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Privacy Networking The Internet Your Rights Online

Tor Anonymity Network Reaches 100 Verified Nodes 332

Posted by timothy 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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Tor Anonymity Network Reaches 100 Verified Nodes More

Tor Anonymity Network Reaches 100 Verified Nodes

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  • Thoughts from a Tor user (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IO ERROR ( 128968 ) * <errorNO@SPAMioerror.us> on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:02AM (#12603705) Homepage Journal
    I've been using Tor as only a client for a while now, and I have to say that it seems maybe a bit overloaded; I ran into a LOT of latency on interactive sessions; anywhere from 3 to 30 seconds or more would be normal. It could just be that intermediate routers were having trouble, but it's not yet something I can use daily for interactive sessions.

    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)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:25AM (#12603761) Journal
      This is the same problem Mixmaster has, along with any anonymizing network that hides you by mixing you with a crowd.

      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.
    • I've been using tor for about six months now; not for all browsing, but for times when I want to be anonymous. It is a bit slower, but I personally value my anonymity for certain things. As someone below has pointed out, it's like leaving the house without wearing trousers.

      I've been running a verified server node for the last couple of months- it's a good way to give back to the community. It's really easy to set up and makes you feel good :-)

      Note you don't need to verify your node- you can just run it
    • It seems to have gotten a lot slower recently, now that idiots are routing BitTorrent traffic through the network.

  • Sooo... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:04AM (#12603710)
    Something "bad" gets onto the network. Something that the authorities don't want out there.

    The authorities find out.

    The network has 100 nodes.

    The authorities arrest the operators of all 100 nodes.

    ....profit?

    • Re:Sooo... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Something bad gets out onto the Internet. Something that the authorities don't want out there.

      The authorities find out.

      The internet has a gagiliion nodes.

      The authorities arrest the operators of all gagillion nodes.

      In this case, if the network is public, aren't these nodes just acting as an ISP or pipe rather than an end user. You don't go arresting an ISP because of the pirating commited by one of its users (Sure, you might try get the details of that end user from them).

    • Re:Sooo... (Score:3, Informative)

      by smoany ( 832744 )
      You seem to be using the Sandra-Bullock (read: incorrect) definition of network.

      Something "bad" gets onto the network.

      First of all, the tor network is for redirect of data transfer only, not for storage. This isn't a P2P kind of service. There's no FS involved. Files don't get onto the network, they pass through it.

      The network has 100 nodes.

      Secondly, the network has 100 dedicated server nodes, and god-knows how many clients. The servers are not necessarily the origin or destination of the pack

  • Wrong URL (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:06AM (#12603721)
    Should be tor.eff.org [eff.org].

  • relationship to TOS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:09AM (#12603724)
    I'd be interested in seeing where this falls on the TOS of internet providers. I have a fat unmontiored (non-student) university pipe.... ;)

    Also, the imageshack links aren't working...?

  • What about the jerks? (Score:5, Informative)

    by drdink ( 77 ) * <smkelly+slashdot@zombie.org> on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:12AM (#12603729) Homepage
    While I think Tor is a great idea, I also think it makes it way too easy to be a bad netizen.
    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)

      by SlashdotMeNow ( 799901 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:21AM (#12603753)
      Well sure, but sites that are likely targets of DDOS attacks tends to be larger, more commercial sites. Microsoft.com or Yahoo.com or Ebay or whoever CAN disallow Tor traffic (using blacklists) without really inconveniencing a significant portion of their users. And that's fine for me - why would I want to hide the fact that I'm downloading patches from MS? However if I'm looking at sites that may flag my IP with the CIA or FBI or whoever, it's likely that those sites will be fairly low on the list of likely DDOS targets. So it's not really and issue for me. Maybe others out there has different ideas of how they would like to use an anonymous browser, but I'm happy with what it is. In short: Meh.

      • Re:What about the jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:37AM (#12603795) Journal
        That's just not true. The people involved with
        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.

        • DDOS at 70Kb.second... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by poptones ( 653660 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @06:21AM (#12604039) Journal
          I use tor routinely. I'm using it right now. I have it on my laptop, too. It goes browser>privoxy>tor>website. There are only a tiny few sites where I go around this chain (slashdot here is one of them, but not the "affiliated" sites). Is it because I have something to hide?

          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...

