Diseased Open Source Software Community - it's about ethics in Code of Conducts

[Kendall Motor Oil]

If the foundation is worried about this, doesn't that basically mean they're not confident that the network is all that secure?

Why are so many exit nodes from the same two countries? They must know there are people sniffing the exit nodes.

 

[AnOminous]

While true, the thing is that nothing really stops anybody from already doing this in a sneakier manner. If the foundation is worried about this, doesn't that basically mean they're not confident that the network is all that secure?

I'm sure they are but why make it even easier? It's always been susceptible to an attack where some well funded agency or group of agencies runs a large percentage of the nodes and then does something like DDoS or otherwise degrade the performance of other nodes to their own are more likely to be selected as either nodes go offline or people get a new circuit because of poor performance.

Stuff like that is actually pretty noticeable though.

 

[The Real Slim Shady]

Nothing says decentralized free network like excluding 80% of relays because you dont like they signed up to a fundraising scheme. LMAO. How do they even have this possibility?

Is there a torrc option to enable ATOR-only nodes (in minecraft)?

 

[Coolio55]

Out of interest: How much effort would it take for null to set up an i2p version of the farms and how much end-user effort would be needed to make the switch?
I looked at it a while back but IIRC it involves shoving proxy settings into your browser which makes it a pain to switch back and forth.

 

[xn--mck1c]

It sounds like a really good way to vastly increase the chances that all three relays are owned by the same entity.

That's a point, if not the most important point worthy of discussion.
I could only allude to it with:

This of course, breaks if all the hops are controlled by the same entity.

And couldn't really address it that without strawmanning, since the that's not the point the blogpost was going into for whatever reason.

 

[AnOminous]

And couldn't really address it that without strawmanning, since the that's not the point the blogpost was going into for whatever reason.

What they said was vague enough I don't know enough to know if it's true, but it did say many of the nodes in question were breaking rules other nodes have to obey, so if that's so, why should they have some license to break the rules everyone else has to abide by?

 

[xn--mck1c]

why should they have some license to break the rules everyone else has to abide by?

Definitely not saying they should.

What they said was vague enough I don't know enough to know if it's true, but it did say many of the nodes in question were breaking rules other nodes have to obey

It's exactly the vagueness which makes the blogpost seem suspicious:

We consider these relays to be harmful to the Tor network for a number of reasons, including that certain of the relays do not meet our requirements

They never really named the actual issues here, even though historically they were never (rightfully so) shy about addressing technical issues. I'm looking around to see if there were discussions about what the actual technical issues were though.

There's also the question of if it's fair to penalize all the users of a technology, for the bad behavior, intentional or not of a few (especially since it's trivial to set up false flag bad relays to discredit the ATOR spec); especially given the TOR network's reputation.

 

[Maldavius Figtree]

If the TOR foundation wants to shut down ATOR because of a few bad actors, by that logic it should shut down all of TOR because of the terabytes of child porn being shared on there. Same logic.

 

[AnOminous]

If the TOR foundation wants to shut down ATOR because of a few bad actors, by that logic it should shut down all of TOR because of the terabytes of child porn being shared on there. Same logic.

One doesn't jeopardize the actual network, while the other creates a financial incentive to do exactly that. People getting rewards for setting up lots of nodes would increase the likelihood they're getting more money by helping TLAs compromise the network.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

I dunno, gatekeeping subtechnical thirdworlders trying to make a buck off your network with no comprehension of how it works or what it's for (and their unknown well-heeled bankrollers) sounds like a positive to me.

I'm also curious how they make TOR's work pay out. I had a very informative discussion on this topic a few years ago here, and the knowledgable sorts made it pretty clear it wasn't feasible.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

I dunno, gatekeeping subtechnical thirdworlders trying to make a buck off your network with no comprehension of how it works or what it's for (and their unknown well-heeled bankrollers) sounds like a positive to me.

I'm also curious how they make TOR's work pay out. I had a very informative discussion on this topic a few years ago here, and the knowledgable sorts made it pretty clear it wasn't feasible.

Isn't TOR literally financed by glowies?

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

Isn't TOR literally financed by glowies?

Yes, but ostensibly not controlled by them. Even if it is, they keep it operational, which a gold rush would not.

 

[AnOminous]

Isn't TOR literally financed by glowies?

Yeah but they want to use it too which creates an incentive not to break it. They also wouldn't want to use an unknown way to compromise it if it would mean revealing they had it. If you aren't a CP king or a massive drug dealer odds are they couldn't give a shit less about you personally.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

Yes, but ostensibly not controlled by them. Even if it is, they keep it operational, which a gold rush would not.

I seem to remember that Snowden revealed that the glowies controlled a non-negligible number of the TOR nodes, but not enough to be very useful in practice.

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

Yes, but ostensibly not controlled by them. Even if it is, they keep it operational, which a gold rush would not.

I thought that's what you meant by making TOR's work pay out, maybe I'm just being dumb.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

I thought that's what you meant by making TOR's work pay out, maybe I'm just being dumb.

Nah, I'm referring to the hashing(?) TOR does to anonymize connections. My layman's understanding is that it's not so far removed from crypto mining, but verifying the mined coin couldn't be done anonymously. So, you can have an anonymous network (TOR) or a crypto network (Brave) but not both.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

The simple thing to keep in mind is that the Tor network is all fine and dandy for hiding from corporations and other individuals, for the most part, but a so-called anonymity network that depends on benevolent people running nodes clearly doesn't work. The very structure of the Internet isn't suited to anonymity, and real solutions to the problem build a network over the Internet, a network in which use and contribution are identical. So, Tor is fine to use, but I wouldn't use it for any major crimes. Every major player who has depended upon Tor gets caught somehow.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

Every major player who has depended upon Tor gets caught somehow.

Except for the ones who haven't been caught, of course. That's a difficult demographic to quantify.

Not saying you're wrong about TOR's flaws, but it's always worth remembering that the people getting away with it are getting away with it.

 

[AnOminous]

Except for the ones who haven't been caught, of course. That's a difficult demographic to quantify.

Not saying you're wrong about TOR's flaws, but it's always worth remembering that the people getting away with it are getting away with it.

Ross Ulbricht (Dread Pirate Roberts) had actually posted to bitcointalk.org using an account connnected with his rossulbricht@gmail.com address in the early parts of starting Silk Road. While the feds may have just used that as a plausible alternative source for how they ultimately caught him, it is in fact plausible that opening fuckup was what doomed him.

I think Tor is pretty good but it is hardly going to protect you from the consequences of being one of the world's most notorious drug dealers.

 

[Creative Username]

Tor is very good, but the tiniest sliver of a mistake will ruin everything. Doing really solid OPSEC for multiple years is hard.