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Hasn't it always been perfectly clear that ~all Tor exit nodes are owned by intelligence agencies? You only need a relatively small fraction of the exit nodes

Hasn't it always been perfectly clear that ~all Tor exit nodes are owned by intelligence agencies? You only need a relatively small fraction of the exit nodes to pwn the entire system.

sp332 13y ago
It's possible, but so far there's no substantial evidence that it's true. And people have been watching out for it.
- arkades 13y ago
  Why? I mean, insofar as they've already said "encryption makes you suspect", I'd imagine they'd want to break TOR wide open. So if they haven't, I presume it's because of technical difficulty. What's stopping them from doing so, if they haven't?
  - sp332 13y ago
    It's not just technical difficulty. It's that people are watching them, and they don't want to get caught doing it.
  - wfn 13y ago
    It's more complicated than that. As of now, the major part of Tor's funding (still) comes from multiple sections of the US government. Nobody likes that, and this is being discussed. (e.g. [1]) The overall relationship between USG (which is, really, a society of different sections, this should not be forgotten) and the Tor project is complex and, I should say, schizophrenic. The initial motivation for developing Tor (while it was being conceived in the US Naval Research lab) as a civilian project was clear (need lots of civilian nodes and civilian traffic to drown out the spies' / army employees / whoever's traffic.) What is happening right now I don't really understand, but would like to, very much. [1]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2013SummerDevMeeting/Fundraising https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2...
    - ippisl 13y ago
      I wonder if it is used as a pressure release valve for anonymity software developers. That way they focus their efforts on tor, which might be more amenable to USG exploits, than other anonymity networks. One relevant data point:the author of mixminion remailer is working for the tor project,probably killing mixminion(a far more secure anonymizer). Another relevant data point(for a similar strategy): Most of the research on JPEG steganography is done on grayscale images, which is mostly useless since mostly nobody sends grayscale images. Alot of What's done on color images is being done in places like iran, china and india(?).
      - wfn 13y ago
        > One relevant data point:the author of mixminion remailer is working for the tor project,probably killing mixminion(a far more secure anonymizer). Do you mean Nick Mathewson or Roger Dingledine? Both are working for Tor now, as a matter of fact Roger was one of the core founders of Tor, and both of them co-founded the Tor Project as a nonprofit (though not sure of details). For what it's worth (ahem, 0%), I believe both of them have very high ethical standards and are great people; I've only physically met them in passing so far, but insofar as I can trust an individual person, I do trust they do not have any secondary ulterior motives. > probably killing mixminion(a far more secure anonymizer). I'm not sure of details here, either. Both of them view Tor as, ultimately, a compromise between usability and security. This was a deliberate choice. Tor webpage makes it clear that Tor is not an ultimate ends to anonymity and privacy. I do agree that Mixminion, assuming other factors are kept to be invariant, is more secure. However, if only very few people were to use it, that would make it much less secure (as I'm sure you understand); etc. etc. > Another relevant data point(for a similar strategy): Most of the research on JPEG steganography is done on grayscale images, which is mostly useless since mostly nobody sends grayscale images. Alot of What's done on color images is being done in places like iran, china and india(?). I've heard about this - if this proves to indeed be the case, then yeah, kind of lol (in a sad way.) :( > I wonder if it is used as a pressure release valve for anonymity software developers. That way they focus their efforts on tor, which might be more amenable to USG exploits, than other anonymity networks. But this is an interesting point, I've thought of it as well. It could be that this is happening semi-organically, in a kind of emergent manner. This sounds magic-boxy, but: just as the mind is not a uniform machine, a government structure is not uniform, either; both, however, appear to produce semi-coherent (to an extent) behaviour that makes sense. Sorry for this rambling sentence, but the "top-down vs bottom-up" conspiracy question is an interesting one, and I don't know of ways to communicate it in a rigorous way. But, again, the pressure valve idea is an interesting one for sure.
autodidakto 13y ago
No and no.
weinzierl 13y ago
I attended a talk of Roger Dingledine und Jacob Appelbaum two weeks ago and during Q and A the topic of compromised exit nodes came up. If I understood Jacob Appelbaum correctly he said that he didn't believe most exit nodes are owned by intelligence agencies. His reasoning was it was not needed, because they could use the data from comprehensive wire-taps for much the same effect. He also said, that if they are already after you, Tor is not going to help you. I'm not an expert in Tor and I attended the talk tired and after a hard days work, so I might have completely misunderstood him.
- griffordson 13y ago
  Was it this talk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUyuFH9CbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUyuFH9CbI
nrp 13y ago
It's not meaningful in this case. When accessing hidden services on onion, you never hit an exit node.
stephen_g 13y ago
This is incorrect. You need more than a third of all Tor nodes to be able to have a decent probability of working out which user originated which requests. Just running or observing the exit node is not enough (the exit node has no idea of who originated the traffic). Either that, or you have to be able to observe the traffic from most/all exit nodes as well as observe all the traffic coming from a user's Internet connection to be able to correlate with some probability what sites that user is visiting through Tor. Given any random person in any country can run a Tor node (exit or non-exit), both are quite difficult.
- gcb0 13y ago
  > more than a third That would be pretty trivial at the current state. Maybe that why they acted now?

