The economic incentives over TOR have really improved TOR
I was pulling 800k/sec the other day, pretty surprised.
Some circuits are still slow. But I remember not that long ago (18 months?) it was a miserable expereince
United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#32What this really indicates, bot or not, is that once you educate people, they will act in their self (and more importantly, self+others) interests. Oppressive and controlling (controlling or controling, I can never decide) regimes will try to prevent it. But it is like trying to prevent wind. The wind will come. You must adapt and accept. And if you are against the wind, you must change.
I appreciate the poetry but blocking Tor is a lot easier than preventing the wind and some governments (e.g. China) successfully do so.
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#33Just out of curiosity: How is Tor looking these days, security-wise? Does someone have a recent analysis of the attacks Tor is facing from state-level attackers currently? Just wondering if any new threats to Tor have come up in the recent years that hadn't been considered before stuff like Snowden happened.
Tor's FAQs address some:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#AttacksOnOnionRo...
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#34Could this be a result of the articles about a "backdoor" in whatsapp?
I don't think so. The news about WhatsApp supposed backdoor was published on the 13th: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/13/whatsapp-... and the uptick of UAE users began around the 15th and the 16th: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html?... Wouldn't there have been a more direct correlation between the 13th and the numbers of users?
I wouldn't be surprised if it took a couple days for people to switch over, you'd need to talk to people you communIcate with before switching, for one.
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#35The economic incentives over TOR have really improved TOR I was pulling 800k/sec the other day, pretty surprised. Some circuits are still slow. But I remember not that long ago (18 months?) it was a miserable expereince
Which incentives are you referring to here?
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#36What this really indicates, bot or not, is that once you educate people, they will act in their self (and more importantly, self+others) interests. Oppressive and controlling (controlling or controling, I can never decide) regimes will try to prevent it. But it is like trying to prevent wind. The wind will come. You must adapt and accept. And if you are against the wind, you must change.
I appreciate the poetry but blocking Tor is a lot easier than preventing the wind and some governments (e.g. China) successfully do so.
Blocking Tor is one thing. But once people have made an effort to use Tor, you have lost as a regime.
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#37Could this be a result of the articles about a "backdoor" in whatsapp?
Why would only people in the UAE react to those articles by using Tor en masse?
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate the poetry but blocking Tor is a lot easier than preventing the wind and some governments (e.g. China) successfully do so.
Blocking Tor is one thing. But once people have made an effort to use Tor, you have lost as a regime.
Holy shit! -4 to that? I don't mean to get all meta, but really I must be further out of touch than I realized.
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#39Just out of curiosity: How is Tor looking these days, security-wise? Does someone have a recent analysis of the attacks Tor is facing from state-level attackers currently? Just wondering if any new threats to Tor have come up in the recent years that hadn't been considered before stuff like Snowden happened.
Tor isn't safe from state-level attackers, as demonstrated by the Sybil attack launched by Carnegie Mellon the other year.
Do you have a link to the paper?
"Sybil attack" is a rather large category of attacks and I'm curious about the specifics of this particular one. In particular, certain vulnerabilities can still be prohibitively expensive for use in dragnet-surveillance.
Re: United Arab Emirates goes from 10k Tor users to 250k in days
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blocking Tor is one thing. But once people have made an effort to use Tor, you have lost as a regime.
Holy shit! -4 to that? I don't mean to get all meta, but really I must be further out of touch than I realized.
I didn't downvote you, but I can imagine two different reasons that people might have done so:
(1) They want to emphasize that there are lots of reasons to use Tor other than political dissidence and that Tor use should be normal or common for lots of people in lots of situations.
(2) They feel like the role of tools like Tor in facilitating political dissidence is overstated and that you were implying that Tor will be crucial or extremely powerful in political conflict situations, rather than, say, hopefully somewhat useful.
edit: (3) They feel like you're overstating how effective political dissidence can be (because having public opinion turn against a government doesn't mean that the government will lose power).