Bahrain Activists Battered By IP Tracking Attacks

An anonymous reader writes "Having been targeted by malware in the past, anti-government protesters in Bahrain are now being hit hard by IP tracking attacks, according to a researcher. Bill Marczak, of Bahrain Watch and Citizen Lab, who is putting together a report on the attacks, said it appeared Bahrain officials had been masquerading as fake activists, sending obfuscated URLs to targets to learn their IP address. The next step is to take the IP address and the time of the click to the relevant ISP to find out who the user is. Then all sorts of things can happen. 'People who have clicked on these links have suffered various types of consequences ranging from having their houses raided and being charged for saying insulting things about the king on Twitter, or losing their jobs,' says Marczak. 'It looks like, from our investigation so far, in one case, the government did lock up the wrong person.'"

Scary because it's so effective

[MalleusEBHC]

If you're going to be a repressive tyrant, at least do it right. While the false positive rate on true dissidents probably limits the effectiveness to some degree, the much more chilling effect is to make people afraid to read any anti-regime news. That's probably much more valuable to them in the long run than nabbing a few people they consider troublesome.

Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what Tor is for. Use it.

We owe a solution to Bahrain Activists

[colordev]

I don't know about your priorities, but "we the programmers" are important partners for those resisting true tyrannies. Thus, pursue making your programs compatible as tools of revolution - not something that will get freedom fighters and their friends thrown into jails.

Consider communicating to the internet using HTTPS, TOR or something similar. Have cell-phone pictures (atleast those from the worst totalitarian countries) by default stripped off their GPS-data and other identification data. Embrace anonymity by default. And if possible make all your communication and messaging software end- to-end encrypted. And finally help the revolunaries getting rid of incriminating evidence from the hard disks, USB sticks; for example by overwriting data not just by removing filenames.

Those who trust their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, upon your software do appreciate you going that extra mile.