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Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

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Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#41

Post by conformal »

Wilya wrote: post #6

Any background on who "Conformal Systems" are and why they would operate exit nodes ? I'm not really familiar with who they are and what they do, but they seem to be the only one in the top-25 that isn't either a hosting company or a residential ISP. (apart from Formless Networking, but that one is a bit more well known) Not that it's not nice of them, but it seems a bit out of place.

we have more bandwidth than we use and we donate this bandwidth to the tor project. we are fans of the tor project and care about protecting personal privacy and individual expression.

we have 3 nodes running up to 4 processes on each node. each node is capable of pushing out up to ~600 Mbps with 4 processes on it. the nodes run bitrig, a fork of openbsd that several of our developers hack on.

EDIT: i just read the linked article and i see why we are listed - we have our own ASN and run openbgpd from our colo space.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#42

Post by bifrost »

In case its not already obvious, most Geo-IP data is not particularly correct. In my experience its often off by 50-100 miles, and lucky if it even says the correct city. I've actually had Google say my IPs were in Singapore, when they were obviously not, and its a big pain to get Google to change that. Some of the other Geo-IP providers are better, but not by a whole lot in my experience.

If its also not obvious, most large TOR exit nodes are in datacenters and not in people's houses, for a variety of reasons.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#43

Post by jcr »

conformal wrote: post #38
jcr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conformal is a startup run by a group of former OpenBSD developers including Marco Peereboom (marco@), Owain Ainsworth (oga@), and others. I've met most of them in person, and I've interacted with them on mailing lists for nearly a decade and a half. They are all good people in my book, and they're very talented. On many occasions, both Marco and Owain have helped me debug problems while adding support for new hardwa…

hi there jcr, this is jy-p, thanks for the kind words :)

You're welcome jy-p. I just realized that I left out something important that nearly everyone on HN could relate with and appreciate. Conformal is comprised of some of the same people who helped to give the world OpenSSH which absolutely everybody uses. Of course they don't get all the credit, but they helped, and it probably wouldn't take too long to search the commit logs and find some of your names committing/OK'ing patches.

Knowingly or not, anyone running OpenSSH is already trusting the work of the people at Conformal.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#44

Post by X-Istence »

kl0nk wrote: post #22
dgesang wrote: post #2

15 exit nodes in the kyrgyz republic hospital area alone? Can that be correct?

IP geolocalisation sucks badly. For example OVH got only 1 DC (well to be precise one big room) in Paris. Kimsufi are hosted in their DC in Roubaix (north of France). They also got another one located in the east (near Strasbourg). You can also buy an IP located in somewhere else in Europe but linked to your server in Roubaix.

I'm with OVH, and I have various IP's with them. Some Geo-IP to the US, some Geo-IP to Canada ... always fun :-)

Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#48

Post by mburns »

lukejduncan wrote: post #46

I'm a strong advocate of the Tor project, but man would I ever be afraid to be an exit node

It is worth noting that you can run Tor in non-exit mode, but still route (secure, encrypted) tunnels around for other Tor users. This is (ideally) how every Tor user should act, if at all possible.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#49

Post by D9u »

jcr wrote: post #43
conformal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi there jcr, this is jy-p, thanks for the kind words :)

You're welcome jy-p. I just realized that I left out something important that nearly everyone on HN could relate with and appreciate. Conformal is comprised of some of the same people who helped to give the world OpenSSH which absolutely everybody uses. Of course they don't get all the credit, but they helped, and it probably wouldn't take too long to search the commit logs and find some of your names committing/OK'i…

There's also their Xombrero browser, of which I am quite a fan. Many thanks to Conformal from a FreeBSD aficionado.

Re: Tor Exit Nodes Mapped and Located

#50

Post by D9u »

bifrost wrote: post #42

In case its not already obvious, most Geo-IP data is not particularly correct. In my experience its often off by 50-100 miles, and lucky if it even says the correct city. I've actually had Google say my IPs were in Singapore, when they were obviously not, and its a big pain to get Google to change that. Some of the other Geo-IP providers are better, but not by a whole lot in my experience. If its also not obvious, mo…

I concur with your statements, as I've seen my own GeoIP resolve to someplace 3,000 miles away from my actual physical location.

Bravo for the data center mention as well. As someone who lives in a rural area, without access to high-speed connections, the idea of running a home based server just doesn't make sense.

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