Hasn't it always been perfectly clear that ~all Tor exit nodes are owned by intelligence agencies? You only need a relatively small fraction of the exit nodes to pwn the entire system.

sp332 13y ago

It's possible, but so far there's no substantial evidence that it's true. And people have been watching out for it.

arkades 13y ago
Why? I mean, insofar as they've already said "encryption makes you suspect", I'd imagine they'd want to break TOR wide open. So if they haven't, I presume it's because of technical difficulty. What's stopping them from doing so, if they haven't?
- sp332 13y ago
  It's not just technical difficulty. It's that people are watching them, and they don't want to get caught doing it.
- wfn 13y ago
  It's more complicated than that. As of now, the major part of Tor's funding (still) comes from multiple sections of the US government. Nobody likes that, and this is being discussed. (e.g. [1]) The overall relationship between USG (which is, really, a society of different sections, this should not be forgotten) and the Tor project is complex and, I should say, schizophrenic. The initial motivation for developing Tor (while it was being conceived in the US Naval Research lab) as a civilian project was clear (need lots of civilian nodes and civilian traffic to drown out the spies' / army employees / whoever's traffic.) What is happening right now I don't really understand, but would like to, very much. [1]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2013SummerDevMeeting/Fundraising https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2...
  - ippisl 13y ago
    I wonder if it is used as a pressure release valve for anonymity software developers. That way they focus their efforts on tor, which might be more amenable to USG exploits, than other anonymity networks. One relevant data point:the author of mixminion remailer is working for the tor project,probably killing mixminion(a far more secure anonymizer). Another relevant data point(for a similar strategy): Most of the research on JPEG steganography is done on grayscale images, which is mostly useless since mostly nobody sends grayscale images. Alot of What's done on color images is being done in places like iran, china and india(?).
    - wfn 13y ago
      > One relevant data point:the author of mixminion remailer is working for the tor project,probably killing mixminion(a far more secure anonymizer). Do you mean Nick Mathewson or Roger Dingledine? Both are working for Tor now, as a matter of fact Roger was one of the core founders of Tor, and both of them co-founded the Tor Project as a nonprofit (though not sure of details). For what it's worth (ahem, 0%), I believe both of them have very high ethical standards and are great people; I've only physically met them in passing so far, but insofar as I can trust an individual person, I do trust they do not have any secondary ulterior motives. > probably killing mixminion(a far more secure anonymizer). I'm not sure of details here, either. Both of them view Tor as, ultimately, a compromise between usability and security. This was a deliberate choice. Tor webpage makes it clear that Tor is not an ultimate ends to anonymity and privacy. I do agree that Mixminion, assuming other factors are kept to be invariant, is more secure. However, if only very few people were to use it, that would make it much less secure (as I'm sure you understand); etc. etc. > Another relevant data point(for a similar strategy): Most of the research on JPEG steganography is done on grayscale images, which is mostly useless since mostly nobody sends grayscale images. Alot of What's done on color images is being done in places like iran, china and india(?). I've heard about this - if this proves to indeed be the case, then yeah, kind of lol (in a sad way.) :( > I wonder if it is used as a pressure release valve for anonymity software developers. That way they focus their efforts on tor, which might be more amenable to USG exploits, than other anonymity networks. But this is an interesting point, I've thought of it as well. It could be that this is happening semi-organically, in a kind of emergent manner. This sounds magic-boxy, but: just as the mind is not a uniform machine, a government structure is not uniform, either; both, however, appear to produce semi-coherent (to an extent) behaviour that makes sense. Sorry for this rambling sentence, but the "top-down vs bottom-up" conspiracy question is an interesting one, and I don't know of ways to communicate it in a rigorous way. But, again, the pressure valve idea is an interesting one for sure.

autodidakto 13y ago

No and no.

weinzierl 13y ago

I attended a talk of Roger Dingledine und Jacob Appelbaum two weeks ago and during Q and A the topic of compromised exit nodes came up. If I understood Jacob Appelbaum correctly he said that he didn't believe most exit nodes are owned by intelligence agencies. His reasoning was it was not needed, because they could use the data from comprehensive wire-taps for much the same effect. He also said, that if they are already after you, Tor is not going to help you. I'm not an expert in Tor and I attended the talk tired and after a hard days work, so I might have completely misunderstood him.

griffordson 13y ago
Was it this talk? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUyuFH9CbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUyuFH9CbI

nrp 13y ago

It's not meaningful in this case. When accessing hidden services on onion, you never hit an exit node.

stephen_g 13y ago

This is incorrect. You need more than a third of all Tor nodes to be able to have a decent probability of working out which user originated which requests. Just running or observing the exit node is not enough (the exit node has no idea of who originated the traffic). Either that, or you have to be able to observe the traffic from most/all exit nodes as well as observe all the traffic coming from a user's Internet connection to be able to correlate with some probability what sites that user is visiting through Tor. Given any random person in any country can run a Tor node (exit or non-exit), both are quite difficult.

gcb0 13y ago
> more than a third That would be pretty trivial at the current state. Maybe that why they acted now?