Slashdot Mirror
Tor Named One of the Year's Best Products
Iorek writes "PC World lauds Tor, an anonymous Internet communication system, as better than its paid competitors, and one of the best 100 products of 2005. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is supporting Tor development, has a press release as well."
gets second place on that list!
How does slashdot get away with publicly lauding Tor as the great application that it is, while simultaneously blocking over 90% of the nodes from posting to slashdot? Try it now, it took me thirty tries to post a comment to slashdot using Tor the other day.
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
The first being pr0n...this being anonymous pr0n!
These lists will become more and more common as people figure out what Tor is.. it's a nice idea but..
Even freenode has banned known tor connections. But that's what happens when you give 12 and 13 year old uber el3et linux hax0rs more power than they deserve.
I have been a Tor users for a very long time and, to a certain extent, the fact that it is not very well publicized has kept the system relatively free of the possibilty abuse. When I say possibility of abuse, I am talking about the media saying that Tor is a way to do anonymous torrents of copyrighted material, transferring child porn, etc. As Tor becomes more publicized, will I have to deal with articles from self-proclaimed experts accusing Tor of being a vehicle for such activity? Will I then see some politician try to pass legislation against anonymizer type software? Maybe I'm being alarmist, but these days anything is possible.
Anyone know if there is (or will be) a Linux Tor binary for NAT routers? I have a Linux router, and I'd like to use it as a client in the Tor network but a server for local computers (behind the router).
The thing I don't get with Tor is why someone would need that much encryption, unless they were transferring something illegal like copyrighted material. Why is an anonymous network like Tor needed?
If I remember right isnt Tor created by the US government?
This isn't even an insightful question. "That much encryption?" What the hell does that mean? If the encryption is easily cracked it's not worth doing, you might as well just be doing your banking over something like ROT13 encoded connections, huh?
.de domain and you're doing anything to interest the FBI.
I've been wondering why the hell the network has been getting slower and slower and slower over the last weeks. I guess now I know.
Why is an anonymous network needed? Well for one thing it's not anonymous regarding the type of uses the critics like to trot out i.e kiddie porn and cracking, since a good many of the connection nodes originate in the US or Germany, two of the most monitored countries in the world. Your connection can go through a hundred drops after that it won't matter at all if you make that first hit straight to MIT or some
What it IS useful for (that is before it became so terribly overloaded every click ends up taking thirty seconds or more to respond) is surfing without worrying about your local "community standards" enforced ISP looking over your shoulder or the bazillions of admonkies being able to snoop. Tor is commonly packaged with privoxy, the two together make moving about the net a lot nicer (even slashdot).
So I'm not really sure why Tor is useful. It's not for file sharing, it does not really protect you completely from spyware, freenet seems to be better.
And the problem with onion routing is that it is neither high-bandwidth or low-latency - just anonymous. Sharing files over Tor is a blatant misuse - but tracker comm over it is perfectly valid (Azureus already has a plugin - though I like dht better).
Interestingly, I2P calls them Garlic routers (the pun is not lost on some of us).Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I don't understand why you would need tor to hit here. Just put slashdot on the "exception list" in your proxy config and it works great. The ads still get killed (if you are using privoxy) but the content is fast and complete.
You might also trying setting up your tor config file. You do not HAVE to use the "trusted gateways" for the final drop, that is only how it is configured OOTB. Add "exit" to the untrusted gateway nodes permissions - heck you can even remove "exit" from the "trusted nodes" permissions. Now you're not connecting via those "known tor nodes."
BTW it ain't just slashdot. Lots of sites still use IP information instead of session variables and it will drive you nuts trying to post to one of them or even stay connected without having to log in again every two minutes. Simple solution is to just add those sites to the "don't proxy these sites" list. May not be the solution you want if it's a "controversial" site that could lead to leagal attention, but if you're really worried about that sort of thing you're a fool for using tor for it anyway.
If you don't believe me, feel free to take a look at his posting history, which contains nothing but offtopic/troll/flamebait/FP comments.
"Version 10 combines a compact interface with an innovative DRM technology for enabling music subscriptions that you can take with you on your MP3 player."
Better DRM features help Microsoft onto the list?
I wonder how many advertising spots MS buys through PC World?
You have been eaten by a Hurd of GNU.
It seems one of the first companies to jump on the Tor bandwagon is VPM. They are selling a Linux desktop on a 128MB USB stick with everything preconfigured to connect using Tor. Sounds like a neat idea even though you could make it all yourself without paying $45.
Slashdot either eliminate "Anonymous Coward" posting, or else allow posting from TOR nodes?
Wikileaks, no DNS
If they'd just let the things I wanted IRC to do before there was a split from one unified IRC network, then we wouldn't be having this discussion.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
For example, China has sophisticated monitoring of the internet.
As another example, a company with aggressive surveillance might retain data being posted, to be analysed. If Slashdot had an SSL connection, that risk might be avoided, but they don't. One side-effect of TOR is that packets arrive and leave multiply encrypted.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Tor very happy to win award. Make Tor happy. Tor not smash now.
