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BeesTea
Network Janitor
Premium,VIP
join:2003-03-08
00000
| reply to novaflare
Re: Anonymnity: Introduction To The Tor Network
said by novaflare  : some one who was involved in helping to decover the meathod used to steel credit card numbers from a secured site No one was using a caching proxy to spoof https sites. It's simply not possible. You've mentioned squid, so here's a entry in their FAQ
quote:
1.12 Does Squid support SSL/HTTPS/TLS?
As of version 2.5, Squid can terminate SSL connections. This is perhaps only useful in a surrogate (http accelerator) configuration. You must run configure with --enable-ssl. See https_port in squid.conf for more information.
Squid also supports these encrypted protocols by ``tunelling'' traffic between clients and servers. In this case, Squid can relay the encrypted bits between a client and a server.
Normally, when your browser comes across an https URL, it does one of two things:
1. The browser opens an SSL connection directly to the origin server.
2. The browser tunnels the request through Squid with the CONNECT request method.
The CONNECT method is a way to tunnel any kind of connection through an HTTP proxy. The proxy doesn't understand or interpret the contents. It just passes bytes back and forth between the client and server. For the gory details on tunnelling and the CONNECT method, please see RFC 2817 and Tunneling TCP based protocols through Web proxy servers (expired).
»www.squid-cache.org/Doc/FAQ/FAQ-···l#ss1.12
Marketscore is the only group I've seen be able to intercept SSL communications enmass, and they were tricking users to install certificates into their browsers.
--
"I can't stand the package managers that come with Linux. RPM, Portage, and the rest don't even let you build from source. The ports collection was all I needed." - Some FreeBSD jackass | |
TK421
Premium
join:2004-12-19
Canada
| reply to Daniel
Hmmm...
I just came across this Secunia advisory regarding Tor. This vulnerability is now patched yet it at least proves what can be done.
Tor Cryptographic Handshake Vulnerability
Secunia Advisory: SA16424 Print Advisory
Release Date: 2005-08-19
Critical: Moderately critical
Impact: Manipulation of data
Exposure of sensitive information
Where: From remote
Solution Status: Vendor Patch
Software: Tor 0.x
Description:
Roger Dingledine has reported a vulnerability in Tor, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to disclose or modify certain sensitive information.
The vulnerability is caused due to the Tor client failing to reject certain weak keys when performing a Diffie-Hellman handshake. This can potentially be exploited by the first Tor server in the path to disclose all keys the client negotiates for the rest of the path and then read or modify all client traffic.
The vulnerability has been reported in versions 0.1.0.13 and prior.
Solution:
Update to version 0.1.0.14.
»tor.eff.org/download.html | |
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| No no, it doesn't matter if the 1st hop can read and manipulate all your data, as long as your IP address is obscured from the eventual target destination.
Or at least, that seems to be the gist in the thread. 
Kidding, folks. I think.
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function | |
jp10558
Premium
join:2005-06-24
Willseyville, NY
| said by B :No no, it doesn't matter if the 1st hop can read and manipulate all your data, as long as your IP address is obscured from the eventual target destination. Or at least, that seems to be the gist in the thread. Kidding, folks. I think. -- B No, no - that matters. And of course the basic idea is that any software can have bugs - TOR isn't really out of beta given the version #. And it warns you not to use if you need strong anonyminity. I don't think anyone has said it's impossible to compromise TOR, just that for the most part, it's not going to work the way novaflare suggests, it's going to be quickly patched (of course you should stay up on any security patches for all your software) and it's not going to protect you from the govt.
All this said, it will keep you relatively anonymous to the end website (ie make it near impossible for them to track your reading habits via IP address) assuming you aren't logging in - in which case there's no reason to use it anyway as you are intentionally breaking anynominity...
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wormie
join:2000-11-19
Lowell, MA
| said by jp10558 :All this said, it will keep you relatively anonymous to the end website (ie make it near impossible for them to track your reading habits via IP address) assuming you aren't logging in - in which case there's no reason to use it anyway as you are intentionally breaking anynominity... Indeed, even this vulnerability doesn't allow the end target to get any additional information. It allows the first hop to do some potentially nasty things, but the basic anonymity from the target itself isn't directly affected.
