Tor Project Pilots Exit Nodes In Libraries

An anonymous reader writes: The Tor Project has announced a new initiative to open exit relays in public libraries. "This is an idea whose time has come; libraries are our most democratic public spaces, protecting our intellectual freedom, privacy, and unfettered access to information, and Tor Project creates software that allows all people to have these rights on the internet." They point out that this is both an excellent way to educate people on the value of private internet browsing while also being a practical way to expand the Tor network. A test for this initiative is underway at the Kilton Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, which already has a computing environment full of GNU/Linux machines.

Comments

Library Filters

[EmperorArthur]

Here in the US any library that deals with children must have mandatory filtering software installed. Given the typical puritanical attitude, quite a few public libraries also have filters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Newsflash: Libraries get blacklisted

[Anonymous Coward]

Most admins block TOR exit nodes at the router and many other places because they are the source of many attacks. All this means is that libraries wind up on IP blacklists.

Librarians

[manu0601]

It is astonishing how mindset about computing can vary among librarians. On one hand we have the one that set up TOR exit nodes to save our privacy, and on the other hand we have the one that purchase strongly vendor-locked and opaque proprietary library softwares.

Balance TOR's costs against the benefits.

[dweller_below]

When we set up TOR infrastructure at USU, we looked at the costs and benefits.

There are definite costs to running TOR infrastructure. You have to be aware of them. Some of the costs can be mitigated, but some can't. At the end, you have to be able to show that the benefits outweigh the costs.

First we examined the benefit. We made a clear statement of the benefit. It is:

USU has many researchers and students who deal in sensitive subjects such as Climate Change, Reproductive Issues, Political Systems, Animal Research, etc.. These students and researchers frequently need privacy and security to advance the goals of USU.

Then we discussed the various costs and methods of mitigating the costs. Afterwards, we decided that the costs could be made acceptable, if we were careful.

• Our cost mitigation strategy had several parts:
• 1) We arranged for the TOR infrastructure to have an academic sponsor. The USU CS department agreed to sponsor the TOR project. This gave us an existing structure for providing IT support. And, frankly, TOR is easier to support than some of the other academic projects.
• 2) Most of the direct costs of creating and administering the TOR infrastructure are born by the USU CS department. It really helps that their admin is a diligent and responsible admin. It has been a joy to work with him.
• 3) We have tried to put all the TOR infrastructure on a small CIDR. If people need to block TOR, we try to make it easy for them to block it without effecting other things. That said, if I had to do it again, I think I would continue to have the TOR entry nodes and intermediate relays on a small USU CIDR. I think I would ask USU's ISP (UEN) for a small /28 and hook it up external to USU's normal security perimeter. Then I would put the TOR exit nodes on that external CIDR. This makes it easier to set routing and firewall policy. It also enables entering the TOR switching network internal to USU.
• 4) We examined the TOR traffic and tried to minimize the abusive bits. In our case, we found that most of the TOR web browsing looked non-abusive. However, the majority of the SSH and RDP traffic looked abusive. So, we asked the TOR admin to limit those protocols.
• 5) We clearly documented our TOR setup and use. The TOR nodes have meaningful hostnames. The systems have are well defined roles and responsibilities. We have strongly discouraged the TOR admin from using those systems for anything else.
• 6) We created processes for dealing with the abuse reports.

Here is our standard response to an abuse report against USU's TOR infrastructure:

=BEGIN ABUSE RESPONSE=
The activity that you have reported is being emitted by a TOR exit node:

------------
$ host 129.123.7.6 6.7.123.129.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer tor-exit-node.cs.usu.edu.

$ host 129.123.7.7
7.7.123.129.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer tor-exit-node-2.cs.usu.edu.
------------

This TOR node is a project of USU's CS department. USU has many researchers and students who deal in sensitive subjects such as Climate Change, Reproductive Issues, Political Systems, Animal Research, etc.. These students and researchers frequently need privacy and security to advance the goals of USU.

Almost all TOR traffic is generated by innocent people who are attempting to escape the shadow of a totalitarian government. But, unfortunately, sometimes criminals attempt to use TOR to attack others.

We are in discussion with our TOR admins to try to find ways to limit the attack activity. Of course, this rapidly becomes a sticky issue. If we start inspecting and censoring some of the TOR activity, then we have less of a defense when we get pressure to inspect and block the rest. And, even starting down this path may make us legally liable for ALL the TOR traffic. Our best action may be to keep our hands off and observe strict network neutrality.

We are still pondering our options.

Please accept our apologies in the mean time.

USU IT Security
=END ABUSE RESPONSE=

Re:Balance TOR's costs against the benefits.

[dweller_below]

Thanks DamonHD,

I am interested to understand what level of inspection you could and did perform to decide "abusiveness". Especially for the secure traffic.

Rgds

Damon

We did traffic analysis using net flow information of a few days of traffic on a preliminary TOR exit node. In this situation, traffic analysis is very powerful. We did not try to determine who was talking. But, we have spent years deciphering the nature of connections using flow analysis. We are very successful in determining the nature of the various connections. Encryption does not change the underlying size, flow and pace of the connection. The TOR structure does little to obscure the ultimate timing of request and response. It does nothing to conceal the size of the requests and responses leaving the exit node. We can easily distinguish:

• * Password guessing.
• * Port scanning.
• * Automated vulnerability assessment tools.
• * Automated attack tools.
• * Human driven web browsing.

When we tallied all the traffic for browsing, almost all of it was human driven. When we tallied all the traffic destined to a SSH or RDP port, over 90% of it was abusive.

Re:Newsflash: Libraries get blacklisted

[ron_ivi]

Most admins

That's not true.

A few Admins, perhaps.

Not most.

Re:Why would they want to deal with that?

[dweller_below]

TOR exit nodes are nothing but trouble.

I think this is an issue where some are more equal than others.

If an individual runs a TOR exit node, they can be easily intimidated and hassled. There is very little cost to law enforcement for engaging in the intimidation.

At the other end of the spectrum, a large public institution is not susceptible to this kind of intimidation. And, there is a very large cost if law enforcement attempts the intimidation. For example, at the institution I support, if the local cops or low level FBI attempted this kind of intimidation, they would be met by the institution's police force, the institution's lawyers and the institution's journalists. Everything would be recorded in multiple ways. Heck, we even have a state assistant DA permanently assigned to USU. He participated in the process that created the policy and procedures approving the TOR infrastructure.

At this point, if a major university's CS group is not investigating TOR, they should probably give back the funding and become a trade tech. The issues surrounding TOR are critical to our society. A university should not turn it's back to these issues.

Given all that, a law enforcement attempt at intimidation would be ineffective. And, it would likely result in the kind of bad publicity that can cause law enforcement to lose budget.

However you have a good point, libraries are widely distributed in the gap between your unfortunate friend and USU. The smaller ones would be easily intimidated. The larger ones, not so much.