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Tor Usage More Than Doubles In August
hypnosec writes that the Tor network has witnessed a massive rise in the number of users connecting to it for the month of August.
"The privacy-enhancing network is known for providing an anonymous browsing experience through the use of a series of encrypted relays, and has had as many as 500k users throughout this year so far. But if we check the latest statistics available through Tor Metrics Portal there has been a whopping 100 percent increase in the number of Tor clients and as many as 1,200,000 users are connecting to the network. The previous peak for the network was in January 2012, when it saw as many as 950,000 users."
(a) Awareness of NSA surveillance has caused people to seek out TOR, or
(b) Increased awareness of TOR, thanks to the coverage of NSA surveillance, has caused people to try to evade said surveillance?
Maybe a percentage of that was FBI agents infiltrating The Silk Road?
Silence is a state of mime.
This in fact means that the Tor network is in need of more relays and exit nodes. If you have access to a server that meets the requirements, you could consider it.
More Tor exit nodes is better. The NSA surely has many honeypot nodes, we need to drown them out with more legitimate exit nodes.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
http://www.kimmoa.se/Tor_summarized_for_mortals/
...which has suddenly exploded in popularity over the past month?
(d) some entity (NSA or otherwise) is trying to compromise the network by owning a majority of nodes
Isn't Tor unsecure if some adversary controls a large fraction of the network?
> "there has been a whopping 100 percent increase in the number of Tor clients
Half of them in those new, billion-dollar data centers, no doubt. Maybe they can't crack the traffic yet, but they could get relatively accurate dynamic topologies, and use their other, non-Tor nodes, also judiciously placed around in Internet backbones, to learn connections to individual computers.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The NSA are the ones that have pushed people to use TOR.
... and, don't forget, provides most of the exit nodes.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
The NSA removed your mod points for security reasons
(e) botnets that use TOR for command and control stuff.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/08/10/1519211/the-pirate-bay-launches-browser-to-evade-isp-blockades
That's why.
The increased usage increases the problem of bad throughput ... haven't used it in a while, but when I played around with it a bit, latency (which would be expected) but more importantly throughput was bad to unbearable ... more users require more performance at the exit nodes, which means more exit nodes are needed ... ... which, in turn, makes the whole network subject to other manipulation, and goes against the reason for the network ...
Having run an exit node for a short while myself, I know of the results: within less than 4 weeks, we received an inquiry into the owner/operator of the machine with the node's IP address, due to reported child porn access. Luckily, the police seemed to be halfway knowledgeable, and with the provided infos on the operation of the node (stats about the node throughput, etc.) they stopped investigating the issue. Needless to say node operation was terminated the day we received the initial inquiry. Without decent "provider status protection" for exit nodes, the risk for operators may be a bit too high unless extensive (and expensive) measures are taken to block illegal material
If the entirety of human history is any indicator, the governed won't see any changes in a situation like this until they're willing to use lethal force against those who govern them.
Let's take at the history of nonviolent resistance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_resistance
In fact, if you look at, it looks as if through the entirety of human history non-violent resistance is really in these days :)
(In fact, never before in the history of mankind have you as an individual ever been more empowered than now).
Tell that to Syrians, Iranians, North Koreans, Yemen etc etc. Hell, tell it to Russian homosexuals
Tor is great to stop your neighbor from spying on your people-dressed-as-cows porn fetish, since it's trivial for someone who lives close to you to sniff your packets (a fact confirmed to me by my ISP btw). SO it's great for privacy from nosy ./ curious / thrill seeking neighbors or defending yourself against common cyber criminals. If you're hoping to position yourself AS a criminal using Tor, for-gheeda-bow-tit.
Just saying this so no one makes the youthful mistake of thinking they can, for instance, order molly from the silkroad and never have that fact traced back to them. Criminals are going to do what they do and Tor isn't going to protect them and that's between those people and law enforcement. What we don't want is young people whose brains and judgement aren't fully developed yet , but whose taste for adventure is, being caught in the meat-grinder of an incarceration-for-profit system complete with mandatory minimum sentences because they were severely misled on technical matters.
Do you know what the cost of owning (statistically , virtually) ALL of the exit nodes and most of the intermediate nodes of Tor is? It's effectively zero to the collective financial and technical resources of the "five eyes", that's what it is.
