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Is Tor still safe to use?
491–500 of 602 posts
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>spread democracy i have to say that i love that phrase, it is peak propaganda that just works.
Yes, I boldly inserted that deliberately aware of its potential provocative effect. So I am truly glad you derive some enjoyment from it. I did too! Comrades in arms? Or at least in Internet nodding hahaha! :)
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Do you think the EFF was in on it, duped, or just thought multiple competing interests could be served?
Well, I could be wrong historically here, but I think you need to recall a previous age where the interests of the state department pushing noble American values into disintegrating but strategically valuable locales might actually have been something that the EFF felt highly aligned with and wanted to support through its electronic and advocacy Capacities. For instance, why would they not support Internet and communicative freedom under a repressive regime?
I haven’t looked closely and I wasn’t there at the time so it makes it hard to say for sure but let’s speculate. I think the people involved in EFF are most likely slightly cynical, savvypolitical maneuverers themselve who, like you said realize the utility of multiple not necessarily overlapping objectives, where all involved parties could derive some benefits.
Certainly not an implausible situation that you lay out
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
Un, Thank you I guess? Seems we are… Winning?
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Ah yes, 'spread democracy around the world'
I appreciate your appreciation of that statement. Thank you. :)
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This could cost less than $5000 for a month I ran a bunch of nodes for a couple years and that's optimistic by perhaps an order of magnitude. No $5 a month VPS provides enough bandwidth to sustain the monthly traffic of a Tor node, and nodes need to be continuously online and serving traffic for about 2-3 months[1] before they will be promoted to guard relays. Throttling traffic to stay in your bandwidth allocation…
Now to add additional problems. 1000 tor nodes on a single platform would be very noticeable and geographically limited. Platforms also have different weight attached to them in the consensus, which adds further time requirements before a node is promoted. The developers do not want a single platform provider to be able to observe a large portion of all the traffic, so there are counter measures. The attacker could t…
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Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’ve heard individuals getting doors kicked in for participating in the network, so it’s not individuals. It's individuals
Unless something has changed, one of the issues with Tor is that it tries to send traffic through servers that have the most bandwidth which are pretty much certain to be servers owned by the state a lot of the time because a random person's residential cable modem is going to be a lot less capable.
Run by individuals doesn't necessarily mean run on potato hardware. I ran a highly reputable (non-exit) node on a beefy but underutilised dedicated server for at least half a decade.
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's half the point. If someone has an intention to undergo some illegal activities with full intention not to be caught, only 100% "safe" solution works for them. Normally we talk about risk tolerance, but this particular use case is a bit special.
If there were a way to 100% avoid getting caught when committing illegal acts, no one would ever get caught because everyone would do it
Well no, there are loads of precautions criminals can use to avoid being caught already, and they just don't do them - most criminals are just not that smart.
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#499Here's imaginary attack with adversary. Just push as much traffic as possible from many hosts to the given hidden service. Now observe traffic metadata from high level network operators. With enough filtering it should be possible to detect where traffic spike is terminated.
It would be "terminated" at all the points that can't keep up, way ahead of the hidden service (or even rendez-vous node).
Re: Is Tor still safe to use?
#500As knowledgeable users of the Internet in 2024, we would do well to assume that nothing is 100% “safe” (I.e. there’s no such thing as perfect security/privacy). However, some things, like Tor, can make your use of the Internet safer . If all you’re doing is arguing that Tor shouldn’t be used because it isn’t/was never “safe”, then you might as well not use the Internet at all.
I wish the people back in the 90s understood this when trying to set up encrypted email.