Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Tor Anonymity Network Reaches 100 Verified Nodes

Posted by timothy on 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.)"

3 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah, and I got slapped by slashdot for using it.. by killpog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Can't post to slashdot using Tor, and a couple servers have been banned by slashdot entirely, for flooding the site.

  2. Prospective Node-op Concerns by heretic108 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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?
    --
    -- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
  3. Some tor users are a nuissance on IRC by borgheron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    --
    Gregory Casamento
    ## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep