- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Setting up AWS cloud-relay - don't reserve expensive storage!
by Nick Sheppard 31 Mar '14

31 Mar '14

Hi all, I set up an AWS EC2 cloud Tor relay a month ago and made an expensive mistake. Perhaps others may learn from my example! I followed the instructions on the tor-project website, and found that it actually is quite a simple process, as it says. I did notice that the AWS setup screens I was seeing were different from the screenshots on the website, but they were asking me similar questions so I just went with the defaults where the website said "No changes". I didn't look closely enough. Everything went to plan and I watched the relay work for a month. However, on the AWS EC2 Management console I neglected to click on "Services" then "Billing" to see how much they were charging me. At the end of the month I got a bill for 120 dollars. And Amazon were quite right - they were charging me for the 1024 GB of storage I had accidentally asked for by not changing the default when I set up the instance. The first 30 GB were free, the other 994 I was paying for. And I was only actually using 1.5 GB ... There doesn't seem to be any way of shrinking the storage of an existing instance (though it can be expanded, now, with EBS, Elastic Block Storage), so I had to terminate it (which deletes the storage) and create another instance with a more reasonable 10 GB (of which df tells me I'm now using 11%). So ... if you've recently set up an AWS EC2 cloud relay with the Tor AMI, check your storage, and your billing! I think the option to specify your storage amount (with its default of 1024 GB) may have been introduced when AWS introduce EBS instead of just instance-backed storage (which may have defaulted to the size of the AMI??). In any case, I think the tor-project website AWS screenshots urgently need to be changed to reflect the current setup procedure, with a warning not to accept the 1024 GB default and an explicit recommendation about the amount of storage to ask for (was my guess of 10 GB reasonable?). Oh well, I have gained 100 dollars worth of wisdom from the episode. My way of "Don't look too closely, and hope for the best at the end of the month" was *not* a good idea. Nick Sheppard

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tor relay recommended upgrade procedure?
by Zenaan Harkness 29 Mar '14

29 Mar '14

Currently running Debian's stable/wheezy version of tor which 0.2.3.25 on my first relay, gracemissionstor. I discovered the torproject deb repository here (of course): https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian The following google search: debian upgrade site:torproject.org didn't give much. But the following search: "tor relay" upgrade site:torproject.org gave: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/lifecycle-of-a-new-relay and the FAQ which includes: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#UpgradeOrMove which relates how to keep the same relay id when upgrading. Is there a recommended procedure for upgrading tor relay? Should I upgrade asap now that I've realised torproject has more recent (0.2.4) stable version of tor? Or should I just wait until I have to reboot the server (don't know when that could be) or until a security alert comes around from tor developers? Perhaps I should just rely on the debian package to do the right thing regardless (which for most services is to restart the service, but I guess could be 'do nothing until next reboot' if the packager decided that was wise). Seeking some guidance on this issue thanks, Zenaan

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Mikrotik implementation
by Wolle Brandstätter 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

*Dear list members,* *I was thinking about implementing a node on a Mikrotik Router which is located in one of my companies datacenters with an 1Gig Uplink. * *Do you already have some experience in deploying TOR on this kind of routers?I found an interesting tutorial on how to get TOR running on those kind of devices.http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Use_Metarouter_to_Implement_Tor_Anony… <http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Use_Metarouter_to_Implement_Tor_Anonymity_Sof…> * *Await your answer.* *Cheers,Wolle*

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2.5.3-alpha packages
by Delton Barnes 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Is the nightly repository currently the Debian repository to use for 2.5.3-alpha packages? I ask because I am looking to move off of nightlies and onto more stable packages once they are available. Am running scramblesuit so need 2.5.x. Thanks, Delton

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TTTT scoreboard
by Sebastian Urbach 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Dear list members, The TTTT scoreboard and the involved systems are in need for some adjustments. Anupam is working on it and we expect that the issues are resolved on this weekend. Sorry for the interruption. -- Mit freundlichen Grüssen / Sincerely yours Sebastian Urbach ---------------------------------------------- Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ---------------------------------------------- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat and statesman

