51 ms·

A Statement from The Tor Project on Software Integrity and Apple

103 points by zo1 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cyphar 11y ago
Why do articles that talk about Tor always reference Silk Road as being the only notable user of .onion addresses? WikiLeaks used them, and they've been used for endless anti-censorship actions. Even Facebook has one.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  Probably because "evil pirates selling drugs and child pornography" generates more page views than "democracy activist not killed by authoritarian government."
  - alfiedotwtf 11y ago
    Guilt by association. They are trying to build a case against the dark web, like they built the War on Drugs: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
  - tzs 11y ago
    For most things like democracy activism, whistleblowing, anti-censorship, exposing human rights abuses, reaching out for help in abusive situations, and so on you generally only need anonymity for one side of the communication. The danger to the party communicating the information is local, not global, and there are usually parties outside the danger area who are openly working on addressing the issue that the person inside needs to communicate anonymously about, and who can serve as recipients of the communication. For the most part, that kind of communication can be done using tools such as encrypted email using the recipient's public key, leaving encrypted files on a cloud service somewhere, and things like that to communicate to those outside parties. Where you really need Tor is when you are doing something where there is no one willing to openly handle the other end of things, and that's usually going to mean it is something like Silk Road, kiddie porn, human trafficking, and things like that where it is generally illegal nearly everywhere. This is why I decided against it when I once considered running a Tor node. All of the noble uses I had in mind, I realized, could be accomplished without too much trouble without it, and so it seemed I would really only be helping people who where doing things I'm not interested in aiding.
    - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
      I don't think the use case of hidden services are large sites that themselves need to be anonymous. That's really hard anyway because if you're big then you inherently have a lot of traffic, which significantly reduces the number of possible nodes that could be hosting the site to the ones with at least that much traffic going through them. The use of hidden services for large sites is that they authenticate the site without the person uploading the documents having to trust the CA system. And the person doing the uploading has to use Tor or something like it because otherwise their adversary would just block them from accessing that site or punish them for it, and Tor is better than something like a VPN in that regard because the uploader only has to trust the design of Tor, not an individual operator like a VPN. I think the real use case for a hidden service where the service itself is anonymous are apps like Ricochet where every user has their own hidden service. So you can have two activists in a repressive country who want to communicate with each other while remaining mutually anonymous and not have to trust some third party in a foreign country who could be cooperating with their oppressors. > All of the noble uses I had in mind, I realized, could be accomplished without too much trouble without it "Too much trouble" is a real problem. Security needs to be usable, especially in the sort of context where someone who makes a mistake or doesn't understand the implications can get killed for it. Anonymity by default and then you can tell them who you are if you don't need it is, in that regard, much better than anonymity only if you do specific extra work and if you didn't know that then you're dead. It's also important for the people who need anonymity that lots of people who don't actually need it use a service that provides it anyway, or use of the service paints a target on you.
      - ryanlol 11y ago
        > I don't think the use case of hidden services are large sites that themselves need to be anonymous. Using a hidden service has some serious caveats, using a hidden service is significantly slower than using a clearnet website over tor. >That's really hard anyway because if you're big then you inherently have a lot of traffic, which significantly reduces the number of possible nodes that could be hosting the site to the ones with at least that much traffic going through them. Yeah, as you would expect you have to scale up if you get a lot of traffic. >The use of hidden services for large sites is that they authenticate the site without the person uploading the documents having to trust the CA system. And the person doing the uploading has to use Tor or something like it because otherwise their adversary would just block them from accessing that site or punish them for it, and Tor is better than something like a VPN in that regard because the uploader only has to trust the design of Tor, not an individual operator like a VPN. As opposed to a PGP public key and a clearnet site?
- ryanlol 11y ago
  > Why do articles that talk about Tor always reference Silk Road as being the only notable user of .onion addresses? Because the dark net markets are really the only notable hidden services, Silk Road being the one that's received the most publicity.
  - cyphar 11y ago
    WikiLeaks and Facebook. I mentioned two. There are many other leaking services that use .onion addresses.
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      That doesn't make them notable hidden services, Facebook is undoubtedly notable but is their hidden service so? I think not. Facebook has no need to hide their origin servers, so their use of .onions is symbolic at best (besides as a TLS alternative) as any tor users would be better off browsing the clearnet version of the site. For wikileaks using .onions makes sense for receiving documents, not for displaying the leaked ones.
      - ohmygodel 11y ago
        My understanding is that Facebook runs an onion service (aka hidden service) primarily because it allows them to easily manage their anonymous users separately from other users. "Management" might include separate security logic to identify fraudulent login attempts and avoiding the accidental blockage that occurs sometimes via automated blacklisting of Tor exits. They also get the benefits of a secure name lookup (unlike DNS), and, as you mention, end-to-end encryption that doesn't rely on the Certificate Authority system. Other "notable" onion services include OnionShare [0], which sets up an onion service to enable simple anonymous file sharing, Ricochet, which is a P2P anonymous chat service that sets up an onion services for each chat participant, and SciHub [2], which provides most academic papers for free. Each of these has been widely reported in the mainstream press. [0] https://onionshare.org/ https://onionshare.org/ [1] https://ricochet.im/ https://ricochet.im/ [2] https://scihub22266oqcxt.onion https://scihub22266oqcxt.onion
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
dang 11y ago
Url changed from http://www.pcworld.com/article/3046849/security/tor-project-says-it-can-quickly-catch-spying-code.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3046849/security/tor-project-..., which points to this.
- arto 11y ago
  Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11338508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11338508
  - jlgaddis 11y ago
    ... with zero discussion.
acqq 11y ago
If you wonder why Tor authors even feel they have to state that they are "clean" here is one article from 2014: http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2014/11/17/who-funded-tor/ http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2014/11/17/who-funded-t...
- dewey 11y ago
  Why is this always being brought up? It's transparently communicated on the Tor website and they have a bunch of blog posts explaining how things are and that they'd obviously prefer for it to not be that way.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > Why is this always being brought up? Always? There are very good reasons why now: Because who doesn't know the context would not understand why Tor people attempt to assure the community "everything's all right" now or even "always was"? Also worth noting the names that appear there, like "SRI International," "International Broadcasting Bureau" (your tax money at work?) or even "Omidyar Network." It is very insightful to see so many players there and investigate their background too. Also worth noting, one of those involved in Tor development who also had access to some NSA files, Jacob Appelbaum, also wrote about what was being logged about the users of privacy tools, Tor included: http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html "Among the NSA's targets is the Tor network funded primarily by the US government to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states."
- lazyjones 11y ago
  This is widely known. What I find more suspicious is the fact that Tor still partly uses obsolete crypto (RSA-1024) that may specifically be open to attacks from governments. This was discussed in 2013 and apparently not fixed ("no time"...). Normally, such a situation would have devs hurrying to fix the issue immediately, as it makes the whole project potentially useless for a particularly important use case (evasion of government censorship/repression).
  - 11y ago

