There are other possible unique hardware IDs 2
other than the MAC address that you need to be aware of 3
and mitigate the risks associated with them if you need 4
anonymity and non-attribution. 5
So let’s start with the CPUs. Almost all modern CPUs 6
do not have a software readable serial number. 7
Intel started to try to add them in the 1990s with the Pentium 3, 8
but because of the massive public upset, 9
they discontinued the serial numbers, which is good. 10
So with most CPUs, 11
you can only identify a particular model and that’s all, 12
because there’s no serial numbers. 13
Now, if you want to examine your CPU 14
and see what sort of information you can get from it, 15
then on Windows you can use CPU-Zed, 16
or CPU-Z, which you can download from here. 17
This will show you what information is available in your CPU, 18
but as I said, there shouldn’t be anything unique 19
if you have a modern processor. 20
And on Linux, there’s a very similar tool 21
to view CPU information called I-Nex, 22
which you can download from here. 23
And that looks like this, pretty similar to CPU-Zed. 24
And on Mac, if you want to see the CPU information, 25
download this tool here. 26
So that’s CPU. Should be nothing much 27
to worry about with CPUs in terms of hardware serial numbers. 28
Now, the next thing is the motherboard. 29
Motherboards often, but not always, 30
contain unique identifiers in the system management BiOS, 31
SMBiOS memory. 32
And major OEMs typically have these serial numbers in the SMBiOS, 33
which means an adversary could get access to this 34
and tie it back to the purchaser or you. 35
In Windows, you can view the hardware information 36
using the Windows Management Instrumentation tool, WMI. 37
So malware could pretty much do exactly the same. 38
From the command prompt, 39
check out if your device has a unique identifier. 40
You can run a command similar to this. 41
This will tell you the name of your BiOS current version 42
and its serial number if there is any. 43
And this command tells you the system motherboard name, 44
number, and its UUID. 45
I’m currently using VMware so you can see the UUID 46
for this virtual machine. 47
So that tool’s unique to Windows. 48
There is another tool for determining hardware information 49
that you can use on Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows, 50
and that’s this: DmiDecode. 51
This is the Windows version that you can just download and install. 52
This is the version you can download and install for both Linux and Mac. 53
But on Linux, you’ll be able to get it from your repository quite easily 54
if you're on Debian or Debian based systems, 55
with just simply the apt-get tool. 56
To install DmiDecode on Mac OSX, 57
I recommend you use Brew because it’s the easiest way to install it 58
and it can keep you updated. Just use this command here: brew install. 59
There we are; DmiDecode installed. 60
So let me show you how to use DmiDecode. 61
It’s the same switches and options for Windows, Linux, and Mac. 62
So, if you see there, it says we can’t find it, 63
well that’s just because you don’t have admin right. 64
So you need admin rights to run it. 65
Typing “-t” will give us a list of all the options that we can run. 66
So let’s start with system. 67
So there you can see the UUID of the system. 68
It has zero for serial number here. You may or may not get zero. 69
I’m in a virtual machine 70
so you may get less information on a virtual machine. 71
System, then you’ve got baseboard, which is the motherboard. 72
And you may find a serial number there. 73
You can also find information on the BiOS. 74
There you go. 75
So use DmiDecode, 76
check out the hardware serial numbers on your machine. 77
Now we’re going to look at hard drive serial numbers 78
and unique IDs as these can exist as well. 79
So first we’re in Windows. We can just simply do a dir. 80
And you can see here we’ve got a serial number for the drive. 81
You can also try this command as well. 82
And you see there, you’ve got lots of information about the disk drive. 83
If we want to separate out the serial number, then we need to type 84
and that would give us the serial number. 85
Again, I’m in a vm so this is reducing the number of serial numbers 86
that it’s producing, but check that out on your own system. 87
That’s for Window; that’s how you do it in Windows. 88
On Linux, there’s a couple of ways of doing it, 89
but LSHW is the tool that I tend to use, 90
so you need to install that if it doesn’t already exist. 91
So that’s installed. 92
And if we go up, 93
there you go. 94
See the hard drive serial number, 95
at least the hard drive serial number for this virtual hard drive. 96
It’s not showing my actual hard drive 97
because I've got isolation within the virtual machine. 98
So that’s how you do it in Linux. 99
Find out your hard drive serial number. 100
And then in Mac, you can go through the about Mac GUI, 101
but you can also put in this command as well. 102
