5 ms·

Well done and thank you to all involved. You are making a real difference on the side of democracy, human rights and the values of the free world at an uncertai

Well done and thank you to all involved. You are making a real difference on the side of democracy, human rights and the values of the free world at an uncertain time when so much is under threat.

iamnotarobotman 5y ago
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  You can't prevent criminals from using math to conceal their activities (they can just use other solutions), you can just prevent law abiding citizens from having privacy.
- ajconway 5y ago
  Not really. TOR is specifically not safe against a global passive observer, which the (supposedly) good guys are.
  - andai 5y ago
    I've been wondering about this. Afaik Ross Ulbricht was caught due to shitty opsec. Was that a case of the NSA having that capability and not sharing it with the FBI?
    - gzer0 5y ago
      Ulbricht was first connected to "Dread Pirate Roberts" by Gary Alford, an Internal Revenue Service investigator working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013.The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest
      - RedComet 5y ago
        Yes, we've all heard that. The question is whether it was actually an instance of "parallel construction".
- bavell 5y ago
  You might've heard about this thing called the internet that does the same thing. Perhaps we should ban it too since rich people and bad guys use it?
  - iamnotarobotman 5y ago
    You also might have heard about this saying which goes by: 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' and it goes both ways. At least I happen to recognize that, unlike the grandparent comment. But where did I exactly say 'ban' it?
    - bavell 5y ago
      So you're saying a tor rewrite in rust is the road to hell then? Or that tor itself is the road to hell? Either way, your same argument can be made against the whole internet which should demonstrate how silly it is.
      - iamnotarobotman 5y ago
        > Either way, your same argument can be made against the whole internet which should demonstrate how silly it is. Not really. I recognize that the same criminals can also use the wider internet too, however there are central authorities and regulators in different countries that have laws that regulate the internet in the countries that they are in and these criminals will be caught very quickly if they tried. The difference is that Tor only makes it more harder to trace, hence the appeal to criminals, extremists and terrorists to use it for their illegal activities which that is its unintended use case after promising 'privacy' and 'anonymity' for 'everyone'. So yes, that is it's 'decentralised' road to hell indeed.
        sodality2 5y ago
        You could have said the same thing circa 30 years ago regarding the internet versus phone calls and letters.
- WesternWind 5y ago
  Most people using tor aren't terrorists, oligarchs, extremists or career criminals though.
  - iamnotarobotman 5y ago
    Have you finally cracked the Tor network yet to find and trace all those Nazis, extremists, hitmen and terrorists that are still hiding there to make that unfounded claim?
    - justinclift 5y ago
      Seems to be exactly as unfounded as yours, yes?
      - iamnotarobotman 5y ago
        Is it? There's just too many to list here, even after the shutting down of Silk Road, but these crackdowns cannot be ignored; and look what they found. Majority of criminals using it once again. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-web-tycoon-pleads-guilty-but-how-was-he-caught/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-we... [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2845616/biggest-ever-tor-raid-hits-410-underground-sites-17-arrested.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2845616/biggest-ever-t...
        nyanpasu64 5y ago
        You're moving the goalposts. The people operating darknet markets are not Nazis, extremists, and generally not hitmen and terrorists. I have heard that many onion services host child sexual abuse imagery though, but I've never looked for reliable citations or personally verified.
        iamnotarobotman 5y ago
        > You're moving the goalposts. Am I? Or didn't I just say 'There's just too many to list here' and just listed the notable examples. > The people operating darknet markets are not Nazis, extremists, and generally not hitmen and terrorists. So who operated those Tor nodes and services of multiple darknet websites in [0] and [1]? Another cybercriminal. > I've never looked for reliable citations or personally verified. Talking about 'movings goal posts' and missing the whole 'anonymity' point of Tor. Only time will tell, but so far a great use case for criminals, extremists and terrorists using it. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/how-anonymous-tor-users-compromised-child-porn-takedown-6c10848680 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/how-anonymous-tor-users-co... [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-web-tycoon-pleads-guilty-but-how-was-he-caught/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-we...
kekebo 5y ago
Towards the flagged sibling comment about the tor network providing a hiding place for illegal activities and terrorism: While it's non-trivial to inspect many aspects of tor traffic, an often used study metric has been the (determinable) percentage of connections to hidden services, which are usually assumed to be disproportionately malicious. This ranges around ~5% across most studies, the most recent one I can find shows similar results[0]. Results are limited by the inability to account for lawful use of hidden services, but also the percentage of malicious use outside of them. [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2011893117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2011893117
- krageon 5y ago
  > which are usually assumed to be disproportionately malicious. Why is this assumed?
- judge2020 5y ago
  It's easier to account for the quantity of malicious use of Tor towards non-hidden internet websites > Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/
  - psychlops 5y ago
    For comparison, I'm curious what the percentage is excluding Tor.
  - bilkow 5y ago
    > Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. I'm skeptical about their metrics. If I try to access a cloudfare protected site and never manage to finish the infinite captcha look or just change my mind after seeing the captcha, do they consider it a successful block? Even if we think they have some magic way of actually knowing whether all requests are malicious or not: > That doesn’t mean they are visiting controversial content, but instead that they are automated requests designed to harm our customers. A large percentage of the comment spam, vulnerability scanning, ad click fraud, content scraping, and login scanning comes via the Tor network. Personally I don't think content scraping and vulnerability scanning are "malicious per se", by that metric even Google (and every other search engine) would be malicious.

