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Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

blog.torproject.org

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Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#21

Post by INTPenis »

daveloyall wrote: post #20
mburns wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en The NSA fully-funded and wrote SELinux, too. So what?

I am naive on this topic. Sincere question: don't these facts call the utility of SELinux and Tor into question? If the answer is "because math", well... I don't speak math. Being illerate in this manner, I must depend on the reputations of the parties involved (and the reputations of the parties that report who was involved!). So... Can a person who does not trust the NSA trust products they paid for?

You can definitely trust the sensational value in finding out that any project advocating freedom and data security would be exploited by a government.

That's what I do, it's not perfect but I love reading source code and figuring out how things work so I know others, much smarter than me, love that too.

The public cases of the US government going after Tor, for example, have all read like external attacks on the protocol design flaws to build a larger case.

I would be more suspicious over placing exit nodes in libraries because I assume they're state owned in the US. Don't know since I'm not from there though. I just think it's sort of ironic because the attacks that have been performed all required possession of exit nodes.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#22

Post by jakobdabo »

gonehome wrote: post #4

If you think the Tor project is working on an important problem, consider running a relay. It's inexpensive, easy to administer, no hassle (if not an exit) and I think the scale is such that a couple thousand additional relays would make a noticeable difference to the network. You can even have it AWS where it will get automatic updates with almost no effort: https://cloud.torproject.org/ If you want to run it on OS…

Will running a relay decrease the chances of my guard nodes fingerprinting me (because of other people's injected traffic)? Or maybe the relay traffic is completely different and detectable from the the normal Tor usage traffic?

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#23

Post by daveloyall »

INTPenis wrote: post #21
daveloyall wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am naive on this topic. Sincere question: don't these facts call the utility of SELinux and Tor into question? If the answer is "because math", well... I don't speak math. Being illerate in this manner, I must depend on the reputations of the parties involved (and the reputations of the parties that report who was involved!). So... Can a person who does not trust the NSA trust products they paid for?

You can definitely trust the sensational value in finding out that any project advocating freedom and data security would be exploited by a government. That's what I do, it's not perfect but I love reading source code and figuring out how things work so I know others, much smarter than me, love that too. The public cases of the US government going after Tor, for example, have all read like external attacks on the pro…

That is interesting. Yes, many states have a "schools and libraries" WAN which public and private EDU-related facilities participate in. Said network is surely monitored by commercial network appliances. (BlueCoat et al.)

I haven't heard of them being monitored in more competent ways, but the opportunity is surely there.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#24

Post by moe »

noondip wrote: post #16
anfedorov wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> safely bypass surveillance from across the world Is this true, for a global passive adversary? If all of the nodes which route your link go through a friendly IC that shares ToR traffic patterns, I'm pretty sure traffic analysis can disclose where you are browsing or which hidden service you are visiting (or at least where it's hosted). Does anyone know more about how a ToR link is chosen, whether you can control i…

From https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des... : A global passive adversary is the most commonly assumed threat when analyzing theoretical anonymity designs. But like all practical low-latency systems, Tor does not protect against such a strong adversary.

Since the global passive adversary is now a reality (NSA) it seems like Tor is broken by design.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#25

Post by simoncion »

ceequof wrote: post #15

https://pando.com/2014/07/16/tor-spooks/ In 2006, Tor research was funded was through a no-bid federal contract awarded to Dingledine’s consulting company, Moria Labs. And starting in 2007, the Pentagon cash came directly through the Tor Project itself — thanks to the fact that Team Tor finally left EFF and registered its own independent 501(c)(3) non-profit. How dependent was — and is — Tor on support from federal g…

Don't take this the wrong way, but... this is hardly news. From top of the Tor Project's "Who uses Tor?" page:

"Tor was originally designed, implemented, and deployed as a third-generation onion routing project of the Naval Research Laboratory.[0] It was originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary purpose of protecting government communications." [1]

The article you link to quotes one of the original TOR authors, but fails to link to his words. They're here. [2]

Even if Tor hadn't originally been built by the NRO, spooks would still be using it for their "open source" intelligence gathering: it is effective, well-built software that protects against the threats that it claims to protect against.

That Pando Daily article attempts to claim that the fact that NSA captures Tor traffic makes Tor a danger. The leaked NSA slides from which that fact comes from also reveal that NSA captures and stores (for a long time) all encrypted traffic that they cannot decrypt. [3] This means that connecting to a non-USian site using SSL/TLS makes you just as much a target as Tor usage. :)

I get that people freak out about government funding of this project or that project, but there are a few things to keep in mind here:

1) Tor is open source and is developed in the open. [4]

2) Respected cypherpunks and cryptographers have periodically evaluated the project and declared it to be effective and high quality.

3) A weakening of Tor or the Tor Network reduces its value for intelligence gathering and covert law enforcement operations.

I welcome your questions and/or comments. :)

[0] That phrase links to http://www.onion-router.net/

[1] https://www.torproject.org/about/torusers.html.en

[2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2011-March/0... (Notice that this is an official Tor Project mailing list archive, and that the message is still visible. :) ) Extended discussion is available here: http://www.cryptome.org/0003/tor-spy.htm

[3] Other NSA slides reveal that the NSA can't actually break Tor. They have to rely on endpoint compromise or improper configuration of hidden services to unmask Tor users.

