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Tor Anonymity Network Reaches 100 Verified Nodes
Posted by
timothy
on Sun May 22, 2005 03:01 AM
from the needs-some-liver-routing-to-round-it-out dept.
from the needs-some-liver-routing-to-round-it-out dept.
James A. Y. Joyce writes "Tor is an onion routing anonymous network. It routes your data transfers through a series of encrypted links between random nodes in the network; the greater the number of nodes, the greater the anonymity afforded. To commemorate the 100th verified node in the Tor network, the EFF are putting up a request for other organisations and personal users to start up Tor nodes of their own. (Tor has been mentioned on Slashdot twice before.)"
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Thoughts from a Tor user (Score:5, Interesting)
Normal web browsing is fine, albeit quite a bit slower than you're used to. Then again, that's the price of anonymity, I suppose.
As far as contributing, if I had the bandwidth to spare, I'd set up a Tor server and contribute. I do have Tor linked from my web site, though, for what that's worth.
Re:Thoughts from a Tor user (Score:5, Interesting)
The more people you mix with, the longer you have to wait for enough to show up to confuse an attacker. If you had zero latency,then timing alone would identify your traffic.
Parent
Re:Thoughts from a Tor user (Score:5, Informative)
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Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
The authorities find out.
The network has 100 nodes.
The authorities arrest the operators of all 100 nodes.
....profit?
Re:Sooo... (Score:3, Funny)
That would certainly make detective novels quicker. "The murderer had to be one of the 12 people in this room... so rather than waste any more time on it we've decided to arrest you all."
Re:Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)
More like, "All 12 of you deliberately helped to conceal the murderer's identity, so we'll arrest you all for aiding and abetting, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice.
(but IANAL...)
Parent
Wrong URL (Score:5, Informative)
relationship to TOS (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, the imageshack links aren't working...?
Re:relationship to TOS (Score:3, Informative)
What about the jerks? (Score:5, Informative)
With Tor, you can flood sites and services such as IRC, web boards, instant messaging, and so forth. You could possibly use it to spam as well. All of this would be done by seemingly random IP addresses. In essence, it is an inflated case of Open Proxy Syndrome. The only remedy that the victims have is to block all Tor sites by using some of the RBLs that exist for doing just that. I'd really like to allow legit use of Tor on my services, but there are some jackasses that flood from within Tor that make it impossible.
With anonymity comes a lack of recourse. I understand that this is the point of anonymity and Tor, but it isn't always good.
Re:What about the jerks? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What about the jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
shady websites are often (but not always) shady
themselves. You get a kid who's ego is tightly
wrapped up with, say, admining a board then there's
some spat and he's ousted. Now he doesn't have
anything better to do than DDOS the site and get
whatever satisfaction that can give him.
Parent
DDOS at 70Kb.second... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I do. Just like I put on pants before I leave the house, the same way I keep my money in a wallet and not on a chain around my neck.
I have a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy and this allows me to have some of that. When I am on my laptop on the filthy campus network I don't have to worry someone sitting across the hall with a packet sniffer on his laptop is eavesdropping on my browsing. And if I want to go haul in something off edonkey or even the evil mean and nasty freenet I can do so from anywhere on campus even behind the firewall that filters out all p2p traffic to the commons areas.
But to say people are going to use this to ddos sites is just stupid. Use the network before making such claims and see for yourself how it works. People who ddos sites don't need tor and wouldn't bother, it's too slow, too easy to trace via timing analysis, and the convenience factor alone means it will probably remain slow due to contantly being overloaded.
The people who ddos sites are going to run a scanner on a couple of irc servers, track down the same poorly configured and/or rooted out proxies all the script kiddies sharing movies and wanking in front of webcams are trying to hide behind, and set up a few chains with some decent bandwidth to stage an attack...
Parent
Re:DDOS at 70Kb.second... (Score:5, Informative)
You may think its stupid, but unfortunately, its reality. The reality is that even though it slower, its still effective.
Here is an example [gnu-designs.com] of some log entries of spammers using Tor to forge referers and trackback spam to domains I host. Whatever tool they're using "broke" the url because they lowercased it (the url is valid, if the 'q' is uppercased).
At first I thought it was a new worm hitting us, but its coming too fast from far too many IPs in a very predictable pattern [gnu-designs.com] to be a random worm. The list of countries represented [gnu-designs.com] is very un-wormlike.