Still, I'm sure some people will use any vulnerability as a reason to spread fear that Tor server operators are going to steal your genetic code.
--
What Would Jim Jones Do? | |
keith2468
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-03
Winnipeg, MB
| reply to Daniel
»tor.eff.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html
quote:
We further recommend that you not keep any potentially illegal files on the same machine you use for Tor, nor use that machine for any illegal purpose.
(snip)
Tor’s core developers, Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, (snip) are not lawyers and cannot give legal advice. Nor do they have any ability to prevent illegal activity that may occur through Tor servers.
The first point is an attempted workaround for those of their clients wanting to host illegal files. The advive is not to obey the law. The advice is how to evade detection.
The second point is pretty much a user requirement for the target market.
Who, other than someone committing a crime or someone with a guilty conscience, would want to visit a site and keep their IP address a total secret? What, people are afraid Victoria's Secret or some freebie porn site will blackmail them? Naw.
Tor itself pretty much states the main known purposes of the service are:
1. To hide the location of a server providing illegal services from the local law enforcement having jurisdiction over it.
2. To hide the source IP of traffic from the destination IP. The only reasons someone would want to do this would be paranoia (the example they pretty much give is directed at an ordinary person who has delusions of being stalked while sitting in an internet cafe), or the act of sending disruptive or illegal traffic.
3. For customers and surfers to obtain a regional price or to obtain access to a product or service web site that the server's owners will not willingly make available to people in the customer's country of residence.
Also, one has to consider who you want to keep your activity secure from.
The service isn't suitable for political freedom of speech use in those countries that do not allow freedom of speech. Sending packets destined for relays (Tor nodes) would put a computer on the "monitor list" of any police state's intelligence service -- and the failure to mention this puts the lives of political dissidents' living in police states at risk. (In 50 years we may just as easily find out that Tor was been developed to make it easier for national security services in western countries to monitor their citizens, by flagging and concentrating "traffic of interest".)
The service is also unsuitable for maintaining secrecy from parents and employers because they can intercept your communications at your end, as they leave your keyboard, and as they are displayed on your monitor.
--
(Virus&Hijacking FAQ + Submit suspected malware + Backups FAQ + Security FAQ TOC) | |
hpguru
Curb Your Dogma
Premium
join:2002-04-12
| said by keith2468 :(In 50 years we may just as easily find out that Tor was been developed to make it easier for national security services in western countries to monitor their citizens, by flagging and concentrating "traffic of interest".) One may not need to wait that long. After all TOR was originally developed by the ONR.
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REMEMBER 1776! NEVER FORGET! | |
B
Premium,MVM
join:2000-10-28
| reply to keith2468
Well that's an awfully provocative position, keith!
I'm not prepared to agree with or to argue against it.
But at least they have China in mind:
»wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnio···e2e13c20
7.9. Tor should circumvent the Chinese firewall too.
The "China problem" is the extreme example of an anonymity and anti-censorship system: a global active adversary with a lot of manpower and money, and severe penalties to discourage people from trying.
We're not working on this problem right now; we have our hands full as it is, and I'm also not convinced that we understand the problem correctly or have a good handle on the requirements.
In any case, Tor might be part of a solution. Here we enumerate four problems that must be overcome to beat the government firewall problem:
*
We need a set of exit nodes on the free side, who will connect to arbitrary places. Tor is achieving this.
*
We need a set of entry nodes on the free side. it needs to be tens of thousands, not just a few hundred. Tor is achieving this too: imagine one day down the road the Tor client GUI has a little "help China" button in the corner, which causes the clients to relay a few kilobytes per second for others.
*
We need a mechanism for telling dissidents about client IPs without letting The Adversary enumerate client ips. Hard problem; good luck.
