Anonymity Security. Encryption

[Koc]

If you are working in carding sphere or doing any illegal activity, your success and future life heavily depends on how good your defenses are. If “federals” will get into your trail, they should have no clues to accuse you – so you should be prepared and start to care about your security right now.

Encryption is one of the most important “basic” parts of security in the modern world, so, it’s really important to understand how it works, even if you work with “safe” carding schemes. When your data transfers between different servers in unencrypted state, it’s really easy to catch it and use against you. That’s why it should be changed in a way that won’t allow anyone except you and server to understand it. Between that points it looks like a bunch of chaotic symbols, so it could be transformed into something useful only by someone who has a decryption key. There are two types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric, which difference is in key exchange process.

Symmetric encryption is kind of process, where same key is used as for encryption, as for decryption. It could be useful and convenient for situations where client and server “know” each other and exchanging information frequently. Main trouble in such method that both sides have to make an agreement before exchange process – they have to somehow get same key. It can’t be transferred via open channels, because intruders can easily compromise it and later get all the information you send as “secured”. That kind of encryption is working well when you need to send data between your own devices and completely fails when you are working with unknown servers on the web. If you have established relationships with someone at carding forum, and have ability to exchange keys by secure, non-web method, it seems the best option.

Symmetric encryption​

So, that’s why asymmetric encryption exists. There are two keys: “open”, or “public”, one, which is known for everyone and used for encryption, and “private”, or “closed”, one, used for decryption. For example, you get an “open” key from the server, where you want to send a message. You encrypt it, send and after that someone sniffs it – but instead of confidential information intruder gets a set of useless symbols. At the same moment, server receives same data, but has an ability to make it readable – because usage of a “closed” key allows to transform “random” message into its initial view.

Asymmetric encryption​

One more theoretical thing you should know about is encryption algorithm. Simply put, it’s just a bunch of operation, which are performed over data to make it look “random”, but at the same time let it be decrypted by the special key – remember, only one key should be able to perform such operation!
One of the most important parts of encryption, which you could change, is block size. In short it’s a size of information that will be encoded before algorithm’s key will change. You may ask a very common question – why can’t we simply set that size to minimal available amount each time? Answer is obvious: the smaller block size is, the bigger is required computation time. So, each time you want to encode something, you have to choose between time losses and safety – and for carders we could recommend to always choose second option.
When you are using asymmetric algorithms, you will have an opportunity to choose between two options: encode your message by using public key of another person or using your personal one. First option allows you to keep your information safe: no one except server could get original message. Otherwise, second option gives another side opportunity to identify you. No one could compromise your secret key; so, when server receives such message, it could be sure, that exactly you send it.
There are bunches of crypt algorithms that are using now. Let’s take a short look onto them.
Most used symmetric methods are:

1. Data Encryption Standard (DES) that was developed by IBM in 1977 and approved by USA government as official standard. It uses Feistel method with 56-bit key and 64-bit block size. It could look kind of insecure because of small key size, but still it took a highly appreciated place in cryptography. 3DES is a modern version of that method that eliminates the main problem of DES – 56-bit key size.
2. RC6 (newer and more secure version of RC5 and RC4) is block cypher that has dynamic block size, key length and round amount. It used at SSL and TLS protocols, WEP, WPA and other security systems, so it’s highly reliable choice.
3. Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is algorithm that was made on DES basics and has 128-bit block size and 128/192/256-bit key length. It is commonly used standard for different symmetric systems, so, usually when you know that symmetric encryption is used probably you are dealing with AES.

Symmetric algorithms speed comparison​

Such methods are used in different spheres: files encryption (7-Zip, WinRAR and so on), disk security software (TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt and etc.), and even at web – HTTPS is symmetric encoding protocol, so, when you are connecting to your favorite carding forums you are dealing with that method.
Let’s take a look onto asymmetric algorithms:

1. Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) is one of the most commonly used options. It is based on factorization solving problem – so it’s hard to compromise key for messages.
2. ECC, or Elliptic curve cryptosystem, is one of the modern methods. Based on the problem of computing discrete logarithms on elliptic curves, it offers high-secure message transferring. Nowadays it becomes more and more popular, so you will meet it sooner or later.

So, that was a short course into encryption sphere. We’ve shown you the basics of encoding, that will be highly useful even if everything you are dealing with is carding – it is always important to know how your security software works or how it processes information. The more you know, the safer you are – especially when your activity is connected with illegal activity, such as carding.