IP addresses

[Anonymous]

Is it possible for someone outside DCUM admin to find out IP addresses, via some sort of virus or tool? Like, a large organization with a huge IT staff and plenty of money and resources for instance?

[jsteele]

This is a difficult question to address with complete accuracy. Obviously, with enough time, money, or effort, it would be possible to find out the IP addresses. For instance, a corporation could simply offer me a billion dollars and I would happily retire to the the French Riviera and leave all of you to fend for yourselves. But, if you are limiting your question to situations that are more realistic, the answer is not without my cooperation. A good enough hacker could break in to our servers. But, the value of the information would not be worth the cost. That is especially true when the IP address might not be particularly useful. Let's say a corporation hires a hacker to break in and that hacker finds out that a post was from someone on the Verizon DSL network. What then? Now they have to break into Verizon.

The bigger threat from workplaces -- corporate or otherwise -- is from their own monitoring systems that may detect that you are using the Internet in a manner in which they don't approve.

[Anonymous]

I'm thinking of the IMF thread. Could the IMF track posters to the thread? They have a huge IT dept. and lots of govt. security and money.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I'm thinking of the IMF thread. Could the IMF track posters to the thread? They have a huge IT dept. and lots of govt. security and money.

The IMF can identify which of its employees have visited DCUM. That's a no brainer. I assume they can also identify any posters that have posted to DCUM. That is also a very basic capability. Assuming the IMF has that capability -- and I assume it does -- identifying which posts are from IMF employees is a simple matter of matching posting activity with actual posts. In other words, if IMF personnel determined that employee x posted a message at 11:05 in the thread with the id of 1234567, they could then go look at thread 1234567 and find the message posted at 11:05. Conversely, since the IMF thread has the ID 166389 and every URL to pages in that thread ends with "166389.page", IMF personnel should be able to easily determine if any of their employees posted to that thread. Then, it would be a matter of matching logged posting times to actual posts to identify exactly what was posted.

[Anonymous]

But I'm wondering about identifying posters who are not posting from the IMF. Is that capability out there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But I'm wondering about identifying posters who are not posting
from the IMF. Is that capability out there?

In other words, can they access DCUM remotely and figure out IP addresses? Via a virus or something?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
In other words, can they access DCUM remotely and figure out IP addresses? Via a virus or something?

I think that I can say with some certainty that nobody from the IMF is capable of that. There are likely people that could do it, but they don't work at the IMF. But, that just gets back to the scenario I mentioned earlier. Let's say a hacker manages to break into DCUM and get access to my logs. He then finds out that a specific post came from a specific IP address. It would be very unlikely that the IP address alone is useful. It would only indicate that the user was on Verizon's network, AOL's network, Comcast's network, etc. Even if the IP address showed the user was at the Law Firm of Huey, Duey, and Louy, the hacker still has to break into those networks to get further information. Law enforcement uses subpoenas for that step. But, a private corporation doesn't have that option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm thinking of the IMF thread. Could the IMF track posters to the thread? They have a huge IT dept. and lots of govt. security and money.

LOL!!! You are definitely joking! Well, ok, they do have plenty of money though...