BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror • Hacker News Board

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#201

Post by make3 » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

class4behavior wrote: post #51

Since no one posted that, yet: Tor relies on the size the of its network to counteract blocks, prevent take overs, and naturally ensure stability as well as performance. You can either donate to various groups running Tor servers, the developers, or take part on your own. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Tor https://www.torservers.net/ https://www.dfri.se/donera/ https://nos-oignons.net/ https://donate.torproject.org…

legal question here for someone who knows what they're doing, if you run a node and illegal activity is performed, are you complicit to the illegal activity?

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#202

Post by swirepe » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

elagost wrote: post #43

andrewaylett wrote: post #37

I know there are good reasons why it's not fully secure, but I'd really like to be able to access `.onion` addresses in my regular browser over TOR and everything else directly as usual. In _this_ I'm not over-worried about the risk of deanonymisation as my aim is on one hand access to resources I don't have access to now and on the other hand legitimisation of TOR as something that anyone could reasonably use, even…

The way to do that is just to use Tor Browser as your regular browser.

I do this. Most of my life is just copy-pasting from stack overflow, so speed isn't a problem.

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#203

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

ktm5j wrote: post #117

zer0tonin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by default you give people the benefit of the doubt I actually tend to assume websites like HN are the NSA or at least the NSA have read access to their databases. Maybe it's my tinfoil hat tendencies but instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt I would rather not give them any data I don't mind the NSA having.

Everyone has read access to HN.. there are no private messages that I'm aware of, anyone can search this site using google

[deleted]

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#204

Post by Shish2k » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #70

Phlogi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the Tor Browser sends all traffic through the tor network and exit nodes.

Why is that bad, per se ? In practice some sites drop Tor connections, and localisations come through wrong, but that doesn't seem to be why you said "no".

"Use tor for everything" is a bad answer, because the question specifically said "I'd really like to be able to access [...] everything else directly as usual"

"Use tor for everything" might be good life advice, but it's not a good answer for "how do I avoid using tor for everything" :P

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#205

Post by coolspot » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

steeleduncan wrote: post #185

Potentially I am misunderstanding how Tor's onion routing works, but according to https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html there are about 6000 tor relays right now. Surely if some well funded organisation (Eve) were to install a similar number of relays itself, then it is reasonably likely that for a given user a packet would eventually travel across relays solely owned by Eve, and at that point Eve could map…

That’s supposedly how silkroad was traced down. There was unusual spike of new nodes months before silkroad admin was caught.

Official version is website bug tho.

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#206

Post by knolax » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

statusquoantefa wrote: post #194

To be clear, they're talking about the un-intellectual dark web: they aren't yet willing to take the risk featuring in-band IDW viewpoints on their pages or airwaves. Probably, in the face of trends like Brexit and a sense of their declining popularity, this is phase one of preparing to take their resistance underground if they have to.

From Wikipedia on IDW:

"The intellectual dark web (IDW) is a neologism coined by American mathematician Eric Weinstein, and popularized in a 2018 editorial by Bari Weiss. The term refers to a group of public personalities who oppose what they see as the dominance of progressive identity politics and political correctness in the media and academia."

Seems like the conventional usage of the term "Dark Web" predates your usage, and is more relevant given that we're on a tech forum.

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#207

Post by Forbo » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

slenk wrote: post #125

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donations are probably better, because while that hardware is helpful, it's the ISP connections that are hard to come by. If you host a Tor exit node on your home network connection, Comcast is likely going to shut down your service for abuse/TOS violations. Having some rack space in a datacenter is far more valuable and better supported by donations.

Also, an exit node WILL use all of your bandwidth. You're going to quickly hit those 1TB caps. When I was hosting a exit node I was getting over 50GB/day

That's easily configurable: https://2019.www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#BandwidthSh...

Also the "limiting bandwidth" section here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide#...

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#208

Post by blotter_paper » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

helios893 wrote: post #95

BTW NYtimes has been doing this for a while. https://open.nytimes.com/https-open-nytimes-com-the-new-york... https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/

Lulz, what good is a paywalled tor site? Does NYT accept crypto, or do you have to get throwaway plastic to pay them pseudonymously?

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#209

Post by Izkata » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #178

_jal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm normally the tinfoil-hat guy in any given discussion. I'll go out on a limb and predict that my HN internet points score is not a signal of interest to NSA selection criteria.

Wait, why not? Knowing who votes for what content, when, and in coordination with whom else seems like it would be extremely useful indeed! Aren't techniques like this already used by FBI etc on Twitter when investigating illegal content and coordination of its' dissemination? Bot networks are taken down on Twitter and other sites all the time using voting data. Social voting data is a rather sizable and useful datas…

GP said "score", so my guess is they weren't even thinking in that direction, just their posts that others voted on.

Re: BBC News launches 'dark web' Tor mirror

#210

Post by blotter_paper » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

coolspot wrote: post #205

steeleduncan wrote: post #185

Potentially I am misunderstanding how Tor's onion routing works, but according to https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html there are about 6000 tor relays right now. Surely if some well funded organisation (Eve) were to install a similar number of relays itself, then it is reasonably likely that for a given user a packet would eventually travel across relays solely owned by Eve, and at that point Eve could map…

That’s supposedly how silkroad was traced down. There was unusual spike of new nodes months before silkroad admin was caught. Official version is website bug tho.

I dunno which Silk Road you're talking about, but the story we're supposed to believe regarding the first Silk Road is that Ulbricht used the name "altoid" both when announcing the site initially and before that on a programming forum in association with an email address tied to his real name. I believe that he really was that sloppy, but I'm still skeptical that this story isn't a parallel construction.