*
We need a mechanism by which Tor traffic can be unobservable: that is, you need to be able to watch somebody and still not realize he's sending or receiving Tor traffic. Hard problem; good luck.
You're welcome to work on this problem. Feel free to use Tor or not. [#] I thought Freenet was better suited to that sort of thing.
-- B
--
In a realm outside causality and function | |
wormie
join:2000-11-19
Lowell, MA
| reply to keith2468
said by keith2468 :Who, other than someone committing a crime or someone with a guilty conscience, would want to visit a site and keep their IP address a total secret? What, people are afraid Victoria's Secret or some freebie porn site will blackmail them? Naw. Ugh, it's the same old naive "only criminals want to keep their identities secret" myth.
Let me address your three points.
said by keith2468 :1. To hide the location of a server providing illegal services from the local law enforcement having jurisdiction over it. Tor is not for obscuring the IP address of servers. You can't connect to a server without knowing its address, so a hidden server is totally worthless.
said by keith2468 :2. To hide the source IP of traffic from the destination IP. The only reasons someone would want to do this would be paranoia (the example they pretty much give is directed at an ordinary person who has delusions of being stalked while sitting in an internet cafe), or the act of sending disruptive or illegal traffic. Would not a woman being stalked want to hide her address from the person stalking her? Would not an anonymous police informant want to hide his IP address? Would not a whistleblower exposing corruption of any sort want to hide his address? The myth that only criminals need to be anonymous is naive and dangerous.
There are innumerable reasons for a person to wish to remain anonymous, the vast majority of them perfectly respectable.
said by keith2468 :3. For customers and surfers to obtain a regional price or to obtain access to a product or service web site that the server's owners will not willingly make available to people in the customer's country of residence. Tor is not really suitable for this purpose, since you have absolutely no control over the route you take.
said by keith2468 :The service isn't suitable for political freedom of speech use in those countries that do not allow freedom of speech. Sending packets destined for relays (Tor nodes) would put a computer on the "monitor list" of any police state's intelligence service -- and the failure to mention this puts the lives of political dissidents' living in police states at risk. First of all, Tor's website explicity states that it may not be effective vs a global adversary. A police state qualifies as a global adversary. Second, in a truly oppressive state that's already monitoring traffic, you're more protected using Tor than you are without it regardless. Because if they're monitoring connections to Tor nodes you can count on them monitoring connections to the endpoints being reached via Tor. It's roughly equivalent to using PGP in your email. Yes, someone may suspect you're doing something bad, but they can't prove it.
said by keith2468 :The service is also unsuitable for maintaining secrecy from parents and employers because they can intercept your communications at your end, as they leave your keyboard, and as they are displayed on your monitor. You're right, Tor does not prevent people from looking over your shoulder. Good argument!
--
What Would Jim Jones Do? | |
keith2468
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-03
Winnipeg, MB
| reply to Daniel
1. What is to stop fraud artists, hackers and authoritarians (self-styled or government agency) from providing Tor servers?
»lwn.net/Articles/138242/
quote:
Tor was originally developed as part of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory's Onion Routing program.
I didn't see anything about Tor vetting or investigating and approving those who run its relays. If there is some approval process and I missed it, the following would be partially irrelevant to the extent that the filtering process was effective.
2. As I read it, and again I might have missed something, any TOR relay (Onion Relay) has a 1/3 chance of being an exit relay/exit server/exit node.
And the default is for the exit relay to be randomly chosen (although there is a way to go in and modify specify one).
That means that Tor users in the default mode are providing an opportunity for some random unknown to see their traffic.
As noted this is not an existing hazard in the normal internet.
In the normal internet providers of relays are companies and institutions that other providers have investigated and agreed to trust (in a peering agreement, where valuable services or money is exchanged, and signatures are obtained).
3. A hacker who sets up a Tor relay can see 1/3 of the ordinary traffic that passes through his node in plain text, because he is the exit relay for that traffic.
That provides the opportunity to view and divert a great deal of traffic, at least once Tor becomes popular and has traffic.
