in. Although law enforcement won't bother following you and monitoring your wireless activity in an internet cafe if they suspect you of being a small time dealer, they're more likely to look at your screen, remember those Russian spies that got caught by the FBI using public wifi's? Well they didn't even do much surveillance on them, so don't worry too much about this. The biggest risk is giving away that you are using an internet cafe and then them coming back and seeing you on the CCTV sitting there on your laptop. Like someone said before for that reason it's better to use open wifi networks in your neighborhood because then there's no CCTV.

2. What is the best Firewall/ Anti Virus to use.
Linux. No seriously don't use Windows if you're worried about getting viruses. Failing that Avast is the best antivirus software for Windows by a mile hands down.

Don't use whatever you do use Norton or McAfee, the first thing you do when you write a virus is program in how to avoid detection by Norton, it's a failure of it's own popularity.

Avast has some of the best detection rates, good updates, behaves well when it finds a virus (unlike some applications that just quarantine stuff which is useless), it doesn't use much system resources so won't slow down your computer like Norton will and has neat sandboxing features meaning one application won't interfere and break another if it gets a virus, kind of like putting a sick patient in an isolation ward in hospital. It also can scan and remove viruses and other malware before Windows even loads, which is a bonus for many reasons.

3. Is there any other security software he should install that will incease his security
Make sure you're using Tor properly and for normal internet browsing have things such as HTTPS enforced (search how to do this in Firefox). Obviously encrypt the hard drive fully using TrueCrypt in a Serpent-Twofish-AES configuration with a complex password over 20 characters.

Also putting really secret things such as client contact details in a TrueCrypt hidden container is a good idea:
http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-volume

4. Is there anything else you can configure on your computer or tor browser to increase security?
Many things. Read the guide here. As I said before Windows is a very poor choice of operating system to do anything you want to do secretly or securely. For everything you can do to make it more secure, there's hundreds of exploits which can be used against it.

5. How should he go about selling his bitcoins and then again buying them (without loseing a bunch on exchange services like btc buddy etc)
That's up to you, I'll let other experts in that field answer that for you.