[4] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#26

Post by tokenizerrr »

moe wrote: post #24
noondip wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des... : A global passive adversary is the most commonly assumed threat when analyzing theoretical anonymity designs. But like all practical low-latency systems, Tor does not protect against such a strong adversary.

Since the global passive adversary is now a reality (NSA) it seems like Tor is broken by design.

Not everyone is hiding from the NSA.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#27

Post by simoncion »

INTPenis wrote: post #21
daveloyall wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am naive on this topic. Sincere question: don't these facts call the utility of SELinux and Tor into question? If the answer is "because math", well... I don't speak math. Being illerate in this manner, I must depend on the reputations of the parties involved (and the reputations of the parties that report who was involved!). So... Can a person who does not trust the NSA trust products they paid for?

You can definitely trust the sensational value in finding out that any project advocating freedom and data security would be exploited by a government. That's what I do, it's not perfect but I love reading source code and figuring out how things work so I know others, much smarter than me, love that too. The public cases of the US government going after Tor, for example, have all read like external attacks on the pro…

> I would be more suspicious over placing exit nodes in libraries...

Librarians are more often rabidly pro-privacy and pro-anonymity than not. They're often very well read, well educated, and know their history.

> I just think it's sort of ironic because the attacks that have been performed all required possession of exit nodes.

Unless you have information that I do not (if you do, please link to it) control of a single exit node gives you no more power than your ISP already has over you. What attacks were you thinking of? Keep in mind that Tor explicitly does not protect against:

* An adversary that can listen to the communication between a large number of nodes in the Tor network and targeted Tor users. (Similarly, Tor cannot protect against a malicious adversary who controls a very large number (1/3? 51%? I can't remember) of the nodes in the Tor network.)

* Tampering with or recording of the data that leaves or is returned by a Tor exit node. (Again, this is an attack that anyone between you and your communication partner can launch, whether you're using Tor or not.)

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#28

Post by middleclick »

ceequof wrote: post #15

https://pando.com/2014/07/16/tor-spooks/ In 2006, Tor research was funded was through a no-bid federal contract awarded to Dingledine’s consulting company, Moria Labs. And starting in 2007, the Pentagon cash came directly through the Tor Project itself — thanks to the fact that Team Tor finally left EFF and registered its own independent 501(c)(3) non-profit. How dependent was — and is — Tor on support from federal g…

All this is public information, repeated many many times by the Tor developers themselves. It's on the "financial reports" section of torproject.org. Go and check it out.

It's good to be critical of things especially where security is concerned, but if the code is open, the protocol is open, the development is open, I don't see how it matters if it was a US Navy project?

(Pando's articles usually lack substance)

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#29

Post by jolan »

gonehome wrote: post #4

If you think the Tor project is working on an important problem, consider running a relay. It's inexpensive, easy to administer, no hassle (if not an exit) and I think the scale is such that a couple thousand additional relays would make a noticeable difference to the network. You can even have it AWS where it will get automatic updates with almost no effort: https://cloud.torproject.org/ If you want to run it on OS…

> no hassle (if not an exit)

Not 100% true, your server's IP will be banned along side the IPs of exit nodes. It seems a lot of blacklists don't bother to make the distinction.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TOR/comments/2abne1/hulu_blocked_af...

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/doc/ListOf...

Re: Tor Exit Nodes in Libraries – Pilot

#30

Post by simoncion »

daveloyall wrote: post #20
mburns wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.torproject.org/about/sponsors.html.en The NSA fully-funded and wrote SELinux, too. So what?

I am naive on this topic. Sincere question: don't these facts call the utility of SELinux and Tor into question? If the answer is "because math", well... I don't speak math. Being illerate in this manner, I must depend on the reputations of the parties involved (and the reputations of the parties that report who was involved!). So... Can a person who does not trust the NSA trust products they paid for?

> Can a person who does not trust the NSA trust products they paid for?

Remember a couple of things:

* The NSA relies on SELinux as a part of their internal computer security system. (However, as the NSA document leaks reveal, even the best system fails when poorly configured!)

* Both SELinux and Tor are open source software, developed in the open. It's not unthinkable that there's a problem with the design of the software of either project, but the commit history and mailing lists of both projects are available for public perusal and audit.

* Well regarded security researchers have looked at both Tor and SELinux and declared them to be reasonably well designed systems that do what they say on the tin.

Anyway. If the NSA involvement really squicks you out, there's always either Grsecurity and PaX [0] or AppArmor [1]. Grsecurity is primarily developed by Brad Spengler. PaX is developed by an anonymous cabal known as PaX Team. [2] AppArmor has been developed by Canonical (the Ubuntu guys) since ~2009.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grsecurity

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor

[2] AIUI, it is the PaX Team's refusal to identify themselves that prevents Grsecurity and PaX from ever being merged into mainline Linux.

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