Well done and thank you to all involved. You are making a real difference on the side of democracy, human rights and the values of the free world at an uncertain time when so much is under threat.

iamnotarobotman 5y ago

jokethrowaway 5y ago
You can't prevent criminals from using math to conceal their activities (they can just use other solutions), you can just prevent law abiding citizens from having privacy.
ajconway 5y ago
Not really. TOR is specifically not safe against a global passive observer, which the (supposedly) good guys are.
- andai 5y ago
  I've been wondering about this. Afaik Ross Ulbricht was caught due to shitty opsec. Was that a case of the NSA having that capability and not sharing it with the FBI?
  - gzer0 5y ago
    Ulbricht was first connected to "Dread Pirate Roberts" by Gary Alford, an Internal Revenue Service investigator working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on the Silk Road case, in mid-2013.The connection was made by linking the username "altoid", used during Silk Road's early days to announce the website, and a forum post in which Ulbricht, posting under the nickname "altoid", asked for programming help and gave his email address, which contained his full name. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Arrest
    - RedComet 5y ago
      Yes, we've all heard that. The question is whether it was actually an instance of "parallel construction".
bavell 5y ago
You might've heard about this thing called the internet that does the same thing. Perhaps we should ban it too since rich people and bad guys use it?
- iamnotarobotman 5y ago
  You also might have heard about this saying which goes by: 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' and it goes both ways. At least I happen to recognize that, unlike the grandparent comment. But where did I exactly say 'ban' it?
  - bavell 5y ago
    So you're saying a tor rewrite in rust is the road to hell then? Or that tor itself is the road to hell? Either way, your same argument can be made against the whole internet which should demonstrate how silly it is.
    - iamnotarobotman 5y ago
      > Either way, your same argument can be made against the whole internet which should demonstrate how silly it is. Not really. I recognize that the same criminals can also use the wider internet too, however there are central authorities and regulators in different countries that have laws that regulate the internet in the countries that they are in and these criminals will be caught very quickly if they tried. The difference is that Tor only makes it more harder to trace, hence the appeal to criminals, extremists and terrorists to use it for their illegal activities which that is its unintended use case after promising 'privacy' and 'anonymity' for 'everyone'. So yes, that is it's 'decentralised' road to hell indeed.
      - sodality2 5y ago
        You could have said the same thing circa 30 years ago regarding the internet versus phone calls and letters.
WesternWind 5y ago
Most people using tor aren't terrorists, oligarchs, extremists or career criminals though.
- iamnotarobotman 5y ago
  Have you finally cracked the Tor network yet to find and trace all those Nazis, extremists, hitmen and terrorists that are still hiding there to make that unfounded claim?
  - justinclift 5y ago
    Seems to be exactly as unfounded as yours, yes?
    - iamnotarobotman 5y ago
      Is it? There's just too many to list here, even after the shutting down of Silk Road, but these crackdowns cannot be ignored; and look what they found. Majority of criminals using it once again. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-web-tycoon-pleads-guilty-but-how-was-he-caught/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-we... [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2845616/biggest-ever-tor-raid-hits-410-underground-sites-17-arrested.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2845616/biggest-ever-t...
      - nyanpasu64 5y ago
        You're moving the goalposts. The people operating darknet markets are not Nazis, extremists, and generally not hitmen and terrorists. I have heard that many onion services host child sexual abuse imagery though, but I've never looked for reliable citations or personally verified.
        iamnotarobotman 5y ago
        > You're moving the goalposts. Am I? Or didn't I just say 'There's just too many to list here' and just listed the notable examples. > The people operating darknet markets are not Nazis, extremists, and generally not hitmen and terrorists. So who operated those Tor nodes and services of multiple darknet websites in [0] and [1]? Another cybercriminal. > I've never looked for reliable citations or personally verified. Talking about 'movings goal posts' and missing the whole 'anonymity' point of Tor. Only time will tell, but so far a great use case for criminals, extremists and terrorists using it. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/how-anonymous-tor-users-compromised-child-porn-takedown-6c10848680 https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/how-anonymous-tor-users-co... [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-web-tycoon-pleads-guilty-but-how-was-he-caught/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/08/349016/a-dark-we...

kekebo 5y ago

Towards the flagged sibling comment about the tor network providing a hiding place for illegal activities and terrorism: While it's non-trivial to inspect many aspects of tor traffic, an often used study metric has been the (determinable) percentage of connections to hidden services, which are usually assumed to be disproportionately malicious. This ranges around ~5% across most studies, the most recent one I can find shows similar results[0]. Results are limited by the inability to account for lawful use of hidden services, but also the percentage of malicious use outside of them. [0] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2011893117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2011893117

krageon 5y ago
> which are usually assumed to be disproportionately malicious. Why is this assumed?
judge2020 5y ago
It's easier to account for the quantity of malicious use of Tor towards non-hidden internet websites > Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-trouble-with-tor/
- psychlops 5y ago
  For comparison, I'm curious what the percentage is excluding Tor.
- bilkow 5y ago
  > Based on data across the CloudFlare network, 94% of requests that we see across the Tor network are per se malicious. I'm skeptical about their metrics. If I try to access a cloudfare protected site and never manage to finish the infinite captcha look or just change my mind after seeing the captcha, do they consider it a successful block? Even if we think they have some magic way of actually knowing whether all requests are malicious or not: > That doesn’t mean they are visiting controversial content, but instead that they are automated requests designed to harm our customers. A large percentage of the comment spam, vulnerability scanning, ad click fraud, content scraping, and login scanning comes via the Tor network. Personally I don't think content scraping and vulnerability scanning are "malicious per se", by that metric even Google (and every other search engine) would be malicious.