103 points by zo1 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Why do articles that talk about Tor always reference Silk Road as being the only notable user of .onion addresses? WikiLeaks used them, and they've been used for endless anti-censorship actions. Even Facebook has one.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago
Probably because "evil pirates selling drugs and child pornography" generates more page views than "democracy activist not killed by authoritarian government."
- alfiedotwtf 11y ago
  Guilt by association. They are trying to build a case against the dark web, like they built the War on Drugs: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
- tzs 11y ago
  For most things like democracy activism, whistleblowing, anti-censorship, exposing human rights abuses, reaching out for help in abusive situations, and so on you generally only need anonymity for one side of the communication. The danger to the party communicating the information is local, not global, and there are usually parties outside the danger area who are openly working on addressing the issue that the person inside needs to communicate anonymously about, and who can serve as recipients of the communication. For the most part, that kind of communication can be done using tools such as encrypted email using the recipient's public key, leaving encrypted files on a cloud service somewhere, and things like that to communicate to those outside parties. Where you really need Tor is when you are doing something where there is no one willing to openly handle the other end of things, and that's usually going to mean it is something like Silk Road, kiddie porn, human trafficking, and things like that where it is generally illegal nearly everywhere. This is why I decided against it when I once considered running a Tor node. All of the noble uses I had in mind, I realized, could be accomplished without too much trouble without it, and so it seemed I would really only be helping people who where doing things I'm not interested in aiding.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    I don't think the use case of hidden services are large sites that themselves need to be anonymous. That's really hard anyway because if you're big then you inherently have a lot of traffic, which significantly reduces the number of possible nodes that could be hosting the site to the ones with at least that much traffic going through them. The use of hidden services for large sites is that they authenticate the site without the person uploading the documents having to trust the CA system. And the person doing the uploading has to use Tor or something like it because otherwise their adversary would just block them from accessing that site or punish them for it, and Tor is better than something like a VPN in that regard because the uploader only has to trust the design of Tor, not an individual operator like a VPN. I think the real use case for a hidden service where the service itself is anonymous are apps like Ricochet where every user has their own hidden service. So you can have two activists in a repressive country who want to communicate with each other while remaining mutually anonymous and not have to trust some third party in a foreign country who could be cooperating with their oppressors. > All of the noble uses I had in mind, I realized, could be accomplished without too much trouble without it "Too much trouble" is a real problem. Security needs to be usable, especially in the sort of context where someone who makes a mistake or doesn't understand the implications can get killed for it. Anonymity by default and then you can tell them who you are if you don't need it is, in that regard, much better than anonymity only if you do specific extra work and if you didn't know that then you're dead. It's also important for the people who need anonymity that lots of people who don't actually need it use a service that provides it anyway, or use of the service paints a target on you.
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      > I don't think the use case of hidden services are large sites that themselves need to be anonymous. Using a hidden service has some serious caveats, using a hidden service is significantly slower than using a clearnet website over tor. >That's really hard anyway because if you're big then you inherently have a lot of traffic, which significantly reduces the number of possible nodes that could be hosting the site to the ones with at least that much traffic going through them. Yeah, as you would expect you have to scale up if you get a lot of traffic. >The use of hidden services for large sites is that they authenticate the site without the person uploading the documents having to trust the CA system. And the person doing the uploading has to use Tor or something like it because otherwise their adversary would just block them from accessing that site or punish them for it, and Tor is better than something like a VPN in that regard because the uploader only has to trust the design of Tor, not an individual operator like a VPN. As opposed to a PGP public key and a clearnet site?
ryanlol 11y ago
> Why do articles that talk about Tor always reference Silk Road as being the only notable user of .onion addresses? Because the dark net markets are really the only notable hidden services, Silk Road being the one that's received the most publicity.
- cyphar 11y ago
  WikiLeaks and Facebook. I mentioned two. There are many other leaking services that use .onion addresses.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    That doesn't make them notable hidden services, Facebook is undoubtedly notable but is their hidden service so? I think not. Facebook has no need to hide their origin servers, so their use of .onions is symbolic at best (besides as a TLS alternative) as any tor users would be better off browsing the clearnet version of the site. For wikileaks using .onions makes sense for receiving documents, not for displaying the leaked ones.
    - ohmygodel 11y ago
      My understanding is that Facebook runs an onion service (aka hidden service) primarily because it allows them to easily manage their anonymous users separately from other users. "Management" might include separate security logic to identify fraudulent login attempts and avoiding the accidental blockage that occurs sometimes via automated blacklisting of Tor exits. They also get the benefits of a secure name lookup (unlike DNS), and, as you mention, end-to-end encryption that doesn't rely on the Certificate Authority system. Other "notable" onion services include OnionShare [0], which sets up an onion service to enable simple anonymous file sharing, Ricochet, which is a P2P anonymous chat service that sets up an onion services for each chat participant, and SciHub [2], which provides most academic papers for free. Each of these has been widely reported in the mainstream press. [0] https://onionshare.org/ https://onionshare.org/ [1] https://ricochet.im/ https://ricochet.im/ [2] https://scihub22266oqcxt.onion https://scihub22266oqcxt.onion
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

