In many countries, running an exit node is a very fast way to have cop knocking at your door and seizing all your stuff.
To run a tor exit node, you either have to try your best to stay anonymous, preferably be based in a country who don't care at all about cyber crime, and run them on a dodgy hosting provider who dgaf. Or you have to create a legal entity, either a non-profit or a company, depending on the country register as a hosting provider (so that you are not consider legally responsible for what comes out of your server if you abide by some rules), and you will still have to respond pretty fast to any police inquiry.
If anything, it's a miracle that there is 3000 of them. Although you can safely assume that a good portion of them (if not the majority) are operated by state intelligence services, cybersecurity companies and bad actor, who will log everything that pass through their node (and might be able to decrypt them one day).
This somewhat begs the question. I know some smart tvs are sold cheap because they are secretly used in botnets. By multiple bad actors independently even, it's enough common of a strategy.
How come no one has done that for the dark web? That we know of at least? It would be incredibly annoying for cops to suddenly go knocking on 15 thousand doors of completely random people.
agree I think tor is such a cool technology but even the thought of what is getting routed through there on my machine or even a machine I rent is enough for me to stay away from it
Same thought for me with Freenet about 15 years ago.
I liked the idea of it, especially since it was a time where ISPs were really cracking down on BitTorrents. But after seeing a few index sites inside the network, I quickly realized how much of that network was CSAM.
I watched Adrian Crendshaw's DefCon talk about how people got busted using Tor and have also stayed away since then. I have used it in conjunction with TAILS a few times, but other than that, I don't mess with it any more.
DEF CON 22 - Adrian Crenshaw- Dropping Docs on Darknets: How People Got Caught
US government literally has a gigantic data centre purely for the purpose of storing encrypted data traffic that might be decoded one day. We can only assume that anything going through any US controlled TOR node ends up there.
Well yeah, because running an exit node in the US is "probably legal but there's precedent for still getting arrested and having your stuff seized." I can't imagine very many normal people are willing to paint a target on their backs like this.
Because running one will get your machine blamed for any illegal activities that Tor users are up to. I ran one for whole 2 weeks, before my hosting provider just told me "pls stop".
Also depending on country you might be accused by aiding them, and it would be upon you to explain the court you have no control who uses the exit node nor their ID
It's insanely few, but also isn't that possibly an advantage? When lots of people's transfers are intermingled that means the possibility of separating out one person's traffic from the rest is harder.
Those user's traffic is cleanly separable at the destination, so this attack is always possible from some vantage point and isn't a defensible position. So malicious exit nodes are the real threat. Your reasoning would apply better to guard nodes.
10% were compromised. The author contacted the Tor Project's network health team, who "made an announcement to the operators, who began shutting their exit nodes down."
In many countries, running an exit node is a very fast way to have cop knocking at your door and seizing all your stuff. To run a tor exit node, you either have to try your best to stay anonymous, preferably be based in a country who don't care at all about cyber crime, and run them on a dodgy hosting provider who dgaf. Or you have to create a legal entity, either a non-profit or a company, depending on the country register as a hosting provider (so that you are not consider legally responsible for what comes out of your server if you abide by some rules), and you will still have to respond pretty fast to any police inquiry.
If anything, it's a miracle that there is 3000 of them. Although you can safely assume that a good portion of them (if not the majority) are operated by state intelligence services, cybersecurity companies and bad actor, who will log everything that pass through their node (and might be able to decrypt them one day).
This somewhat begs the question. I know some smart tvs are sold cheap because they are secretly used in botnets. By multiple bad actors independently even, it's enough common of a strategy.
How come no one has done that for the dark web? That we know of at least? It would be incredibly annoying for cops to suddenly go knocking on 15 thousand doors of completely random people.
agree I think tor is such a cool technology but even the thought of what is getting routed through there on my machine or even a machine I rent is enough for me to stay away from it
Same thought for me with Freenet about 15 years ago.
I liked the idea of it, especially since it was a time where ISPs were really cracking down on BitTorrents. But after seeing a few index sites inside the network, I quickly realized how much of that network was CSAM.
Deleted that and never looked back.
I watched Adrian Crendshaw's DefCon talk about how people got busted using Tor and have also stayed away since then. I have used it in conjunction with TAILS a few times, but other than that, I don't mess with it any more.
DEF CON 22 - Adrian Crenshaw- Dropping Docs on Darknets: How People Got Caught
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ2OZKitRwc
You don't route anything by default, you have to explicitly enable it if you wish to help the network.
And relay operators (not exit nodes) don't face any issues. Don't let the unreasonable fear blind you.
2 replies →
US government literally has a gigantic data centre purely for the purpose of storing encrypted data traffic that might be decoded one day. We can only assume that anything going through any US controlled TOR node ends up there.
Well yeah, because running an exit node in the US is "probably legal but there's precedent for still getting arrested and having your stuff seized." I can't imagine very many normal people are willing to paint a target on their backs like this.
plus becoming the technical target of every spy agency and tons of random hackers! likely the most trouble you can bring to your computers legally
Because running one will get your machine blamed for any illegal activities that Tor users are up to. I ran one for whole 2 weeks, before my hosting provider just told me "pls stop".
Also depending on country you might be accused by aiding them, and it would be upon you to explain the court you have no control who uses the exit node nor their ID
It's insanely few, but also isn't that possibly an advantage? When lots of people's transfers are intermingled that means the possibility of separating out one person's traffic from the rest is harder.
Those user's traffic is cleanly separable at the destination, so this attack is always possible from some vantage point and isn't a defensible position. So malicious exit nodes are the real threat. Your reasoning would apply better to guard nodes.
No, it makes it much easier.
So one person single-handedly knocked out 10% of the entire Tor exit network over an SSH port redirection?
10% were compromised. The author contacted the Tor Project's network health team, who "made an announcement to the operators, who began shutting their exit nodes down."