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:DDOS at 70Kb.second... (Score:5, Informative)

            by hacker ( 14635 ) <hacker@gnu-designs.com> on Sunday May 22, 2005 @11:57AM (#12605144)
            "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."

            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.

      • No, No, and No.

        Myself being in a gaming clan who has a . . . reputation, getting a DDoS is pretty regular even though we're not large, nor commercial.

    • Re:What about the jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:25AM (#12603762)
      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.

      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.

      • That's a superficial argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Sunday May 22, 2005 @07:27AM (#12604191)
        You're arguing freedom is worth any price, without considering what the word freedom means. Do the Chinese possess the human right to criticize their government freely, to talk to their fellow citizens without worrying about secret police, etc.? Absolutely so--and that the Chinese government insists on interfering with this human right is proof, in my book, that the Chinese government is illegitimate.

        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.

        • Re:That's a superficial argument. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by m50d ( 797211 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @08:15AM (#12604309) Homepage Journal
          Crapflooding doesn't make speech impossible. The right to free speech is far more important than the right to be listened to.
          • But if those who whish to listen to you can not, surely it makes the freedom os speech useless. After all, you can blather all day long about the evils of government from your solitary confinement cell. The government isn't restricting your free speech, just who can hear it.
        • It is immoral to buy one person's freedom with another person's freedom.

          Oh. So locking up kidnappers is immoral? Criminals in general? Trerrorists?

          People who make broad moralistic statements of black and white are wrong.

        • Re:That's a superficial argument. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by JadeNB ( 784349 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @10:30AM (#12604750) Homepage
          Your ability to speak your mind freely is not impeded by a flood of spam and crap posts. Your ability to find the information you want, and the ability of other users to find the (presumably valuable) information you have provided, is indeed impeded -- but, while self-expression is a fundamental right, the `right to be heard' is not. If the price of a Chinese citizen's right to criticise his government was that I could no longer criticise mine (which, as an American, I increasingly am not allowed to do anyway), then that would be an illegitimate trade-off; but surely if the price of that same right is that I have to sort through a few (or very many) more messages to get to the ones I want, then it is selfish in the extreme to claim that the price is too high for me to pay. It is not that a Chinese citizen is `more equal' than I, only that a huge benefit accrues for a relatively small price.
        • Freedom for one person always comes at the expense of freedom for another.

          My freedom to punch you in the face comes by taking away your freedom to not be punchbed in the face by me. It's a fundamental tradeoff.

          What's important is not sticking to some impossible moral high ground, but accepting that this whole governing business involves a series of clever compromises, and then figuring out what those compromises should be.

        • The crapflooding doesn't prevent you from speaking at all. At worst it makes your speech harder to find, but it in no way prevents those who want to hear you from listening, or you from speaking.

          The most bizarre part of your argument, however, is the assumption that lack of anonymity cannot possibly hurt your ability to speak. I'll grant you that the western world does a much better job of allowing you to say what's on your mind than China does, but if you believe that no censorship happens here, you're

        • You don't have a right to expect other people privately using a protocol-linked inter-network (public by mutual implied consent) to act in ways that are personally convenient to you. If somebody does you actual harm, or trespasses into your property, go after them. But you have no "freedom" to require others not to do things for their own reasons that coincidentally make harm or trespass easier. That's what's known as "tough luck". Suck it up, or switch off your modem.
        • It's a small price that allows others to express themselves more safely. You don't need to listen.

          All it does is decrease the signal/noise ratio. You may have to work a little harder to find the good stuff, but you'll will find a way, or maybe an alternative. Reminds me of email filtering somehow. It is much harder when the sender doesn't have a stable identity. But, if all your legitimate senders have stable addresses, you can filter out the others. It also reminds me of seti, if you don't want to
      • 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...

        - 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)

          by TheoMurpse ( 729043 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @09:32AM (#12604513) Homepage
          Assume that no one can DoS the entire internet for a second. Thus, a censored people, prior to Tor, had no recourse of action to speak their mind safely. After Tor, they have a chance (remember, we assumed that no one can DoS the entire internet!).

          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?

    • Re:What about the jerks? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gbulmash ( 688770 ) * <semi_famous@ya h o o .com> on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:31AM (#12603775) Homepage Journal
      Have to agree here. I don't want to sound like an RIAA or MPAA lawyer, but I see like 100 methods of abusing anonymity for each valid reason to have anonymity.

