Slashdot Mirror
Tor Anonymity Network Reaches 100 Verified Nodes
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.)"
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.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
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?
Should be tor.eff.org.
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...?
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.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Can't post to slashdot using Tor, and a couple servers have been banned by slashdot entirely, for flooding the site.
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.
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 want to be responsible for people who use Tor to spam (not just email, which I believe is blocked by default)?
This also applies to any other illegal activity.. Do you want to help people commit crimes?
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 that this points to says they had 100 nodes as of February 2005. Is TOR no longer growing, or is the math off somewhere?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Here, I'll try and do it again right now.
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.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I suspect it will work.
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.
I have to disagree with this. The Internet, as it was invented, intended, and as it has been adopted ... none of these things ever included regulation. All efforts are being, and have been made to work around network problems.
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
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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!
OLPC Australia
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...
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.
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).
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
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.
And dont forget the TOR DNSBL, since you know TOR is just itching to be abused.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
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'?
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
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...
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.)
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
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 go through "trusted" nodes but traffic in the middle may go through untrusted nodes - and anyone can setup an untrusted node and, in fact, tor comes OOTB ready to run as an untrusted server if it detects you have a decent connection to do so. So in this respect the TOTAL number of nodes is constantly changing as people enter and leave the network. The total number of nodes is separate and not directly related at all to the number of TRUSTED, registered nodes.
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?
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.
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 at the endpoints, not in the center. As a result, it is difficult for governments to step in the middle of the internet and impose their will from a central place. However, there ARE places where intelligent decisions are made about whether information is passed on... at the endpoints.
If either end of a communication decides that the communication shouldn't take place (eg. if it's not consensual), then the communcation can and should be stopped. A free and open internet can simultaneously encourage the free-flow of information from individuals without government intrusion, and also inhibit the proliferation of spam and spyware. We only need to give individuals the tools to make more intelligent decisions about what kinds of data they accept, but in the end, it's up to every individual to make their own choices.
Spam and spyware are more about communicating false data to further their own goals than they are about freeing up information (eg. "here is the information you requested", "go ahead and download our nice P2P software... there's nothing undesirable hiding here"). Hopefully and fortunately, our philosophical underpinnings do not require us to tolerate such behavior.
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.
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 anyway. I didn't verify it until I received a nice friendly email from the EFF/tor people asking if I would register - from a human - and I did.
The more tor routers there are, the faster the service may become.
http://blog.grcm.net/
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.
Kythe
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
Wikipedia is currently blocking many Tor server IPs from writing (reading still works), because they haven't figured out internally how to deal with the fact that they want to provide open access but they also have no ways to control abuse to their website. We're working with them to resolve this.
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I think that you are falling in to the trap of thinking that free speech means the ability to say anyting you like without repercussion. This is patently false the constitution gives you the ability to utilize free speech without fear of reprisal from the GOVERNMENT, it does not follow that it gives you the right to think that there will be no repercussion from your peers. In other words you may speak your mind, but be aware and take the consequences of your actions. Freedom is all about personal responsibility. The Federalist papers were written under pseudonyms because at the time there was no freedom of speech guarantee hence freedaom of speech becoming a cornerstone of the rights protected under the constitution.
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 sadly mistaken. Consider SLAPP suits, for one example.
Anonmyous communication helps those with suppressed views in the west just as much as it helps those with suppresed views in China. It also helps those who just like to flood the world with crap. The solution is better filtering and ways to reduce the incentive to spam, not eliminating anonymous speech.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That's not true, the professor in question has also made threats against those who people who disagree with him or came forward with unflattering evidence against. Such evidence includes plagiarism, falsification of credentials on his resume/application (claiming to be a native american when in fact he is not)...added to that is the fact he was granted tenure outside the normal tensure process (not his fault so much as CUs)--what he said and free speech are not the issue with the guy...that fact that he is a liar and a grifter is. Ward Churchill is the professor should anyone want to search what all the fuss is about.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
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.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)