- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

My VPS relay has just been hacked
by Nick Sheppard 27 Oct '14

27 Oct '14

For the last month I've been running a middle relay (no guard flag yet) on a 512 MB VPS provided by Edis.at in Switzerland (4.99 euro per month). The software is Tor 0.2.5.8-rc with obfsproxy 2 and 3 running on up-to-date Debian Wheezy 7.6. I left the iptables at their defaults. Last night Edis suspended my VPS because of a suspected outgoing DDoS attack, and emailed me. I rang their (very helpful) phone support in London and they de-suspended the VPS so I could ssh into it and investigate. ( I told them it was running a tor non-exit relay - that wasn't a problem.) Sure enough the Solus control panel traffic graphs show the tor relay traffic stopping abruptly last night, followed about 40 minutes later by an exponentially increasing spike of outgoing traffic, soon cut off when the VPS was suspended. I ssh'd into the VPS ("last login" showed my own last login, so no problem there) and looked at logs and top. notices.log simply cut off when the tor traffic stopped, but showed nothing unusual before that. The Solus control panel traffic graph started showing (a very small amount of) outgoing traffic as soon as the VPS was de-suspended, so I assumed the malware was still active, and used top. This is typical of what I found. 1 root 20 0 10604 832 700 S ... 0:00.10 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S ... 0:00.00 kthreadd/3277 3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S ... 0:00.00 khelper/3277 1370 root 20 0 36976 660 492 S ... 0:00.38 hxyqbutesc 1400 root 20 0 109m 1616 1188 S ... 0:00.00 rsyslogd 1446 root 20 0 18836 884 680 S ... 0:00.00 cron 1473 root 20 0 49888 1212 608 S ... 0:00.00 sshd 3187 root 20 0 27556 744 504 S ... 0:00.00 vzctl 3188 root 20 0 17808 1968 1500 S ... 0:00.00 bash 5374 root 20 0 21584 1416 1072 R ... 0:00.00 top 5440 root 20 0 6244 536 296 S ... 0:00.00 akcviaxtbl 5443 root 20 0 6244 532 296 S ... 0:00.00 akcviaxtbl 5446 root 20 0 6244 532 296 S ... 0:00.00 akcviaxtbl 5448 root 20 0 6244 536 300 S ... 0:00.00 akcviaxtbl 5449 root 20 0 6244 532 296 S ... 0:00.00 akcviaxtbl There is a strange line near the top for process "hxyqbutesc", which didn't change; and a strange block of lines at the bottom, which changed every second or two. Sometimes it was five similar lines, as above; sometimes it was several block of lines, eg this: 5276 root 20 0 6244 528 292 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 qscntoweqb 5277 root 20 0 6244 536 300 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 qscntoweqb 5280 root 20 0 6244 532 296 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 qscntoweqb 5282 root 20 0 6244 536 300 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 qscntoweqb 5283 root 20 0 6244 528 292 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 qscntoweqb 5290 root 20 0 6244 532 296 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 saqizxaihz 5294 root 20 0 6244 528 300 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 saqizxaihz 5295 root 20 0 6244 532 296 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 saqizxaihz 5296 root 20 0 6244 524 296 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 saqizxaihz 5298 root 20 0 6244 528 296 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 saqizxaihz Each block is always 5 lines, and the names (always 10 lower-case letters) seem to be different every time. The blocks change fairly regularly every second or two. I shut the VPS down to stop it doing any more harm, but I didn't delete anything; I can restart it and ssh in again for further investigation if necessary. Eventually I'll have to reinstall everything from scratch, straightforward enough, but what can I do to make sure it doesn't happen again? Would hardening my iptables work? Has anyone else seen this? Nick Sheppard

6 7

tor-relays set on nokia n900
by Franklin 27 Oct '14

27 Oct '14

Hey all My issu not responds?

1 0

Tor 0.2.5.10 is released!
by Nick Mathewson 26 Oct '14

26 Oct '14

Hi, all! I just sent a release announcement to the tor-announce mailing list. If you're not on that mailing list, you should subscribe; it is very low-volume. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-announce/2014-October/000096.html Synopsis: There is a new stable out. Some packages are up-to-date, more packages should be up-to-date over the next week. Usually I don't announce a stable till there are packages, but people have been asking me about this one, and I'd rather have an official release announcement than a series of weird rumors. yrs, -- Nick

8 9

Relays alongside firewall
by Jan Nielsen 26 Oct '14

26 Oct '14

Hello. I recently enabled UFW on my relays. I have allowed in all necessary ports that my relay uses. I was looking at the logs and there are plenty of blocked incoming TCP connections. These connections are being blocked because they are attempting connection on ports that I have not opened e.g. 9001. However, the traffic appears to be relay traffic. Is ufw interfering with my relay? Are there additional steps to take when running a relay alongside a firewall? Here is a redacted snippet from my ufw log: Oct 26 15:10:29 [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=04:01:26:15:5a:01:xx:8a:xx:64:xx:f0:xx:xx SRC=202.108.xxx.xx DST=178.62.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=48 ID=46331 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49892 DPT=34449 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Oct 26 15:10:32 [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=04:01:26:15:5a:01:28:8a:1c:64:cb:xx:xx:xx SRC=202.108.xxx.xx DST=178.62.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=48 ID=46332 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=49892 DPT=34449 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 Oct 26 15:15:12 [UFW BLOCK] IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=04:01:26:15:5a:01:28:8a:1c:64:cf:xx:xx:xx SRC=60.186.xx1.xx DST=178.62.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=49 ID=19751 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=52502 DPT=34449 WINDOW=5840 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