dang 11y ago

Url changed from http://www.pcworld.com/article/3046849/security/tor-project-says-it-can-quickly-catch-spying-code.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3046849/security/tor-project-..., which points to this.

arto 11y ago
Previous submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11338508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11338508
- jlgaddis 11y ago
  ... with zero discussion.

acqq 11y ago

If you wonder why Tor authors even feel they have to state that they are "clean" here is one article from 2014: http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2014/11/17/who-funded-tor/ http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2014/11/17/who-funded-t...

dewey 11y ago
Why is this always being brought up? It's transparently communicated on the Tor website and they have a bunch of blog posts explaining how things are and that they'd obviously prefer for it to not be that way.
- acqq 11y ago
  > Why is this always being brought up? Always? There are very good reasons why now: Because who doesn't know the context would not understand why Tor people attempt to assure the community "everything's all right" now or even "always was"? Also worth noting the names that appear there, like "SRI International," "International Broadcasting Bureau" (your tax money at work?) or even "Omidyar Network." It is very insightful to see so many players there and investigate their background too. Also worth noting, one of those involved in Tor development who also had access to some NSA files, Jacob Appelbaum, also wrote about what was being logged about the users of privacy tools, Tor included: http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html "Among the NSA's targets is the Tor network funded primarily by the US government to aid democracy advocates in authoritarian states."
lazyjones 11y ago
This is widely known. What I find more suspicious is the fact that Tor still partly uses obsolete crypto (RSA-1024) that may specifically be open to attacks from governments. This was discussed in 2013 and apparently not fixed ("no time"...). Normally, such a situation would have devs hurrying to fix the issue immediately, as it makes the whole project potentially useless for a particularly important use case (evasion of government censorship/repression).
- 11y ago