You'd have 1/3 of the Paypal traffic that passes through your relay using your relay as the exit node. A simple mod to your own host file would allow you easily divert the paypal traffic to wherever you wanted.
This is a new hazard.
The result is similar to replacing a remote host file on the victim's computer, but this exploit is simpler -- it is the criminal's own host file that is modified, not some remote host file.
If you check »www.antiphishing.org/phishing_archive.html you can see some good examples of actual phishing emails and servers.
What a Tor phisher might do, and this part isn't particular to Tor, it has been done before, is to use a URL like www.paypal.signon.com, which most of us here know is on the signon.com domain, but which most innocents will think is part of paypal.com.
A new technique, not in the archive above yet, is for criminals to make their domain (signon.com) https by buying a certificate from a recognized certificate issuing authority. (Of course the purchase creates a paper trail that they'd have to hide, but most organized criminals have access to experts in hiding paper trails.)
4. What kind of traffic would a knowledgeable person consider both:
(a) sensitive enough that they want to their act of sending it to remain secret,
(b) not care who reads it or where it gets diverted to?
I think in with its current design, Tor will not add to the security of political dissidents, whistle blowers, or internet bank users, because it is designed to protect source IP, not identity or data, and because of the resources available to the adversaries these people face. Tor unwittingly increases the odds against ordinary people.
I think a lot of innocent people are going to use this service in its current state and they are going to get caught by their employer, their spouse, or the secret police of their homeland, etc., and they will increase the chance of theft of their banking and credit card information.
And I think a lot of pranksters, vandals and fraudsters will successfully use the current version of Tor to aid in their commissions of crime because Tor is designed to hide source IPs and that is pretty much what these criminals care about.
I'm not surprised that EFF lawyers bought the idea. It should be good for business.
--
(Virus&Hijacking FAQ + Submit suspected malware + Backups FAQ + Security FAQ TOC) | |
keith2468
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-03
Winnipeg, MB
| reply to B
said by B :But at least they have China in mind: But China could:
1. Have some nodes of its own infiltrated into Tor, which it could then monitor.
- It would make substituting its own pages for foreign pages even more effective, by hiding it.
- They only need to catch some dissident traffic to identify a dissident.
Once they've made the initial identification, the Chinese have their versions of the UK's RIP Act and the US Patriot Act that allows them to monitor the dissident's computer and internet connection directly.
--
(Virus&Hijacking FAQ + Submit suspected malware + Backups FAQ + Security FAQ TOC) | |
wormie
join:2000-11-19
Lowell, MA
| reply to keith2468
said by keith2468 :I think a lot of innocent people are going to use this service in its current state and they are going to get caught by their employer, their spouse, or the secret police of their homeland, etc., and they will increase the chance of theft of their banking and credit card information. And I think a lot of pranksters, vandals and fraudsters will successfully use the current version of Tor to aid in their commissions of crime because Tor is designed to hide source IPs and that is pretty much what these criminals care about. Funny, apparently the criminals can use Tor effectively but nobody else can. Those clever criminals. But you're right. If the criminals use Tor the way it was designed and everyone else uses it as some sort of cure-all encryption solution the criminals will do better.
It's been said more than once in this thread already: if you're sending your credit card information, or any other truly sensitive information over an unencrypted link then you're vulnerable. Tor has nothing to do with this. Sensitive data should always be encrypted, but that's not what Tor is designed for.
Somehow I miss how your phishing link is in any way relevant. Phishing is a universal problem based on human credulity, not a technology or program.
--
What Would Jim Jones Do? | |
Daniel
Premium,MVM
join:2000-06-26
Pleasanton, CA
clubs: 
| reply to keith2468
said by keith2468 :I think in with its current design, Tor will not add to the security of political dissidents, whistle blowers, or internet bank users, because it is designed to protect source IP, not identity or data, and because of the resources available to the adversaries these people face. Remember, the only purpose of this project is anonymity -- nothing else. Even if the data is read on the exit node, the original source of the request is still hidden -- hence the anonymity. Ways that the project fail to provide other types of protection are not even germane to the discussion, in my opinion, since they aren't what the project was designed to address.
