- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

A vote for the amateur relay operator
by torix＠protonmail.com 13 Sep '18

13 Sep '18

My vision for the tor project (toropia, if you will) is that running a relay be normal, i.e. part of the ritual of children leaving home for college would be to make sure their parents know how to reboot the tor relay in the basement when the power goes out. But it would be a big plunge for an amateur to set up an exit relay. So when Conrad Rockenhaus offered SWIPEd freeBSD installed relays, it seemed like a chance to get my feet wet. I have no freeBSD experience, but the new torproject directions turned out fine. I'm trusting that Conrad's install will be fine while I learn about hardened freeBSD and get plugged in about security updates. So Conrad gets the grief, and I just run the relay. Maybe I'm not a "real" relay operator for this one, but I think that's okay; I'm contributing to OS diversity, and a new exit relay. When Conrad wrote about getting a court order this week, and got a reply from teor, and said he was getting help with it, my reaction was "as least he seems to be getting help" - a comforting thought for an amateur reading this list who has never seen a court order. --torix Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.

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Exit node seized
by tor-relays＠geek1.de 12 Sep '18

12 Sep '18

Hello, I've found no information - after short googling - if I should take some action after an exit node got seized. Like marking the fingerprint as compromised or something like that. I'd guess it's ok to just set up a new exit node on the same IP and everything should be fine but I'm not quite 100% sure on this. Node in question: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/AF8A3EE078EB81338461F178DBE5… And another question about this topic: Would it be better to create a new exit from scratch or is it ok to restore the latest backup with all keys, etc. ? Cheers Michael

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Court Order
by Conrad Rockenhaus 11 Sep '18

11 Sep '18

Greypony received its first Court Order yesterday. Unfortunately, we have no records to provide since it was a Tor Exit, and we don’t even have records of who owned that relay at that IP address because we don’t keep records of the info. Oops. It’s a pretty broad Court Order, and kind of funny. Oh well. Conrad

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Contact info on exit notice page?
by Isaac Grover, Aileron I.T. 10 Sep '18

10 Sep '18

Good morning fellow exit node operators, I am considering adding a dedicated email address (not this one) to be used for my exit nodes on the exit notice pages, where currently none exist. After reading this list for over two years and the stories of DMCA notices, court orders, etc., would an email address on the page provide some benefit to those parties who need to send complaints and piracy violations, or would it only attract more spam? Make your day great, Isaac Grover, Senior I.T. Consultant Aileron I.T. - "Practical & Proactive I.T. Solutions" Office: 715-377-0440, Fax:715-690-1029, Web: www.aileronit.com

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Difference Between "Number of Routers" And "Number Of Descriptors"
by Keifer Bly 10 Sep '18

10 Sep '18

Hi, So upon checking my relay status at torstatus.blutimage.de, I saw Number of Routers In Cache: Number of Descriptors In Cache: I wanted to double check, what is the difference between “Number of Routers” and “Number of Descriptors”? I know Number of Routers means number of relays currently running. Thank you.

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Reminder: Meeting in #tor-relays
by Colin Childs 10 Sep '18

10 Sep '18

Hi everyone, As promised, this is a reminder email that we will be holding our first IRC relay operator meeting this week! When: September 11th @ 1:00AM UTC Where: irc.oftc.net <http://irc.oftc.net/> @ #tor-relays You can confirm your local date / time by visiting the following page, and selecting your timezone from the dropdown menu: https://www.worldtimeserver.com/convert_time_in_UTC.aspx?y=2018&mo=9&d=11&h… <https://www.worldtimeserver.com/convert_time_in_UTC.aspx?y=2018&mo=9&d=11&h…> See everyone there!

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Suspension of service (ISP Scaleway / tor exit)
by Olaf Grimm 08 Sep '18

08 Sep '18

Dear readers, some days ago I change my relay to an exit relay with a very strict policy. Today came the suspension message into my regular mail account. After login into the Scaleway account I saw that the time between the abuse log message and the deactivation of my exit relay were 6 hours only. At these time I was at work! I was not able to react of the message, neither I knew it. The "abuse message" was a raw firewall log, without spaces hard to read. I'm not a professional, so I could read only "SYNFLOOD src IP xxxx dest IP xxxx". That's all. After I learnt what this is, I responded to the provider that good providers realize own DDOS protection in the network and protect customers too. Why log the provider bad outgoing traffic and ignore bad incoming traffic? They don't know the source of the bad traffic, but have the customer to beat someone! The answer field for the reply were some lines only. Without comment from the ISP the ticket was closed and the VPS locked yet. I try to delete the old instance and build a new one. If the same occur I leave Scaleway (and give info about that again). Now I recommend to set the ISP Scaleway (in France) of the list of bad providers. Scaleway message: Hello, We have tried to contact you about an abuse report concerning one of your server. Unfortunately at this time you did not reply to this report. As stated in our terms of service, we have suspended your account. Sincerly, Scaleway End message To avoid a big shitstorm: I know what I do and it is not my first and only exit. Scaleway was the first trouble and in such a way, that I must leave a comment. To the tor website editors: It is possible to include a basic abuse protection chapter in the tor documentation (config guide)? I've found some iptable rules, but I use the user-friedly "ufw", the overlay to iptables. It would be fine if some good guys could help with an easy configuration guide in the config chapter for tor relays. Have a good time. I feel me better. Olaf

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Lets increase Routing Security for Tor related BGP Prefixes
by nusenu 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Hi, I measured the adoption of RPKI ROAs that help with routing security and some other properties for the >3k BGP prefixes that make up the Tor network. https://medium.com/@nusenu/how-vulnerable-is-the-tor-network-to-bgp-hijacki… You might want to jup directly to section "Recommendations for Tor Relay Operators". (I could paste it here but then all the URLs would be lost) Since OVH SAS and DO do not deploy ROAs at all yet: If you are an OVH SAS or Digital Ocean customer (directly or indirectly just on the same AS) it would be great if you could ask your customer support when they are planing to deploy RPKI ROAs (like other big hosters already did). thanks, nusenu -- https://twitter.com/nusenu_ https://mastodon.social/@nusenu

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4 of Conrad Rockenhaus trial servers are in the top ten exit relays for Canada
by zimmer linux 06 Sep '18

06 Sep '18

Hi, Just to let you know that following on with the one month trial with tor exit relays that Conrad kindly offered, at least four of his exit relays are now in the top 10 listing for Canada, out of 68 Canadian exit relays. https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/country:ca%20flag:exit Well done to Conrad - I say. The more, the merrier. If you want any help with setting up your own FreeBSD tor exit relay, feel free to contact me off list. Zim

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Possible problem with NYX
by arisbe 05 Sep '18

05 Sep '18

Hello ops, Today I noticed something on NYX that I find disturbing. Page 2 (list of inbound/outbound connections) showed me the IP address of an inbound connection on one of my bridges! Not the authority. This is crazy as these are indicated as <scrubbed>:port for the users protection! I have never seen this before and haven't seen it since. Of course, on low usage bridges, the connection IP address can possibly be disseminated from netstat but that's not the point. It's my sense that this should never happen. I get chills imagining this happening on a guard relay operated by an antagonist ! ! I'm using the default NYX configuration on Ubuntu server 18.04.1 LTS, Tor 0.3.3.9. Arisbe -- One person's moral compass is another person's face in the dirt.

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