cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1246200/pdf-a-hacker-s-arrest-reveals-microsoft-can-track-users-ip-history-even-with-vpn-full-we
You can read about it yourself here on page 12 (or page 8 of affidavit), then page 33 and down (page 29 of affidavit)
First one to notice this: Security researcher, VX-Underground.
Sounds like the used other data to link the IP addresses that were used, not tracked the IP addresses directly through the VPN.
Privacy is pretty much fucked these days because there are so many identifiers being gathered your device ends up being “unique.”. And if your device is unique, you can disappear in the U.S, appear in Spain, and when they look up who you are in Spain, they still know it is the same device.
Yeah if you’re going to be a hacker it’s good to do so from as clean of a machine as possible
Ya, my high seas device never gets used for anything that can be logged to me. Never log into anything with it. No geographic based searches either. 100% connectivity with vpn. Linux only
Would this be a good use case for a VM? I would imagine you could make the most vanilla, undifferentiated “PC” ever with that. I never thought of using that as a clean slate for purposes like this.
Pretty sure it’s been established that VMs can be fingerprinted based off the host machine.
Depends on how it’s done; using Hyper-V, definitely.
Using QEMU? The network traffic will all be linked back against the QEMU UUID, but that’s it. Disposable QEMU image via TOR? It gets harder to track back.
See this is why, when you are doing the haxors, you keep a clean side computer with none of your personal information on it.
