Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

blog.torproject.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 143 posts

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#71

Post by kekebo »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #4

Well done and thank you to all involved. You are making a real difference on the side of democracy, human rights and the values of the free world at an uncertain time when so much is under threat.

Towards the flagged sibling comment about the tor network providing a hiding place for illegal activities and terrorism:

While it's non-trivial to inspect many aspects of tor traffic, an often used study metric has been the (determinable) percentage of connections to hidden services, which are usually assumed to be disproportionately malicious.

This ranges around ~5% across most studies, the most recent one I can find shows similar results[0].

Results are limited by the inability to account for lawful use of hidden services, but also the percentage of malicious use outside of them.

[0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2011893117

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#72

Post by dtx1 »

pjmlp wrote: post #34
dtx1 wrote: post #5

Every time a piece of legacy c/c++ code get's replaced with something written in a sane language i smile a little!

Unfortunely there are tons of domains that it will never happen, given the existing ecosystem We as society basically have to undo 50 years of going into the wrong direction, without the economical incentives to fix them, rather mitigate their faults.

While that is true and for some extreme cases might stay true for a long time (> 100 years) most software has a lifetime, even if it's damn long and as long as we start writing new software in better languages we will see progress over time, simply by old software dying or no one being able to deal with the legacy codebase anymore

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#73

Post by colesantiago »

robbedpeter wrote: post #62
colesantiago wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this means that Tor taking money from Zcash is an explicit endorsement of the crypto token space and the scams and speculation and environmental destruction they harbour. Not to mention the ransomware enablement of a so called privacy token. I don't think Tor would want to be associated with all of that on top of all the other illicit activities they are already associated with.

So when did you stop using Amazon? Or Apple? Or Visa? Because of the gift card scams. Or the usd? Almost all crime is paid for in usd. Your argument is less than merited because there is no moral contrast with alternatives. Guilt by association is fallacious. That leaves only "because you don't like it" and that's a valid opinion, which you're welcome to, but having privacy enabling technology allows real world freed…

Your whataboutism is missing the core point.

These privacy tokens enable ransomware, full stop. Taking money from them enables them to exist and to allow criminals to continue using Zcash, Monero, etc and effects are huge. They are not even regulated and this needs to stop.

Even if I were to use these crypto tokens, the price would fall over drastically upon receiving them. No notable improvement or use at all than receiving a donation or grant via card payment straight into my bank account. No scams or price drops at all there.

> Others of us have the opinion that despite bad people existing, supporting the freedom and anonymity of people, good or bad, is an improvement to the world.

There is nothing wrong with having privacy enabling technology, I didn't argue this at all so I am calling strawman on this.

What I do not want is for the Tor foundation endorse or accept money from a project that environmentally destructive and only benefits speculation, scams and doesn't work as a currency at all.

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#75

Post by colesantiago »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #63
colesantiago wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would want them to at least go to the Rust Foundation Grants Program [0] or perhaps the Mozilla Foundation grants program [1]. This isn't minor, Wikimedia [2] is also asking the same thing of their project and they shouldn't use or endorse these crypto tokens, same thing as Tor. [0] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/2021-12-09-news-rust-f... [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/ [2] https://meta.w…

> This isn't minor, Wikimedia [2] is also asking the same thing of their project and they shouldn't use or endorse these crypto tokens, same thing as Tor. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Stop_ac... is a proposal with what looks like extremely divided voting; I'm not seeing where it was ratified? So Wikimedia is not asking that, someone suggested that Wikimedia should ask that.

So it isn't a minor open and shut case then as you said? Surely something minor should have been sorted quickly no?

And most people actually support the motion to stop accepting them, despite the division it is the correct decision.

I only hope that Tor does the same.

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#76

Post by zozbot234 »

pjmlp wrote: post #34
dtx1 wrote: post #5

Every time a piece of legacy c/c++ code get's replaced with something written in a sane language i smile a little!

Unfortunely there are tons of domains that it will never happen, given the existing ecosystem We as society basically have to undo 50 years of going into the wrong direction, without the economical incentives to fix them, rather mitigate their faults.

There are millions of lines of code written in COBOL in production use, pretty much all of them addressing business-critical needs. FORTRAN scientific codes are not far behind, either. Better get crackin'.

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#77

Post by loeg »

colesantiago wrote: post #30
esyir wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise crypto, but telling an underfunded OSS project to abandon scarce funding for what is a relatively minor ideological reason definitely rubs me the wrong way. Rather than demanding them to change, why not find a way to help secure them a source of less objectionable funding.

I would want them to at least go to the Rust Foundation Grants Program [0] or perhaps the Mozilla Foundation grants program [1]. This isn't minor, Wikimedia [2] is also asking the same thing of their project and they shouldn't use or endorse these crypto tokens, same thing as Tor. [0] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/2021-12-09-news-rust-f... [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/ [2] https://meta.w…

Wikimedia is one of the most well-funded non-profits on the planet; they have largely unconstrained spending. They can easily be choosy about funding sources while other projects cannot afford to be.

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#78

Post by colesantiago »

loeg wrote: post #77
colesantiago wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would want them to at least go to the Rust Foundation Grants Program [0] or perhaps the Mozilla Foundation grants program [1]. This isn't minor, Wikimedia [2] is also asking the same thing of their project and they shouldn't use or endorse these crypto tokens, same thing as Tor. [0] https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/2021-12-09-news-rust-f... [1] https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/ [2] https://meta.w…

Wikimedia is one of the most well-funded non-profits on the planet; they have largely unconstrained spending. They can easily be choosy about funding sources while other projects cannot afford to be.

I have already mentioned elsewhere in the thread alternative sources of grant funding they can use which are not an endorsement of the crypto space.

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#79

Post by onedognight »

qersist3nce wrote: post #8

So at this point it is ready for passing traffic through a SOCKS proxy. Meaning we can `cargo run --release -- proxy` and redirect applications to use port `9150` for their network connections. Couple of related questions: - Does anyone know, in a Linux distro, how to pass all system traffic through a SOCKS proxy port? I'm not looking for intermediary proxy handlers but an official method to force all user and system…

One way is to enable a global `LD_PRELOAD=libtsocks.so` (transparent socks) environment variable where you provide an optionally suid (to allow suid binaries to use it if you want) library that overrides `connect`, etc. and forwards them to your socks proxy. Make sure you get ipv4 and ipv6 support if you care. This is not bullet proof by any means. Any application that doesn't using the C library (e.g. go) will not proxy, but most things will.

Re: Arti – An implementation of Tor in Rust

#80

Post by colesantiago »

DoItToMe81 wrote: post #66
colesantiago wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure Tor helps Ukrainian and Russian citizens, but I urge the Tor foundation to question themselves and to stop accepting crypto token donations and grants. It acts as an endorsement and emboldens the cryptobros, enthusiasts and fans to pump the price of the token.

Why should they forgo an opportunity for funding that allows people to donate in countries where direct bank transfers to the Tor project would be logged and marked as suspicious, and which is resistant to payment processors deciding not to process the donations? Because you personally don't like cryptocurrency? That is ridiculously childish.

There is no reason to present a personal attack with your non-argument. As I said before in other threads there are alternative ways they can receive grants for funding of Tor projects without endorsing crypto scams. I mentioned Mozilla and Rust foundation as examples.

On the crypto tokens, there are tons of reasons not to use them as I have mentioned on this thread and others have mentioned as well. [0]

[0] https://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/the-technological-case-ag...

Post reply on HN