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keith2468
Premium,MVM
join:2001-02-03
Winnipeg, MB
| reply to wormie
said by wormie :said by keith2468 :Who, other than someone committing a crime or someone with a guilty conscience, would want to visit a site and keep their IP address a total secret? What, people are afraid Victoria's Secret or some freebie porn site will blackmail them? Naw. Ugh, it's the same old naive "only criminals want to keep their identities secret" myth. Note the difference between a person's identity and their IP address. With IPv4 and the usual DHCP, a home IP address can be made to change every few days or weeks. With dialup it changes with each connection.
Anonymity, the desire to doing things to others while remaining anonymous to them, is not a historical right.
Privacy, the right to do private things in private, for only the parties to a communication to know its contents, is a historical right.
In history there was no anonymity. People lived in small groups, in neighbourhoods, and they knew the people they came into contact with at least by sight. Travelers might be unknown, travelers might give false names, but their scarcity made them easy to track down by appearance.
But in history there was privacy. Privacy is the right to do private things in private. To have transactions and conversations confidential between the 2 parties to the transaction. Two people talking while walking in the forest or in a field had privacy.
Tor doesn't add to privacy, because of how it relies on relays. Https and other encryption methods do.
said by wormie :said by keith2468 :1. To hide the location of a server providing illegal services from the local law enforcement having jurisdiction over it. Tor is not for obscuring the IP address of servers. You can't connect to a server without knowing its address, so a hidden server is totally worthless. Good point.
said by wormie :said by keith2468 :2. To hide the source IP of traffic from the destination IP. The only reasons someone would want to do this would be paranoia (the example they pretty much give is directed at an ordinary person who has delusions of being stalked while sitting in an internet cafe), or the act of sending disruptive or illegal traffic. Would not a woman being stalked want to hide her address from the person stalking her? Would not an anonymous police informant want to hide his IP address? Would not a whistleblower exposing corruption of any sort want to hide his address? The myth that only criminals need to be anonymous is naive and dangerous. There are innumerable reasons for a person to wish to remain anonymous, the vast majority of them perfectly respectable. A stalking victim should be going to the police, not emailing the stalker.
Likewise a whistle blower is concerned about privacy from the agency he's blowing the whistle on, not from the agency he is blowing the whistle to. As part of the whistle blowing process he'll be meeting with representatives of the agency he is blowing the whistle to, handing over documents, answering questions, etc.
With anonymous police informants, most police informants are known to the officer they inform to.
There are the "CrimeStoppers" type anonymous informants. What if the entry or exit Tor router they used was donated by someone associated with either the police or (worse) a criminal organization? Using Tor could be fatal. Better and safer to stick to phoning from a pay phone.
said by wormie :said by keith2468 :3. For customers and surfers to obtain a regional price or to obtain access to a product or service web site that the server's owners will not willingly make available to people in the customer's country of residence. Tor is not really suitable for this purpose, since you have absolutely no control over the route you take. Fair enough, but they do mention that use here:
»tor.eff.org/overview.html
quote:
This can impact your checkbook if, for example, an e-commerce site uses price discrimination based on your country or institution of origin.
said by wormie :said by keith2468 :The service isn't suitable for political freedom of speech use in those countries that do not allow freedom of speech. Sending packets destined for relays (Tor nodes) would put a computer on the "monitor list" of any police state's intelligence service -- and the failure to mention this puts the lives of political dissidents' living in police states at risk. First of all, Tor's website explicity states that it may not be effective vs a global adversary. A police state qualifies as a global adversary. The way I read their warning I took the "global" part of the "global adversary" literally.
Reading it that way, China would be a global adversary, but Saudi Arabia, Iran and Myanmar would not be.
