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A couple of days ago I read that 'As of 2012, 80% of the Tor Project's $2M annual budget comes from the United States government.' http://online.wsj.com/articl

by teeja 13y ago

A couple of days ago I read that 'As of 2012, 80% of the Tor Project's $2M annual budget comes from the United States government.' http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324677204578185382377144280.html?mod=googlenews_wsj http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732467720457818... That might be another reason that TOR isn't safe. You don't ever know who any of the other servers belong to ... and the staff at the Exit Node can (and has) read anything. I wouldn't bet my life on software 'originally sponsored by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory'.

hnha 13y ago
you can simply run a node yourself and make your client use it.
tekromancr 13y ago
So that they could conduct cyberwarfare ops and maintain deniability. Math is math. All of the cards are on the table, the code is entirely open. The protocol is designed in such a way that any of the in-transit nodes know fuckall about the messages source, destination, or content. There is no "the" exit node, anyone can operate one. Not to mention that there is nothing stopping you from encrypting the data going into the network in the first place. And If you think for a second that the military has some magical insight into information-theory that allowed them to hide a backdoor in a god damn protocol spec, then shit, they can probably factor large primes too, in which case modern crypto is broken.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  >There is no "the" exit node, anyone can operate one. From what I understand an awful lot of them are run by the US government.
  - tekromancr 13y ago
    There is one way to fix that, but it involves you having to explain why your IP address has been accessing CP honeypots.
dredmorbius 13y ago
The State Department has had a strong interest in enabling communications particularly from dissidents in various countries (China, Arabian states, possibly others). I'm aware of some projects they've backed or considered. I'm also aware that State is frequently a cover for intelligence operations. And that there's been a fair bit of cooperation between various intelligence organizations and Free Software projects (Salon's got a long piece on Hadoop up at the moment).

by teeja 13y ago

hnha 13y ago

you can simply run a node yourself and make your client use it.

tekromancr 13y ago

So that they could conduct cyberwarfare ops and maintain deniability. Math is math. All of the cards are on the table, the code is entirely open. The protocol is designed in such a way that any of the in-transit nodes know fuckall about the messages source, destination, or content. There is no "the" exit node, anyone can operate one. Not to mention that there is nothing stopping you from encrypting the data going into the network in the first place. And If you think for a second that the military has some magical insight into information-theory that allowed them to hide a backdoor in a god damn protocol spec, then shit, they can probably factor large primes too, in which case modern crypto is broken.

crdoconnor 13y ago
>There is no "the" exit node, anyone can operate one. From what I understand an awful lot of them are run by the US government.
- tekromancr 13y ago
  There is one way to fix that, but it involves you having to explain why your IP address has been accessing CP honeypots.

dredmorbius 13y ago

The State Department has had a strong interest in enabling communications particularly from dissidents in various countries (China, Arabian states, possibly others). I'm aware of some projects they've backed or considered. I'm also aware that State is frequently a cover for intelligence operations. And that there's been a fair bit of cooperation between various intelligence organizations and Free Software projects (Salon's got a long piece on Hadoop up at the moment).