      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)

      • Re:What about the jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2005 @08:38AM (#12604363)
        There are hundreds of methods for abusing cars as well. I could drive my car through a crowded flea market every Tuesday wearing sunglasses and using stolen license plates. That's both abusive and anonymous. But it's not a reason to take away cars. Or sunglasses. Or license plates. Or the screwdrivers used to steal and install license plates. Or flea markets. Neither is potential abuse a reason to take away anonymity.
      • Using your analogy, i guess we need to ban ( or monitor - 'safeguard' ) the rest of the internet too. Since there are '100's of bad uses'.

        Hell, with your menatlity we should also ban ( or monitor ) guns, sticks, cars, streets, shoes... books...

        We have a right to privacy. Regardless of how SOME incorrectly use that right. THEY should have that right restricted, not the rest of us.
      • 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.
        When the time comes that we need an anonymous network it will be too late to build it. It doesn't look very beneficial now, but when/if it ever is it will be invaluable.
      • but I see like 100 methods of abusing anonymity for each valid reason to have anonymity.

        It's not about numbers. Those few reasons valid reasons are far more important for humanity as a whole than the huge number of potential abuses.

    • The defunct Freedom Network had a good idea (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:34AM (#12603789) Journal
      Zero Knowledge systems made their anonymizng network pseudonymous instead of truly anonymous, and (here's the good part) you had to pay for a pseudonym.

      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.
    • Anonymity isn't always good, and anonymity isn't always bad. Yes, there's some tension here, but the solution isn't that difficult: we simultaneously need technical measures to ensure anonymity in some circumstances, and we also need technical measures to enhance verification of identity in others. The same internet can and SHOULD support both non-anonymous blog comments, and at the same time allow chinese dissidents to post anonymously to other areas of the internet.

      Anonymous and non-anonymous postings

  • Yeah, and I got slapped by slashdot for using it.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by killpog ( 740063 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:15AM (#12603739) Journal
    Can't post to slashdot using Tor, and a couple servers have been banned by slashdot entirely, for flooding the site.

  • Issues of running a Tor node (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are many questionable issues to deal with when you run a Tor server..

    Child Pornography
    I dont know if you are legally responsible, but do you want to help the anonomous distribution of child pornography, especially if the children are actually being harmed?

    Terrorism
    Networks like this would make it easy and untracable for terrorists to send their commuinications without being traced to a location. Do you want to be unwittingly helping Osama bin Laden send out messages and hide his location?

    Spam
    Do you

    • Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 22, 2005 @05:01AM (#12603858)
      yea, wont somebody please think of the children?

      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?

      • Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        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.

        • Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:5, Insightful)

          by h4rm0ny ( 722443 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @05:52AM (#12603980) Journal

          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.
          • Piling on, if you make these networks somehow illegal in country A, how are you going to enforce the jurisdiction elsewhere?
            What are you going to do about a ship with >12 mile wireless capability sitting off the coast in international waters?
            I submit that the answer may be the other extreme: networks whose entry requires total transparency at all times, whose on-ramps actually cost money, so that users can simply access them and do what they gotta do without an privacy beyond username/password.
            If the
        • It's thinking like that that makes the people who don't wear their asses as hats very angry.

          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.

      • Screw the children! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by poptones ( 653660 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @06:02AM (#12604000) Journal
        And screw the chinese. It amazes me how people still drag out this inflamed and rancid red herring every time there is a discussion of anonymity on the net.

        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.

        • Re:Arrest the children! (Score:4, Interesting)

          by L.Bob.Rife ( 844620 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @07:03AM (#12604108)
          Reminds me of the girl who was arrested for possession and distribution of kiddie porn with pictures of herself.

          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?

    • Re:Issues of running a Tor node (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mincognito ( 839071 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @05:11AM (#12603889)
      Yes anonymous internet use should be banned. Thank you for your insightful post Mr. Coward.
    • These questions can be raised against any system which allows its users to stay anonymous while distributing contents. A more general question then is, are you against any communication mechanism which allows all parties to stay anonymous? Do you believe that any communication channel must have provision to be wiretapped? If your answer is "no", then how Tor (or FreeNet etc) should be any different. If you answer "yes", you should understand that it is basically the same as the infamous "Fair citizens need

      • You can even raise this issue against the entire Internet (disregarding the anonymity issue altogether): should we ban the Internet because people distribute child pornography through it? Are ISPs legally held responsible when their users distribute child porn without their knowledge? The answer is no, because ISPs are a common carrier and are not required to police their users unless the government (or others, like the DMCA notices) brings specific evidence of wrongdoing to them. How is Tor any different?

