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Lately, Tor has been in the national media (in Belgium and Holland) in a negative way on several occasions:
At the end of January the media reported about a Belgian pedophile that was unmasked by Dutch journalist Alberto Stegeman (who is known for his opportunistic and unethical journalism - not that I defend any pedophile in any way);
At the beginning of February some journalist from Dutch television ordered "hard drugs" (I don't know what they were) using Tor;
Last week some Belgian journalists ordered cocaine and mephedrone on the Silk Road and wrote an article of about 6 pages in their newspaper. They also stated that the place is swarming with drug dealers, political extremists and weapons dealers.
All this was also shown in the news on national television. There were a few dozen other occasions as well on which Tor has been depicted in a very negative way in the European media.
The Belgian justice department claims they are powerless against the criminal activity on Tor, and that the only option to fight crime on the Tor network is banning Tor all together. When and if this happens (and that's a big IF), I'm sure Holland will follow as first and the rest of Europe will do too, as will the United States.
Is it really possible to ban Tor entirely? I've read here that Iran has blocked Tor on February 9 by filtering SSL connections, but Tor has found a way to work around the censorship with a tool called Obfsproxy (I downloaded it right away, since I wouldn't want to loose access to Tor in Belgium.
Also, the Dutch government has stated they will investigate the possibility to hack into Tor to expose criminals... Is this even possible? Apart from the technological difficulties I doubt they could use information they obtained by hacking could be used as evidence during a trial. But am I wrong when I think it is nearly impossible to hack into Tor to track down criminals?
All input is very much appreciated.
-------------------- Zorro, Zorro, the fox so cunning and free,
Zorro, Zorro, who makes the sign of the Z.
Zorro sàz:
Consuming tropane alkaloids is like using Windows XP.
It seems plain to me that the problems created by tor are exactly those you'd expect to be created from prohibition.
How much longer is this nonsense going to go on?
Personally I think tor and the drug sites are serving a valuable purpose. Hopefully in the future there will be all manner of medications for people to buy to meet needs that are ill served under the current legal regime (i.e. purchasing medicines they previously had no access to due to the inflated costs and requirement for physician approval).
Not really. Tor is designed so that the traffic is indistinguishable from regular web traffic.
> I've read here that Iran has blocked Tor on February 9 by filtering SSL connections, but Tor has found a way to work around the censorship
Kinda sorta... almost...
Tor works by making its traffic look like HTTPS traffic. To block tor, you have to block HTTPS. Unfortunately, one of the fields that Tor used in the HTTPS header wasn't obfuscated well enough and Iran used this to block Tor traffic. It took a few hours for the Tor authors to figure out what the filters were keyed on and fix the problem. Users had to download a new version of Tor, and it took a few weeks for a bulk of the nodes to upgrade.
The Obfsproxy tool helps shape tor traffic even more, making it even harder to filter. Tor is here to stay and nothing the censors do will make a bit of difference.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
Quote: Seuss said: > Is it really possible to ban Tor entirely?
Not really. Tor is designed so that the traffic is indistinguishable from regular web traffic.
That's only the technical aspect of the matter. In a legal sense, I suppose it is possible to ban tor. That is to say: to make it illegal. Indeed, proposals for that can be expected pretty soon now. It remains to be seen if such a proposed ban, if it actually comes into effect, will be possible to be enforced.
Quote: Seuss said: > Is it really possible to ban Tor entirely?
Not really. Tor is designed so that the traffic is indistinguishable from regular web traffic.
> I've read here that Iran has blocked Tor on February 9 by filtering SSL connections, but Tor has found a way to work around the censorship
Kinda sorta... almost...
Tor works by making its traffic look like HTTPS traffic. To block tor, you have to block HTTPS. Unfortunately, one of the fields that Tor used in the HTTPS header wasn't obfuscated well enough and Iran used this to block Tor traffic. It took a few hours for the Tor authors to figure out what the filters were keyed on and fix the problem. Users had to download a new version of Tor, and it took a few weeks for a bulk of the nodes to upgrade.
The Obfsproxy tool helps shape tor traffic even more, making it even harder to filter. Tor is here to stay and nothing the censors do will make a bit of difference.
I'm extremely glad to hear that! Thanks for your input, you seem to know what you're talking about (I've seen your name around here a few times and you make fucking sense every time you post).
Quote: koraks said:
Quote: Seuss said: > Is it really possible to ban Tor entirely?
Not really. Tor is designed so that the traffic is indistinguishable from regular web traffic.
That's only the technical aspect of the matter. In a legal sense, I suppose it is possible to ban tor. That is to say: to make it illegal. Indeed, proposals for that can be expected pretty soon now. It remains to be seen if such a proposed ban, if it actually comes into effect, will be possible to be enforced.
You have a point there as well, but is such a thing even ever done before (banning particular software in the U.S. or Western Europe)? Also, how would they enforce such a law? Passing a law is one thing, but to control a whole population seems rather impossible (especially in a country like Belgium where most politicians and law enforcers are complete and utter morons)...
-------------------- Zorro, Zorro, the fox so cunning and free,
Zorro, Zorro, who makes the sign of the Z.
Zorro sàz:
Consuming tropane alkaloids is like using Windows XP.
Quote: Seuss said:Tor works by making its traffic look like HTTPS traffic. To block tor, you have to block HTTPS. Unfortunately, one of the fields that Tor used in the HTTPS header wasn't obfuscated well enough and Iran used this to block Tor traffic. It took a few hours for the Tor authors to figure out what the filters were keyed on and fix the problem. Users had to download a new version of Tor, and it took a few weeks for a bulk of the nodes to upgrade.