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Re: [tor-relays] TTTT
by Sebastian Urbach 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Hi Renke, Thanks, we are looking into it asap. On March 28, 2014 2:13:42 PM renke(a)mobtm.com wrote: > Sebastian, > > > http://datarepo.cs.illinois.edu/relay_scoreboard.html > > I believe your updater script for the scoreboard is broken - the values are > unchanged since 2014-03-17 :) > > Renke > _______________________________________________ > tor-relays mailing list > tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

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Metrics for assessing EFF's Tor relay challenge?
by Roger Dingledine 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Hi Christian, other tor relay fans, I'm looking for some volunteers, hopefully including Christian, to work on metrics and visualization of impact from new relays. We're working with EFF to do another "Tor relay challenge" [*], to both help raise awareness of the value of Tor, and encourage many people to run relays -- probably non-exit relays for the most part, since that's the easiest for normal volunteers to step up and do. You can read about the first round from several years ago here: https://www.eff.org/torchallenge To make it succeed, the challenge for us here is to figure out what to measure to track progress, and then measure it and graph it for everybody. I'm figuring that like last time, EFF will collect a list of fingerprints of relays that signed up "because of the challenge". One of the main pushes we're aiming for this year is longevity: it's easy to sign up a relay for two weeks and then stop. We want to emphasize consistency and encourage having the relays up for many months. So what are the things we'd want to track? - Number of relays signed up that are Running, over time. - Total bandwidth history of these running relays, over time. - Maybe a graph showing the total number of bytes ever contributed by these relays? That would impress people perhaps. - Total consensus weight of these running relays, over time. - Something emphasizing duration -- e.g. the total consensus weight of the subset of the relays that have been in the consensus for 90% of the past month, 2 months, 6 months, etc. Are there better ideas here I hope? We'll want to be cognizant that if we're in the first week of the challenge, the 2 month graph will be empty and thus look sad. - Something comparing the above numbers to the total numbers. Given how huge some of the relays are lately, it would be easily to visualize the new contribution as a tiny irrelevant fraction, which could be disheartening to new relay operators even if their relays will actually become a big deal with some patience. What are some strategies for making this work right? E.g. a layer graph showing y layered on top of x where y is the new contribution, rather than a percentage-of-total graph that shows approximately 0%. We could also imagine more niche categories. For example, if we're hoping to get people to sign up relays at universities, we could imagine that the folks running the challenge give us a list of fingerprints of relays that self-identify as being at universities, and then we do up the same set of graphs with that subset of relays. So, Christian, others, how much of this is possible as-is or with some limited tweaking, with Globe and related scripts? I am hoping the answer is most of it. :) I also cc Karsten because a lot of this overlaps with the metrics scripts, but I am expecting Karsten to push back against the idea of integrating these measurements more with the metrics project. Any other ideas for what to measure to help people know whether their contribution is being worthwhile? [*] Please don't take this mail as any official announcement, or timeline, or any of that. At this point we need to collect people to help make this happen, not collect news stories. Thanks! --Roger

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TTTT
by Sebastian Urbach 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

Dear list members, The next big data review regarding the "Trying Trusted Tor Traceroutes" project was initiated this week. It will probably take a while (weeks) before we have solid conclusions. We are very close to 100 complete runs from different IP's, in fact 99 right now. I hope that we will reach this goal very soon :-) We are not sure yet if we gathered enough data, but time will tell. We want to thank you for your support and if you want to make sure that we have more data in case the amount we collected turns out to be insufficient, then join us or keep running multiple rounds. Project: http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~das17/tor-traceroute_v1.html Results: http://datarepo.cs.illinois.edu/relay_scoreboard.html I make sure that this list is getting the results from the data review before anyone else. -- Mit freundlichen Grüssen / Sincerely yours Sebastian Urbach ---------------------------------------------- Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ---------------------------------------------- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Inventor, journalist, printer, diplomat and statesman

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Avoiding sinkholes
by ramo＠goodvikings.com 28 Mar '14

