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Tor is an anonymizer. Why would embassies use an anonymizer for communicating back home? Everyone knows they’ll be communicating with home. There’s no point in

Tor is an anonymizer. Why would embassies use an anonymizer for communicating back home? Everyone knows they’ll be communicating with home. There’s no point in hiding that. What you want to hide is the content of that communication, which Tor doesn’t do very well. You do that with standard encryption tools.

dontbenebby 7y ago
Because if you don't know where traffic is going or coming from it's harder to infer what the message is about.
- quonn 7y ago
  You properly encrypt it and regularly send data (like in a VPN). Done.
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    So you're claiming that using a VPN makes correlation attacks impossible? Do you have any sources on this? I'd love to read up to better understand your thinking.
    - theamk 7y ago
      Correlation attacks are attacing anonymity. If you are an embassy, there is no need for anonymity. Ok, an embassy connected to vpn.whitehouse.gov and sent 20 gb of data, so what? (unless you are thinking about high level things, like "lots of traffic" -> "something going on", but tor won't help with that either)
      - dontbenebby 7y ago
        >unless you are thinking about high level things, like "lots of traffic" -> "something going on", but tor won't help with that either But is an embassy always only "phoning home"?
        ermir 7y ago
        Yes, it's good practice for an embassy to use a VPN to their home country for 100% of incoming and outgoing traffic (at least that's how I would do it).
        theamk 7y ago
        Yes, if you are an embassy, you can be pretty sure that the host country is watching all of your traffic very carefully. Having all the traffic go via VPN is just sanity. (and for really secure stuff you will want a channel with constant rate, constant size packets, as others said)
      - deathanatos 7y ago
        I feel like if I were a network operator for something that sensitive I might send some bursts of traffic to nothing just to keep anyone trying to infer "lots of traffic" → "something going on" on their toes. (Though certainly things like packet timing, packet size, etc. might make more thorough analyses harder to escape…)
        astrange 7y ago
        A highly secure connection either uses a fixed-bandwidth pipe or constantly sends random data to avoid correlation like this.
        420codebro 7y ago
        Correct. Inside the NSA-bubble this is typically referred to as Link Masking. Extremely inefficient (you are broadcasting a CBR of X bits per second regardless of activity) - but pretty much makes it immune to frequency analysis.
        bigiain 7y ago
        I'm now imagining a significant portion of some small country in politically sensitive area's external internet bandwidth being composed entirely of vpn encrypted email with attached Word docs and Powerpoint decks full of "This page left intentionally blank" sent from embassies back to their respective motherships...
- mikeash 7y ago
  It’s not hard to infer that traffic from an embassy is probably going to their home country.

dontbenebby 7y ago

Because if you don't know where traffic is going or coming from it's harder to infer what the message is about.

quonn 7y ago
You properly encrypt it and regularly send data (like in a VPN). Done.
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  So you're claiming that using a VPN makes correlation attacks impossible? Do you have any sources on this? I'd love to read up to better understand your thinking.
  - theamk 7y ago
    Correlation attacks are attacing anonymity. If you are an embassy, there is no need for anonymity. Ok, an embassy connected to vpn.whitehouse.gov and sent 20 gb of data, so what? (unless you are thinking about high level things, like "lots of traffic" -> "something going on", but tor won't help with that either)
    - dontbenebby 7y ago
      >unless you are thinking about high level things, like "lots of traffic" -> "something going on", but tor won't help with that either But is an embassy always only "phoning home"?
      - ermir 7y ago
        Yes, it's good practice for an embassy to use a VPN to their home country for 100% of incoming and outgoing traffic (at least that's how I would do it).
      - theamk 7y ago
        Yes, if you are an embassy, you can be pretty sure that the host country is watching all of your traffic very carefully. Having all the traffic go via VPN is just sanity. (and for really secure stuff you will want a channel with constant rate, constant size packets, as others said)
    - deathanatos 7y ago
      I feel like if I were a network operator for something that sensitive I might send some bursts of traffic to nothing just to keep anyone trying to infer "lots of traffic" → "something going on" on their toes. (Though certainly things like packet timing, packet size, etc. might make more thorough analyses harder to escape…)
      - astrange 7y ago
        A highly secure connection either uses a fixed-bandwidth pipe or constantly sends random data to avoid correlation like this.
        420codebro 7y ago
        Correct. Inside the NSA-bubble this is typically referred to as Link Masking. Extremely inefficient (you are broadcasting a CBR of X bits per second regardless of activity) - but pretty much makes it immune to frequency analysis.
      - bigiain 7y ago
        I'm now imagining a significant portion of some small country in politically sensitive area's external internet bandwidth being composed entirely of vpn encrypted email with attached Word docs and Powerpoint decks full of "This page left intentionally blank" sent from embassies back to their respective motherships...
mikeash 7y ago
It’s not hard to infer that traffic from an embassy is probably going to their home country.