We survived 2 slashdottings 2 days in a row last week, barely a blip on our network radar, bu t a few days later, we were hit with this mountain of traffic [gnu-designs.com] from random locations, all within a 10-15 minute span, and only about an hour after I blocked the entire country of Brazil from reaching port 25 (the whole 200.0.0.0). Its definately maliscious, and definately intentional. I'm fending off attacks on our servers almost daily now, from netbios floods to SYN and TIME_WAIT attacks, to other things. I've been using the TARPIT module in iptables to slow things down, but they keep on coming, from thousands of unique IPs, across all range of our open ports (22, 53, 80, 2401, whatever).
So yes, Tor is most-definately being used to spam and DDoS sites, that is a fact and reality, which I can consistently prove with graphs, logs, and charts.
But it does serve a valid purpose, so I don't block the Tor IP range... yet.
Parent
Re:What about the jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure dissidents in the PRC or other dictatorships, who look forward to a way of publishing things that go against their governments without losing their heads, are happy to hear you're worried about IRC crapflooding...
That's the price of freedom: preserving it comes at a cost, something citizens in the America of the DHS should remember too one of these days, incidentally.
Parent
That's a superficial argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
But we cannot buy human rights for people in China at the expense of the human rights of people in America or Europe. I have the exact same right to speak my mind freely, to make effective use of public forums to disseminate my ideas and my views. The original poster was remarking, quite correctly, that the total lack of accountability which Tor facilitates leads directly to a radical diminishment of his ability to effectively and freely communicate.
So you're saying that the right of Chinese dissidents to speak their minds freely is more important than my right to speak my mind freely? That I should be forced to endure a diminishment of my ability to express my views on the Internet, in order to ensure that Chinese dissidents can get their views out?
Congratulations: you're a character in a George Orwell book. The book is Animal Farm, and you're the character that tells the farm animals all pigs are created equal, just some of them more equal than others.
It is immoral to buy one person's freedom with another person's freedom.
The only moral way out of this which I can see is to devise protocols which guarantee everyone's freedom--the freedom of Chinese dissidents to criticize their government without the secret police knocking, and my freedom to have the Internet available for me to publish and disseminate my own information without dealing with a crapflood of spam.
Parent
Re:That's a superficial argument. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:That's a superficial argument. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What about the jerks? (Score:3, Insightful)
- IRC crapflooding is a form of DoS attack.
- DoS attack renders the forum to which they are applied practically useless (thus its name - Denial of Service).
- Practically any internet base publishing format is vulnerable to DoS attacks.
- Dissidents in the PRC or other dictatorships won't
Re:What about the jerks? (Score:4, Insightful)
I posit that, by stating that any forum a Chinese person would join would be DoSed, you made the assumption that the entire internet can be DoSed simultaneously, bringing the entire internet crashing down. Now doesn't that sound a bit silly?
Parent
Re:What about the jerks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from stuff like rape victims posting to support group boards with anonymity (one of the justifications people used for the old anon.penet.fi anonymizers) or protecting whistle blowers, I'm not getting the need for a public anonymizing network or how it will benefit us more than it hurts us.
What stops all sorts of jerks from trying to abuse it for spam, slander, harrassment, hacking, etc.? And if there are no safeguards, then how does the benefit of this outweigh the harm?
Seems to me like a bunch of geeks doing something because it can be done and worrying about the consequences later.
- Greg (who once used the anon.penet.fi server to post alt.personals ads from "Heddy", a disembodied head looking for people to chat with after the scientists left the lab for the night)
Parent
Re:What about the jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The defunct Freedom Network had a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
If you acted like a jerk people would block you, your pseudonym would become useless, and replacing it would cost actual money.
I don't know how they avoided making the nyms traceable via the payment system. There is high magic in the crypto world that might have made it possible to break that linkage.
BTW I bow with respect toward your low user id.
Parent
Yeah, and I got slapped by slashdot for using it.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've posted to Slashdot using TOR. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Okay, here it comes through TOR. (Score:3, Informative)
And what I did was to turn on my proxy settings in Firefox and then go to an IP check site. My current IP is being reported as other than any in the range of my ISP.
100 nodes, since when? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:100 nodes, since when? (Score:3, Informative)
My node, lemonmirangue, is within the past month, so was probably in the 90s. Someday, I'll get to brag about that.
If it's anonymous... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, think about it for a moment: If it's completely anonymous, then how can we count the nodes. By counting a node, we now know where it is, virtually speaking, and can translate that into a physical location.
So either we don't know where all the nodes are, or this isn't really anonymous.
Re:If it's anonymous... (Score:5, Informative)
Answer: You can't know. Hence the people using Node X remain anonymous.