I am pretty sure that even a smallish third world country could penetrate the content communications sent through Tor. That would fit with the way you read it.
said by wormie :Second, in a truly oppressive state that's already monitoring traffic, you're more protected using Tor than you are without it regardless. Because if they're monitoring connections to Tor nodes you can count on them monitoring connections to the endpoints being reached via Tor. It's roughly equivalent to using PGP in your email. Yes, someone may suspect you're doing something bad, but they can't prove it. What using Tor (or PGP) does do is bring a dissident to the attention of their government's secret police who are doubtlessly doing some rough monitoring of all internet traffic.
A source or destination IP for a Tor entry or exit router would raise a flag. The agency could then use other means (for example software hidden on the dissendent's computer) to monitor the dissident's computer more closely.
One thing that Tor does is to provide an new easy way for countries to monitor dissident communications abroad. They simply have to have some of their intelligence agents participate in Tor, and set up some Tor relays. Sure they'll be lots of traffic they don't care about, but it will provide a view into some of what is being said.
--
(Virus&Hijacking FAQ + Submit suspected malware + Backups FAQ + Security FAQ TOC) | |
wormie
join:2000-11-19
Lowell, MA
| said by keith2468 :Note the difference between a person's identity and their IP address. With IPv4 and the usual DHCP, a home IP address can be made to change every few days or weeks. With dialup it changes with each connection. It's a rare ISP that does not keep the records that can connect the IP address with the person's identity. DHCP is irrelevant if records at the ISP identify you.
said by keith2468 :In history there was no anonymity. People lived in small groups, in neighbourhoods, and they knew the people they came into contact with at least by sight. Travelers might be unknown, travelers might give false names, but their scarcity made them easy to track down by appearance. I don't disagree, but the history of anonymity is not relevant to current discussions.
said by keith2468 :There are the "CrimeStoppers" type anonymous informants. What if the entry or exit Tor router they used was donated by someone associated with either the police or (worse) a criminal organization? Using Tor could be fatal. Better and safer to stick to phoning from a pay phone. But what if someone standing by the pay phone overhears your conversation? That's at least as likely as some criminal orginization running a Tor server just in case an informant rats on them through it and it happens to randomly get routed through that node.
"Do not rely on it for strong anonymity" comes up every time you start Tor. In a case of life-or-death you shouldn't be using the internet, period.
I think you miss the point of why anonymity over the internet is important. Have you never said anything that could come back to haunt you? Perhaps not, but I'm willing to bet that most people who've been using the internet for a good number of years have publicly said something they would prefer not to be traced back to them. Or maybe I'm the only one.
said by keith2468 :I am pretty sure that even a smallish third world country could penetrate the content communications sent through Tor. Depends entirely on how much of the internet they have access to. If you have access to communication from both the entry and exit nodes there are ways to track a person's activity if you know who to monitor. I'd be surprised if most smallish third world countries had this ability. China may or may not.
said by keith2468 :What using Tor (or PGP) does do is bring a dissident to the attention of their government's secret police who are doubtlessly doing some rough monitoring of all internet traffic. A source or destination IP for a Tor entry or exit router would raise a flag. The agency could then use other means (for example software hidden on the dissendent's computer) to monitor the dissident's computer more closely. It's quite a leap to go from suspecting someone may be a dissident based on their use of Tor to comprimising their system with a trojan.
If your use of the Tor network is picked up, it means you're already being monitored. If you're already being monitored, using Tor does nothing but help to obscure what you're doing. To me, this seems rather better than letting them see the raw communication.
said by keith2468 :One thing that Tor does is to provide an new easy way for countries to monitor dissident communications abroad. They simply have to have some of their intelligence agents participate in Tor, and set up some Tor relays. Sure they'll be lots of traffic they don't care about, but it will provide a view into some of what is being said. I disagree that this is in any form an "easy way for countries to monitor dissident communications". If a dissident is unlucky enough to randomly get routed through a rogue node, the node will usually both not know the source IP address and not know the content of the data. Perhaps in very rare cases they'll have access to the contents of the information, but the vast majority of time even that will be useless. Furthermore, do you really think any government would undertake such an effort? The benefit is miniscule while the cost of examining all traffic through the node is considerable. Plus once again we're back to the issue of what Tor is designed for. Encryption is up to other programs, Tor is there to hide the IP address.
