4 ms·

I mean there are a lot of resources but they are at a very high level. I don't think much has changed. The basic idea is that with Tor, you make HTTPS connecti

I mean there are a lot of resources but they are at a very high level. I don't think much has changed. The basic idea is that with Tor, you make HTTPS connections to the "tor relay", a network of volunteers who route your traffic around the world to make it hard to track. You can use Tor in two ways: you can join the relay network and route traffic for others, or you can just use the browser and make queries. If you do decide to join the relay network you have an additional decision about whether you will be an "exit node", one that does the final request to the destination website and thus appears to be the initiator of the request. This is an option because it can be difficult on home internet setups: if someone uses your exit node to post a lot of stupid crap to Reddit and Reddit tries to IP-ban them, then you are suddenly IP-banned from Reddit at home, because you ran the exit node. If you are just a user then the only thing you need to know is that there is a price for your privacy, which is that routing your traffic all the way around the world takes a little more time than sending it straight to you, and this has two effects -- a latency jump which exists basically no matter how big the network gets, and a slowdown in your bandwidth which depends on how big the network is relative to the number of people trying to browse with it.

zodiakzz 6y ago
How is malicious interference by exit nodes prevented for plaint-text HTTP requests?
- mrlala 6y ago
  I would have to say "it's not".. anything non-encrypted you risk being manipulated by a node of the TOR network. I bet there are people who act as relays just to try to sniff out any good non-HTTPS traffic.. although, I suppose generally anyone using TOR is mostly aware of this so there's probably not that much to gain. Complete side note.. but this just reminds me of back when I was in college in the late 90s, and our entire apartment buildings traffic was a hub (not a switch).. so I had a packet sniffer running for fun on linux and could see everything from everyones internet since every single packet was rounting to every machine on the network, and lots of stuff had no encryption... nuts to think how open stuff was back in the day.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    Pretty sure some switches (to this day) can be tricked into doing similar. eg send them a few specially crafted packets, and they fall back into broadcasting ~everything like a hub for some period of time. Not from the point of view of "legal intercept" stuff, more like "switch gets confused and doesn't know how to route, so broadcasts as a workaround".
- freemint 6y ago
  It can't be prevented on a technological level. However there are attempts to detect bad nodes and ban them. Since the exit node doesn't know "who" is accessing the website it can't just temper with your content. So it would be detected asymptomatically.
- alkyl 6y ago
  A subset of relay operators & other volunteers monitor the network for bad actors and report them to Tor Project who will then direct directory authority operators to blacklist those relays. One of those volunteers is nusenu: https://medium.com/@nusenu/the-growing-problem-of-malicious-relays-on-the-tor-network-2f14198af548 https://medium.com/@nusenu/the-growing-problem-of-malicious-...
implements 6y ago
> if someone uses your exit node to post a lot of stupid crap to Reddit ... I think there’s a lot more to worry about than reddit shitposts eg straight up criminal activity apparently coming from your router, and in way you’d have difficulty proving was tor and not you or your family.

zodiakzz 6y ago

How is malicious interference by exit nodes prevented for plaint-text HTTP requests?

mrlala 6y ago
I would have to say "it's not".. anything non-encrypted you risk being manipulated by a node of the TOR network. I bet there are people who act as relays just to try to sniff out any good non-HTTPS traffic.. although, I suppose generally anyone using TOR is mostly aware of this so there's probably not that much to gain. Complete side note.. but this just reminds me of back when I was in college in the late 90s, and our entire apartment buildings traffic was a hub (not a switch).. so I had a packet sniffer running for fun on linux and could see everything from everyones internet since every single packet was rounting to every machine on the network, and lots of stuff had no encryption... nuts to think how open stuff was back in the day.
- justinclift 6y ago
  Pretty sure some switches (to this day) can be tricked into doing similar. eg send them a few specially crafted packets, and they fall back into broadcasting ~everything like a hub for some period of time. Not from the point of view of "legal intercept" stuff, more like "switch gets confused and doesn't know how to route, so broadcasts as a workaround".
freemint 6y ago
It can't be prevented on a technological level. However there are attempts to detect bad nodes and ban them. Since the exit node doesn't know "who" is accessing the website it can't just temper with your content. So it would be detected asymptomatically.
alkyl 6y ago
A subset of relay operators & other volunteers monitor the network for bad actors and report them to Tor Project who will then direct directory authority operators to blacklist those relays. One of those volunteers is nusenu: https://medium.com/@nusenu/the-growing-problem-of-malicious-relays-on-the-tor-network-2f14198af548 https://medium.com/@nusenu/the-growing-problem-of-malicious-...

implements 6y ago

> if someone uses your exit node to post a lot of stupid crap to Reddit ... I think there’s a lot more to worry about than reddit shitposts eg straight up criminal activity apparently coming from your router, and in way you’d have difficulty proving was tor and not you or your family.