Parent
Read: VERIFIED (Score:3, Informative)
Gozer the Gozarian (Score:4, Funny)
During the rectfication of the Voldrani, the Traveler came as a large and moving Tor.
Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Machetrik Supplicants,
they chose a new form for him -- that of a Giant Slor!
Many Shevs and Zuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day I can tell you!
Prospective Node-op Concerns (Score:5, Interesting)
Particularly related to situations where my node ends up last in the chain for given http hits.
From a low enforcement point of view, I am accountable for any and all outbound http hits from my network.
At worst case, if my node does the actual http hits to sites like www.some-secret-kiddie-pr0n-site.com or www.some-phishing-victims-bank.com, then in all likelihood I'll be getting a visit from the police.
In such a case, there's no acceptable outcome:
If I encrypt my disks and refuse to hand over keys, I'm looking to do time for accessing the sites.
If I tell cops about the Tor node, and mount a 'plausible deniability' defense, there's the possibility of 'accessory' or 'contributory negligence/liability' charges.
Even if I beat all these charges and escape conviction, I still have to suffer:
- stress from police harassment
- time wasted in police interviews and court appearances
- loss of my PC for a year or more, while computer forensics cops go through my hard disks with a fine tooth comb
None of these outcomes are very appealing.Any thoughts on this?
Re:Prospective Node-op Concerns (Score:5, Informative)
Note that you can be a server without allowing users to make connections from your computer to the outside world. This is called being a middleman server.
Parent
Tor DNSBL (Score:5, Informative)
What is the use of anonymous networking? (Score:5, Interesting)
1: political groups trying to hide from censorship
2: diplomatic/spy-agency messages
3: P2P
4: criminal/terrorist/pedophile activity
I think most people would agree that the great benefit of such a network is number 1. Number 2 is well accepted practice over the last 100 years, so I think there are not much objections against that. Number 3 might be the biggest selling point of this technique, allthough somewhat ethically debatable. I think this problem will be solved in the next 10 years by either the collapse of the content industry or the availibility of better alternatives. That leaves number 4. Is there anything that can be done against that or must this be seen as 'collateral damage'?
You did forget one (Score:5, Insightful)
The more law enforcement is simply trusted to do the right thing, the more you will have bad apples who don't. The phrase "power corrupts" describes a very real phenomenon.
Parent
Anecdotal data point (Score:5, Interesting)
Some tor users are a nuissance on IRC (Score:5, Interesting)
As an op, I've had to ban parts of tor because a lot of flooding, spamming, etc comes from that domain. Despite the EFF's push to create an "anonymous haven" it's basically turned into a thieves paradise which allows one to carry out attacks without fear of being detected.
Later, GJC
Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorism Networks like this would make it easy and untracable for terrorists to send their commuinications without being traced to a location.
Do you not want to help civil rights campaigners in China defeat political suppression? Do you not want to help the Iraqi people fight against American terrorism and get their country back from the evil empire?
Parent
Screw the children! (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when it was SUPPOSED to be about freedom of speech? Yeah even when it's the "bad" kind. Look how they keep these kiddie porn pictures locked away where only a tiny few detectives and the pervs who obsessively seek out the images can find them. When they FINALLY admit defeat and roll out a few carefully altered pictures worldwide in an unprecedented "have you seen this place" (still cannot see the kid who probably could have been identified much quicker) they find out the guy was locked up and the girl has been safe now for YEARS!
How many years did she go on being abused because the friends and neighbors of this kid never had the chance to identify her?
Now, having said that let me remind you of something else: "child porn" is a moving target and especially in the US there is a VERY heavy footed march toward defining anyone under the age of 18 as a "child."
And the primary motivation for this is NOT to stop at "child porn" but to stamp out every modeling site and every ADULT porn publisher by overloading them and binding them with red tape and overzealous, politically correct "laws" brought about through uniting the most intrusive elements of the right wing religious nuts and the left wing feminist nuts. The door was thrown open decades ago when the court said "intent" was good enough for prosecution even in cases of pictures where no "harm" was done to the children and that was all about one thing: punishing people for beiung who they are and not punishing them for their actions.
I've said this before here and people go "oh they can';t get away with tat we have the supreme court" well yeah, it was the SCOTUS that sent down the first ruling and did so even in a much more liberal atmosphere, think of how that might go today. Better yet just look around, watch the news over the next few weeks and you will see it being played out right before you.