    • At least in the EU the legal issues are very clearly spelled out in the E-commerce Directive [eu.int].

      Article 12

      "Mere conduit"

      1. Where an information society service is provided that consists of the transmission in a communication network of information provided by a recipient of the service, or the provision of access to a communication network, Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for the information transmitted, on condition that the provider:
      (a) does not initiate the transmi

    • You are right when talking about Tor as it is, but not in respect to the general concept. The problem of accountability can be worked around somewhat by using trust based networks, see www.advogato.org trust rating for the concept.

      Terrorists don't need safe and secret networks to communicate in secret, they can communicate quite well using unsafe and supervised networks. Admittedly a Tor network offers some more protection, but probably not as much as you are making it out.

      Spam is sent out by email in ma

  • 100 nodes, since when? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @04:48AM (#12603819)
    The point of this post seems to be that TOR now has 100 verified nodes. But the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Routing [wikipedia.org] that this points to says they had 100 nodes as of February 2005. Is TOR no longer growing, or is the math off somewhere?

  • If it's anonymous... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @05:01AM (#12603859) Homepage
    then how do we know there are a hundred nodes?

    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)

      by aussie_a ( 778472 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @05:18AM (#12603907) Journal
      The nodes are what people use to remain anonymous. They nodes themselves need to be well-known so they can be used. 100 people use node X. Someone from China could use node X or someone from America could use Node X or someone from England could use Node X. How do you know where any of those people live, by knowing where node X is?

      Answer: You can't know. Hence the people using Node X remain anonymous.
      • Doesnt knowing where the node is allow countries/organisations/ISPs/whoever to block access to all Tor nodes? If access to them can be blocked, doesn't that mean that the people with the most need for an anonymous network (Chinese maybe) may not even get access.

    • Read: VERIFIED (Score:3, Informative)

      by poptones ( 653660 )
      it is 100 verified nodes. To become "verified" is to be "blessed" wiht a certain level of trust. It means your node is held somewhat accountable, it can be trusted to not be intercepting packets. Although every packet is re-encrypted at each node and it knows only the IP of the next and last in the chain, honeypots could do some damage because there is likely to be some incriminating content inside the packet itself - cookies, usernames, etc. So the tor net is setup by default that the first and last hops
  • Wait for a sign from Gozer the Traveler; he will come in one of the pre-chosen forms.
    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!
    • Which came first, the language or the compiler?

      This is completely Off topic, but I have to comment on your signature.

      The language, of course, came first. This doesn't even come close to Chicken Vs. Egg.

      To write a programming language [wikipedia.org], one needs a grammar [wikipedia.org]. The grammar provides syntax and form for the language (and also governs the language's capabilities), but the grammar is not a compiler by itself.

      Once one has a grammar (and hence, a language), one can write a parser/compiler, not before.

      (although po

  • Prospective Node-op Concerns (Score:5, Interesting)

    by heretic108 ( 454817 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @05:20AM (#12603912)
    It's crossed my mind to run a Tor node myself, but I do have some questions/concerns.

    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?

  • Tor DNSBL (Score:5, Informative)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @06:03AM (#12604005) Journal
    And dont forget the TOR DNSBL [sectoor.de], since you know TOR is just itching to be abused.

  • What is the use of anonymous networking? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by photonic ( 584757 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @06:08AM (#12604013)
    The ones I can think of are
    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'?

    • Well, when I clicked on the ImageMagic link in the article I got the lovely message "Your IP has been logged. Please enter your email address so we can send you the link you wanted".

      I don't want my IP address to be logged. My computer has been portscanned twice in the last week (which is freaking my uni's computer dept out slightly). Apparently I pissed someone off and they're looking for ways to get back at me. The more information on me and my computer that's spread round the net, the easier this is. I
      • I don't want my IP address to be logged. My computer has been portscanned twice in the last week (which is freaking my uni's computer dept out slightly). Apparently I pissed someone off and they're looking for ways to get back at me. The more information on me and my computer that's spread round the net, the easier this is. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

        You're kidding? Unless your university is some sort of spy agency, two port scans in a week is pretty light.