The Obfsproxy tool helps shape tor traffic even more, making it even harder to filter. Tor is here to stay and nothing the censors do will make a bit of difference.
Sorry for shooting so much questions at you, but what exactly does the 'Obfsproxy' tool does? What does the name even stand for? I have downloaded it already but I haven't installed it yet. Do you think I should install that tool or not?
Are there other tools or measurements to take into consideration when using Tor? Anything else that we need to know concerning the use of Tor?
Thanks in advance.
You've all been very helpful so far!
-------------------- Zorro, Zorro, the fox so cunning and free,
Zorro, Zorro, who makes the sign of the Z.
Zorro sàz:
Consuming tropane alkaloids is like using Windows XP.
> Sorry for shooting so much questions at you, but what exactly does the 'Obfsproxy' tool does?
It is difficult to explain without getting technical. The following isn't 100% accurate, but it gets the general idea across. The way IP network traffic works is kind of like a matryoshka doll. You want to send some data. You pass that data to the OS. The OS takes that data and wraps it in a package that identifies what application generated the data and passes the data to a device driver. The device driver wraps the package (wrapped data) in yet another package that identifies what computer generated the data. The package of data is then handed off to a router. (There are actually a lot more layers than this.) The general idea is that your original data is wrapped in layers of data that help identify where the data is supposed to go and where it came from. Even if the original data is encrypted, the layers of information around you data are not encrypted.
The censors analyze these layers that are not encrypted to try and identify packages (packets) that contain Tor encrypted data. For example, they know that all Tor data travels over HTTPS, thus all Tor traffic, and all HTTPS traffic, will have an unencrypted destination port of 443. The censors can block port 443 and Tor will stop working... of course, so will HTTPS, thus this isn't a very good solution. However, it illustrates the problem.
To make Tor even more difficult to block, a program called Obfsproxy was created. The "obf" stands for obfuscate. A proxy, in networking, is a 'middle man' that acts as an intermediary for your network requests. The Tor application running on your computer is actually a proxy. It acts as an intermediary for your network requests, encrypting them and sending them out to the Tor network. In the case of Obfsproxy, it takes Tor traffic and "reshapes" it to look like other types of traffic instead of HTTPS. For example, it might make the traffic look like FTP traffic, or email (SNMP) traffic, or HTTP traffic, or usenet (NNTP) traffic, etc. The Obfsproxy client on your computer talks to an Obfsproxy server on the Tor network to 'undo' the shape shift and return the traffic back into the Tor network. This makes it even harder for censors to identify Tor traffic as they can no longer look at just HTTPS.
(Tor actually implements an entire new routing system inside the encrypted data. This is how it is able to keep you anonymous even though the parts of the system outside of Tor's control are unencrypted. This is also part of why it is slow...)
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
Thank you very much, that's some great information you've given there. Would you recommend using Obfsproxy though, since Tor fortunately isn't blocked (yet) where I live. Does Obfsproxy make Tor even slower or does it not affect browsing speed that much?
Or there other applications that I could combine with Tor as well (for instance to increase my anonymity on the internet)?
Also, I read somewhere that Freenet is a newer and more secure alternative to Tor. How does Freenet compare to Tor? Are their sites like the Silk Road on Freenet (or another network for that matter) as well - and if so, to what extent?
-------------------- Zorro, Zorro, the fox so cunning and free,
Zorro, Zorro, who makes the sign of the Z.
Zorro sàz:
Consuming tropane alkaloids is like using Windows XP.
> Would you recommend using Obfsproxy though, since Tor fortunately isn't blocked (yet) where I live.
I wouldn't because it gives the censors more data to work with to try and figure out a way to block it. This is a cat and mouse game... the less the cat gets to see the mouse, the better off the mouse is.
> Does Obfsproxy make Tor even slower or does it not affect browsing speed that much?
Yes, potentially. There are a fewer Obfsproxy servers for you to connect to than Tor nodes, so the chance of getting a slow connection is greater.
> Or there other applications that I could combine with Tor as well (for instance to increase my anonymity on the internet)?
Not really. Tor is pretty good at what it does. There are a few minor weaknesses, but these are well documented and very difficult for 'big brother' to compromise. Using a VPN is another solution to get around censors. It is much faster than Tor, but is much less secure (as you have to trust the VPN server).
> How does Freenet compare to Tor?
Donno. I haven't studied Freenet.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
Could anyone venture a guess as to what law they would leverage to illegalise tor?
It seems to me that this is another case of the medium taking the wrap for what a proportion of it's utilisers are choosing to do with it.
Everything that TOR does for the user, as far as I can see, can be done manually with your standard desktop version of Firefox and a little time and effort.
At the beginning of February some journalist from Dutch television ordered "hard drugs" (I don't know what they were) using Tor;
Last week some Belgian journalists ordered cocaine and mephedrone on the Silk Road and wrote an article of about 6 pages in their newspaper. They also stated that the place is swarming with drug dealers, political extremists and weapons dealers. [/LIST]
I bet they weren't arrested for this either... :p
Quote: as will the United States.
The legal impediments to that in the US are staggering... Not to mention, they have a strong interest in maintaining the existence of Tor (according to wikipedia, 80% of the funding for Tor's development comes from the US government).
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