In germany magazines target at 13 to 15 year olds have frontal nudity and articles on buying condoms and giving head. They prepare kids for adulthood and recognize their right to their own bodies and their own sexuality. In the US and UK the political machination is moving in the exact opposite direction, seeking to strip away even adults from their inalienable liberty of self.
Just watch... you'll see soon enough.
Parent
Re:Arrest the children! (Score:4, Interesting)
Please explain to me again how throwing a teenage girl in jail, and making her become a registered sex offender for the rest of her life, does something positive and helps her.
How can somebody be both the victim and the abuser?
Parent
Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this have to do with the issues I raised?
Do you think that child pornography is not a legitimate issue?
Just beucause there are GOOD uses of Tor does not mean there are VERY BAD uses of it. The Good does not negate the Bad.
That's a good point and a better reply to it than the one the parent got is that if your counter to something bad requires you to throw out something very good with it, then find a different counter. Terrorists abusing the technology that enables free speech? Don't block free speech, remove the causes of terrorism. It can only thrive in a sympathetic environment. Without that it just becomes isolated psychos.
This isn't a absolute argument, but it's worth keeping in mind. Similar arguments can be made for other things. There are multiple approaches to every problem - you focus on the best one.
Parent
Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:3, Insightful)
If (something) has a use that is "bad" (something) = bad
That's just wrong. bittorrent has illegal and legal uses. VCRs have illegal and legal uses. Guns have legal and illegal uses. Cars have legal and illegal uses.
Someone could use a car to get kiddie pr0n, OMG! BAN CARS!!!!11oneonethree.
You can't ban something because it may be used to do something bad, that's just wrong.
Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that the Internet exists doesn't translate to a need for the government or anyone else to guarantee that it operates without hiccups. I tire very easily of those that take the stance that the Internet and services based on the Internet should work flawlessly, and if needed, the network should be regulated to ensure that they do.
This kind of thinking is socialist in nature, and the Internet (as it is now defined) is totally antihtesis to this notion.
There is no current methodology for regulating a global phenomenon. No single government, despite their aspirations, can achieve regulation of a global network. Spam comes from every corner of the globe, and like fire ants, when you think you have eliminated it, it will show up from some other spot you have no control over.
Anonymity, or stealth on the Internet is part and parcel of what it is. Tracing someone's work over the Internet necessarily should be difficult. That people have made efforts to make it even more difficult is nothing more than living in the spirit of free flow of information without retribution.
While some of you might feel that this is not needed, there are disidents in some countries that really would like to have this kind of anonymity. Who are we to deny it to them on the basis of our view of the world?
Liberty and freedom only happens when you truly are free to say and do as you please (so long as you don't violate anyone else's freedom) and publishing what you think and feel is not against that. There are actual valid reasons for ultra privacy.
To say that netizens or Internet users should be responsible is to intimate that there is a set of regulations that they should abide by that is significant and pertains only to the Internet.
There are laws and social norms of decency that all should abide by whether they are on the Internet or in the local convenience store.
Sure, there will be those that abuse any leniencey, but there always is, no matter what the law or social morality says. Those that think there should be more regulation on the Internet might be better off staying off of the Internet... go get an AOL subscription... or something like that.
Just two cents worth
Parent
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to provide a very profound example of the need for privacy: The U.S. Constitution. One of the biggest aids to getting the Constitution ratified in 1789 were the series of essays later entitled The Federalist Papers and although they were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and others they were published under the pseudonyms Ceasar, Publius, amoung others. See: ClassicNote on The Federalist Papers [gradesaver.com].
The Federalist Papers are the single greatest interpretive source of the Constitution of the United States, the best insight and explanation of what the Founding Fathers purpose was in the passage of the document that governs the United States of America.
Supporting freedom of speech is not going to your local church on Sunday and hoopin' and hollerin' along with the priest, minister, rabbi, or whatever title they may possess. Supporting freedom of speech is seeing someone on their soap box spewing forth the most vile, soul wrenching diatribe you can imagine and while disagreeing with the message being given you still stand up and fight for their right to voice the opinion. Unfortunately many opposing points of view must be expressed anonymoously to avoid any repurcussions (like the no-fly list).
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strip a Boulder professor ---facts are wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bad idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the internet routes around damage. And information wants to be free. BUT, information does not want to molest people.
Most geeks don't want EBay to be constantly DDOS'd, and they don't want to be constantly spammed. And by all respects, we're making progress towards these goals. And these goals are NOT in conflict with the open design of the internet. Famously, the main underpinning of the internet is that all of the intelligence is