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A Tor of the Dark Web

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Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#21
Tor was not "designed by the Navy" to protect dignitaries in cars or ships or whatever it is this article is alluding to. It was an academic research project for the NRL's CHACS group (NRL : CHACS :: MIT : Lincoln Lab).

If you look at the project's publication history, it was almost from the jump (and continues to be today) a project intended to frustrate online censorship. The DOD, via both DARPA and the NRL, continues to sponsor the project.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#22
post #18

Ooh, the Tor darknet. I went there recently out of curiosity. You can get used to doing everything over Tor quite quickly, if you use it for everything you don't really notice the latency. Yes, Tor has CP, but I didn't look for it so I didn't find it. Same with all manner of other illegal content, pretty sure it's there. I2P and Freenet are more interesting than Tor, though, because they are truly P2P. Freenet is bas…

> Yes, Tor has CP, but I didn't look for it so I didn't find it. Same with all manner of other illegal content, pretty sure it's there. My assumption is that the open web has it too - but given tor isn't a single place with a directory to everywhere, I don't see how you could stumble on it accidentally at all.

Well, since Tor's anonymous, (secure enough) directories with legitimate sites also have illegitimate sites.

Also, yes, I think the open web probably has CP too, but Tor's anonymity means that CP is probably up for longer there, I suppose.

I've never visited any such sites, this is mostly speculation.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#23
post #3

The things I always wonder about TOR: Won't I look like someone else's computer? Is it possible for me to get in trouble for because someone else's traffic exits from my home network?

Check out the "This is a Tor Exit Router" notice https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git?a=blob_plain;hb=HEAD;f...

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#24

A word of advice for those living under truly oppressive governments - do not connect to Tor directly (nor to a Tor bridge, to be on the safe side). Get a cheap VPS/EC2 abroad and use SSH tunnel to connect to that and from then onwards - to a Tor bridge. The reason is that, if connecting to Tor directly, security services will be able to figure out you are using Tor (although not what you are using it for) and may ta…

By the same logic, won't they be able to detect SSH tunneled traffic too?

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#25
post #3

The things I always wonder about TOR: Won't I look like someone else's computer? Is it possible for me to get in trouble for because someone else's traffic exits from my home network?

In addition to what other posters wrote: you can decide to run an exit node but restrict the sites that are available to Tor users. The most obvious use is to disallow your home country. For extra safety restrict it to far away countries that have no legal power where you live.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#27
Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.)

GOD.

There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all humanity. On one of these forums, there was this alleged "doctor", who adviced people, from what age you can have sex with your children without their doctor to notice. Tips how to kidnap young children. The worst thing was that I just knew that - if they don't do something stupid - they are basically untracable and uncatchable, while I would simply want to catch them all and kill them one by one. (I am sorry for being so expressive.)

There were also some picture forums but really I couldn't stand that, I just wanted to vomit while I was shaking.

I... am not sure why I am writing this. I am all for Tor. But we have to admit - when everything is allowed and anonymous, EVERYTHING is allowed and anonymous. And the dark parts of humanity flow on top. Drug markets, weapon markets, assasin markets (altough I don't know how sersiously to take those), terrorist websites, child porn websites.

But - as hard it is for me to say it - to see that the seriously f...d up child molesters are freely allowed to say really anything there and noone has a chance to catch them just shows that Tor is really anonymous and safe.

edit: I do not know if The Hidden Wiki is still operating, if the dark places I visited are still operating, it is about one year and I did not feel any urge to revisit it again.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#28

A word of advice for those living under truly oppressive governments - do not connect to Tor directly (nor to a Tor bridge, to be on the safe side). Get a cheap VPS/EC2 abroad and use SSH tunnel to connect to that and from then onwards - to a Tor bridge. The reason is that, if connecting to Tor directly, security services will be able to figure out you are using Tor (although not what you are using it for) and may ta…

By the same logic, won't they be able to detect SSH tunneled traffic too?

My advice would be to spin up a free EC2 instance, put a small "dog fancy" type blog/website up with a few articles about poodles, and then use something like openVPN to tunnel your traffic via tcp, port 443 through this.

It looks like you're just doing your wordpress thing, fancying your dogs. Just watch how much data you tunnel this way. 500 gig in a month might raise some eyebrows.

Also remember to use your regular un-vpn'd connection to visit ILoveAhmadinejad.com on a fairly regular basis so not all your traffic goes to this mysterious blog.

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#29

A word of advice for those living under truly oppressive governments - do not connect to Tor directly (nor to a Tor bridge, to be on the safe side). Get a cheap VPS/EC2 abroad and use SSH tunnel to connect to that and from then onwards - to a Tor bridge. The reason is that, if connecting to Tor directly, security services will be able to figure out you are using Tor (although not what you are using it for) and may ta…

Many people who need Tor can't afford or are unable to purchase VPSes abroad. However, the obfsproxy feature is available in the latest versions of Tor, which can mask traffic, and worked effectively against Iran's DPI earlier this year. You can contact the Tor Project directly to get a few bridges that support this feature.

https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en

Re: A Tor of the Dark Web

#30
post #27

Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.) GOD. There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Maybe out of utter fascination, I spend about few hours on there and I felt like I want to murder all hu…

freely allowed to say really anything

Well, that's allowed on the normal internet for the most part.

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