        • As far as I can tell, that's incorrect. What generally happens is that script kiddies run scans by vulnerability rather than by computer - why waste time thoroughly scoping one box out when there are thousands more like it? As a result, portscans of just one computer are fairly rare, and tend to imply malicious intent - the last one was a script kiddie I ended up chatting to who got annoyed at me.
    • If the great benefit is allowing people to hide from censorship, how about having a whitelist of sites that can be visited through your Tor Server?

      A good start might be all the appicable sites currently blocked by the great firewall of China (e.g. BBC and goolge).

      I know I'd be a lot happier to run a server if I knew that my computer would not be publicly accessing dodgy stuff.

      Admittedly this would somewhat limit the usefullness of the tool, and there is always the question of who decides what is on the l
      • You may restrict what an anonymous user accesses with whitelists, but without allowing unrestricted posting capability you have removed most of the benefit of an anonymous network.

        Also, restricting the Chinese to viewing the BBC and Google(? how does that work then? They can search but not link? ) is still censorship. Who makes the whitelist, and by which criteria?

        If it's down to the server operator, they become government enforcement agenies by virtue of their local laws.

    • You did forget one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kythe ( 4779 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @09:35AM (#12604528)
      5: Ordinary citizens who don't want their private information viewed/used against them either by hackers or by law enforcement personnel who abuse their power

      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.

  • Anecdotal data point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cally ( 10873 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @06:26AM (#12604048) Homepage
    I've a friend, a Mac freak, who'se in Beijing on an intensive Chinese language course. I suggested he try tor out, expecting to have lots of hassles walking thru his first ever configure / make / install cycle. Eventually he tried it out & got it working without any help from me - just let me know he was using it, it was working fine, and to remind him to give a donation to the EFF (I'd mentioned making a donation myself a few weeks earlier.)

  • Anonymity is NOT about free speech... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you're anonymous, than you're not speaking freely. Sure, it has it's place in allowing those who are in a position to provide a pointer to society in the direction of evil which may then be discovered when that person doing the pointing would othersie lose his privilege to said information by revealing his presence. Beyond that, it's counter productive in building liberty.
  • The link given in the summary was http://eff.tor.org/ [tor.org] , but that leads to some site that... well, Im not sure what it is (one link leads to a list of what appears to be footraces, the other link goes to some photos.)

    I beleive they meant to say http://tor.eff.org/ [eff.org]

  • Some tor users are a nuissance on IRC (Score:5, Interesting)

    by borgheron ( 172546 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @09:40AM (#12604549) Homepage Journal
    I am usually all for anything the EFF does, but...

    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

  • Slow Bla bla Slow (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @10:13AM (#12604680) Homepage Journal
    Im sure there will be plenty of complaints 'but its slow, it sux'.

    Having a anonymous network or a fast one are mutually exclusive.

    If you want to be anonymous you have to give up speed, its the trade off.

    If you want speed, then you give anonymity up.

  • The greatest reason for anonymity: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Sunday May 22, 2005 @02:19PM (#12605903)
    Preserving your right to privacy.

    As a friend once said, just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean you can't hide it. It is still your nothing, not theirs.

    Do I have to wear an ID tag at the mall with a uniform that never changes so I am always identifiable? Do I have to file an itinerary ahead of time and stick to it? No. In whatever street clothes I'm in for the day, wherever I go and whenever, I'm anonymous unless I tell someone who I am. None of their business.

    Is there anything amazing in my e-mails to my family that I need to hide? Nope. Does this mean I don't have the right to hide them? Nope. My yard is boring and I have nothing to hide there. Do I tear down my fence? Nope. Do I sleep under the stars when camping instead of a tent just in case some agency wants to train their satellites on me? Do I stop wearing baseball caps and sunglasses? Nope.

    Do I invite the public into my home and on my journeys to peruse everything I have and do? Nope. None of their business.

    You may have nothing to hide, but it is still your nothing and if you allow the very ability to keep your own business private then you might as well move to the next step and keep a detailed by the second journal of everything you do, see, say, etc. and hand it over to the authorities, the news media, and the reality entertainment slime so you can report on yourself.

    If we allow our fear of what criminals might do with a thing to instantly overpower any rational thoughts considering what we might do positively with the thing, then we might as well adopt a police state right here, right now because that is what we're asking for when we reject our own naturally existing human freedoms based on FUD.

    If you'll excuse me, I have to IM and e-mail some people you don't know about subjects I'm not divulging to you through channels I don't feel like disclosing. I'm sure you'll probably be doing the same. If you don't tell me, that's just as anonymous and secretive as this system.

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