1 0

Iptables dump
by Sebastian Urbach 26 Oct '14

26 Oct '14

Dear list members, I want to offer my iptables dump so that everybody who's interested can use it to fill up the firewall with the "usual suspects". My system basically runs just TOR and SSH, so it's not a big surprise that the file contains almost only ip's which attacked SSH. Iptables is fed by fail2ban and then dumped every hour iptables-save so that this collection is automatically loaded via iptables-persistent after a reboot. I will publish this file just once so that this list is not stressed too much. If there is a certain amount of interest i'm willing to offer the file for download permanently. Please contact me if you are interested in that. -- Mit freundlichen Grüssen / Sincerely yours Sebastian Urbach ----------------------------------------- Definition of TOR: 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain and 100% reason to remember the name! -----------------------------------------

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] BBC and UK Lottery blocking ip addresses running Tor
by Dan Hanley 26 Oct '14

26 Oct '14

Hi Matt I was in the unusual position where www.bbc.co.uk decided I was not UK resident (I am) and redirected me to www.bbc.com - where none of the links worked for me as that site decided I was UK resident. The BBC did make it clear that they understand Tor relays should not be an issue for them, but that they consider exits to violate their terms of service. It would seem they have stopped discriminating against relays, I doubt they'll ever be exit friendly :-( Dan > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Matt Puckey <matt(a)puckey.org> > To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > Cc: > Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 18:19:21 +0000 > Subject: Re: [tor-relays] BBC and UK Lottery blocking ip addresses running > Tor > Dan Hanley: > > Looks like the BBC have changed their rules. I am still running a relay, > > but can now access www.bbc.co.uk in a normal fashion. > > > > Still blocked by national lottery, but I'm hopeful that they both use the > > same third party ip checker, and that the next lottery update will fix > the > > issue. > > Progress! > > I cried a little inside when I read, "We have asked our provider to give > us a way of differentiating Tor exit nodes from non-exit relays, to > allow us to block exit nodes only." > > Ugh. > > Did you have trouble reaching www.bbc.co.uk as well as iPlayer? That > would be strange. I haven't seen them block Tor relays & exits simply > getting to www.bbc.co.uk. > > --Matt > > > >

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] My VPS relay has just been hacked
by Libertas 25 Oct '14

25 Oct '14

For what it's worth, there's an operational security document on the Tor wiki: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/OperationalSecurity However, that document covers more advanced techniques mostly intended for serious attackers such as government agencies. Others have already mentioned to you the simplest options, which should keep you safe from automated botnet hackers. These include: allow only public key authentication on SSH, use fail2ban or sshguard, update frequently, and don't run anything unnecessary (a torrent client, an HTTP/FTP server). Some relevant links: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/Keys (if you're only going to read/do one thing, make it this) https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/index.en.html#cont… -Libertas

1 0

Note: 0.2.3 is deprecated
by Nick Mathewson 25 Oct '14

25 Oct '14

And please forgive me or sending one more email, please let me call your attention to these bits of the Tor 0.2.5.10 release notes: This release marks end-of-life for Tor 0.2.3.x; those Tor versions have accumulated many known flaws; everyone should upgrade. o Deprecated versions: - Tor 0.2.3.x has reached end-of-life; it has received no patches or attention for some while. If you're still running Tor 0.2.3 on a relay, I'd strongly suggest you upgrade to 0.2.4, or to 0.2.5 as soon as it's available for your operating system. If there's some issue that prevents you from running a more recent version of Tor, please let us know soon so that we can try to address it before 0.2.3 becomes totally obsolete and gets rejected from the network. best wishes, and thanks for running relays! -- Nick

1 0

Oniontip
by Sebastian Urbach 24 Oct '14

24 Oct '14

Dear list members, Since i was the One who asked to put Oniontip on the tor-website (donate section), what is the current discussion status ? -- Mit freundlichen Grüssen / Sincerely yours Sebastian Urbach ----------------------------------------- Definition of TOR: 10% luck, 20% skill, 15% concentrated power of will, 5% pleasure, 50% pain and 100% reason to remember the name! -----------------------------------------

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] Unstable router
by humbletoruser＠Safe-mail.net 23 Oct '14

23 Oct '14

Hello, thank you all for your suggestions. From: Julien ROBIN <julien.robin28(a)free.fr> > Take another well known product from well known trademarks > Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, Sitecom, TP-Link, or something compatible with OpenWRT for example. Okay, I'm going to try a new router. I don't use VoIP or TV-Services. Just a Tor Node and a hidden Service.

1 0