Oh but WoofyGoofy I use a VPN and encrypt everything !!!! And therefore what do you think follows? When you also own both ends of the connections and every major ISP etc etc How hard is it to attach unique identifying packets to your packets as they pass back into the network and then track them through it? Or a little Bayesian analysis based on just the time and size of your packets? Tor is based on the idea that most nodes are not pwned. That assumption is almost certainly false. Remember this also- law enforcement only needs a subpoena for your online activities and email if it's recent- 18 months. When the information you generated is older than that- and Google et.al. keep it FOR-EVAH-AH - that's forever to the phonically challenged- law enforcement can look at it without even so much as a warrant- just ask and ye shall receive, and yes, that includes the CONTENT of your emails etc. Look it up.
There are a lot of dangers to the total information awareness that's been set up. The one people focus in on is J Edgar Hoover style political repression.
Another one is that we're creating a generation of people who get caught for *absolutely* *every* transgression. Call them "generation busted".
People didn't evolve to be either perfectly compliant nor perfectly spied on all the time, everywhere and and norms of society didn't evolve with that as a fact either. Young people whose judgment is not in effect are a potential gold mine for people who make money off things like parole and incarceration and they will push to increase their revenue flow just like any other corporation would.
After all, who do you THINK lobbied for mandatory minimum sentencing? Who do you think pushes for three strike laws for what are basically non-violent offenders- stealing pizza, shit like that? This is a real danger.
I know one friend's son who is constantly in trouble with the law over shit like smoking ladies soap bubbles and petty shoplifting and such shit. Basically, it's like watching a lamb being fed to the wolves piece by piece. Soon enough he'll have enough of a record that they'll lock him up, making him permanently unemployable and then wait for him to commit a robbery or suchlike. It's sickening. The kid has severe mental health issues, probably was born that way and should be on some form of permanent public assistance. There exist people like that. It's cheaper than locking him up. Let him smoke dope, watch TV play games and just exist in whatever way makes sense to him. People are born who are just like this for reasons we don't understand, it's not anyone's fault, least of all his.
Just as bad is kids who are transgressive as a kind of experimentation, like, oh I don't know our coke snorting (he admits to it) President. Go to a
That wasn't the argument. The argument was "no change has ever happened without lethal force". You're arguing "because non-violent change has sometimes not born fruit, violence always has to be used to bring about change." The actual argument is "non-violent change has been quite successful quite frequently. Here's how. It's cheaper than violence. Try it." Pay attention.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Speaking of SIlk Road -- have you ever actually looked around that site at any length?
After ignoring it for the longest time, I finally created an account there and took a good look at it, just to satisfy my curiosity.
What surprised me the most about it was the LACK of anything really exciting up there for sale! I mean, when you read the news hype and all the supposed angst from politicians and law enforcement over its existence, you expect the place to be a hotbed of sex slavery, child porn, virus/malware dealers, email spammers, and what-not.
In reality, I saw a fair number of people simply offering to exchange your bitcoin for US currency or bars of silver, a few people selling used electronics gear, and a lot of offers to sell information on how to supposedly do such things as hacking an ATM machine (reminds me of the old "G-Files" people passed around the local BBS's in the late 80's except those were free!).
Sure, there were some people offering to sell you pharmaceuticals and even small amounts of drugs like cocaine, but that's one category out of dozens - and there wasn't even a dramatic number of ads posted for them.
Mountain out of a molehill, all in all.
It's not a perfect solution, but the Tor Project's attempt to answer the problems faced by Tor with their Tor Browser bundle. Basically, it's a copy of Firefox tailored for Tor usage. It's set to use Tor by default. It also comes with HTTPS everywhere, an extension the EFF makes that redirects web traffic to use SSL when possible. Some websites don't support SSL and some don't implement it well, but it helps solve part of the problem with exit nodes being able to sniff traffic. Exit nodes can still see where that traffic is going but actually looking at contents is difficult. NoScript is installed and plugins are disabled to keep javascript and plugins from leaking your IP. StartPage is used as the default search engine rather than Google because StartPage doesn't log what users do and they are based outside of the USA.
Ideally, the increased attention the Tor Network is getting will result in more people volunteering their equipment and bandwidth to serve as exit nodes.
The Gospel according to lolcat