A rogue node is only a danger if you're not encrypted, and even then it's probably only a danger for about 10 minutes before you switch paths. How does this make Tor somehow a bad thing?
--
What Would Jim Jones Do? | |
evencarm
join:2005-08-21
Norway
| Hi there, just a question here from a relative newb.. I use Tor and Privoxy with Firefox, the Switchproxy tool and a Spoofstick extention. Personally I wouldnt dream of using it for using my credit card online (thats not its purpose as Im lead to believe) but does anybody know if the Spoofstick I have would help avoid the 'spoof sites' proposed above? »www.corestreet.com/spoofstick/
And by the way- I have scanned all my ports with the tools on this site (and others) and none of my ports respond to any probe. I'm using the latest 0.1.1.5-alpha Tor with Zone Alarm pro 6.
Hope someone can enlighten me here- thanks | |
Wildcatboy
Premium,Mod
join:2000-10-30
Toronto, ON
Host:
Security Product V..
Security
| reply to Daniel
Just a few words to help this thread get back on track. This thread is about TOR in specific and not about proxy servers in general, how they're used, who creates problems in forums and IRC, how criminals might use proxy servers, etc...
This is about TOR and only TOR. Does it do the job? What kind of vulnerabilities it may have? How does it do the job? etc ...
Now about this:
said by Daniel :Remember, the only purpose of this project is anonymity -- nothing else. Even if the data is read on the exit node, the original source of the request is still hidden -- hence the anonymity. I disagree. A proxy server's job is to keep users anonymous. Once you try to set yourself apart from the average proxy servers and add encryption to the process, you're indicating a desire to keep things secure as well and you now have an obligation to make sure it will work.
--
You can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long. | |
jp10558
Premium
join:2005-06-24
Willseyville, NY
| said by Wildcatboy :said by Daniel :Remember, the only purpose of this project is anonymity -- nothing else. Even if the data is read on the exit node, the original source of the request is still hidden -- hence the anonymity. I disagree. A proxy server's job is to keep users anonymous. Once you try to set yourself apart from the average proxy servers and add encryption to the process, you're indicating a desire to keep things secure as well and you now have an obligation to make sure it will work. I don't see it that way, instead what the encryption is doing is hiding the route the data takes. By using encryption inside the "bouncing" network, you can't just see a message with "foo" in it go in the server, and then look on where "foo" goes out of the server. Instead, you have to do traffic analysis or the like (which becomes more difficult with many users).
The thing is with TOR, all connections in and out of a node look alike - like gibberish (well again, there is traffic analysis), whereas with a standard proxy server it's plain text so you can just sit on both sides of ONE server to catch the traffic.
Even easier is that for seeing what user X is posting, you just have to sit directly upstream of user X and read the plain text he sent out to the first proxy.
TOR fixes that by encrypting till the exit node - and with 3 bounces (or more?) it is significantly more difficult to figure out who send that text.
But it's not about end to end security. And the TOR encryption is clear about what it wants to accomplish.
All that said, I believe TOD does have "hidden" servers now inside the TOR network. I believe they work like in freenet, you have a hash you input to get to that server. But you still have to know the "address" to reach, it's just not an IP address.
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BeesTea
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| reply to Wildcatboy
said by Wildcatboy : I disagree. A proxy server's job is to keep users anonymous. Once you try to set yourself apart from the average proxy servers and add encryption to the process, you're indicating a desire to keep things secure as well and you now have an obligation to make sure it will work. Again though, the encryption isn't to secure the data, it's to secure the source of the data. The idea being that a man in the middle cannot determine where the source of the packet is. Without that, one could watch the flows come and go from the node. With it, the flows vary in size and length, making it considerably harder.
TOR isn't trying to be SSL, it's trying to tackle the problems that come with being anonymous while using a normal proxy.
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