28 Mar '14

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Heya List I currently run a VPS which hosts both my mailserver and my tor relay / exit. Recently I sent an email from this mailserver and had it bounce back. It seems the receiving mailserver subscribes to the spambot list CBL (http://cbl.abuseat.org) and denied it because my IP address was on that list. It's on that list since at some point a botnet talking through tor to its C&C server used my exit node to do so - The C&C server has since been replaced with a sinkhole. That was logged, my server was deemed infected and bam, I'm blacklisted. The site that did the blacklisting kindly has a good description of what happended (including the sinkhole IP address) and allowed an automatic delisting. I'm able to update my exit policy so it doesn't happen again, however I'd like a somewhat more proactive approach. So my question is - Does anyone know of a publicly available list of sinkholes created for botnets? If such a list exists I can dynamically update either my exit policy or firewall appropriately. Has anyone implemented such a system already? (obviosuly this only works for sinkholed botnets - but if anyone knows how to stop all botnets I'm all ears....) Cheers Ramo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJTNQpGAAoJEAXQWoW8lug/mdkH/jqK5ndFWbVrRnNV7a8IqgYl 4iiR6TUYLjGEdcz8VDZ+cOkW0uCQkOvD6RWl/kWHKmA4iy7alFgbKE4Lkcg4QgBB 7EgNYww3zBbj1NX5rtRN7POge2n4ns7Y7whw0qbvHXE0ur74iLyy5H3hHZeWoosU g6t9mCsMpEpGAvbkzkDxo+idAdxYe+JiB3iaAAEUDtzeStOG5RJ/qrg8JM+U7ofA bWPehBV8+V8E//4G/XLsePCciBN0071ylg+YoGcxDpM97WHvmQKbi5VU3KfQJFTB AFaQ+7ib1BNhe7KEC7V0Iha6Yu/BTNhDRA/0i1C3pad32HQsfGvep261yq+KBjc= =Wemh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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the obfsproxy bundle, and decrease in number of users to my bridges
by Viking God 27 Mar '14

27 Mar '14

A repost, as I didn't get any answers when I posted in another thread: Where can I download an obfsproxy bridge bundle nowadays? It seams to have disappeared. I use both win and linux(but not debian/ubuntu). I have found dual information pages about setting up obfsproxy+tor in Debian/Ubuntu Here: https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en And here: https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en Why dual instructions for Debian/Ubuntu? But no instructions for other OS:es, and no direct download links with compiled packages/programs here: https://www.torproject.org/dist/ How do you suppose that people will be able to help setting up obfsproxy bridges, when there isn't any way to get instructions or packages/programs? Previously I ran an obfsproxy bridge and saw the amount of traffic get lower and lower, at the end it was only about 2-10 MB of traffic per week and with very few users. Some weeks I go no users so I stopped wasting my electricity and stopped running the obfs-bridge. But now I would like to try again after a couple of months pause. I'm interested to see if the Internet-blocking in Turkey might have caused some more traffic. I also used to run a normal bridge up until a couple of weeks ago but saw the traffic get as low as around 50MB per week, while normally I used to get around 1-2GB per week so I shut it down too. I asked myself: "What's the point of wasting energy and at the same time making it easier to hack into my network, when I'm not even helping the world?". So I shut it down too. Perhaps some changes in the tor network after the release of Tor 0.2.4 has reduced the number of bridge and obfsproxy users globally? Due to the constant flow of bugs in the different tor-related software and bundles, my first guess is that the problem is with changes in Tor plus related software. A look at the bug tracker makes me wonder if there are more things in the Tor related software that do work or don't work??? But perhaps more bridges are blocked nowadays by the filters that various countries apply to the Internet? Or perhaps less countries block their Internet users so less people need to use bridges? Or perhaps a lot of new bridge operators have arisen, making every bridge receive less traffic? My ISP isn't known for blocking anything and I've never heard of any government blocking of Tor in the EU, so the problem is probably not with my ISP nor the EU. I have always been running the latest stable release of the bundles, so It doesn't have anything to do with old versions. So my questions: Where can I find a obfsproxy bridge bundle for rpm-linux and for windows? Is there any good explanation to why the traffic to my normal bridge and my obfsproxy bridge got lower and lower after the release of tor 0.2.4 as stable?

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