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I doubt it's either of those - it would be extremely unethical and illegal for academics to do, and governments don't need to take this approach because they ha
by Blahah 3y ago
I doubt it's either of those - it would be extremely unethical and illegal for academics to do, and governments don't need to take this approach because they have a bunch of systemic attacks that are less obvious. Perhaps someone with a botnet looking to sell unmasking, which has been popping up as a service recently. Or trying to use it against a specific DWM or vendor.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago> it would be extremely unethical and illegal for academics to do Nothing illegal about it.
- carstenhag 3y agoHugely depends on the country. Don't assume the law you know, to apply here
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoCan you give just one example of a country with a law making it illegal for academics conducting research to attempt to demask tor users?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deely3 3y agoEU? Basically researchers tries to get PII from people connected to Tor without consent of these people.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoThat's an interesting argument. Not sure it would hold up. I don't think an IP alone counts as PII, since the ISP would have to be queried to actually get any contact info.
- thissitesucks__ 3y ago[dead]
- addandsubtract 3y agoIP addresses are PII under GDPR.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoNot by themselves, surely? Even so, GDPR has research exemptions which would protect the academics doing research in the example being discussed.
- MacsHeadroom 3y agoOnly of they are connected to a short list of more sensitive PII, of which "tor user" is not one. IP logs are fully legal in the UE under GDPR and Tor deanonymization is just an IP log of connected users. Also there is already plenty of research of this type out of the EU. It's quite common in infosec.
- Blahah 3y agoThere is, because it's a botnet
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoThat would likely make researching and demasking the entities involved explicitly legal.
- Blahah 3y agoMy claim is that researchers are unlikely to be operating the botnet
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI don't think anyone claimed or implied otherwise?
- Blahah 3y agoThe original comment raised the possibility that researchers or the government were responsible for the 2m new tor users
- flangola7 3y agoWhat is unmasking? What does it have to do with a botnet
- Grimburger 3y agoMentioned it because there's been many papers which specifically used the live network to do such a thing already. Some researchers have spun up large numbers of relays in the past to conduct their work. I personally don't see how it's unethical for either academics or governments to do this? Both have an interest in breaking tor, even when in the governments case where they both utilise it and want to know who else is using it. The tor people themselves acknowledge the work in their blogs https://blog.torproject.org/research-problem-measuring-safety-tor-network/ https://blog.torproject.org/research-problem-measuring-safet... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314521450_Characterization_of_Tor_Traffic_using_Time_based_Features https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314521450_Character...