11–20 of 55 posts
I'd love to hear a little more about the architecture.
Interesting, so I'm presuming there's several VPNs involved between the load-balancer and all the discrete servers. I wonder if they use a VPN provider with a static IP and no-logs policy or if it's simply yet another VPS. I'd love to hear a little more about the architecture.
If the load balancer is the weak point that would be first to be discovered, then I imagine they must have some mechanism to stop it leaving evidence that leads to the other machines if it were to get raided (it isn't on their hardware, so they can't prevent the files being backed up). Is there a way the codebase could be entirely encrypted and not even accessible to the cloud provider (with some 'boot password' need…
Encryption (with the decryption key being gotten at boot from, say, a particular .onion address) would work against backups, but won't protect against an adversary with admin access to the server when the virtual server is on.
Interesting, so I'm presuming there's several VPNs involved between the load-balancer and all the discrete servers. I wonder if they use a VPN provider with a static IP and no-logs policy or if it's simply yet another VPS. I'd love to hear a little more about the architecture.
Why would they use a VPN provider? It's trivial to set up your own if you control the systems at both ends.
" This saved costs, guaranteed better uptime, and made the site more portable and thus harder to take down " Probably not true for " This saved costs ". From what i've seen, virtual machines usually cost more than twice the price of renting the equivalent "real" machine monthly. They could have used dedicated servers; there are more dedicated server providers than VM providers, thus achieving the same goal, less expe…
They are more expensive, but they are usually easy and immediate to acquire. Which makes provisioning much more efficient in case of fluctuating traffic. And overall sysadmins will have less tendency to over-provision, meaning getting more and beefier machines than it's needed "to be safe".
" This saved costs, guaranteed better uptime, and made the site more portable and thus harder to take down " Probably not true for " This saved costs ". From what i've seen, virtual machines usually cost more than twice the price of renting the equivalent "real" machine monthly. They could have used dedicated servers; there are more dedicated server providers than VM providers, thus achieving the same goal, less expe…
They are more expensive, but they are usually easy and immediate to acquire. Which makes provisioning much more efficient in case of fluctuating traffic. And overall sysadmins will have less tendency to over-provision, meaning getting more and beefier machines than it's needed "to be safe".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they use a VPN provider? It's trivial to set up your own if you control the systems at both ends.
Assuming at least one side isn't under a NAT, true. Otherwise it gets... "fun".
If the load balancer is the weak point that would be first to be discovered, then I imagine they must have some mechanism to stop it leaving evidence that leads to the other machines if it were to get raided (it isn't on their hardware, so they can't prevent the files being backed up). Is there a way the codebase could be entirely encrypted and not even accessible to the cloud provider (with some 'boot password' need…
It depends on what you mean by that. The only way to prevent a codebase from being seen by an adversary with physical access when the server is on is to not have the sensitive data on the server in the first place. Encryption (with the decryption key being gotten at boot from, say, a particular .onion address) would work against backups, but won't protect against an adversary with admin access to the server when the…
" This saved costs, guaranteed better uptime, and made the site more portable and thus harder to take down " Probably not true for " This saved costs ". From what i've seen, virtual machines usually cost more than twice the price of renting the equivalent "real" machine monthly. They could have used dedicated servers; there are more dedicated server providers than VM providers, thus achieving the same goal, less expe…
1) Hardware seizure expenses vs LEOs duplicating the hdd of a virt.
2) TPB needs to locate in disparate jurisdictions to take advantages of different legal situations. That would involve a ton of shipping costs, probably more lost hardware, and paying for remote hands
3) They had been paying a premium for 'bulletproof' hosting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming at least one side isn't under a NAT, true. Otherwise it gets... "fun".
A NAT does not stop you if you do it right. Console games have been hosting servers through NATs for the last decade.