Read my blog.
Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and more.
Don't we have enough problems with script kiddies trying to SSH into our machines without making them anonymous?GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
I was banned within hours of settiing up Tor on my host.
Join Tor today!
It complains that libevent isn't installed, which it IS... Seems the rpms are for fedora, and the source won't compile because of the libevent problem..
help?
page 1
Only one point, though ( the other one disappeared, it seems)
.
/kinds/ of worth, and some are worth more to any individual than are others.
/don't/ so deeply value.
/made/ on us, is oriented to making our lives' expenditure/work into grazing-fodder for "corporations" ( keeping in mind that governments, churches, etc are other-appearing instances of what I really mean here, not just business-entities ), then what result is inevitable?
/can/ induce such learning ( think of ones who have endured near obliteration, over the course of years, say reasonably-advanced Huntingtons, or something, and ask what their values are, compared with "money". . .
--
More seriously, that's an accommodation of humanity: it's more convenient to erode worth than to grow it, and if one wants to get one's own gain, then one has to be more aggressive a predator-of-worth than Others are, so. .
The only problem with that equasion is that there are different
I find autonomy, quiet, harmony, freedom-of-intelligence, spiritual freedom, etc. to be worth more than
{ belonging, social-sentience, status, position, image, money, "self-esteem" which is One's Social-Circle's Opinion Of One, a car, a partner, "education", etc }.
Therefore I can't be manipulated to sacrifice the kind-of-worth I hold-to, in order to have the kind-of-worth I
BUT, since the entire "education" of a someone in the society/machine we
WWIII will change that, because it'll be a pogrom/tantrum so deep/profound that humanity is going-to learn the difference between kinds-of-values.
ANY sufficiently profound obliteration-experience
WHEN humanity experiences something that heavy, humanity will change the same way, but not before: ideas and understanding are different in substance/nature, see. . . )
Cheers,
-me
IPTables enhancement Fail2Ban bans cracker-login's
if you want to surf anonymously without downloading and installing stuff, check out anonycat.
http://anonycat.com/
it's open source, so you can download and run it from your own computer if you want, but you can also just surfy anonymously from the main page.
it's pretty good for viewing slashdot, too, which you can't do with Tor.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
Tor is a great idea but is becoming largely useless for anything but casual web browsing. Here are some of the things I have observed while using Tor:
- Blocked on Wikipedia from editing
- Blocked on Slashdot from posting, in some cases, I am blocked from even browsing
- Blocked on most IRC networks
Those are just a few of the places I noticed, I'm sure there are more.
Tor isn't much good if you can't get your message out. It seems like many places preach about the freedom from censorship it gives (i.e. Slashdot) but are willing to block Tor.
Every time tor is mentioned on Slashdot, the networks gains speed thanks to a surge in runnin server numbers.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Because Tor works, apparently.
It's the same with any other internet service - give it a few days, and watch the abuse roll on in. Web, Email, Chat, they can ALL be used for great things but the perpensity for abuse lurks just around the corner, and Tor isn't an exception to this.
No, it's because Slashcode lacks support for anonymous use. Until someone adds said support, Slashdot will not be anonymously usable.
If everyone created an account, no problem.
The thing is that Slashdot's codebase uses blacklisting as part of its functionality (it's how they keep abusers from flooding the board). Blacklisting does not work in a pure anonymous environment (that allows abuse if many entities collaborate to abuse the system, which is the case for most systems) without "expensive IDs" (the use of some resource which one cannot produce en-masse to identify onesself). Slashcode treats IP addresses as "expensive IDs", intending that those wanting to abuse the board have a limited set of IP addresses available to them, and those become blacklisted. Tor extends the availability of Tor-enabled IPs (expensive IDs) to anyone who wants. Slashcode cannot understand this. To make Slashcode work in an anonymous environment, support for expensive IDs that work in an anonymous environment must be added. There are many mechanisms for doing expensive IDs.
Slashcode currently uses both IPs (they can get banned) and accounts (they can get banned as well, and it takes a while to work up a high-post, low UIN account) as expensive IDs. IPs cannot be used in an anonymous environment. Accounts could, but probably must be boostrapped in a non-anonymous environment. That is, it would be possible for Slashdot to allow only registered users to use Slashdot from Tor systems (I could even register my IP as one that only allows registered use), but to prevent someone from mass-creating accounts, these accounts would have to be bootstrapped from a non-anonymous environment -- for example, perhaps an IP could only create an account a week, but once created, users could use their accounts on Tor systems.
Another popular expensive ID that saw some interest during the antispam discussion days is solved problems that require many CPU cycles. Generate a hard mathematical problem, to an anonymous user and the person has to burn 5 CPU-minutes of cycles solving a problem in order to post. They'll have a hard time flooding the board.
Another popular expensive ID is human time -- hence the OCRable letters that low-karma accounts and ACs have been seeing recently.