And there we go. We can see a bunch of volume unique IDs here, 103
here, 104
and serial number here. I blurred these out 105
as these are the actual serial numbers on this machine for the hard drive. 106
Let’s consider these unique hardware identifiers 107
in the context of the operating systems that you use. 108
Any operating system that is licensed to a machine 109
has to identify the machine uniquely. 110
This is to control and track product key use and abuse. 111
This means if you're using, say, Windows or Mac OSX, 112
Microsoft and Apple are aware of your unique hardware IDs, 113
and specifically, usually the motherboard ID 114
is tied to the license in some way. 115
So if you're using Windows or Mac OSX 116
or other operating systems you have purchased 117
and are attempting to be anonymous 118
and your hardware ID is compromised, 119
whoever you purchased it from could link the device back to you. 120
Your adversary may have the power 121
to get this information from the seller. 122
And it’s not just operating systems. 123
Also applications can be aware 124
of your hardware serial numbers, 125
which again, through a money trail can be tied back to you. 126
Another consideration: 127
if you're using a live CD operating system like Tails, 128
or maybe you're dual booting on the same hardware 129
that you are running Windows, or OSX, 130
or a paid operating system, 131
you are sharing the hardware IDs with every operating system. 132
So you're not completely unique even though you're dual booting 133
or you're using a live operating system. 134
If Tails is compromised, if the dual boot system is compromised, 135
and your hardware ID is recorded, 136
the seller, again, could link this back to you. 137
Your adversary could link it back to you. 138
This is the problem of hardware serial numbers 139
for privacy and anonymity. 140
So, if we care about non-attribution and being anonymous, 141
how do we mitigate the hardware serial number issue 142
and the leaking of these hardware serial numbers? 143
Well, it’s potentially possible to alter 144
the unique identifiers with special proprietary tools. 145
Much like we did with the Mac address, 146
you can find tools to change some of these hardware serial numbers. 147
If you look here, you can see an old post for some tools 148
that can enable you to change the hardware serial IDs. 149
Check out this post. A couple of the main ones 150
is VolumeID that it shows on this post, 151
which you can get from Sysinternals, 152
which works for Windows. 153
And there’s also Chameleon. 154
Chameleon can change the hard-coded serial numbers 155
of hard drives and network adapters on Windows. 156
So these might be useful for you. 157
The next mitigation is to have anonymously purchased 158
the devices that you use. 159
This will mitigate the risk of an adversary deanonymizing you 160
as there is no money trail. 161
Another strong mitigation is using virtual machines 162
for isolation and compartmentalization. 163
Virtual machines have different physical machine IDs 164
and there is no traceable connection 165
to the real physical machine’s unique hardware IDs 166
unless there is a breakout to the host, which is unlikely. 167
Check out what the unique IDs are within the virtual machines you have 168
and compare them to your host operating system. 169
They should be different. 170
So when in a virtual machine, you don’t need to worry 171
about these hardware serial numbers. 172
Moving on from hardware serial numbers, 173
let’s explore some other isolation and compartmentalization methods 174
that are implemented physically. 175
You can use a separate phone or Burner phone, 176
which we talk about later. 177
You can store your files, emails, and data physically separate, 178
maybe on an external USB drive, a DVD, or in the Cloud, 179
out of the sphere of influence of your adversary. 180
Law enforcement agencies are having particular problems 181
getting access physically to remote content out of their jurisdiction. 182
You can use security tokens, hardware security modules, 183
and store encryption keys separately. 184
Nitrokey is an example of something you can use to do that. 185
YubiKey is also an example. We’ll discuss more on these later. 186
You can store backups offsite for physical isolation. 187
You can do network isolation, 188
separating trusted devices and untrusted devices 189
using LANs, VLANs, utilizing routers, switches and firewalls. 190
We cover this in its own section later. 191
And you can even use a separate physical location to operate, 192
such as using an internet café for separate aliases. 193
And we discuss more on these topics later 194
as we go through the course. 195
Isolation and compartmentalization can extend to anything physical 196
to create layers of defenses. 197
Consider using physical isolation for your security, 198
and make sure that your physical devices 199
are properly isolated by unique IDs 200
in order that you can stay anonymous and have non-attribution.