Comments on: High-Traffic Colluding Tor Routers in Washington, D.C., and the Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity

By: cryingfreeman

cryingfreeman — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:28:46 +0000

This missive and thread remains the best and most important article I’ve yet seen on the web on this subject.

By: BlueTone

BlueTone — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:15:17 +0000

The very Great thing here is what am I paying the congressmen that are suppose to be safe guarding my rights for? How should I feel about this? I like respect all around.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:57:35 +0000

I haven’t actually heard of any of those Evil Terrorist-Support Child-Pornography-Making Software-Pirating Communist Freedom-Hating Scum being caught on Tor, so I’d have to say it’s pretty secure. Would I trust it to keep /me/ safe from an attack on /me/ (not the network, but /me/ specifically) from the NSA? No. But, I wouldn’t trust a tank for that, so, I still think it’s OK.

By: switch

switch — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:13:56 +0000

the so called “neutral” Swiss were just collaborators with the Germans in the war. This is how the Germans kept their war production machine free from attack. The Swiss tripled their gold reserve during the war ! Neutral, my ass!

By: GaveUp on Net

GaveUp on Net — Mon, 21 May 2007 03:06:15 +0000

All very interesting. Look if the superdupper guys want to read my stuff ok. I am sure they might have a chuckle and tag me as something near the idiot ref . But I just want to feel Ok about buying something online without some nasties scum ripping me off. I am so not sure anymore that I will not buy online, I really wish I could. Then there is the pn;ine sales who say oh oh we use ssl or some other thing that mean nothing to me. So the data maybe sucure in transmission but will it be stored securely and for sure the sales peeps have no clue. Damm, if the online store got their ^$&%#^*$E&IRiu right and give me some confidience rather than tring to feed me a bunch of blub blub, they could make way more sales. I am so fed up with the nasties virus etc… that I rarely bother to use email.

The Net and Web great tools and seem to have arrived at the commons crisis, online stores looking for their nickel and not caring about the security of the data.

I guess I am off topic but that is my venting 50cents.

By: dog

dog — Sun, 20 May 2007 10:51:42 +0000

It’s actually nice to see some people with lot of paranoia. To a certain degree it’s a good thing, but paranoia can kill you – if you have lost your common sense and common sense is based on knowledge and logic.
You cannot do everything just because of a unlimited budget. There are certain boundaries in technology and there are great minds out there who actually don’t work for some government, but open-source community. But maybe you don’t trust them, maybe the government is using alien technology, maybe, maybe … and endless limbus of maybe. And in the end you’re already dead, you cannot move anymore, you’re seeing spies everywhere, your whole life is a life in the matrix. Welcome to fantasia, you’re lost in your imagination, far far away from reality.

If you want to believe in an evil empire, you will actually “see it” everywhere and nobody can prove it otherwise. It’s up to you to build some common sense, try it – it’s hard. There are real dangers out there, but you do see only your very own nightmares. It’s a pity, there is lot of potential in this website.

By: ioerror

ioerror — Fri, 18 May 2007 02:49:19 +0000

// MOD

http://cryptogon.com/?p=624#comment-7467

Setting up 2 TOR servers on the same machine, I can easily understand how that could be an innocent mistake. But 30 nodes across 2 machines? Whoops, an accident? I donâ€™t buy it. Forgot about a transparent proxy? I can even envision that. Yet when a TOR developer tracked him down last year, instead of fixing the network issue, he instead killed off two thirds of his TOR servers and left the rest running? No, I donâ€™t think so.

To set up 30 TOR servers on different interfaces across two boxes takes a conscious effort, and I seriously doubt that there exists Some Dumb Guy From Dubai who knows enough about FreeBSD to set up 30 instances of TOR for â€œprivate use,â€ but doesnâ€™t know enough about ipfw or pf to properly secure them.

Thank you,
Kevin

// MOD

You’re mistaken. This was an accident and people in the Tor community actually know about this.

See this link for the emails on the Or-Talk list.

By: DaveX

DaveX — Fri, 18 May 2007 00:51:49 +0000

Who says they (and I mean ANY “they”) has to catch you doing anything wrong at all? If they want you dead/maimed/out of the picture for whatever reason, they can do it. The ultimate end to all the paranoia is a person who is willing to do anything whatsoever to get what they want, regardless of law or effort. There are more people like this in the world than you’d think. It’s best to shoot for reasonable security against opportunists, and just hope you never attract the attention of the rest in any way.

By: Mentifex

Mentifex — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:20:16 +0000

Wow!

By: America Jones

America Jones — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:34:54 +0000

Great post. I’d like to see Part 2 on how to make as much noise as possible.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 14 May 2007 12:14:15 +0000

@ Anakaine

>>>But the moral of the story, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.

I don’t know who started this silly theory, but it’s wrong. Dead wrong:

Princeton Professor, Former U.S. Marine Colonel On Terrorist Watch List for Criticizing Bush

http://cryptogon.com/?p=596

What does he have to hide?

By: Anakaine

Anakaine — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:46:24 +0000

If we were to simply omit the whole internet / geek thing for just a short moment in time, and consider the gathering of information here, I’m sure that a carrier pigeon, and a job that pays cash only is a fantastic start.

There are some old school guides available around the place if you look hard enough, written in the 60’s/70’s that still contain some excellent information for everyday anonymity. Mind you, I think they are a little ‘out there’ as far as their purpose goes.

But the moral of the story, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about. Even at corporate level, it’s quite often a trivial matter to bypass security and gain secure access to the outside world.

The government isn’t going to sit and whatch all your doings on the net, simply because they can. You, quite frankly, are a waste of resources unless you are of particular interest. If you are of interest, you should know better than to use electronic communication.

Simple concept.

Ana.

By: Nemo

Nemo — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:30:16 +0000

I can certainly understand the military not trusting TOR, but do you have any thoughts on their blocking access *from* TOR? Not playing nice with other agencies, or do they know something (they think) you and I don't?

By: doug

doug — Sun, 13 May 2007 18:55:58 +0000

My two bits of chaff are: avoid directional sensing by being totally remote from the transmitter that connects to the network. I.e. move a secondary lap top with can tenna around, and connect to that one, ideally from a random remote location.

two: Stegnography is really going to be better than crypto. My assumption is that They can crack any code you have. PGP, yeah, go ahead sure. Then the idea becomes to hide the information in something innocuous that wouldnt be searched. Lets say, in spam. Or, a series of spam messages. Also, identity spoofing/ theft would come in here, based on the good analysis above stating that you can never really be anonymous. You just make it look like someone else is doing it.

By: Jack

Jack — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:39:36 +0000

As I’ve suggested elsewhere, perhaps it’s time to start using things like the “Echelon Spoofer”:

http://echelonspoofer.com