Another expensive ID is transitive trust -- allow accounts that have "trusted" accounts marking those accounts as, in turn, "trusted" (something like the friends system, but should not use the friend marking, which means something different) to use the board anonymously. If those accounts abuse the board, the abusing account loses his trust and the account that endorsed him loses some trust, transitively back to the source. This isn't *fully* anonymous (since the truster has to have some relationship with the trustee, even if it's nothing more than reading a Slashdot post made in non-anonymous mode).
Any other mechanism that uses expensive IDs that can function in an anonymous environment will also work.
I'm going to see whether or not open source solves this one. The Slashcode codebase is there, free, and open, and any number of people with crypto and security design experience read this board and presumably want to use Tor.
I don't really care much about using Slashdot anonymously, so I'm not going to do it. I'll probably take advantage of it if someone else adds support to Slashcode for working in an anonymous environment, though.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I consider pseudonymity just as important as anonymity. The ability to anonymously and untraceably place digitally signed newsletters and documents that people can retrieve. For example dissidents should be able to publish a monthly or weekly index of all the files they upload with their md5's or whatever hash. Then people can download those other documents while being sure of the source. This would prevcent fake documents being put out there by evil organizations because people can be able to authenticate that the doc they are downloading comes from a reputable dissident group.
Firefox won Product of the Year! Congratulations to the Firefox guys!
Hopefully this will help further "legitimatize" Firefox to those who are reluctant to switch to something "underground".
I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but back around like 1994-95 or so, when Power Rangers was still fairly new, one of their Zords was named Tor (I was about 9 at the time, and my dad told me it was named after some mountain). It was this huge turtle robot that could carry the other Zords when they were injured. I had the toy of it (actually I still do, it's in my closet), and it had these two little buttons on its back, and when you pushed them, they made growling noises (since turtles are known for their constant growling). I think THAT should've won a product of the year award as well.
allow people who *FLOOD* or spam to the point of interfereing, be-aloud-to?
Exuse me, but if someone *interferes* with my ability to talk (like the spamers/flooders were with /.), then I have a right (natural reaction) to find away around that.
I would say that the moderation and steps taken by /. to stop the spamers, does more to help (us) all talk, instead of those clowns who dont' like /.
Let them (spammers/flooders) go form their own /. if they dont' like it... or, they can *keep trying*, and /. will keep trying, and the best-man-will-win! :)
What I am investigating, is the theory that bill-gate$-the-turd-junior is behind these attacks.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
CHINX!! (lol).
Anyone who takes so-called derogitory terms personally, needs counceling/pills, or to be ostracized!
LEARN to laff! maybe we'd then *all-get-along* better!! =:O
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
You (we) need to define a *GOOD* track record.
And you can't say: "whatever the community decides", cause although that may work for THE COMMUNITY, it is not nescessarily good, fair, legal, moral, or whatever, and because of this, it will continue to morph (as it should). :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Maybe this was a mis-communication on my part-- on what this part of the thread was about originally.
We (me too, in my reply) were talking about /. HAVING to control people who were FLOODING the network to the point where everyone would be affected. In other words, to the point where /. was not useable (it happens with dos attacks, etc u know..)
Now I don't know about you, but I would prefer if /. stopped those (spamming/flooding) arswholes, this way we (you & I) could continue our discussion.
Why would'nt anyone defend themselves like that? I mean, it is common sense! Why would u let the *spammers* control /.?
And as far m$ interfering with places like /., linux, or whatever else they see as a threat.. then actually you would be considered *more nuts* by professionals, by claiming that this would be un-heard-of (like you implied) :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
the other way around when it comes to programs like Tor.
BUHHT..I dont' blame /. for *defending* itself against spam & flood attacks. This is only common sense. If they didn't we wouldn't have /.
And I can't see why anyone (even after reading ALL the threads) would act like /. is hypocritical.
If you RTFM (/.'s) you'd see that not only do they speak-a-good-game, but they walk it tooo.
Censoring can ONLY be over come by MORE & LOUDER freedom of speech, period.
ANYTHING short of this will be giving in to the bad-guys... and that is the ONLY way they can win!!
I am always curious as to why people and the governments..always seem more concerned with what people *say*, then what they actually *do*.
Ahhhnd, I *think* I have part of the anwswer, which is, because *words* are everything..
After all, even before someone *pulls-the-triger*.. there is that *little voice* inside that *says* (do it! or DON'T DO IT!!), which then controls the actions of the individual.. :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
I remember when JAP did this function. Then the German Gov't forced an upgrade to let them snoop. I get the feeling that this network isn't as secure as many seem to believe.
apparently your traffic goes out from a single machine acting as you - if that machine is a dialup, you're screwed. there isn't any form of load balancing that I can tell. I'll revisit TOR later.
No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil
You maybe do not need them at all. Just a combination of the OCRable letters (or a similar measure) with indication in the title of the post that the post is from an anonymized IP, and allow assigning users a modifier for anonymous posts (one more criterium in addition to already existing ones).
Anything that involves a non-anonymous IP breaks anonymity and can lead to the Goons With Guns coming and requesting the logs.
should have been:
from the it's-so-great-we-banned-it dept.
Get your torrents...