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Is Tor still safe to use?

blog.torproject.org

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Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#431

Post by PawgerZ »

WHA8m wrote: post #405
GTP wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never operated a TOR node, but as far as I know and heard from other sources, TOR realays don't get much attention from law enforcement, it any attention at all. Which makes sense: all they're doing is getting encrypted traffic in and giving encrypted traffic out. It would hard for them to link a relay node to a specific connection, and even if they do, you can't help them in any way: even you as the node operator…

Just a quick note on the Youtube channel you mention: I follow his videos for a while and it seems to me, that he's half a shill. My impression is, that he re-models popular HN threads into Youtube videos. Just watch the latest video on the MrBeast topic and you'll basically get the same info as all the popular 'root' comments (was on HN front page last week). Not the first time I noticed a suspicious connection.

Wow, I was about to comment the same thing. Glad to have my assumptions validated by someone else.

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#432

Post by haolez »

alecco wrote: post #423
haolez wrote: post #415

Here is an awesome DefCon talk about this topic from the perspective of a darknet vendor. It's amazing: https://youtu.be/01oeaBb85Xc

Nice presentation. Ironically the ?si= parameter is for tracking. You should remove it.

Thanks. I was on mobile and didn't notice it.

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#433

Post by oldgradstudent »

toby- wrote: post #412
tomcam wrote: post #200

Sincere question. This was created with US government funding. Is there any reason to believe it is safe?

So was the Internet at DARPA (or its modern foundation). And the WWW at CERN. Tor's development team aren't on the payroll of the US gov't, and their funding comes from many sources. If having received funding from a government agency is enough to earn your distrust, you'd quickly become a paranoid schizophrenic.

> Tor's development team aren't on the payroll of the US gov't, and their funding comes from many sources.

That's not serious. From the Tor official blog:

> U.S. Government (53.5% of total revenue)

> Individual Donations (28.5% of total revenue)

> Non-U.S. Governments (7.5% of total revenue)

> Foundations (6.4% of total revenue)

> Corporations (3.4% of total revenue)

> Other (0.6% of total revenue)

https://blog.torproject.org/transparency-openness-and-our-20...

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#434

Post by berkes »

perlgeek wrote: post #385
hannasm wrote: post #292

If enough governmental bodies can get behind running Tor nodes then couldn't we theoretically protect the bulk of humanity from spying on Internet access? Truly an advance in the Internet technology. It's kind of like if a single nation does it they control everything, but once all the nations compete then everyone wins. But at planetary scale would Tor scale in an environmentally friendly way?

Most governments value their law enforcement obligations and/or desire for surveillance more strongly than an Internet that is protected from spying, so good luck with that.

Ironically, most of these same sectors in the same governments have strong need to be protected from spying themselves.

So in many cases it's really a case of "we want a monopoly on secrecy".

Which should be a massive red flag for everyone, from left to right, from liberal to conservative, from anarchist to communist and so on. But somehow isn't picked up by any of these. I presume because they all believe somehow they either won't be targeted or will be exempt?

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#435

Post by DrillShopper »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #305
DabbyDabberson wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its important to realize that TOR is primarily funded and controlled by the US Navy. The US benefits from the TOR being private. It provides a channel for operatives to exfiltrate data out of non-NATO countries very easily.

I dont see how TOR is better than just spinning up a server on the public cloud for each asset. Since each asset would have a different IP they couldnt use one assets knowledge to catch the others. Non-NATO countries tend to monitor internet traffic and so would know if you access TOR.

Servers in the public cloud are a lot easier to do traffic analysis on.

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#436

Post by DrillShopper »

keepamovin wrote: post #384
throwaway37821 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75% [0] of all Tor nodes are hosted within 14 Eyes [1] countries, so it would actually be quite trivial for the NSA to de-anonymize a Tor user. It baffles me that Tor Browser doesn't provide an easy way to blacklist relays in those countries. [0] Here, you can do the math yourself: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#aggregate/all [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes#Fourteen_Eyes > Edit: For all the cynics…

The original purpose of TOR was to provide agents and handlers with a means of secure communication, allowing them to organize subversive or espionage activities. It was created by the Department of Defense to propagate their interests and spread democracy around the world using these secure capabilities. Given this context, it's not unreasonable to assume that TOR is still being used in a similar manner today. Becau…

After talking to my Democracy Officer I have to say I love managed democracy!

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#437

Post by cubefox »

cubefox wrote: post #180
roetlich wrote: post #3

For context, here's the NDR report: https://www.ndr.de/fernsehen/sendungen/panorama/aktuell/Inve... And more info here: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2024-Septe... Edit: The NDR alleges a timing attack (no further explanation) that allows "to identify so-called ‘entry servers’" Very little information is actually available on the nature of the attack. The NDR claims this method has already lead to…

This should be the article linked at the top.

[flagged]

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#438

Post by cubefox »

oytis wrote: post #49

Don't quite get it - why doesn't CCC share information with the Tor Project maintainers?

The information comes from the NDR (link im neighboring thread), not the CCC. The CCC only got to see the documents via the NDR.

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#439

Post by maicro »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #428
qb1 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pagers and the next day handheld radios exploded on their users! This can be done.

I think the news about that particular counter example is too recent to be easily understood. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/09/remotely-expl... Still, I think your point is excellent. The sort of group interested in tracking someone(s) over Tor certainly might have the capability to do so despite the difficulty.

Yeah, too recent to understand (though I've also been out of the loop a bit) - so thank you, that's...a good one.

Re: Is Tor still safe to use?

#440

Post by maxrecursion »

WHA8m wrote: post #405
GTP wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never operated a TOR node, but as far as I know and heard from other sources, TOR realays don't get much attention from law enforcement, it any attention at all. Which makes sense: all they're doing is getting encrypted traffic in and giving encrypted traffic out. It would hard for them to link a relay node to a specific connection, and even if they do, you can't help them in any way: even you as the node operator…

Just a quick note on the Youtube channel you mention: I follow his videos for a while and it seems to me, that he's half a shill. My impression is, that he re-models popular HN threads into Youtube videos. Just watch the latest video on the MrBeast topic and you'll basically get the same info as all the popular 'root' comments (was on HN front page last week). Not the first time I noticed a suspicious connection.

While that is a crappy thing to do, I bet tons of YouTubers are doing just that. Hell, most political YouTubers just read articles and make stupid comments about them.

It would be impossible to create daily content if you weren't just rehashing, or taking, information from somewhere. Again, not defending it at all, just saying it's probably a very common thing. Like how some crappy news articles are just a bunch of reddit comments, like that qualifies as news.

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