February 2014 - tor-relays-universities

Re: [tor-relays-universities] Preventing access to scientific databases
by Jesse Victors 19 Mar '14

19 Mar '14

For my exit at USU, I've had great success with blocking access to journals and publications by configuring the machine's firewall and Tor's exit policy to reject outbound to the university's IP block, except for our DNS servers. I pulled up a journal in my laptop using Chrome and got access, but when I used Tor (with torrc configured to use my exit) the same page timed out because the machine couldn't contact the library's resources. I don't know if there's a session key, Kerberos, or some kind of other access-granting mechanism that the library's site uses to grant journal access to machines on USU, but when I block outbound it doesn't go through, whatever it is. Your mileage may vary depending on how your network is configured. For me, experimentation worked just fine, and I would recommend blocking campus machines anyway. If it doesn't work, try something different, or talk to your sysadmins and get advice. Jesse V.

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Fwd: Partnership between Wikimedia community and Tor community...
by Lane Rasberry 10 Feb '14

10 Feb '14

Hello, My name is Lane and I contribute to Wikipedia. I am writing to invite members of the Tor community to give comment on a proposal to establish some kind of partnership between the Tor community and the Wikimedia community. I myself am not a Tor user, so I do not have a good understanding of what the Tor community might desire from our side and would appreciate feedback on the extent to which this seems worthwhile. One proposal is to create infrastructure which would allow Tor users to write and contribute to Wikipedia articles and other Wikimedia projects. This would probably include the Wikimedia Foundation having a Tor exit node. I am proposing this as part "The Day We Fight Back". <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_We_Fight_Back> A draft of the proposal is here < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Partnership_between_Wikimedi… > and the discussion page is at < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Partnership_between_Wik… > Anyone who is not using Tor can edit either of those pages. If Tor users wish to share thoughts there, then I can offer to post anything there on behalf of anyone who mails me their comments. Thanks to everyone who can share any ideas. yours, -- Lane Rasberry user:bluerasberry on Wikipedia 206.801.0814 lane(a)bluerasberry.com

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Preventing access to scientific databases
by Philipp Winter 06 Feb '14

06 Feb '14

At Karlstad University, we recently got permission to operate an exit relay. One item on our "to do" list is how we should handle databases such as IEEE Xplore. Our university has several subscriptions meaning that our net block is whitelisted to have access to the databases of different publishers. Unfortunately, we cannot allow users of our exit node to access these databases as we would risk violating copyright. Possible solutions are: - Blacklist the publisher's net blocks in our relay's exit policy. - Put our relay's IP address in a non-whitelisted net block. - Do nothing and risk getting sued? How is this handled elsewhere? Cheers, Philipp

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Re: [tor-relays-universities] Preventing access to scientific databases
by Timothy Hayes 05 Feb '14

05 Feb '14

Rutgers has dozens of sections of our network which support people that are not faulty, staff, or students. The libraries were very unhappy to learn about this a few years ago. I honestly don't know their solution, but tor is only one of many such things they have to deal with (which include such things as random proxies run by foreign grad students, planetlab, k12 schools, outreach programs, and soon open wifi for unauthenticated guests.) I think for the most part they ignore the problem until they get a complaint. -- Timothy Hayes Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Office of Information Technology, Information Protection & Security Voice: 848-445-7515 Fax: 732-445-8023 Email: thayes(a)rutgers.edu

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