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After reading the Times article, I don't see how TOR would be affected. Tor ensures Annonimity not Privacy. Tor just obfuscates who you are talking to, not what
by pilom 16y ago
After reading the Times article, I don't see how TOR would be affected. Tor ensures Annonimity not Privacy. Tor just obfuscates who you are talking to, not what you are saying. A warrant to your ISP will get everything you say over TOR (assuming you aren't then encapsulating inside one of the other encryption mechanisms listed).
- kgo 16y agoWrong. Tor encrypts the channel from point to point. ISP doesn't know what you're saying.
- sorbus 16y agoData passed between TOR nodes is encrypted. It should be painfully obvious that this encryption is essential for TOR to function properly.
- bincat 16y agoCorrect me if I am wrong but I think all communication between the TOR nodes is encrypted. So if you run a node locally (as you should) nothing is revealed. However if you just configure your browser's proxy settings to use outside node all bets are off. Everything should be encrypted from entry node to exit node.
- jdavid 16y agoIt depends on how many nodes the listener has ownership of. Just as a point, the Military started TOR. So how many TOR nodes do they have? At DEFCON I have seen several man in the middle attacks on TOR, the most successful of which required only 50% of the nodes.
- uxp 16y agoIf you own and operate a node of which someone is using to route their packets through, you can effectively listen in on that communications. TOR does encrypt its communication between nodes, but it is decrypted, inspected, then encrypted in order to pass through a node, so any packet on a node is for a moment, unencrypted, if the original communication did not have any secondary encryption applied to it.
- bincat 16y agoI am not sure it works like this. You can only listen on communication if you are the first node (you will know the contents, where traffic comes from and the destination) or the last node (you will know the contents and the destination but not the source). And onion routing should mean that encryption layers are peeled off as communication travels through the nodes. https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-design.html https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/design-paper/tor-des...
- zargon 16y agoYou are correct about the last node. But the first node knows neither the contents nor the destination.
- samdk 16y agoThis is partially true, but this (and other replies) are all somewhat wrong/light on actual information. You're correct in saying that Tor assures anonymity and not privacy: if you don't want other people to know what you're sending over Tor, it needs to be encrypted separately, because the communication between the Tor exit node you're using and the computer you're communicating with is unencrypted. However, Tor still relies on encryption in order to provide anonymity, and messages are still encrypted when you first send them out (whether or not you're running a Tor router yourself). Tor does onion encryption: when you send out a message, that message is wrapped in three layers of encryption. The first router you send it through can take off the outer layer to see who it send it to next, the second router you send it through can take off the second layer, and the third (exit) router you send it through can take off the final layer of encryption and see the actual message you sent (and where you want it sent). This encryption is very important, because it assures that each router can only see its immediate neighbors in the chain. If the encryption is broken, then whoever breaks it can see the entire circuit the message is traveling along (which will include the source and destination) and so anonymity is compromised.