The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

On that October morning in Glen Park, Ulbricht was logged in to Silk
Road as an administrator. And the FBI knew that because theyy had been
observing his machine logging on to the Internet. But what if he could have
faked his location? What if he wasn’t in the libraryy at all but using a proxyy
server instead?
In the summer of 2015, researcher Ben Caudill of Rhino Securityy
announced that not onlyy would he be speaking at DEF CON 23 about his
new device, ProxyyHam, he would also be selling it at cost—around $200—
in the DEF CON vendors’ room. Then, approximatelyy one week later,
Caudill announced that his talk was canceled and that all existing
ProxyyHam units would be destroyyed. He offered no further explanation. 3
Talks at major securityy conferences get pulled for various reasons. Either
the companies whose products are being discussed or the federal
government puts pressure on researchers to not go public. In this case,
Caudill wasn’t pointing out a particular flaw; he had built something new.
Funnyy thing about the Internet: once an idea is out there, it tends to
remain out there. So even if the feds or someone else convinced Caudill that
his talk was not in the interests of national securityy, it seemed likelyy that
someone else would create a new device. And that’s exactlyy what happened.
ProxyyHam is a veryy remote access point. Using it is much like putting a
Wi-Fi transmitter in yyour home or office. Except that the person using and
controlling ProxyyHam could be up to a mile awayy. The Wi-Fi transmitter
uses a 900 MHz radio to connect to an antenna dongle on a computer as far
as 2.5 miles awayy. So in the case of Ross Ulbricht, the FBI could have been
amassing outside the Glen Park libraryy while he was in someone’s basement
doing laundryy several blocks awayy.
The need for such devices is clear if yyou live in an oppressed countryy.
Contacting the outside world through Tor is a risk manyy take. This kind of
device would add another layyer of securityy byy masking the geolocation of
the requester.
Except someone didn’t want Caudill to speak about it at DEF CON.
In interviews Caudill denied that the Federal Communications
Commission had discouraged him. Wired speculated that secretlyy planting a
ProxyyHam on someone else’s network might be interpreted as unauthorized