What It Means When Something’s Funny Online

Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many gmkarl at gmail.com
Sun Nov 20 02:21:12 PST 2022


Now, somebody with closer connections to spy agencies could answer
this much better than me, but I can give you some really important
basics.

When you go to a website on the internet, it's not like you're just
looking at the website as if it were an object in front of you.

The website content passes through a mass of systems and filters, and
each junction something can go wrong. Which junction is likely to be
the cause of something wrong has been changing over the years and
decades.

Important junctions look something like this:

You => Your Computer & Hardware => You Local Network and Neighbors =>
Your ISP => Your Government & The Government of the Website => The ISP
Of The Website => The Web Host of the Website =>  {Wires and Airwaves}
=> The Datacenter The Website is Hosted At => The Website Content

Now, there are actually a number of problems that can happen at _each_
juncture, above. At every single juncture, some malicious party can
make something go wrong.

[Cypherpunks and hacktivists have been trying to implement
cryptographic networking to reduce the number of junctures above, but
the efforts have not been successful enough to enter the mainstream.
TOR, for example, reduces the number of junctures above.]

# You
We consider this trustworthy for now.

# Your Computer & Hardware
There are networks of trojans in the wild that have not been squelled.
A trojan is a computer virus that gives somebody else control of a
system. It is becoming normal for there to be a dark market where
somebody can, at a distance, mutate people's systems so that they
display the wrong web content.

# Your Local Network and Neighbors
This is the space where you can crack other people. When you perform a
web request, it goes through physical cables and home routers, and
often wifi, that are as a norm generally very poorly secured, and it
is possible for you to access the networks of your neighbors and
change what they see on the web. There are also trojans that can live
inside home routers, and mutate the web and one's internet experience
while sitting there.

# Your ISP
In recent decades, it's come to light that, due to the incredible
utility of all the information flowing through them, different bodies
have been coercing the providers of internet service, so as to acquire
detailed information on what people are doing, provide an alternate
view of the internet, or make things harder or easier to access than
they would otherwise.

# Your Government & The Government of the Website
Similarly, it is well known that governments run programs that log and
filter web traffic extensively. Not only this, it is well known that
governments have many, many employees, and that these employees can
change hands. For example, in our government in the USA, we recently
had huge political swings where the affiliations of our government
employees radically changed, and there has been ongoing conflict in
the aftermath. Our government _already_ has a long track record of
misusing its power to oppress groups of people its influences dislike,
and discussion of that has been suppressed as a norm, more recently.

When talking about governments, it is also good to remember that they
do not understand this shit. With regard to this list and prominent
hacktivists, they have instead been attacking the people who do. They
obviously hope that if they harm the hackers, they won't have to worry
about the details they don't understand, but the unfortunate result is
that they actually get attacked by other governments and groups. So "a
government" or "an ISP", is not a simple thing where you could get a
sense of whether or not they are logging you or mutating your
internet: it is a complex situation where many international parties
may have their hands in the mix, trying to assert control of your
internet.

# Your Website's ISP
This is basically the same situation as your ISP, except that here the
website's ISP is more likely to be focused around the needs of large
corporations or whatever situation the site is hosted in, for example
Amazon's cloud.
So, you may yourself live in a small neighborhood with very boring
network activity, but this website is the center of many, many things.
It is much more lucrative for somebody to influence the network
traffic around a major host, than a random visitor.

# The Web Host of the Website
There are a lot of different kinds of web hosts, but the same as the
ISP applies: this is a much more lucrative point for a cracker to
attack, because many people visit it, and many things happen.
A web host usually has some kind of shared infrastructure: many
websites, for many different organisations, are usually hosted
side-by-side, generally in the same actual systems. When this is the
case, it often means that compromise of one website can lead to
compromise of all the other websites on the same system. This has been
common since the dawn of shared webhosting. A blackhat entity is
generally far more interested in gaining more power, than in gaining
less.

# Wires and Airwaves
I want to take some time here to mention the physical layer of
communication on the web.
When you send and receive traffic on the web, it needs to travel,
_physically_ from your machine to the web host and back again. This
happens incredibly fast, most parts at a fraction of the speed of
light, but it happens over physical media that anybody who can get
near the physical media, can log, mutate, etc etc.
Ethernet cables for a long time have a been a normal physical medium
for endpoints, and it is well-known how to attack them so as to view
or mutate all the traffic.
WIFI has also been a normal physical medium for much more recent
times, and again it is well-known how to attack WIFI, so as to view or
mutate all the traffic.
The people who implement the cryptographic standards of these things
are generally influenced by anti-security influences that want to
increase surveillability for people, believing that attacking the
people who expose the problems will give them power rather than
vulnerability.
Deeper into the routing systems, I haven't learned as much about the
details, but I can assure you that the situation is comparable,
because it is just another physical medium run by a specification that
people can look up.
When one of these vulnerable physical mediums is used, it doesn't mean
that an adversary has to stand next to it and log it: they can hide a
small device near it, and remotely access the device, to log all the
traffic and even mutate it. I can assure you that this has been done
commonly: because you can buy such devices on the internet, and there
is discussion about them being used.
Regarding airwaves, also note that things are electromagnetic (i.e.
almost all technology except fiberoptic cables: that is, router
equipment, computers, and copper cables) emits radiowaves that
broadcast fine details on its operations. There are also advanced ways
to direct radio waves toward them and mutate their operations
surreptitiously and without contact.

# The Datacenter the Website is Hosted At
This is a physical location, run by human beings, who can be coerced
and subpoenad to change operations or place hacking devices near. It
also has its own wires and airwaves.

# The Website Content
What I mean here, is a human being who placed the content on the website.
This would sound somewhat trustworthy, but unfortunately it appears to
be a norm for people who run high-value websites to be coerced or
replaced. This is highly visible for websites taken over by out FBI,
where they replace it with a fake website after a sting, but it
happens in other ways as well. The phrase "mind control" can seem
strange to many: but it is quite normal for people of high value to be
placed under so much _confusing stress_ and _painful lobbying_ that
they actually mutate their websites thinking that it may be a good
thing to do so.
For a long time it was the norm for reliable websites to place a
"canary" message on their site, to share whether or not they were
being coerced by a federal body, to change their operations.
Apparently when this happens they are ordered not to talk about it.
Nowadays, many of these canaries have now performed their function and
shared this information, and people are not sure what to do.

-

In summary, if you see something weird on the internet, please check
by physical in-person conversation with a person you already know
associated with the strange message.

And please check multiple times so they can answer from a relaxed
place, explaining what's up, rather than give a knee-jerk reply that
could have been primed by an influence.

Generally, if there is something clearly wrong with a site, people are
actually excited to recover the material and resolve the problem.
Because they made the site, and care about it.


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